My husband started his new job as a software developer from his home office in our bedroom yesterday. What a strange path we are now on. I’m working at the library 20 hours a week and he’s got a convertible desk that sits next to our bed. I mean, I know we are all playing the, If you would have told me this time last year…game but I feel like it’s really mind-blowing for us. I’m now parentless, he was on sabbatical for 10 months, I sleep on a hide-away bed in the living room because I snore too much, and we turned into Electric Kettle/French Press coffee people after the carafe on our coffee maker broke and we couldn’t find a replacement.
OH MY GOD. I’m looking at that picture and realized: We also became people who put their coffee and sweetener in their own glass jars. I swear the rest of my kitchen doesn’t look like that. Just the coffee area. This picture is so embarrassing. This is this shit the kids on Tik Tok mock in middle-aged white ladies. AM I A KAREN?
Anyway…things have changed a lot, is my point. Like…I know they have for everyone, but I just keep finding the realizations startling. I feel like every inch of my life is different from this time last year. From the mundane like the new showerhead in Donnie’s bathroom, to the complex like new boundaries in decades-old relationships. Even E moved closer to us in the last year, which we love but still…ANOTHER NEW THING.
There is not one section of my life that I can not examine and find a change. It’s unsettling at best…and at worst?
I don’t know, y’all. I like order in my life. I like to be able to describe things and predict things and plan things. When things change this much over every area of my life…I just feel out of sorts constantly. Like…yes…there’s a new normal for all of us to find, but can I not at least have some of the old normal to hold on to while I settle in to the new normal? I need something stable and stagnant to brace myself against while my world settles back into place and THERE IS NOTHING HERE THAT ISN’T NEW.
Not even my blog is safe. It got hacked repeatedly and so I had to start writing over here so I can figure out what to do with that mess. WHAT EVEN IS SUBSTACK?
We had family over this week for Wes’s birthday and we were discussing that it was probably Christmas 2019 when the full group came over last and so much around our house has changed in that time. Donnie has built us an outdoor paradise with swings and stained glass and beautiful oak leaf hydrangeas and an outdoor TV and…well…you get the point.
But we’ve also changed things a bit inside, both of the kid’s rooms have become teenager rooms, we even painted Wes’s last summer. Donnie and I have switched desk areas, we have a baby gate that protects the sliding glass door now because right before Mom died Zoomie busted through it trying to get to something outside. We have a new TV, we have some of Mom’s old furniture, Donnie is growing 4 avocado trees. There’s hardwire internet in our bedrooms and grounded outlets in most of the house.
It’s so much new stuff that I think Donnie spent most of the birthday gathering giving everyone a tour of all that had changed in almost 2 years.
It’s just new, new, new…everywhere I look.
And it all hit me that maybe this is part of my feeling of unsettled despair lately. That there’s just so many changes in our lives and maybe I just need something to hold onto that feels familiar. Hell, I’m not even sure that I feel familiar anymore. I am a very different person than I was this time last year. I’m setting boundaries. I’m standing up for myself. I’m sitting here writing this post while Donnie does dishes and no part of me feels guilty that it’s him instead of me even though what he’s scrubbing is his favorite pot with the crust of the dinner I burned in it two nights ago. So, literally my fault and he’s cleaning it and I don’t feel one ounce of guilt or obligation to get up and finish it for him.
(If you’re a long time reader here you know that…my friend…is fucking progress.)
And all of the changes are good! I mean, aside from the dead Mom of course. (Too soon?) But really…I am happy with all of the new and different it just…I’m just unsettled. I just keep coming back to that word. Like every day I’m just bouncing around in this haze of new challenges and new environments and new situations and a new me facing them all and no amount of bullet journaling will save me.
But I’ll keep trudging forward trying to find things to keep me stable while the new me adjusts to the new normal at the new workspace in my newly formatted family and my new job and my stupid new fucking glass coffee jars.
Random thought I just had...looks like you're still keeping up with your bullet journal! I know it's not much, but seems like part of the "old normal." I love that picture of it you shared at the end!