Speakers are all over the news lately. What speakers can you find in today’s blog post?
This speaker assumes that someone will speak up about National Cuddle Up Day occurring simultaneously with National Bean Day.
Here’s what I find when I search for “speakers” on YouTube.
Thanks to all the speakers that helped me create today’s blog post, including YOU!
When you are consumed with fear, anger, hopelessness, or helplessness, looking forward to the future is difficult.
After listening to Vice President Joe Biden’s speech last night, I am looking forward to the future again.
I am looking forward to watching his speech for a second time, here and now.
It’s wonderful looking forward to the future through tears of relief.
I am looking forward to the future and
.
.
Looking forward to the future when there isn’t a national sleep deficit.
Looking forward to telling you that this photo from the past of me looking forward to the future …
.
… was taken by my excellent ex-husband, Leon Fairbanks, who reads this blog.
Looking forward to the future of reading your comments, below.
Looking forward to the future, as always, with gratitude for all, including YOU.
As I’m dealing with change, the morning after the funeral of my good friend Hillel, I’m dealing with searching all my 2,438 previous blog posts for “dealing with change.” The top result of that “dealing with change” search is Day 1888: Well … THEY WERE WRONG which, among other things, deals with climate change. Climate change is something that a lot of people are dealing with, here and now.
I’m also focusing on “dealing with change” today because next week I’ll be conducting a version of my Coping and Healing groups for staff at the major Boston hospital where I work. That’s a change for me and I’m going to focus the group topic on dealing with change, since we’re all dealing with so much change, especially in the health care industry.
One way I deal with change is to blog here daily and to share my photos from the day before. Today’s photos feature
If you want to change the size of any of those photos, just click to enlarge.
Music also helps me deal with change. Here‘s “A Change is Gonna Come” written and sung by Sam Cooke.
What are your thoughts and feelings about dealing with change?
No matter what change I’m dealing with, I’m grateful I’m alive another day to deal with the changes around and within me.
Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote a post titled “One of Those Days.”
Yesterday, I had another one of those days, in which I felt
While I was having another one of those d-days, other people were having their own days.
Near the end of another one of those days, Vivian (appearing in my daily blog here, here here, here, and especially here) texted me the helpful reminder shown above. Let’s have another look at that:
This is your reminder that healing is not linear. It’s ok for some days to feel like you’ve regressed, it’s ok for the “small” things to hurt again. Healing is a continuous learning process.
It seemed like Vivian, miles away, knew I was having another one of those days.
Mama said, “There’ll Be Days Like This.”
What do you do when you are having another one of those days?
Here’s another one of those daily blog endings:
Because I caved, despite my avowed avoidance of social media, I just saw this from Merriam Webster on Twitter:
We’re seeing a 1500% spike on “cave” this evening.”
When we descended into the cave of television news last night, I asked my boyfriend Michael, “Why is everybody characterizing the temporary end to the government shutdown as a cave? Why is that news agency calling Trump “Cave Man?” Is that going to help? How can there be cooperation when there are no exceptions to this win-or-lose philosophy? Does everybody have to act like they’re seven years old? Where are the adults in the room?”
Michael agreed with me. Was that a cave?
Maybe this result of searching for “CNN cave man” can throw some light on the subject:
There’s a little cave man in all of us.
I’m not going to cave and make some stupid joke about that headline, but I will share this more inspiring result of searching for “CNN cave.”
The Thai cave rescue ended in success. But only two weeks ago, it all seemed hopeless
I remember, last July, when the world seemed to be caving in, that story about the rescue of the twelve young boys and their soccer coach from the Thai cave helped us all emerge from the cave of hopelessness, at least temporarily.
Is it a cave if you look at my photos from yesterday?
While that might look like scrawlings from a cave, that last photo shows my writing all the topics from a group therapy session on the wall of a group room.
Walls and caves. Caves and walls. Will we ever escape this cave of confusion?
Michael loves Nick Cave.
If I ask you to leave a comment below, is it a cave if you comply?
Even when I’m in a dark cave, I look for the light of gratitude. Thanks to all who helped me create this cave of a post and — of course! — YOU.
What kind of number is 2018? The website Numbermatics tells us that
2018 is an even composite number. It is composed of two distinct prime numbers multiplied together. It has a total of four divisors.
2018 squared (20182) is 4072324
2018 cubed (20183) is 8217949832
The square root of 2018 is 44.9221548905
The cube root of 2018 is 12.6368953011To count from 1 to 2018 would take you about thirty-three minutes.
It takes me about thirty-three minutes to create my daily blog posts, including one where the number of the post equals the number of the year.
2018 is also approximately the number of thoughts I had about how to mark this special number today. I spent about 2018 seconds searching for “mathematical puns” and I found Yan’s One Minute Math Blog, which included these mathematical puns from Stewart Francis:
I’m the youngest of three, my parents are both older.
Of the twenty-seven
students in my maths class,
I was the only one who failed.
What are the odds of that, one
in a million?
What are the odds of my blogging consecutively for 2018 days? What are the odds of 2018 being the kind of year it’s been?
The number of photos I’m sharing today is approximately the cube root of 2018:
After spending approximately 2018 seconds creating this blog, I can see glimmers of light at the end of the tunnel. Can you?
Here‘s what comes up for “2018” on YouTube:
One more mathematical fact: that has 6.5K likes and 6.7K dislikes on YouTube.
I wonder what number of comments I’ll get on this 2018 post?
I’ve been grateful 2018 times to those who help me create this blog and — of course! — to YOU.
Writing this blog, this year, has turned out to be therapy for me. And I’ve especially needed This Writing Therapy, this past week, since I live — and work — in Boston.
Yesterday, I wrote about how weird, how awful, it was for me, that all the scenes on TV — as they hunted for the Boston bombing suspect — were so friggin’ familiar.
And that surrealism continued throughout the day, after I published the post in the morning. Every place the media went, every place they set up their cameras — all were super familiar to me. I recognized everything.
And the climactic scene, last night, in Watertown? Hovering in the background, as the news media people waited, was my favorite diner.
The Deluxe Town Diner in Watertown. I’ve spent countless hours at that diner.
My favorite t-shirt, which I wear when it finally gets warm enough in these parts (like now!), is from that diner.
All the people I love in the world? Most of them have been to that diner with me.
I am grieving for that diner, right now, in a way. I feel very sad, as I’m writing this — for how that diner — and all those other familiar things — have been tainted, in memory, by the violence in and around Boston this week.
But I’m also mad right now, as I’m writing this.
(Anger is part of grieving, too, which you may already know.)
Here’s why I’m angry, right now. I thought this was over (for me). Like most people, last night, I was relieved when they captured the guy, and he was alive. The media told us he was on his way to a Cambridge Hospital. It was over. The healing could begin.
And I woke up this morning, eager to write this blog post. Eager to write about lots of things I’ve learned, from this experience.
I love when I’m in that place, of eagerness to learn.
I’ve blogged about something, several times this year (because it’s important for me to remember). When I’m feeling bad — helpless, powerless, depressed — my own personal experience of “traumatized” — I forget something. I forget that I will get through that bad period.
But I always do. I always move through the bad times and come out the other end, with lots of gifts. Those gifts always include some sort of wisdom — things I’ve learned that I can apply to my journey through life.
This morning, when I woke up, I thought I was through the Bad Time — the time when things feel out of sync, unfamiliar, scary, overwhelming, confusing, shocking — of this Boston Trauma.
But I’m not.
Now, I’m reading that the media is reporting that the guy might be at the hospital where I work.
So when I go back to work on Monday (after missing work yesterday, because my home was on lock-down), I’m assuming that my world will look different. The media will be there. The police will be there.
When I was talking to people — staff and patients — last week, at the hospital where I work, I could see that people were traumatized by the proximity of the pain of the explosions. Some of these people had run in that Marathon. Almost everybody knew somebody who was in the race or watching the race.
And, according to the media, several of the severely injured people from the bomb blasts were at the hospital where I work. Staff talked a lot about how we could help others — and ourselves — deal with the nearness of all this.
I am so angry at “the bombing suspect” (as the media calls him) right now. I’m so angry I can’t even go there — write about it — right now.
I’m especially angry that I might still be in this guy’s movie.
I’m also angry at the media — the ones who are making this friggin’ movie. I’m especially angry about the misinformation that the media puts out there. I’m angry about the mistakes they sent out over the airwaves — throughout this experience that overtook my home — without ever owning their mistakes.
Digression about Why I’m So Pissed at The News Media
As I wrote, earlier this year (regarding how Weather Forecasters Never Admit When They’re Wrong, here), it drives me up the wall when people promote speculation as fact. I don’t like when people say they’re sure about something, when they’re not sure. And I don’t like it when they don’t own their mistakes.
The more powerful the people are who promote Speculation as Fact — the more angry I get. I judge it as irresponsible – because it hurts more people.
That drives me up the wall because I, personally, am soooooo careful to say: I Am Not Sure About This. That is a value of mine — to own when I don’t know something. I don’t want to mislead people. I don’t want to use my power — my expertise — to give somebody the wrong information.
The 24-hour News Media? That doesn’t seem to be a value of theirs, at all. And I can understand the forces that dicate their being that way — that viewers want to know what’s going on, that they don’t have time to fact check, etc. etc. But it still drives … me … up … the …. wall.
End of This Digression
So, right now, I’m assuming that my place of employment — the location where I get to do work I love — might be crawling with the media on Monday, when I go back there. Lots of law enforcement around, too.
Can you picture it? Imagine what that might be like?
I’m imagining this: Bright lights, armed people.
The volume — and the visuals — turned WAY UP.
Dear readers, I was so ready for my world to start looking normal again.
For me, it might still be Trauma Central, on Monday. Because this is how I am defining Trauma, right now. It’s when the familiar and the safe becomes strange and frightening. It’s when we have trouble seeing past that, to a return of normalcy.
Damn it!
Well, as my sister said to me this morning, if he is there, he won’t be there for long. That helped — to look ahead to when my personal healing can begin.
And it’s a relief to know, that for many people around me — the people who were “locked-down” yesterday, the people who recognized the locations on TV yesterday, the people for whom the Boston Marathon was a comforting touchstone, the people whose sense of reality was disturbed in any way by the bombings here on April 15 — the healing process DID begin, last night. It began with the capture of the suspect, last night, in Watertown, MA.
I felt that relief, last night, too. And I guess — I know — that I will feel it again.
And for the rest of this weekend, I can try to help that healing process along, before I might need to return to the Familiar/Unfamiliar at work on Monday.
I will use those things that help me, this weekend.
I’ll be more in the moment. (I’m not at the hospital, now!)
I’ll listen to music I love.
I’ll walk around my no-longer-locked-down town, and take in all those beautiful flowering trees — the ones I wait all year to see.
I’ll connect to people I trust.
I’ll talk about it.
And I’ll write about it, here.
Thanks for reading, as I do.
The Year(s) of Living Non-Judgmentally 