Tag Archives: personal update

Meta-Blogging, Personal News, Politics

Reeling and trying to recover from a Trump win

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Hello dear readers! Last week felt like a massive trainwreck to me. And it started out so well. I was excited to get out another polytheology post on Monday and was hoping to get back into blogging after only putting out four posts in October. Then things changed on Tuesday.

I will note that Tuesday already started out rough for me before the U.S. election results started rolling in. I was dealing with some aches and pains1 Monday night, which meant I got very little sleep. What sleep I got wasn’t all that restful either. So when I got up Tuesday morning, I decided to take an unplanned day off from work. I spent the day with my husband watching television and YouTube videos, playing computer games, and just enjoying each other’s company.

That evening, I made the mistake of looking at the election results so far. Things did not look promising. At the time, only 217 electoral votes had been called for Trump. Harris had secured 174. And while there were plenty of states that hadn’t been called yet, the map I was looking at showed that the vast majority of the outstanding states were clearly leaning toward Trump. But as someone who tries to remain hopeful, I told myself anything could still happen. Still, my husband and I took a few minutes to discuss our fears and what we might want to do if the worst happens.

Tuesday morning, my hopes were dashed and I was devastated and angry. In fact, I was angry enough that I was willing to say the following on social media:

I’m not going to lie. Those were not entirely idle words. I put some power behind them.2 I am that angry about the fact that so many of my fellow Americans are willing to vote for a man and a party3 that holds that much contempt towards so many of us. They wouldn’t mind seeing many of us getting harmed as long as they think it’ll get them what they want.

After that, I went silent on social media for a few days. I decided I just needed a break from the political hellscape. I needed time to keep myself from spiraling into total despair and fear. After all, there’s a part of me that fears just how bad things could get over the next few years. I really do believe that if we don’t find effective and meaningful ways to resist, our democracy could warp into something sinister and even fascist.4 While those fears are legitimate, I needed time to get some distance from them lest they rob me of my ability to resist. If that were to happen, I’d be of no help in reshaping wyrd and setting our society and country back on a better path.

So right now, I’m trying to figure out what my part in resisting the nightmare policies Trump and his supporters have planned will look like. I’m not sure what efforts I want to financially support and how much I can budget for that efforts.

The one thing I do know is that for me, resistance will start with continuing to be myself. I will continue to maintain this blog and my presence on social media sites. I will continue to post about the things that matter to me and present my authentic self and my perspective on the world. After all, I’m among the people that Trump and his base like to dehumanize and deny rights to, so it’s important to make myself seen and my humanity evident in order to push back against those attempts.

I’ve also been thinking about community a lot. I think that in this time, community and mutual support will be even more important. And I think that working communally will be vital.5 I’m not sure what that will look like for me, but it’s something I’m thinking about.

I’m still reeling. I’m still trying to recover. But I’m here and I will not allow my fear and despair to drag me away from my ability to help make this world a better place. I’m just taking some time to develop a vision and a plan.

Post History: The first draft of this post was written on November 9, 2024. I proofread, revised, and finalized it on November 20, 2024.

Footnotes

  1. It’s somewhat distressing how frequently I have aches and pains these days. After all, I’m still only fifty and hope to live another forty years or more. What are things going to be like when I’m ninety? ↩︎
  2. Before any naive readers start shouting “harm none” at me, you might want to be aware that (1) I do not consider the Wiccan rede binding and (2) I don’t interpret it as prohibiting all harmful acts anyway. ↩︎
  3. I mention this because our problem is not Trump. Trump is just the symptom of the greater problems that are deeply rooted in our society and system. Problems like misogyny, white supremacy, Christian supremacy, and queerphobia. Trump’s just what you get when we as a society let these problems run rampant. ↩︎
  4. The reality is that our democracy is already broken and that was true even before Tuesday. Now we have to find a way to keep it from getting worse and hopefully reverse the damage already done. ↩︎
  5. I find it interesting and appropriate that my recent posts in my polytheology series have spoken heavily at the concept of community and group work toward a better world. It’s a reminder I think I and many others need right now. ↩︎
Meta-Blogging, Personal News

Checking in: We need more steam, Captain!

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Happy Monday, readers. I’m doing a bit of a check-in for today’s blog post because I must admit — somewhat red-faced — that I don’t have anything prepared. While I had a great time participating in #ChangingPathsChallenge2024 all last month and going through some of the journal prompts in Yvonne Aburrow’s book on Fridays, I didn’t do a very good job of planning for what comes next. I made it through last Monday by coming across something on Threads I wanted to talk about, but no such luck this week. Oh, there are a couple things I could have talked about, but my weekend also didn’t really lend itself to working any of those ideas into a blog post.

I’m not giving up like I’ve often done in the past, though. I just need to regroup and make a plan and put in a bit of prep time. Hopefully, things will be motoring right along starting next week. As for this Friday, I’ve gathered a list of bookmarks to lists of journal prompts relating to witchcraft, Paganism, and spirituality in general. I will probably use those lists for blogging prompts on Fridays until I can find another book I want to blog my way through.

I’m currently reading Cultish by Amanda Montell right now. It’s a fascinating book and I’m enjoying her exploration of how cults use language to draw in and control their followers. I also find it interesting and compelling how she points out how cultish language is everywhere, and not just in cults themselves. I’m considering doing a blog post about that as well as on discussing the authoritarianism in cults and how religions can and should strive to be explicitly anti-authoritarian. But I don’t see myself doing a whole blog series about the book. I’d love to find another book I could do that with.

I’ll also note that I was probably more than a little exhausted by the end of June from doing the blog challenge. As much as I loved participating (and plan to do it again), it definitely confirmed that I am not someone who can blog daily. And I think that blogging fatigue contributed to my failure to prepare for what comes next. Well, that and the fact that I’m a notorious procrastinator.

But rather than engage in useless and even counterproductive self-recrimination, I’m just going to pick up and get going again.

Thanks for listening. Drop a comment below and let me know how all of you are doing. And as always, requests for blog posts covering specific topics are always welcome.

Personal News

Working from home while working to obtain the new home

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Monday morning, members of the leadership team at work walked around the building and told everyone that they should go home immediately if they did not have to work in the lab. Apparently, they decided that the coronavirus situation here in Rochester merited that kind of action. For at least the next two weeks, we are supposed to work from home as much as our duties allow us. We should only go in to work — and we should get approval from the director “on duty” that day — is when we need to do something in the lab or generally access equipment beyond our work laptops.

Heck, my boss even sent out an email telling us that we should feel free to grab our monitors and bring them home if we feel it will help. I’d do that, but I don’t really have any place to set up another monitor here at the house. Now, if we were int he new house, i’d have some options.

That brings me to the home-buying update. The owner of the house I mentioned in my previous post on the topic accepted our offer. Well, our adjusted offer. We had to go up little bit to edge out the other offer(s). This past Monday, we also did the home inspection. It was an interesting experience. The inspector took us through the whole house and around the grounds. In addition to pointing out things we might want to ask the owner to either fix or give us a credit on — we decided only two rose to that level — he pointed out other, more minor things we might want to take care of ourselves as time and money permits. Lots of preventive maintenance/improvement things. Today, we sent the owner our requests of what we’d like fixed or credit to cover our costs of fixing ourselves. We now have to wait for her agreement or counter-proposal, which would mean further negotiations. But overall things look good and we feel like we’re one more step closer to having our very own place.

Of course, next comes the fun part: Pulling the trigger on the actual mortgage application and going from being pre-approved to being fully approved. After that, it should just be signing a butt-load of checks.

Gender and Sexuality, Personal News, Politics

personal update 2019/04/13

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[Content Note: Harassment, misogyny, war on agency]

Since I dropped a post on here about a week ago and have been getting a small but steady trickle of traffic, I decided to do a “personal update” post. Especially in case any of my long-time readers (all five of you) are still around.

I’ve actually been wanting to blog more but have been struggling. There are a number of reasons for that. (Have I mentioned that I have a growing and possibly obsessive love of lists lately?)

  1. I’m trying to figure out what my “voice” should be. That is what I want to communicate and share with people.
  2. I’ve struggled with that process because it’s leading me to wonder what I’m really qualified to talk about.
  3. I’ve also struggled with it because it’s leading me to question what i can say that hasn’t already been said better by others.
  4. I’m married now and I need to balance my blogging time with spending time with my Hubby.
  5. Most of what I feel I want to and am qualified to say fits in a tweet or a string of tweets, but would not really make a good blog post (in my opinion at least).

That last point is why I’ve been spending a lot of my time on Twitter and Ive been pretty active over there. In fact, here’s another list (told you I was obsessed with the silly things) I’ve been up to on Twitter.

  1. As I mentioned in my previous post, I made an effort to get Pete Buttigieg, who is running for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020, to acknowledge how some of his “defenders” are harassing and attempting to silence his critics, particularly those who face oppression in ways Buttigieg does not (nor do I) and speak out against such harassment. At this point, I am declaring my attempt ineffective (other than hopefully making some of those who have been harassed feel seen). I’ve tweeted at him. I’ve emailed the only account I could find associated with his campaign. I just don’t see what more I can do.
  2. After watching people promote the anti-choice propaganda film, “Unplanned,” I started promoting counter-proposal and alternative to seeing the movie. [tweet 1115216412488892416 ]
  3. I’ve been getting much more involved with the exvangelical community and have enjoyed both hearing about other people’s experiences with evangelicalism and sharing in bringing people’s attention to the toxicity of evangelical culture.

On a more personal note — and because I realized I never actually blogged about it — I’ve been a happily married man since August 2016. Hubby (I have not asked his permission to use his name on this blog. He’s a fellow geek, a gamer, and a fellow witch. That last one is absolutely amazing to me, because he was only the second guy I’ve ever dated that was a Pagan (and the other relationship I had with a fellow witch lasted like a week). He’s also given me my first chance to actually play Dungeons and Dragons, and I love it.

So, that’s my life in a nutshell right now. What’s going on with all of you, dear readers?

Health

Personal Update: Seeing my cardiologist a year later

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[Content Note: Health Issues, Heart Disease, Heart Failure, Needles]

Before yesterday, my last appointment with my cardiologist was last May. I’ve seen my GP a few times since then, as well as urgent care doctors when I’ve had a cold that lingered just a little too long for my tastes. So when my cardiologist reviewed my chart at the beginning of this week and saw that the doctors in internal medicine had been playing with my diuretics, He decided it was time to see me again now rather than waiting to the appointment I had scheduled for May.

I showed up at his office a few minutes after my appointment time, a bit frazzled. (A nasty accident on Elmwood turned what should have been a half hour drive to nearly an hour drive.) Needless to say, the stress of being late had my blood pressure up — even more than it normally is due to my penchant for white lab coat hypertension.

After the technician took all my vitals and got me seated comfortably in the exam room, my doctor came in less than five minutes later (the advantage of scheduling the early morning appointments is that they’re usually neither busy nor falling behind schedule yet). He asked me what was going on and I gave him a brief run-down, then gave me a brief exam. We talked a bit more and said I probably need to go for an echocardiogram since my last one was over a year ago. Also he noted the same symptoms they were seeing in internal medicine, so he said he was going to change my diuretic and double the dosage. Then he went to talk to the supervising doctor in the cardiology department.

The supervising doctor came back in the room — as is common — and talked to me some more, then asked me to hop back up on the exam table so he could take a look too. He checked me out and found the same symptoms every other doctor has found. However, he wasn’t eager to blame them on my heart. He noticed other signs that suggest that my heart may just be fine and pointed out that the symptoms I am exhibiting can be caused by other factors1. As such, he said he didn’t want to throw more diuretics at me without a definitive answer. So in addition to the echocardiogram — which he managed to get scheduled immediately after my visit in cardiology — he recommended a chest X-Ray (to determine if there actually is any fluid in my lungs) and some blood work. Which meant spending an hour or two hopping from department to department in the hospital.

Since it was right next door and is the only thing that had to be scheduled, I immediately went over to get the echocardiogram. That’s always a fun procedure, and this was my third time at it.  Basically, you take off your shirt, lie on a bed and let the technician run an ultrasound probe all over your chest while fiddling with the controls. This time, though, the tech also took shots of my abdomen and throat, which was a new experience. I look forward to finding out what that was all about.

The hardest part of the echocardiogram is the contrast dye. They inject it into a vein to get better contrast in the images, which helps them take more accurate measurements. The put it in through an IV port. That means that — unless you have other tests scheduled that also require an IV port — they put one in, take about ten minutes to do that part of the procedure, and take it right back out.

After that, it was off to the outpatient lab to get blood drawn. They needed three vials this time. I joked about that to the phlebotomist and she responded, “Yeah, we only take as much as they need.” I told her that was good, as I kind of like my blood.  I was also pretty impressed with the this phlebotomist. Not only did she manage to get blood with only one try, but I think it was the closest I’ve come to having blood drawn completely painlessly. (Well, other than the time in the hospital when I’m pretty sure I slept through the whole thing.) I barely even felt the needle.

After that, it was off to radiology for chest X-Rays. I was a bit concerned about how long that would take. When I had a chest X-Ray back in October, they were packed and it took them about half an hour to call me.  Even then, they actually took me to a different part of the hospital because they were so backlogged. (I”m guessing this is probably why the radiology department validates parking for their patients.)

However, they were pretty slow yesterday morning. They called me in less than five minutes. After that, it was just a matter of posing for the nice woman, praying that the radiation would give me superpowers instead of cancer, and going on my merry way.

Now the hard part is waiting for my cardiologist to look over the results and call me back with answers. Fortunately, I’m able to see all my results (except for the echocardiogram) this morning. What I can see looks pretty good:

  • My calcium and platelets are both low, but otherwise my blood work looks great.
  • My A1c (I was totally surprised when my cardiologist — who usually doesn’t care about my diabetes — ordered one) is a mere 6.0.
  • The report from the chest X-Ray indicates that both my central airways and my lungs are normal. No mention of fluid, so I’m guessing that means there isn’t any. Sadly, it also doesn’t give any indication as to what’s causing the crackling sound in my lungs, which is what everyone panicking that my heart might be getting worse again.

So unless the echo shows something to be concerned about, this is probably a good indication that my heart is happy. Hopefully the cardiologist will be able to shed some more light on things whenever he calls.

And hopefully we can figure out what really is causing my symptoms so everyone will quit throwing diuretics at me until they’re actually necessary.

1This seems to be the problem with getting a diagnosis of something like congestive heart failure. If a symptom can be attributed to that diagnosis, most doctors are inclined to assume that’s what’s going on and act accordingly. That’s great if they’re right. If they’re wrong, you end up wasting a lot of time treating the wrong thing.