Day 3 of 100: Forward progress. Maybe this will actually be a habit. A forewarning, here: I have things to say but my mind is disjointed, so I am trying to embrace the freewrite a bit. (Sidenote, and relatedly: lol forever, past!Melissa, that you thought you’d someday turn this into a “real blog” whatever that means – because here’s the thing: I am me. I am the human being that writes the long winded post that maybe means something, and also maybe doesn’t, and just kind of likes how words sound when they’re strung together a certain way. I don’t want to lose that, and honestly, I want to get back to it. Because I am all about the prose poems, and the things that are not that but aspire to be.)
—
I spent more time than I care to admit today fighting with the layout design I barely remember working on 6 years ago, and while I can say for certain that I don’t see anything that should be removing my site title in post subscription emails, I can also say I did not dive deep into the meaning of various site file terms. I can say that I achieved a small victory and the “submit” button of the subscribe widget is now readable. So I guess that is something? Trying to focus on the small victories these days, I guess. Here’s to that. I also found a way to use the classic editor on here, and my oh my do I enjoy it more than the new one. I am a creature of habit, even if I’m not always the best at forming new habits.
I’ve been missing the beach a lot recently, thinking about time spent outside and in nature and that feeling of just…existing, without thinking that everything is terrible and the world is going to hell. But: I think there is something fascinating that we’re all witnessing, in some strange way, in these strange times. There’s a reprioritization, a collective understanding in a way that maybe there hadn’t been – at least in some circles, a heightened awareness of what, precisely, is actually important. And I don’t in any way at all mean to imply that that’s a silver lining, because we are in a global pandemic; for the love of all things, it would just be better if we, you know, weren’t in the midst of that, and could hug each other and visit friends and go to restaurants and generally just go outside without wondering what might happen. (If you told me three months ago that I’d be quite anxious about going to the grocery store, I would have thought you were very odd, and I would have been very confused.)
I, like others in these times, obviously, have been thinking a lot about health, about illness, about death. I reread my post about my mom (tw: death, but mostly it’s about life, and feelings, and not her death) – on going quiet and silences – recently (yesterday? today? last week? what is time?!), and it remains one of my favorite things I’ve written. I’ve been thinking a lot about her, and words, and the words I wrote in that post, too: I wrote that post almost exactly 4 years ago. Mother’s Day is next weekend. Every year I think it will be…better, and it is, but it it is also, somehow, exactly the same. This year there is a bit less advertising, I guess, if only because there is less shopping? I don’t know, exactly. This year is weirder, to be sure – and I have feelings about that – about her, and this time we’re in, but I’m not sure they are feelings meant for this blog. But it’s still a year, without my mom, where there are many things I’d love to talk to her about.
This week, my cousin – older, though I’m bad with numbers and can’t tell you exactly, but much closer to my mom’s generation than mine, has high school age kids – sent me the photo of a photo that is the featured image of this post, along with several others he found of me, of my parents, of my cousins. I know it’s a common thing of our ~millennial generation~ to wax poetic about simpler times, but like: I don’t want everything to be lost to old phones and dead hard drives and backup drives tucked into drawers that can’t be plugged into anything anymore without adapters that are expensive or hard to find (not that I am, um, speaking from experience here at all). I think there is something to be said about artsy, spur of the moment photos that capture a feeling more than an image of a thing, but the image is there, too.
I realize the…something like irony, of writing about all of this on the internet, which is not a tangible thing in a notebook and not a thing that lives forever (I mean, it does, and I love the wayback machine as much as anyone, but still). But here’s the thing: typing is how I think through words, which is a phrase I used to use a lot on a couple of sites that aren’t quite defunct but basically are, and I am trying to find my way back to that.
Happy Sunday night. Here’s hoping this week brings whatever we all need, whatever that may be.
(My Yoast plugin is so mad at me. 45% of my sentences contain more than 20 words, apparently. Hashtag I am me, always.)