Blood

While I do currently serve on a board and also participate in other “one-off” volunteer activities, there is something that I do every few months that takes up relatively little time and energy.  And, although I didn’t do it during pregnancy and breastfeeding, I am glad that I have started giving blood again.

I started donating blood 3 or 4 years ago, and it was a major step for me.  I used to be incredibly afraid of needles, and donating blood probably requires one of the biggest ones you will encounter.  But, I knew that if I was eligible I should do it.  I knew my donation could literally save a life.

I do a regular donation of blood every 8 weeks (you can’t do it more frequently than that).  Some people will do a “double donation”, so they can only donate every 16 weeks.  There are certain rules and restrictions to donate, and there have been times I was not able to (pregnancy, hemoglobin too low).  And, while breastfeeding did not prevent me from donating, after talking with my doctor I decided it might create issues with supply, so I did not chance it.  Overall, there may reasons that you may not be able to donate, and that is ok – I think it is at least worth checking into if you can.

For me, donating takes maybe an hour.  The discomfort is also fairly minimal, and the staff has always been great at giving me ice packs or reclining me to help me feel ok during the donation.  Then, at the end of your donation, there are free snacks and beverages!  Of course, you need to take good care of yourself before and after you donate, and drinking lots of water before and after is one of those items.  I try to drink a lot of water before I go in, and that seems to help a lot.

Whether you have donated before or not, I encourage you to check into it and/or continue to donate if and when you can.  Donating blood is a great way to give, and I love being able to help others in this way.

Mid-Year Check-In

A lot of companies require that employees complete yearly goals.  As a part of that, they also usually require a “mid-year check-in” to look at progress and make sure the employee is on track to meet the goals that have been established.  While I hadn’t formally completed goals for this year (I kind of like the idea of SMART goals, but I hate creating them), I did create a list of things I would like to do as well as have a theme for the year.  Since we are now halfway through the year I thought I would reflect on my progress so far.

Looking first at the tough side – 2017 has been a brutal year so far.  The loss of my mother-in-law tops the list obviously, but I have also had some really tough situations related to work.  On top of that, we have had a lot of issues related to our house, and with that has come some financial pressure.  We are very fortunate that we will be able to rise above most of this and be fine, but there is at least one loss here that you don’t just “get over” in my opinion.

Despite these challenges and losses, when looking at my list, I am happy to say that I have been able to check a few things off of it already.  There are also many that are in progress that should be completed by the end of the year.  Of course, some of these are subjective, but I am feeling a good sense of accomplishment here.  Also, if you may recall, my theme for the year is “creation”.  So far, I am trying to remember that as I go through my days, and I feel like my understanding and appreciation for all that we create has increased.  However, as I reflect on my theme, I realize how I want to create so much more – more time with friends and family, more ways to help people, more writing, more teaching – the creation is never ending.  So, I have a lot of work to do in the 2nd half of 2017, and I hope to continue to share my journey with you.

Mystery

Since I seem to be on a roll of random topics lately, I thought I would discuss one of my current distractions.  My family is a member of Amazon Prime, and with that comes some different benefits, one of which is the ability to watch some TV shows and movies without an additional cost.  I don’t know how big this library is, but since it is Amazon my guess is that it is pretty large.  I also don’t spend a lot of time watching TV and movies these days, but right now I am stuck on one TV show on Amazon Prime.  That show is Unsolved Mysteries.

For those who might not know or who weren’t around for it, Unsolved Mysteries is a TV show where they reenact crimes, unexplained events, ghosts, lost loves – pretty much any mystery that is – yes – unsolved.  I have been playing the show in the background a lot lately while doing other things, and it has brought back a lot of memories for me.  I would watch this show a lot in the late 80s and early 90s as a kid, and for some reason it stuck with me.  I don’t like any bit of scary movies or shows, yet I can sit and watch this.  What’s funny to me is that there are people who think watching Unsolved Mysteries is scarier than any scary movie or TV show.  Maybe it is because the stories are supposed to be real?  I don’t know the answer, but regardless of what others feel about it I enjoy it.  I certainly don’t want to become a part of an unsolved mystery, and I think one of best parts of the show is when mysteries do get solved or are explained.  Unfortunately, they are not always happy endings, but finding a resolution can be helpful.

Perhaps, for me, it will always be an “unsolved mystery” as to why I like the show so much.

Batman

When I sometimes stop to think about it, the world is so full of contradictions and hypocrisy.  And, just because I notice it, it does not mean I am above it.  I wanted to share a recent contradiction I have thought about in my life.  It probably isn’t all that serious, and, you might share the same thoughts, but I thought it might be amusing to discuss.

My contradiction today is about bats.  In real life, I am not really a big fan.  I understand they have important roles in the biology of our ecosystem, and that is great, but I don’t need to hang around any.  I had a close encounter with one a few years ago at our house, and that was downright terrifying to me.  We fixed the opening in our attic that caused that close encounter, so all has been well.  However, there is another part of the attic that was recently discovered to have an opening and also evidence of a bat being there.  Again, we are actually planning to have that fixed today, and I haven’t dealt with any bats recently, but still it freaks me out a little that I might see one again.  Yuck.  Bats, you go do your thing away from me and I’ll do mine.

However, I started thinking about it, and then it hit me.  I love the super hero Batman.  All of the Christian Bale Batman movies are so good, and Batman 1989 is my absolute favorite.  I don’t mind seeing the bats in a movie, so why are they so scary in real life?  Honestly, I think the big reason is that real bats can carry rabies and disease, and no one wants that.  For some reason, though, I think it is interesting that I love made up bats but not real ones.  But, I know I am like that for many things – a bag of contradictions.

Five Years

For me, this date will always be a day that signifies both the joy and sadness that we all carry with us in our lives all of the time.

Today marks five years since my dad became a victim of suicide.  Five years.  While in some ways it seems like it the blink of an eye, in many other ways there has been so much that has happened.  Personally, I became an aunt, I got engaged, I got married, I had a child, and that is just the big stuff.  Among the family we have celebrated births and graduations, but have also mourned the loss of others.  There have been a lot of ups and a lot of downs, a lot of big events, and a lot of the small events that make up a life.  There has been laughter.  There has been tears.  Life, although forever changed, has went on despite my dad not being with us on Earth.

This is a grief that will never go away.  When it comes to grief, I think “closure” is a dangerous word.  This will stay with me for the rest of my life, although how I feel about losing my dad has changed throughout the years.  While I wished my dad could have been physically here for my wedding and the birth of my child, I know he was there in some way.  I also know he has been and continues to be with us in some spiritual way.  I know my son experiences him as well.  I take a lot of comfort in knowing this.

Today also marks my mother’s birthday.  To have a happy event and a sad event on the same day at first struck me as very unfair, especially to my mother.  But, I have come to see that it truly exemplifies what life is like for all of us.  There is joy in the sadness.  There is beauty in the pain.  There is peace in the struggle.  Despite our loss, we will still celebrate, both my dad’s life and my mother’s birthday.  Today, I plan to listen to music that my dad and I both loved while I am working.  Then, we are going to celebrate my mom’s birthday.  Life does go on, and while we do have sadness to carry around, we also have our joy to carry alongside it.

Paisley Park

This last month or so has been full of all kinds of experiences and events.  Sometimes, I feel like I don’t get much of a chance to reflect on anything, but here I am going to discuss a particular experience.  Recently I had the opportunity to visit Paisley Park, which is where the musician Prince lived and worked.  As most of you know, he passed away over a year ago, and now they have opened up Paisley Park as a museum.

I am not going to discuss the details of what it looked like, but I really enjoyed the tour and a peek at Prince’s personal and professional life.  As we were looking at different rooms, I was really impressed by some of his interior design.  I was even thinking that I wished I had rooms decorated like his.  Maybe Prince and I have more in common than I thought.

However, what I really started thinking about was how interesting his philosophy and creativity were.  This was a person who performed “when the spirit moved him” and seemed to go with a spiritual flow.  He was also a person who mentored and helped others – my guess is that we have no clue how much philanthropy he was instrumental in producing.  While a lot of people have heard his music and that is all they know, I find it fascinating to look deeper at this complex person.  To understand (if that is even possible) his motivations, his goals, his hopes, and his dreams and how that influenced his art – that seems to me a better way to appreciate what Prince brought to our world.  While we have his art and Paisley Park, what bums me out now is the loss of all the other things Prince would have created had he lived longer.  In all, I am so glad I had the chance to visit and learn more about Prince’s intriguing life.

Adults

Today I am going to criticize a little bit – and with that, please keep in mind that this is my opinion and not a bunch of facts I found.

As I have gotten older, I have grown increasingly appalled at some of the slang terms that have developed in our culture.  For example, saying “cray”.  Why would you say that?  Was saying “crazy” and adding that one extra syllable that hard?  Another example is “jelly” instead of jealous – why oh why would you replace a feeling with a condiment?  There are plenty of other examples, but the one that irritates me the most right now is sayings such as “adulting” or “I adulted today”.  This to me has to be about the silliest thing I have heard recently.

When did the word “adult” get transformed into being a verb?  You are either an adult or you are not.  You don’t get to pick and choose throughout the day when you are an adult – it’s a full time role.  Now, your maturity level may differ during the day, and there are certainly moments where you may not be immediately responsible for something, but as an adult there are typically responsibilities around you all of the time.  I also understand that we live in a culture where the lines between adolescence and adulthood are blurred.  Sometimes I don’t always feel like an adult either, although being responsible for another human life has wiped away those feelings for the most part.

Overall, I am not here to say I am better than anyone because I detest this language.  I just don’t get it.  To me, it’s a waste of language and not really that amusing.  If you are an adult, words like “adulting” should not be in your vocabulary, and I hope these terms disappear soon.

Concerts

I feel like I have a lot of interests.  Some might even describe me as a “renaissance” individual – one who is curious about many things and dabbles in a variety of activities.  I don’t see anything wrong with that label, but there would be some who challenge the notion that because of it I can’t focus or become very well versed about a few particular subjects.  I get that, but I think everyone gets to choose how they spend their free time, as long as it doesn’t hurt themselves or others.

However, there are some interests that I would say I am at “expert” level.  One of those is going to concerts.

Attending concerts is something I have been doing since sometime in high school.  I go to enough of them that I have kept a list of concerts I have seen, and the list is pretty long.  I probably haven’t even done that great of a job keeping track, but if you look at my list, I have seen almost 80 different groups or performers.  Of those, some of them I have seen multiple times.  This spring alone I have already been to four events, and a few more are planned in the near future.  I don’t know if obsessed is the right word, but it is definitely a place where a lot of my money goes.

What is it about me and live music/performance?  I don’t know.  Perhaps it is one of the few ways that I actually do a good job of living in the moment.  Perhaps it is a way to get out and see others and the world and get out of my own head.  There are probably many reasons for my interest in attending concerts.  So, assuming no big changes, I look for my list to keep on expanding.

Anticipation

In the last week or so, I’ve had a few events where I was anticipating that I would not enjoy them.  I wouldn’t say I was absolutely dreading them, but I figured they were going to cause me some discomfort.  Of course, once they were over and I looked back on them they weren’t nearly as bad as I had thought in my head.  These events have led me to think about anticipation in general.

Anticipation can work in several ways.  You can anticipate things you are not excited about, things you are excited about, and anything in between.  Not too long ago, I started realizing that big exciting events usually aren’t as awesome in reality as they are in my mind.  Sometimes that has been disappointing, but I feel like I have learned to understand that perception.  However, when it comes to events I am not excited about, I feel like I still dread those more than I know I should.  For the most part, I know it won’t be as bad as I think it will be, but yet I still dwell on it.  Why have I been able to be more realistic with the exciting parts but not so with the less exciting ones?

I’m not sure I have an answer for that one.  Maybe it’s a work in progress.  I imagine every individual perceives these things in different ways.  But, here’s a prime example – driving when there is a winter storm.  Every time I know I have to go out in a storm the anticipation of it is awful for me.  Usually, it is not as bad as I think it will be, but it always seems to be there.  Perhaps there is some protective or awareness instincts going on and it is supposed to be helpful.  Regardless of what it all means, it is important for me to look at the role anticipation plays into my emotions and life.

Air

As I write this entry, it has been over a week since we have had air conditioning.  At this time of the year, that may not always be a big deal, but we have had several days over 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and they were pretty darn uncomfortable.  There was a night spent in a different location.  There was a night spent in the basement.  I wasn’t so much worried about my husband and me, but I could hardly stand seeing my little one so restless and unable to sleep.  Luckily, we did get a new air conditioner installed yesterday, so now we can go back to enjoying the luxury I pretty much took for granted.

And that is the key thing for me – taking it for granted.  When you think about it, air conditioning has not been around that long, and it is something that not a lot of people even have.  Not only have I enjoyed air conditioning all of my life, but I am pretty sure I am more intolerant of extremes in temperature because of it.  Air conditioning has made me wimpy, but I still look at it as a necessity.

Experiencing life without air conditioning when it is nice to have it has definitely been a case of not knowing what you have until it’s gone.  And boy, did I miss it.  Right now, I am all about gratitude for it and understanding that it is a luxury that most people don’t have.  I’m pretty lucky.  My guess is that life will go on and I will forget about it, but I hope not.  I hope that this helps me to expand my gratitude and focus more on all of the things that I take for granted.  Air conditioning is only one of many, many things I am fortunate enough to have in my life.