I've been thinking a lot about ends of things, including ends of lives and ends of civilizations. In a year, I will have outlived my grandmother, should I be so lucky. In four, I will outlive my mother. Both died young of illness. My grandmother of breast cancer, and my mother of pneumonia exacerbated by tobacco and alcohol.
I spent the last years of my childhood on the Central Coast of California, and my oldest son was born at UCLA Harbor in Los Angeles. I have friends I've known for decades who are being affected by the fires, including my birth partner and his wife, two of my longest and dearest friends.
Change is inevitable and can be terrifying. My main goal for this year is to focus on helping others to navigate change as a way to manage my anxiety about that same change. There are a lot of things we can't control about the world, but when we're lucky we can manage our responses to the things we can't control.
I've been using Finch App to help with motivation and staying on task, and so far its working to the point where I've exercised 9 times in the last 11 days, I'm doing minor but forgettable tasks more frequently, and I've made my bed in the morning 11 days running. It's basically a Tamagotchi that can't die and is tied to intelligent, flexible prompts for self care, time management, and reminder systems. It's cute, simple, engaging, and everything you *really* need is free, though FOMO will likely get you and make you want the paid version after playing with it for a bit.
I'm gonna miss TikTok if it goes away, but more importantly I'm going to miss having a semi-effective semi-democracy. I've returned to the subject of homelessness over and over again in my writing and life choices over the years, and with the recent rise in homeless and impending exacerbation of the problem, it's not likely I'm going to stop paying attention.
All that to say I've got a fairly busy paperwork day scheduled today. My goals are to finish up some overdue progress notes, write an article about SURJ and other important organizations in the direct action and mutual aid spaces, upload one of my old articles from my earlier website that I have saved on my hard drive, take a shower, watch a movie, and make some postcards to send to people I love. So a busy paperwork day. Plus exercise. I think today will be a strength and flexibility day, not a cardio day.
Gratitudes: I am grateful for my best friend who I've been married to for 27 years and change now. I am grateful for the spaces online where I can congregate with friends. I am grateful for Lofi Girl, whose music is tickling my brain this morning and helping me get motivated.
