Ring, Ring

I thought it was about time to ring in the new year somewhere online as I do intend to keep blogging this year! It's just going to change quite a bit. I'm not doing resolutions this year. I'm not even setting goals for myself for the year. I've come to learn over the years that making resolutions and setting goals is really not a good thing for me. I tend to set them impossibly high and inevitably fail because they're unattainable. THIS YEAR I WILL TAKE CARE OF MYSELF! How unrealistic and how broad is that? Many of our resolutions and goals are almost set up to be viewed as failure when in actuality, they're often not. We do plenty of things to take care of ourselves, the best we know how throughout the year. But when we set this concrete picture in our mind of a perfect existence of what "taking care of myself" looks like, it'll never be achievable. There are too many factors beyond our control to ever have that perfect picture. So this year, I'm going to do the best that I can, a day at a time. That's not a goal, that's not a resolution, that's just what I'm going to do. And sometimes the best that I can probably WON'T be too great :p But it's nice to at least acknowledge that it's the best I can for today and take the weight of impossible goals off of my shoulders.

This past year sort of showed me that there needed to be a big change like that. This was the first year that I didn't do an end of the year reading recap and honestly, I'm ok with that. When I finish this post, I think I'm going to post on Stuff as Dreams and put it on hiatus officially for now so people don't wonder where the hell I've gone to. It won't be a permanent goodbye from there. I like to leave the possibility open of going back there. But for now, the commitment that I feel when I'm blogging there is just overwhelming. I need a more private place that feels more like a journal than a book blog and this has become that. Though this will also be a place to talk about books too I'm sure, though probably much differently than I talked about them on Stuff as Dreams. I DO think I still want to keep track of what I read though, so maybe I'll start a new page for that here.

My holidays were really nice and just exactly what I needed them to be this year :) The only shitty part was a migraine that started on Christmas Eve and didn't let up for 4 days :/ I haven't had a migraine like that in years. I had to get my neurologist to call in a steroid pack to finally break it up. We did Christmas eve at my dad's house like we always do and it was nice to have tradition during this time of what's been chaos! Everyone had a really good time I think and it was really nice to have the time together. With everyone getting older now and with my dad's cancer, it's more and more rare that all of us are in the same room together, so that night was extra special.

Christmas morning was spent with tradition too with me and my sister sleeping at my mom's house and opening gifts first thing in the morning!! The only difference was my sister's boyfriend was with us too which was nice. I've really come to appreciate family even more this year. Tradition especially has meant the world to me when everything else has been so full of change and so unknown. If you haven't figured it out already, I do NOT do well with change and I don't like to have things left unknown. There's this part of my brain that wants to know everything about anything that's going on and I hate uncertainty. With my dad's cancer, I've learned more medically than I have in my entire education leading up to me working in intake at a hospital. It's probably NOT the healthiest coping mechanism, but, it at least leaves me prepared and educated. So spending the holidays without any surprises and falling into the comfort of family was so wonderful.

New years eve, I spent most of the afternoon and night with my mom and then went by my dad's to ring in the new year with him at midnight. It was a rough night with him honestly. He had a bad night. More mentally than anything...I think the coming year makes him nervous, but we had a really good talk that night and I think he took what he needed from it and things seem to be better for him since. He found out two days before that his tumor had grown. It has only grown 7mm, but the fact that it grew at all is discouraging. So treatment is about to get stepped up even more with radiation 5 days a week getting added to his chemo. He's going to have a lot of fighting to do :/ It will be an interesting year!

I'm going to try to lay out my plans for reading for the month this year at the beginning of the month! Not so much as a goal, but just as sort of a present to myself. It's almost like I get to go pick a few treats off of the shelves and lay them out for the month. Of course I can switch them out if I want to, but it gives me something to look forward to :) So that's what I did today....I picked out a few books for the month of January, a nice mix of fiction and nonfiction, adult fiction, YA, poetry, essays, things I've been wanting to read for a while and things I've just discovered :)

I'll leave you with this beautiful poem that I discovered last night that Adrienne Rich opens her collection, The Dream of a Common Language with...it's called "Power". And it's exactly what I needed to read right now.

Jumping Back Into The Waters

Today is the start of a new month and it marks the end of the toughest months of the year for me. I HATE July and August. With a passion. Seriously. They literally just drain the life out of me every year. The reason being, the heat is just so unbearable and so stifling in New Orleans. We stay between 90-100 degrees throughout the months of July and August but the heat index and humidity makes it feel in excess of 110 and it's just exhausting. It feels like you can drink the air on some days. I have a hard time understanding people who love the summer and the heat. I'll take the cold any day over the heat! This year was just especially bad. It hasn't been a good year to begin with. I could write for days on why and in time I'm sure I'll get it all down here, but suffice it to say, I really would've liked to just fast forward through these last two months.

BUT, a cool front came through last week reminding me that there's an end to this relentless heat and that Fall is right around the corner! And with that cool front came back my desire to blog again finally. Or at least to get back to writing. So that's what I'm doing. And I'm going to use this blog for now to do that for a number of reasons. First, let me say that this is not a private blog...it's set up as a blog that anyone can view and I don't mind anyone reading or commenting on what I post here! So if you've found your way here or if you've visited here before, hello :) At the same time, there's a reason I'm writing on this blog. I'm not ready to go back to Stuff as Dreams are Made on. I don't know how many times in the last year I've gone back to that blog and said "I'll be around more often now!" With that ending up obviously not being the case. It has to do with a number of things. There's the fact that it's an 8 year old blog, with 8 years of followers and what I see as expectations even though I know those are self imposed expectations. I feel committed to talking about books mostly on that blog, commenting, keeping up with the latest, posting regularly, not being too personal...and that's not what I need right now. When the time's right, I'll go back to it. But for now, I really need an outlet to just write. About whatever I want to. Just to get me back into writing and visiting friends blogs again. This will be a place that I can work out thoughts on what's going on in my life, vent when I need to, record life events, talk about books and food and art and whatever else is going on. But most importantly, it'll be a place for ME. Which is what I need and what I've been missing. Like I said, if anyone else wants to come along for the ride, I'd love to have you :) But warning ahead of time, I may bore you to tears with this blog :p Unlike Stuff as Dreams are Made on, I don't plan on writing for an audience with this blog.

So the impetus for really wanting to get back to blogging is my dad being diagnosed with lung cancer. I need a place to start writing about this and start getting it out and try as I may, I just suck royally at keeping a handwritten journal. I've finally accepted that after starting probably hundreds of handwritten journals over the years and never going back to them after a few pages :p He was diagnosed almost a month ago now and still hasn't had his biopsy yet :/ It was supposed to be today but he hadn't fasted from aspirin so they had to push it back to Thursday now. Part of me is glad that they finally know what is wrong with him and why he's lost so much weight recently and why his health just continues to decline and part of me, obviously, is scared shitless for him and for myself. I know it's not going to be good news when he has the biopsy. His doctor says he may have had this for up to 3 years, so it's likely to be late stage and/or to have spread. I just really really really hope that this is treatable.

It's the first time in my life that I've really seen my dad scared...it's allowed me to see him in a different light than I have before. You never ever want to see someone that you care about suffer in any way, but oddly enough, it's made me feel closer to him. I've never had the best relationship with my dad. We never had the typical father/son relationship. For the most part, he chose alcohol over his children and still does to an extent. I was never really the son he wanted...that sounds more harsh than it is....I don't at all mean to say that he didn't want me, but he got a gay son who wasn't into sports or girls and I think it showed when I was growing up that he was disappointed that I wasn't into those things. In the last year or so though, we've gotten a bit closer. I've never come out to my dad, but I think he has an idea that I'm gay, and in his own way, he's shown that he's ok with that. We've talked a lot more recently. He's come to me as a more vulnerable person than he ever has and tells me when he's scared or anxious or nervous and I've been there for him late into the night to talk through some of this stuff. Roles have switched and I've become a care taker of sorts and I've really made myself just look at my dad as a person, not so much as a father...and in doing that, I don't mind him at all as a human being. He wasn't capable of being the dad that I needed growing up and honestly, my mom did the job of two parents. I'm forever grateful to her for all that she sacrificed, all of the love that she poured out to me and my sister unconditionally, and all of the joy that she has brought to our lives. I have no clue where I'd be without her. I had to acknowledge that and accept that my dad...while we don't have the best father/son relationship, he's someone that I do care about a great deal and maybe he didn't do the best that he could, but he's struggled with addiction, a disease his whole life. And that disease is killing him now in more ways than one. I don't need to lecture him anymore at this point.

Right now I'm just taking things a day at a time...it's all I can do. But I need to start doing more for myself. I didn't read a single book in the month of August. Well that's not completely true, I listened to an audiobook. But aside from that, nada. I'm going to do RIP during September and October and I'm REALLY looking forward to that!!! I really have a craving to start gardening again, though it's late in the year to do that :/ BUT I do live in southern Louisiana where we can pretty much grow stuff until late December, so all is not lost! I have my new reading room in my apartment which is a fun project to get back to designing. I got my sisters sofa and ottoman and table and lamp. I just need to decorate now! I'd like to get back to baking and cooking as I haven't taken the time to do any of that in a long time. I can't WAIT for the weather to cool down so that I can start going on walks in the woods again!!! I always feel so much better when I'm out in nature. Up until now, I haven't even thought of any of this stuff as a possibility for the most part this year :( That's just what kind of year it's been. I feel like I've mostly just been keeping my head above water. It feels really good that these things are starting to come back!!

I think I'll leave it there for now and go play with my bookshelves for a little while and pick out my RIP books :) I'm sure the pile will be enormous :p Thankfully, I'm off of work tonight so I get to relax and indulge myself! I had my botox injections today for my migraines, so I took the day off because I normally get a pretty bad headache afterwards and end up laid up on pain pills all night. No headaches yet though! Lets hope it stays that way. Ok..off to pick out books!