Always the wait

 The lines to check in, the lines for a toilet, the lines to board...and always aware of the privilege it is to travel at all.

Last couple of days have felt the urge to start wearing g a mask when I step through a door. Not wearing one now, people sneezing and coughing around me; might be time to start.  Back to "normal" life, whatever that is now.

If last year I couldn't quite leave the shore, this year, while a shorter vacation I definitely did, to the point of not being able to imagine the life I'm returning to.  Does anything change?  Does that life fit?

And in other things, I'm an anxious person.  All the ways I'm not well have not changed: my arm keeps going numb, and I'm still sick to the stomach everyday now going on three months.

Memories and Summer

I'm sitting in a bar in Ballard. Ordering food. It's Sunday, I came back for the Seafood Fest because I volunteered a Friday night pouring beer and got a free meal ticket, that I came back to use today. A friend's band was playing so I stayed to listen as I haven't been out in four years. "Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory" is playing without sound on the screen in the bar and I remember I used to love this movie and make everyone watch it in college.  A local celeb is two tables over facing me.  I used to come here all the time. Lately, I haven't done much of anything. I've lost myself. 

Had another shitty work review, peer reviews said they didn't trust I was capable of getting things done, and people don't feel they can ask me things.  Also something about saying stuff isn't my job which I've never done; I don't tend toward entitled though I do tend to panic.  Staying late to get work done showed my incompetence, even though it was because I was interrupted all day and stayed to finish work that needed to be done.  I wasn't asking for brownie points.

In other parts of my life, I got elected/entrusted with being president of church council and we just hired a new pastor as of today.  Someone trusts me.

June 28, 2023

 We lose ourselves in increments, a mourning for all things lost.  Has life become just a habit of familiar and no longer a wonder a love? Would I fall into ruts just the same living here, or can places bring out different aspects of ourselves? How much more alive we feel in travel, even on a bad day?