Hi Darling Ones,

I have been out of sorts lately in ways unrelated from all death and accompanying grief. There’s just been this low-level air of dissatisfaction and crankiness lurking about the place.

My fart noises at positive affirmations on Insta were extra farty. My sisters asked me an innocent question about Christmas plans and I burst into tears while texting them. There were probably other things that I can’t remember now.

I chalked it up to some weird quirk of grief, but I was wrong. It seems all my crankiness may have been work-related. I have a tendency not to write a lot about work for a variety of reasons including, but not limited to:

• Work talk is boring.
• In order to not upset people it’s usually really vague. For real, I’ve read posts I wrote about work in like 2004 and I have no idea what I was going on about. Whatever it was I was really upset about it.
• It can make for some awkward situations like that one time I went on a twitter rant about people who ask me to work for free and it turned out they wanted to pay me but were really terrible at communicating. I did not get that gig.

Anyway, a couple weeks ago I launched a new site for a client and there was one annoying technical issue I could not resolve. This was basically the web equivalent of when you were a kid and you’d say, “Mom, it hurts when I do this.” And your mom (or at least my mom) would say, “Don’t do that.”

The client and I both refused to not do that.

I do not deal well when things are broken (Looking at you, ice maker). I want them fixed right now. Like right this second. This is obsessive tendency is even worse when I’m the one who is supposed to do the fixing.

So today, after literal weeks of going back and forth with not-very-helpful tech support people I won the lottery. Finally, I found the one who understood my problem and explained the solution in a way that made sense. I only had to say, “I don’t know what that means” once during our conversation. It took roughly 3 minutes to fix a problem that has been plaguing me since December 1st.

Darling Ones, I’m fucking giddy and jelly-boned with relief. I had no idea this problem was bothering me so much. After all, I didn’t really think about it constantly, which is what I usually do about broken things. So I assumed I was putting it away, setting up good work/life boundaries, and all that happy horseshit.

But the body knows, doesn’t it? My shoulders are relaxed for the first time in ages. I bet I sleep like a goddamn champ tonight.

After so many losses, it feels good to have this teeny, tiny win.

Jodi

P.S. I’m not a huge Flaming Lips person, but I really love the song Buggin’, which I’ve been singing in my head since I started writing this post.

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Bleh.

#1. I made the mistake of watching the dueling Fyre documentaries the same weekend a bunch of rich, entitled white boys got in the face of the Native American drummer during the same week a bunch of dudes lost their shit for a commercial that said maybe they should try to be better humans. There are no words for my exasperation or rage or disgust. We need to throw men away and start over from scratch.

#2. I really need people over the age of 25 to stop referring to songs as bops. Please. “This song is a real bop.” WHAT DOES IT EVEN MEAN? You can take your bop that slaps and shove it up your ass.

#3. A hill I well die on:
Yeah = Yes.
Yay = Woohoo. Right on! Super duper.

If you consistently mix up these two I will silently judge you without remorse or regret. Knock it off.

#4. There’s only 18 days left in the 200 project and in my head I act like once I reach day 200 I can never blog again and it makes me kind of sad, even though 12 minutes before I started typing this post I was whining to myself how I didn’t want to do it.

The post Day 181 of 200: A Stream-of-Consciousness Airing of Grievances appeared first on I Will Dare.

Last night when the soul-crushing verdict came in regarding the murder of Trayvon Martin, I shut it all down. While I can handle the cries of outrage and promises to enact change, I cannot handle the faux-moaralizing some people do without actually taking a stand on anything. I seem to know a lot of these kind of people on Facebook. Basically, I cannot stand people who always want to ride both sides of the fence. Fucking take a chance, express an opinion, and stop being a moralizing asshole.

I hate people who feel the need to judge the way people handle big news, and I really, really hate when I become that person who judges the judgers. Can you see why I avoided the Internet for most of the day?

It’s like I don’t even know where to begin to express my sadness at the verdict, how overwhelming the race problems in this country continue to be, and the utter helplessness I feel about it all.

Here’s what I know, between the abortion rights nonsense in Texas and the George Zimmerman verdict the U.S.A has sent a loud and clear message: if you are a woman or a black man you do not matter.

Because I couldn’t handle any of it (or anything), I turned to the coping mechanism that worked for me so well as a child. I read. I read a good chunk of The Beast, but stopped at the point where it makes me snot my face off with all the crying.

Is it super weak that I’m moved to tears by something I created? I don’t know, but there it is. I make myself cry.

I spent the rest of the afternoon intermittently napping, watching “Buffy” b/w “Angel,” and reading We Sinners by Hanna Pylväinen, which I am enjoying a great deal. The book is good, about a family with one of those weird restrictive religions and a boatload of kids. It’s labeled a novel, but it reads more like a series of linked short stories, and so I spend a lot of time between chapters/stories thinking about why having it properly labeled seems to be important to me. I haven’t found the answer yet, but you’ll be the first to know once I do.

Truth be told, I’ve been sleeping my ass off since about Friday. I had a late, late night with the Dylan/Wilco concert and a sinus attack that was so awful I didn’t sleep at all on Thursday, because the moment I moved my head I’d wake up. I’ve discovered I move my head a lot in my sleep.

Eventually, around dinner time I roused my weary carcass from the couch and attended Family Dinner where me mostly discussed racism and the drug problem of a teenage boy we know.

And now, since I’ve been awake for like six and a half hours in a row, I’m totally going to bed.

The “It’s (Insert Day of Week) and I’m Boring” is a series that Christa and I do to pay homage to the beauty of old-school blogging. (I totally copied this nice explanation from Christa).

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So instead of cryptoblogging I have not been writing at all. Which sucks. But when you can’t talk about what’s on your mind you’re left with talking about Bret Michaels and how you kind of feel like the entire world has jumped on your bandwagon because you loved him way before he had a stroke (but not so long before he drove a Whore Bus).

Or you talk about the weather and how totally asstastic it was today. So asstastic that it took all my energy to remain upright in front of the fan because I refuse to turn on the AC before Memorial day.

Or you talk about signing up for the Graphic Novel & Comicbooks conference at The Loft ani d how Max, your 11-year-old nephew, is going to attend too.

Or you talk about how you threw yourself into work and books to avoid thinking.

See? Isn’t it annoying as hell? Maybe this will break the dam and l’ll have other things to write about, like how I got a cute haircut to see my College buddies and they stood me up because after all this time they’re still just a bunch of Stupid Boys.

The post Blathering idiot appeared first on I Will Dare.

Thank you Superamerica, you have guaranteed I won’t be stopping at your place any time soon.

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