The tree planting with Jon’s soil went very well. It was a good weekend overall. The kids, including my best friend’s kids, did most of the digging. There’s this great photo of where these spooky kids have one of them standing in the hole looking slightly menaced. I couldn’t help but think of the Sleater-Kinney song, ‘Bury Our Friends.’

The dark humor was there, planting a tree with compost composed of Jon’s atoms and organic matter. It was a burial, but not a burial. It was work. It was community.

I think I had hoped it to be more of a threshold moment, but I find myself still waiting in a grief purgatory.

In winter, I tended a fire and found myself out of fuel coming into spring. I want to be anywhere but home. My office near Pike Place Market has become a joyful novelty where I imagine myself a tourist, because among these buildings and strangers you can be anyone and let the waterfront, fresh dead fish, and the gum wall hold you in their contrasting grandeur.

There is something comforting about being ignored by strangers. The ultimate no-strings-attached situation where a gentle smile can affirm, and everything else can be discarded.

In just over two weeks, I’m on a plane to NY. I keep turning over and over all the things I want to see and do when I get there - I really have just two full days in the city, and both of them are starting to fill up with plans either finalized or dreamed. I want to be someone else for a minute. Or maybe I just want to be able to eat a slice of pizza for dinner and not have to worry about anyone else. Or spend as long as I want in some vintage shop without interruption. Maybe I just want to lay in a bed in a room that is not my own, on linens that are not my responsibility, with no chores to be seen around me, with just what I need in that moment.

This is not a work trip (though I will be seeing some coworkers), but over the past few years work trips have become fantasy respites just based on the beautiful thing of my primary responsibility being myself, the shower and bedtime on my terms, even if it meant I needed extra coffee in the morning. Extra coffee, but only responsibility for me.

I need a break.

This week I took the kids to see Chalk play at Easy Street for a free in-store show, and it was fantastic. It was the kind of experience that allowed me to drift through my mind while moving my body, which is one of my favorite things about live music. I had plans to see a friend DJ last night, but the friend I was going with got sick, and my eldest came home from school complaining of dizziness and a headache - because he had hit his head really hard against a tree branch on the way home.

What followed was my consciousness as a passenger to a sympathetic nervous system ride to go through triage and assessment of the situation, going so far as to make the call to get in the car and head to urgent care or the ER. A couple blocks from the house I got myself together to call the nurse line to get a phone assessment, pulling over when they called back to talk it through. They had to consult with the charge nurse to verify, but we were cleared to head back home at the end of the call. Kiddo was OK, but I was a wreck.

This ‘Year of Whatever’ is full of self-discovery, but I didn’t like this one. I had to truly give up on my plans to go out. I was tender, feeling like falling apart. Everything was fine, but my body and brain geared up for the fight for survival. Inside a part of me screamed, wanting to run hard and fast away from everything. Why is this my responsibility? I felt like I was being pulled back into a war I thought I left behind.

I’m so tired.

And there’s a grief in realizing that I can’t fight or force through this without causing myself more damage. I’ll have to be that person who says, “No, I have to rest.”

Who am I anymore?

I had coffee with an old friend last time I was in New York, and one of the things he said was something about just hitting your limit, and stopping everything, and just going and laying down. I’m trying to do that more. Just stop, lay down. I did that when we got home last night, before going on a walk, taking some photos, buying some ice cream to soothe my soul.

Next weekend is Norwescon. Over the past fifteen years, we rarely missed one, outside of the pandemic. The kids want to go, but I don’t want to. There’s obvious reasons why, primarily because Jon was the reason we started going in the first place. He was a regular panelist. I’m probably going to buy tickets. We’re probably going to go. It makes me sad to think about.

Life feels like a constant balance between taking care of myself, and what I feel like I need, and trying to make sure that my kids aren’t shorted because of my own inability to execute. I think about my own childhood, and what I needed, and what I didn’t have, and want to do better for them.

And on that note - it’s taken me multiple days to craft this - and it’s time for me to log in to work.

Go take the opportunity to listen to some live music and get lost in it. I know I need to do that more.