You know how sometimes people invite you to do things, but accidentally leave out critical bits of information? This was one of those days. When Lindsay asked me if I wanted to go sailing today, neither one of us knew that we were actually going to be racing the boat. And by “we,” there were plenty of crew members who knew what they were doing, and our job was to sit where they told us… because as it turns out, just being weight in the right place at the right time (staying out of other people’s way) is almost as important as pulling lines and raising sails.

When we first got on the boat, I did what I always do in new situations. I fell down. Monocular vision, fields of vision different depending on dominant eye, didn’t see something because it wasn’t there a second ago, yadda yadda yadda. I banged up my knee and my shin right good. Luckily, I was so hopped up on adrenaline from finding out that we were racing that it didn’t hurt too much. Everyone kept asking me if I was okay, because my leg looks like I got in a fight with a dog and lost…. badly.

All of this is not to evoke pity, just to explain why even being dead weight was a steep learning curve. Tacking and jibing became more and more difficult as the excitement wore off, because that meant our group had to move from one side of the boat to the other, with our heads low enough not to get smacked by the boom. It was kind of like being a soccer goalie, because there were long periods of doing nothing followed by twenty seconds of hauling ass… I had no idea what place we were in, because there were boats all over. You could tell which boats were just on the Chesapeake having fun because they weren’t sailboats…. and yet, there was no real order to the sailboats, either.

I am very competitive when it comes to team sports, because I don’t want to be the weakest link. So I took a video and pictures on my phone during our “down time,” and during chaos, I just gritted my teeth and tried to move as quickly as my body would let me… because thinking that we were losing because I was in pain was unacceptable. Lindsay asked what place we were in, and everybody kind of agreed they didn’t want to know…. but it wasn’t because I hurt myself and was moving slow or that we weren’t a good team. We just weren’t awesome. There were three-man professional teams out there today, and I know that because “I raced with them.”

At one point, in utter disbelief, I turned to the man I’d just met, “Fletch,” and said, holy shit… I’m in the middle of a sailing race. This is not where I expected my day to end up. When Lindsay and I got there, they were loading up the boat with alcohol and ice. I joked with everyone that we were going drinking and sailing was just background noise. They laughed and agreed with me…. when in reality, the alcohol and ice was for after the race was over. So what I thought would be this leisurely sail around the Bay was more like having your hair catch fire several times an hour.

It was exhilarating, every moment of it.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Lindsay picked me up around 7:00, and after introducing her to Sam, Mike, and the dogs, we headed to Cava. Cava is akin to Chipotle, but Mediterranean bowls, meats, and condiments. We ate healthy and then went to the pub for a drink. It’s all about balance.

Today we’re sailing out of Annapolis with her lobbyist at 5:00. I can’t wait. I really love the water and I haven’t been sailing in years. I also just really love Annapolis, period. I could take pictures all day.

But the title comes from news I got when I got home. I read on the Internet that if you are ordained in the Church of Dudeism, in some states you can perform weddings. I was ordained in 2012, but back then it was just a joke and my certificate says that I was ordained in 1969, almost a decade before I was born. So I got a new certificate with the right date on it and ordered a paper copy and a letter of good standing for my papers, business papers for the ins and outs and what have yous.

If Bryn’s county doesn’t recognize it, there are plenty of other places I can pick up ordination for the ordinary, because I’ve never met anyone who could finish all three years of seminary between now and the middle of August.

For now, the Dudeist priest abides.

Say what you will about Dudeism… at least it’s an ethos.

If I have it, and you need it, it’s yours.

-My father, David M. Lanagan

Whenever I fall, my dad is there to pick me up. The first thing he said when Dana and I announced that we were getting a divorce and not planning on reconciliation was, “what’s next, Mrs. Landingham?” I didn’t really know, but I did know that it gave me strength at a time when I could really use it. My whole world was upside down, and it was emotional shorthand for “let’s not look in the rearview mirror.” He knows that it’s my process to think and rethink everything to the point of exhaustion, and that one phrase, repeated over and over in The West Wing, had the desired effect. I started thinking about what I wanted my life to look like, and let myself off the hook (for the time being) of wishing for what had been.

When he started the conversation about moving to DC, he said, “do you really want to remain in Houston?” At first, I didn’t know where that was going to lead… but as we ate breakfast in the Avalon Diner at The Fountains in Stafford, Texas, I told him that I absolutely adored my friends and family, but Houston itself didn’t really speak to me. After having lived in Portland so long, I missed the ever-present green spaces, and places to hike that weren’t man-made due to the concrete-jungle flatness. Houston is a lot of things, even beautiful in its own way, but my heart just didn’t live there in terms of setting. I am a Virgo, tied to the land… but I never realized how much I liked to be outside until I lived in a place where it wasn’t 90 degrees most of the time…. and 60 degrees on the inside as overcompensation. DC gets just as hot, but not as long. By the time we were ready to pay out, I could already feel the snow blowing against my cheeks.

DC had been on my own 3-5 year plan because Dana’s parents are older than mine. We figured it would be a good idea to move home eventually so that we could be a part of their lives while we still had them (the irony of my mother dying is not lost on me). We’d spend a few years in Houston, and try to get jobs in DC so we would have guaranteed income once we got there. Dana was going to be a teacher, so she could work anywhere. There’s an IT corridor in Northern Virginia and if I couldn’t find a job right away, I could always cook or wait tables until that perfect salary came along.

My dad, knowing how much I loved DC and how much I wanted to go back, jump started the process by saying “I will support you until you find what you need. Just go.” So, I packed up my clothes and rented a furnished room, while, for the first few weeks at least, little boxes of the “if it fits, it ships” variety arrived every day. We called it “moving $11 at a time.”

It’s always been that way. Every time I’ve needed something, my dad has just handed it over. It just says so much about him and the way he approaches life, because he doesn’t just do this for me. He does this for the rest of my family and his friends, as well.

When I was in high school, the girl that bullied me every day got her horn stolen, so he told her that she could borrow his… the one he’d played since he was in high school himself. The bullying got worse after that, but in retrospect I think it was because she was embarrassed that she could never repay such a gift.

I feel that way often. I wish I could publish a best-selling anthology or novel, win the lottery, get a job that pays me far more than I’m worth… whatever. Anything to be able to repay the gifts that I’ve been given over the years… and not in a way that makes things equal. Something to show my dad that his investments in me haven’t been lost… that believing in me wasn’t a raw deal.

I know for certain that if the tables were turned, that I had money and he didn’t, I’d do exactly the same thing he does for me. What is mine would be his… and even if he never found himself in that position, it would still be a dream to shower him with cars and houses and bling-bling. I can’t show my gratitude the way I want, the way he deserves, so I spend a lot of time hoping that what I can do is enough. It doesn’t have anything to do with him; it is all about me and how I’d like to be able to treat him to something he’d never buy for himself.

What he can’t buy for himself is memories.

Shortly before Lindsay was born, in May of 1983, Return of the Jedi arrived on the big screen. I don’t remember any of the movie, but I do remember the lights going down and feeling incredibly special because we were on our own… the last father-daughter date before he was wrapped up in taking care of a six-year-old AND a newborn… but it was more than that. Shortly after Lindsay was born, Hurricane Alicia hit Galveston hard, and while my mom, Lindsay, and I went to NE Texas to be with our grandparents, my father was one of the few people allowed to remain on the island with his clergy pass. He weathered the storm by helping others… the way he weathers any storm, really.

As I got older, I got my own kid-sized clergy pass. I went to weddings where he officiated, I went with him on visits to families whose loved ones had just died, I went to funeral homes and cemeteries. Because Mom was so tired because of the insane schedule of a baby/toddler, I became his de facto company. He never talked down to me, because by the time I started talking, I was way past the cutesy voice you use with a child. A lot of the time, I had just as good a vocabulary as those around me. We’d laugh and joke while rolling around the city, and I often answered his bag phone while he was driving. I was an excellent secretary with a preacher’s kid phone voice… probably the same one I use in customer service, now. Very few people ever knew it was me, because I was determined to sound like a grown-up… so most of the time they thought it was my mother.

Life as a preacher’s kid makes you grow up fast, especially the larger the church because more and more eyes are on you. My dad always made room for me just to be me, another thing for which I’m eternally grateful. It was hard to constantly be held to a higher standard than the rest of my friends, and not by my parents… by theirs.

I’ve also seen him handle so much tragedy with grace. When I was in fourth grade, the fifth grade class went on a swimming trip with the principal and a few teachers. One of the girls thought swimming looked easy, and jumped in. The principal almost had her, which made the situation even more tragic for him when she drowned and they recovered the body later. My dad helped the entire community through their unimaginable grief. I was grieving, too, because even though I didn’t know the girl who drowned, she was the daughter of my favorite third grade teacher. Even while dealing with sadness on every front, I felt safer knowing my dad was in charge.

When I was in 7th grade, my dad let a parihioner move in with us who was taking chemo treatments at M.D. Anderson. We all took care of her, but it was my dad who showed me just how far he would go to help, and why it matters. It always matters.

When I was in tenth grade, one of the kids in the youth group lost his father while on a saltwater fishing expedition, and my dad carried the family through their tears, as well.

Helping people with his prayers and presence led to his next move when I was in 12th grade. He thought he could help people more with medicine, and embarked on a lifelong dream. He sacrificed going to medical school because he thought it would take too much time away from Lindsay and me, working his way up from EMT I to Paramedic II and apprenticing under my stepmother to learn as much about rheumatology as he possibly could… and because he was a Paramedic, he’s the only one you want to go to when you need a shot or an IV.

In the evenings, he let me practice on an orange until I could use a butterfly needle and when it came time to practice on real skin, offered his own arm. It was brave, but not nearly as brave as teaching me to drive.

My favorite memory in that arena is that I’d just gotten my learner’s permit when we had to go and visit my grandparents. It was just us in the car, and my dad was exhausted. He reasoned that you only had to have a licensed driver in the front seat- it said nothing about being awake. So, off I went, “Driving Mr. David” the five and a half hours from Houston to Lone Star.

It was amazing, because for once, I was taking care of him.

The interview with the Blackboard recruiter went well enough that my resume is being passed on to the hiring manager. This is because I stayed up all night trying to prepare, because there are so many things I’ve forgotten in the last six months. I reviewed everything I could possibly think of that might be asked, and the most helpful was going to Blackboard listservs hosted at universities that use it. If they required a user name and password, I just moved on. Enough were open that I was able to learn a lot in 21 hours and two minutes. It’s actually not that different from WebCT, the LMS (learning management system) I helped set up at University of Houston. WebCT was bought out by Blackboard, so some of the same technologies still exist. This is a more technical position than I’m used to, so I’m hoping that if I don’t get this job, I’ll be considered for another position in the customer service department. I’m not afraid of working on the backend, but I’m also much better on the phone with inexperienced users. As I put in every cover letter, I am great at translating “geek to English.”

In any case, I’m not going to give up on Blackboard. I’m going to give this opportunity everything I’ve got, and keep applying until I annoy them enough to hire me for something. I am too talented at academic technology to let this opportunity (or any others with the company) slip through my fingers. I’ve also applied at lots of universities who have distance education programs, because generally full-time positions come with tuition waivers. I’d really like to end up at Howard, because I could go straight through the last of my undergrad into the MDiv program, which is my ultimate goal, anyway. However, I cannot tell if my resume is being ignored, or if it’s just a case of university bureaucracy. Getting hired at University of Houston was no small feat, but once I got there, I was promoted every year. It was getting my foot in the door that was the hard part.

I’ve also applied to schools that would be out of my league in terms of trying to get in, but with tuition waivers from working there, I could bypass the application process. I’ve sent resumes to both Georgetown and American, and have considered James Madison, UVa, and Tech. The only reason I’ve considered them without actually applying is that I’m still debating on whether I’d want to move out of the DC area. It’s not like it’s far… maybe a couple of hours, but enough to take me out of where I really want to be. For instance, I can’t take the Metro. I’m also a little gunshy about moving to a place I’ve never been. The whole idea of living in DC was that I’ve lived here before. It wasn’t a stretch to come back, getting into my normal routines here & expanding my friendship circle.

I wish I lived a little closer to Alexandria, where most of my friends are, but Silver Spring has been so good to me that I can’t imagine leaving, even just to go across the river.

The shooting that happened yesterday (in the Del Rey neighborhood of Alexandria) rattled me, because it happened where my friends, Thomas, Autumn, and Dan, and my cousin, Nathan, all live. Dan actually heard it happen, and thought it was fireworks.

There was a neighborhood walk last night called “Hate is Not Welcome Here,” which was heartening because it shows that when violence happens, we will not back down. We will show up with our non-violent responses and try to make a difference.

I so admire people who have jobs and children and other enormous responsibilities that still go the extra mile to put themselves out there in terms of political activism. I am slowly easing myself into getting back into the swing of things, but I’m not there yet. DC will be ready when I am. There are marches all the time, if not every day… we have to believe that resistance is not futile.

In a lot of ways, I am ashamed of the way I’ve handled myself since my mother died, because I did not expect to fold into myself as hardcore as I did. I knew that I would be sad for the rest of my life, but I didn’t expect to absolutely lose my snot. I didn’t expect my whole life to crater into nothing as at first, I could not get out of bed, and I am still reticent to leave my house. Applying for jobs is busywork which still allows my mind to wander while I’m doing it. I know that there is no right and wrong way to grieve, and I shouldn’t beat myself up so hard, but I don’t think I’ve ever been good at not beating myself up. I’ve shamed myself for moving out of Houston, I’ve shamed myself for not spending more time with my mother while I was in Houston, and I’ve really shamed myself for counting on the fact that my mother would live so much longer than she did.

My mother and I were not close for a lot of my life, having pushed each other away because we didn’t really understand one another. Therefore, my grief and guilt is centered around the loss of the future I didn’t get, because we made a lot of progress in a very short time, especially when she came to DC alone and we had so much time to ourselves to rekindle our relationship. She didn’t get a hotel room, she stayed with me, and slept in my bed for the first time in probably 35 years. I was still in deep grief over losing Dana, and those few nights with my mom lying next to me were the best sleep I’d gotten in ages.

In retrospect, thinking about these things has rendered me a zombie, walking through life here… but not present. I am slowly trying to change these things about myself, and each victory, no matter how small, is glorious because it was so hard won. For instance, I slept well and made coffee this morning. I am excited to see Pri-Diddy this evening. I am excited about going to Dan’s game night tomorrow. Excitement is not an emotion I’ve felt a whole lot lately, because excitement requires energy.

Most of the time, I feel like my “get up and go just got up and left.”

Yesterday, I treated myself to a haircut and relaxed into the woman’s hands as she washed my hair… possibly the first time I’ve been touched in weeks. It was a simple thing, but so important. Another victory to add to my list.

Another thing I have noticed is that in my writing, I can turn nearly any entry into talking about grief. No matter what topic I start with, it invariably whittles down into “God, I am so sad.” But that is my life right now. Everything does come down to that. There’s no one I wanted to call more after my interview than my mother… so, even though I don’t believe that she’s watching me, I talked to her, anyway. Just because you don’t get a response means your words are less important.

But not getting a response is just one more thing I have to get used to- along with the many other things that are different now.

But hey… I made coffee today.

When I woke up and looked at my phone yesterday, it didn’t say “Carolyn Baker’s birthday is today.” It said, “you have a notification from Carolyn Baker.” I nearly jumped out of my skin. Of course it was the birthday thing, but the wording set me off. From the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep, I was in full-on panic mode. I took my psych meds, including Klonopin for anxiety, but grief this deep is not something that psych meds can touch… the relief is that I wasn’t feeling the physical effects that anxiety brings, such as shortness of breath, brain and heart race, cortisol pulsing through my body so that I am feeling like a wet cat backed into a corner, claws extended.

My original plan for my mother and Dana’s birthday was to go to Mount Vernon, George Washington’s house, because that’s the trip that my mother and I had planned for this summer. I was about to get into the shower when I got a call from my sister that my dad had a heart attack. That was my official “fuck this shit” moment. I waffled between dropping everything and driving down to Houston so that I would have my car once I got there… and getting into bed, possibly under it. My dad and sister chatted with me on Google Hangouts so that I could see that my dad was okay, and told me not to come. So, I did what any self-respecting depressed person would do… I got into bed and alternated between staring at the ceiling, overthinking about it, and zoning out to videos on my laptop (I started Orange is the New Black, because I found out last season that if I didn’t watch it butt-quick, there were going to be spoilers on Facebook that I didn’t want to see… for instance, I found out through an AD that Samira Wiley had gotten a new job…).

I would overthink and overworry until I couldn’t take it anymore, then take a break, then overthink and overworry some more.

My dad has now been given the all-clear, and will possibly go home from the hospital today.

In other news, I’ve got a job interview with Blackboard tomorrow for a Client Support Engineer position. I am very excited about this possibility, because I have been in academic technology for a large part of my career. Digital pedagogy is a passion of mine, and I love Sherry Turkle, the premier expert in the field. She does a great job of advocating for online education, but balancing it with in-person conversation. She personifies an Anne Lamott quote which is that “almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” I have made it a goal in life to meet her, and I can’t imagine she doesn’t come to DC once in a while for book readings, etc. I will just make it a point not to yell at her or give her a hug while harboring an infection… things which I lovingly refer to as “dumbass attacks.”

I am so tired of hearing bad news that tears came to my eyes when the Blackboard recruiter e-mailed me. It was just for a short phone interview, but it’s the first step toward achieving a major goal. When I wrote him back to tell him of my availability, you cannot imagine how hard it was not to say “oh dear God you cannot imagine how much I needed this today my mother died my grandmother died my father had a heart attack and I am one step away from crawling under my bed.” There’s no punctuation because in my head it was a huge run-on sentence with no breath whatsoever.

I need this job. I really need this job. While it will be nice to get paid for something I love, it has been hell on earth not to have any distractions at all from thinking about everything that’s been going on since October. The one saving grace about having that time to myself is that I really dug deep into my feelings and dealt with them right away. I read a story in the news that Prince Harry is just now getting counseling over Princess Diana’s death, having stuffed it down for 20 years.

I have been able to sit in deep grief since it happened, so that going forward, it will be a more shallow well of pain. When you lose a parent, grief never goes away… it just changes. I’ve been amazed at how much it has changed just in the last few months. Progress is happening, albeit slowly, but every journey begins slowly until there’s a little momentum behind it. I feel that the regular routine of having somewhere to be every day is that inertia. Maybe I’ll be able to laugh a little more and cry a little less. Maybe going out into public won’t be so scary. Being on a team again sounds like a hug from Jesus.

I also don’t know what the salary range is for the position, but if it’s anywhere close to what I’ve made in the past, I’ll be able to go back to school shortly. The possibly of working for Blackboard and going to school on Blackboard is hilarious to me… the haha for my day. I have to savor them, because of course in deep grief you don’t get all that many.

I am also going to dinner with Pri Diddy on Thursday and possibly to a Game Night at Dan’s this weekend. Look at me! I have plans for leaving the house TWICE!

I ask for your prayers, and if you are not a God person, your presence tomorrow at 11:00 AM… and by presence, I do not want you to show up at my house. 😛 Hold space for me, keep me in your mind, send positive energy, say your own special kind of black magic prayer. I’ll take it.

And now I have to let you go. I only have 21 hours and two minutes to get ready.

This morning I made a concerted effort to take care of myself. I took a long bath, shaved my legs, slathered myself in sunscreen, and put on shorts for possibly the first time this season. And, look at me, I am wearing sandals. My room is next, because Marie Kondo lies. She says that if you clean your room, you’ll never go back to it looking like a disaster area because you’ll be so proud of yourself.

Unfortunately, not so much. Maybe this advice is for regular people, who don’t have the type depression I feel, which a lot of the time centers around “nothing matters.” I don’t feel happy, I don’t feel sad, I just feel empty inside with nothing to fill it. Also, I think there’s something psychological about having everything I need within immediate reach. My house burned down when I was 11, and I think it triggered something in my brain that I need to be able to see all my stuff at once, because you never know when you won’t have it anymore. Additionally, even though it feels good to me (at times, anyway… maybe a nap), I won’t sleep naked, either… because what am I going to do if the fire alarm goes off? I don’t have time to look for pants. I suppose that is one advantage to being male. I’d only have to look for pants… otherwise, I’d be running down the stairs, as Dana & Counselor coined, “tatas akimbo.”

[Editor’s Note: Happy birthday, Counselor. I hope you get lots of cake and presents…. but mostly cake.]

For Dana, who I don’t think has seen it, “tatas akimbo” reminds me of a villain on Freakazoid! called “Arms Akimbo.” I can’t think of one without the other. For those of you not in the know, it’s still one of my favorite Amblin Entertainment cartoons ever.

It’s about a teenager named Dexter Douglas who gets trapped in the Internet and the electricity turns him into a comic superhero. The humor is MUCH like The Tick and Venture Brothers, but of course the Internet angle speaks to me… as well as the double personality that goes along with being a mild-mannered nerd at home and an ADHD spazz when he “freaks out.” I suppose Dexter is kind of like Clark Kent, if Kent was constantly glued to a computer terminal alone in his room.

It’s voiced by the usual Amblin crew (meaning also on Animaniacs and Histeria!), like Tress MacNeille, Paul Rugg, and Maurice LaMarche- but adds guests that are equally hilarious, like Ed Asner, Ricardo Montalbán, and Craig Ferguson. I am still sort of bitter that F! only got two seasons, because every single episode is fall-down funny, particularly a standalone episode regarding a British “superhero” named “Lord Bravery…” conceived as an homage to John Cleese. He wants to call himself “Lord Bravery,” but quickly finds out it’s a copyright infringement. Hilarity ensues.

You can buy both seasons of F! on YouTube for $40.00, or $2.00 per episode. I am hoping that because Animaniacs is now on Netflix that they’ll add Freakazoid! and Histeria! as well, but I’m not holding my breath.

Histeria! is the least known of all the Amblin Entertainment cartoons, but it combines real historical events with extremely smart comedy… such as information about President Taft to the theme of Shaft. It was conceived as an animated version of Saturday Night Live, more a cartoon sketch show that met the WB network’s policies on education for  children… and, like all Amblin shows, built with jokes that go right over the kids’ heads and make adults fall on the floor. For instance, with the Taft thing, I highly doubt that the children watching would know the movie being parodied.

You know, this entry started out with me talking about taking care of myself, and it’s amazing how much my mood has lifted by talking about all this comedy… for instance, thinking about Dexter Douglas again, which I haven’t in years, reminds me of me. For all practical intents and purposes, Dexter and I are the same person… particularly when I get into Linux command line mode. Not so much with DOS. I haven’t used it since fifth grade, so I have to Google everything I need to do with it. I also hate that the commands are just different enough that it wastes my time. For example, in DOS it’s ipconfig. In Linux, it’s ifconfig. I am so lucky that the amount of time I have to use DOS is negligible. Otherwise, I think I’d be tearing my hair out on a daily basis.

Now, just because I’ve said this, my punishment will be that in my next job, my Microsoft operating system will be installed without a graphical user interface and coworkers who say, how did you make it this long in IT without learning DOS, n00b? It evens out. Most Microsoft people are terrified of Linux and won’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. My entrance into Dexter Douglas-land started in college, when I had, as my friend Leslie so aptly put it, an idealistic Red Hat phase. One of my close friends was a Linux system administrator, and I was hooked from day one. I started using Debian-based distributions when they progressed beyond Slackware, which, if you don’t know what I’m talking about, just take it on faith that it is a lesson in gut-wrenching pain… unless you really know what you’re doing.

I did not.

With most operating systems, if there are pieces of software that you need to get another piece of software to run, it will tell you… like having to install the Dot Net framework to run Quicken. With Slackware, you had to find all the dependencies yourself, and most of the time, compile software from source code rather than it coming in a .deb executable (equal to a Windows .exe). I only knew one person in college that preferred Slackware because it was so difficult, because it gave her bragging rights. I would just sigh and rub my temple with my middle finger when it came up.

Joe, the aforementioned Linux system administrator, set up a web server for my friend Luke and me, and that’s how I really got started with the command line. That was in 1997, and I haven’t looked back… although I knew UNIX a little bit from just being in college, period. In those days, UH e-mail was hosted on either a UNIX or VAX/VAX box, depending on which one you were assigned, with pine as your client. Moving up in the world to Outlook and/or Entourage was a big damn deal.

We also had staff and students that used a popular e-mail client called Eudora. One of the funniest support calls I ever took was a lady who called up and asked how to configure her “Endora” account. I had to mute the phone I was laughing so hard. When I recovered, I said, “do you mean your Eudora account? I think Endora was the grandmother on Bewitched.” It’s been so long that I don’t remember whether she laughed or was peeved, but I certainly remember how quickly I started shaking with laughter, willing no sound to come out.

And now that we’re on the subject of computer support calls, here are my top “favorites:”

• A man called up and said that his computer wouldn’t turn on. I knew to check physical connections first, so I asked him if it was plugged in. We go back and forth for way too long, because he insists that it is. I am moments away from telling him that his power supply is toast when I hear, “wait.” It was plugged in, but he had plugged the power strip into itself instead of into the wall.
• At the UH Helpdesk, like most others, when you first call in you get a list of network outages (if there are any that day). When I pick up the phone, she says, “I just heard the network was down and my monitor is blinking on and off. Are those two things related? Again, it was all I could do not to fall apart laughing, so on the verge of tears running down my face, I said, “ma’am, I hope not.”
• It is simply amazing just how many people think you can help them solve their computer problems while their computer is at home and they are driving.
• And finally, through no fault of their own (because why would you know this if you weren’t a computer person?), there were so many people who called in with their theses erased, their PhotoShop projects ruined, etc. because they didn’t know that a magnet would erase the data on a floppy drive and would stick them to the side of their CPUs or on the refrigerator in order not to forget them. And of course there weren’t any backups. Why would that be important?
  • As a side note, even though USB drives are more stable than floppies, please just put copies of files on them. Mobile drives are prone to errors, loss, theft, etc. With errors, sometimes they can be fixed, and sometimes the drive is bricked. Please, for the love of God, don’t let that bricked USB stick contain your only copy of your doctoral research. I used to be wary of cloud storage, but I got over it. Now, if I have sensitive documents I password protect them, zip them, and then add a second password to the zip file. I do very little with Google Docs, Office Live, etc. and just download my files to whichever computer I’m using at the time… including my phone and iPad.
    • I also use LastPass to keep track of all my passwords in an encrypted vault. The only password I need to know from memory is the one for my e-mail, and the rest are complicated random strings. For instance, my bank and blog passwords are 25 characters. In terms of hacking, your best bet at security is to make passwords so long that it takes years to crack them. It won’t stop a hacker if he/she is that dedicated, but most will move on to the people who still think Password123 is a valid option. LastPass is available for all browsers and mobile devices, and on my Android, works with my fingerprint reader (don’t know about iOS).

The bottom line is that there are very few computer problems I haven’t encountered in the 20 years I’ve been doing this… and in 20 years, those problems haven’t changed. There are still people who write down their passwords in a notebook and keep it either on top of their desks or in an unlocked drawer. There are still people who put their network credentials on a Post-It note and stick it to the bottom of their keyboards…. that way, no one has to hack your network at all. You’ve just let them in the front door……………….

Which is kind of like having to run out of a burning house, tatas akimbo.

I mentioned yesterday that my grief presents as lack of motivation in most areas of my life. The one area it doesn’t affect is looking for a job, because especially since I passed my ITIL exam, I have a much better chance of getting an interview than I did before, because I’m still working on my Bachelor’s. In technology, the degree won’t matter much because it’s not in Computer Science (degree plan is BA in Political “Science”), but most companies want to make sure you can make it through college, anyway. It is a long, long, long story as to why I’m not finished yet- one for another day. As a result, I think my resume is getting kicked out of the automatic readers on principle, so that hiring managers aren’t getting to look at my resume at all. Basically the ITIL certification allows me to run a helpdesk rather than just being a part of one, but I’d work my way up if I got my foot in the door. For all the money I spent on it ($1,000), I don’t understand why I’m being kept in the dark. I am a computer badass, and I wish more people knew it.

However, I only put that stuff on my resume. When I introduce myself and people ask me what I do, I tell them I’m a writer. Of course it’s not my career. I think if it was, I wouldn’t have anything to write about. But at the same time, it defines me more aptly than computer badass ever will. Even when I am working full time, writing is a second full-time job because I don’t slow down on the blog, either. I write at lunch or after work, and just hope that people keep listening… but even more important than that, wanting to be a better writer tomorrow than I am today for all the tomorrows of my life.

If I’d had any kind of forethought, I might have used that money to enroll at UMD instead. I could finish quicker at University of Houston, using (ironically enough) the distance education tools I first helped set up from 1999-2000. However, now that I have in-state tuition, I would rather go to class in the flesh if I can swing it. I am positive that Blackboard would work well for me… after all, I am a writer and my thoughts come out clearly that way. But in political science, part of the fun is arguing in person.

There’s also a few classes I could take at community college that were full when I tried to enroll as a freshman/sophomore… or would work better online than others. For instance, I need a literature requirement, and I was dropped from Intro to Poetry when I got sick and missed three classes in summer school. There are few times in my life that I’ve been more angry, because as it was explained to me, it didn’t matter how sick I was. Rules were rules. The day I was dropped, I had an A+ in the class. I think it was because I never had to write poetry, just essays explaining what other poets meant. I, like most teenagers, had notebooks full of angsty, awful poetry… and I don’t think I’ve ever progressed beyond them. But Freshman Comp 1 & 2 were both Mickey Mouse classes for me, so I guess I’ve found my genre. Not every writer can be good at all of them.

I also need a math requirement, and I’ll have to check with UMD, but at University of Houston, you could sub Music Theory and Logic for things like Algebra and Calculus. I never took the SAT/ACT, but if I had, I assure you that my results would have been somewhere along the lines of verbal wizard and maths potted plant. How did I get out of taking placement tests, you ask? I missed three weeks of school, when both of them were being administered, due to migraine headaches that wouldn’t go away and was hospitalized. I had several spinal taps, so for a long time I couldn’t even keep my head up. I just took the entrance exams for community college and skipped standardized testing rites of passage altogether.

In terms of the hours I already have, at UH I’m a second-semester junior. My minor is in psychology, and all of those hours are finished… thank God. One of my friends made me laugh (because it wasn’t really a joke) by saying, “could you change your major? We’re tired of you trying to diagnose us all.” So, I waited until I had enough hours to complete my minor and changed my major to political science after having been bitten by the bug. When you want to get involved with social justice and governmental change, there’s no better place to be… although where Trump is concerned, I’m really glad I took Abnormal Psych and aced it.

At first, I chose psychology as a major because I didn’t want to be a therapist myself… I thought I would end up as a professor or something, because I didn’t want to unleash a crazy person on my poor patients. Lots and LOTS of people go into private practice because they got interested in psych when they were diagnosed with something themselves. I just preferred learning the theories, from William James to Sigmund Freud to Erik Erikson to Jean Piaget. I am interested in the way your core personality is set by the age of six, and further development has more to do with behavior modification rather than changing who you are.

For instance, I am a writer, and I have been since kindergarten. It is literally who I am, and not something I picked up along the way.

I picked up computers in the ’90s, and when I did, boy were they heavy. You haven’t lived until you’ve crushed your feet with a 21-inch CRT monitor, or cracked your head on a desk trying to hide cable.

It has been a blessing to see wi-fi, Bluetooth, and flat screens develop…. not to mention laptops with docking stations.

Being a geek has gotten easier, while writing has stayed the same amount of gut-wrenching difficulty. I carry these words with me all the time, given to me by a friend and they’ve just stuck………… “looking inside yourself isn’t for sissies.”

But to be fair, neither is teaching a little old lady how to e-mail picture attachments.

There are so many books out there on how to deal with grief, but it is as individual as a fingerprint. No one grieves the same way, and there is no right or wrong answer. I am writing this to share my own process in hopes that it might be helpful to someone else… but again, my experience is going to be different from yours.

In some cases, the person you’re grieving might still be alive. In others, the process of your loved one dying might be so protracted that you will absolutely get a chance to wrap up loose ends and say goodbye. Lastly, some of you will lose loved ones in an instant, because tomorrow is never promised.

I have probably said this before, but I fall into the last category. At 65, after just retiring the last May, my mother broke her foot and kept it elevated so much that an embolism developed in late September. When it blew, it killed her instantly on October 2nd… not even really enough time to enjoy being retired. Because none of her doctors knew it was there, they could not have removed it while it was still in place. It was no one’s fault, because the best surgeon in the world, had he or she been standing right next to her, could not have saved her. She was in the midst of reinventing herself, because teaching had defined her for so long, and I would have loved to see the person she would have become…. especially since, selfishly, she would have had a lot more time to come and visit me. 😛

In those first few days, my sense of loss included lack of control… as if the most experienced surgeon couldn’t have saved her, but somehow, I could’ve. Eventually, it went away as I internalized what had really happened, but I still felt guilty that in the two weeks before, I’d thought about driving back to Houston to visit my father as he went through multiple surgeries to remove the cancer on his nose, and when I told my mother that I wanted to do so, she told me that she thought it was a bad idea. The guilt was that I had plenty of money in the bank to stay in a hotel, that my car gets 40 mpg so fuel wouldn’t have been expensive, and I could have been there to visit my mother in her last days, as well as been there for Lindsay when it happened had I stayed in town long enough. I still was, because I rushed to Houston immediately when I heard the news, but it wasn’t the same. I had to let go of those feelings as well, because I did the best I could with the information I had.

My grief process started out the way every emergency in my life ever has… make sure everyone else is okay, and break down later. What emotions I couldn’t stuff down naturally, I took anti-anxiety medication so nothing rattled me. In a sense, my natural response coupled with the meds made me feel as if I was having an out-of-body experience, as if this were happening to someone else. I needed it to be that way, though, because otherwise I would not have been able to function. The visitation and funeral would have been too much, and not because my mother died. Because I am not big on crowds of people I do not know, and though my family was in attendance, including my dad, it was a small number of people with which I was comfortable. My medication allowed me to rise above, and in most cases, return to the “show mode” of my PK upbringing. I was polite, my breathing deep and even, though I was screaming obscenities inside (come on… we’ve met). I felt sympathy for everyone who lost her, because it wasn’t just Lindsay and me. It was our stepsisters and their families, her first family, my dad (not only were they married for 23 years, they’d been friends since elementary school), and a whole host of friends, former students, and their parents as well. As an empath, it was hard not to pick up on all the pain in the room… but perhaps it was for the best, because it was another tool to keep me functioning. Again, I could break down later. I felt that in the moment, my best bet was to be strong for everyone else. Plus, I gave a short eulogy at the funeral, and I had to be able to make it through without falling apart so that I could be understood.

However, not everyone understood that about me. For some, I didn’t seem sad enough. They wondered why I didn’t cry.

When I got back to DC, the floodgates unleashed and I came undone…. just not in front of all the people that probably needed to see that I was grieving, too. Of course I was, just not in the same way. Part of the reason I was so incredibly calm was that I was in shock. I think I’ve said this before, but it was akin to the high you feel when you break a bone and adrenaline kicks in so hard that you really don’t feel the pain until it wears off. Even seeing my mother’s body at the visitation didn’t allow the shock to wear off, which was entirely surprising because in the beginning, I was convinced that I would believe she was dead when I could see it.

Not so much.

Again, the shock didn’t wear off until days later, in, strangely, the bathtub of all places. In retrospect, perhaps it was being naked physically that allowed me to be naked emotionally. I was reading a book and one line broke the dam. Before that, I was my own best dike (literally, although it’s okay with me if that makes you laugh. It made me laugh, too.).

So, in no particular order, here are the feelings I’ve had and the actions I’ve taken over the past few months… the things I’ve learned about grief that I didn’t think I’d have to learn quite so young:

• I am so angry at the time I view as “stolen from me.” I thought I would have 15 or more years with my mother.
• I am so jealous that I have friends much older than I am whose mothers are still alive.
• I am irrationally filled with rage every time someone says to me that this was God’s will, she’s in a better place, or it would have been so much harder for me had I lost my father rather than my mother, as if I was happier I lost my left arm than my right. I also wear an ichthus necklace that has my mother’s fingerprint etched into the silver, and people have commented that it’s creepy because they’re focused on how said fingerprint was acquired at the funeral home.
• I am ashamed of all that rage because I know that they have no idea that they’re saying the wrong things and only meaning to be kind… except for the necklace comments. That’s just mean, and it’s been said to me more than once.
• My cost of living is very, very low and I had a lot of savings in the bank. I used that money to be able to completely fall apart, and in retrospect, it was the wrong thing to do because I didn’t have a routine to allow me to return to some semblance of normalcy.
• Alternatively, no one had to see me in the stage of my grief where I was metaphorically tearing my clothes and literally unable to take care of myself… even with medication, I was still completely undone.
• Now that months have passed, I am able to take care of myself, but rarely amenable to leaving the house, for two reasons. The first is that I still have anxiety attacks and I don’t want anyone to see them. The second is that when the subject of my mother dying comes up, people start to treat me differently. If you don’t know what I mean, it is such things as pushing me away, treating me with kid gloves, and asking how I am every five minutes when the way I feel hasn’t changed in months, much less between the coffee being served and the bacon & eggs arriving.
• I have empathy for the people who push me away, because they’re not doing it on purpose. They simply don’t know what to say, and view saying nothing as “better.”
• If you are reading this and have never lost anyone close to you, please know that you don’t have to say anything. I would much rather have touches- a hug, a cheek kiss, an arm around my shoulder, and you not minding if in the middle of that hug, I start to cry and you get tears (and possibly snot) on your shirt.
• Also, do not say “call me if you need anything.” I will not call you under normal circumstances, and I need a lot of things. I just don’t know what they are and guessing is a losing battle. If I wrap my brain around something that I think will make me feel better, it won’t five minutes later.
• Do not listen to anyone who says “everything will be okay,” because it won’t be for a long time. That’s a piece of advice I got from a friend, which I have extrapolated into nothing will ever be okay again. I will get moments of extreme joy, and life will go on, but there’s never going to be an event in which I don’t wish my mother was there. I will grieve in some measure for the rest of my life.
• I’ve pushed away people I really love, and have come to regret it immensely. At first, I just wanted to be left alone. Now, I’m more careful what I wish for.
• My grief also presents as not eating and then EATING ALL THE THINGS when I get hungry enough. I thought about setting alarms on my phone for meal times, but discarded the idea when I realized that I couldn’t force myself to eat, either.
• I have little motivation for my dreams, because again, my mother is not there to witness them materialize. I find myself willing to settle in all areas of my life. I have no doubt that the motivation will eventually return as I get a sense of “the new normal,” but right now I would be just as happy working at Taco Bell as I would starting a new church plant…. because What. Is. The. Point?
• I am realizing more and more that I can’t wait until grief is over and my mood changes. I am in charge of changing my own mood, but sometimes I don’t have the motivation. I want to sit in my sadness, because thinking about and grieving my mother is all I have left of her. When I don’t want to sit in sadness, I play happy music, like Aqua, and go for a walk. There is room in my life for both.
• I am a lot more scatterbrained than normal, a brain fog that will not lift. Just a small example… I’ve told many people that I’m watching Wentworth. I’m watching Westworld.
• I read books on grief in small doses, because I am determined to finish them, but I can’t take it all in one sitting. I would rather escape into novels that have nothing to do with my current situation.
• Alternatively, over the past few months I’ve also escaped into TV shows where people come back to life, fantasy I wish was reality, such as:
  • Santa Clarita Diet
  • iZombie
  • The Returned
  • Deadbeat
• There have been so many things I perceive I’ve done wrong during this transition, and just have to hope that they were right for me. I am jealous of people that are able to achieve post-traumatic growth quickly, as if it is a flaw in my character. Again, I’ve only done the best I could with the information I have.

Grief is so weird and terrible, but it also teaches you, in some measure, who you are. It will separate out who you were before and who you are now. It will shatter all of your illusions of what you thought life meant…. in some cases, allowing for a greater purpose. In others, shutting you down into the smallest version of yourself. Sometimes, both ideas present all in one day.

I never knew until last October that the smallest version of myself is I miss my mommy. The process is how not to get stuck there, because there will always be moments.

Getting “bigger” hasn’t happened all at once, because there are moments where I feel six feet tall and bulletproof, then a movie will run across my mind and I am paralyzed with fear… mostly the fear that I’ll never feel better than I do in that moment.

And then another great moment comes along, a bulwark against the storm…. because grief often feels like being pushed overboard into terrifying water- you can’t see land. And if you could, it wouldn’t be a beach you recognize.