elainegrey

Wednesday: Therapy. Assignment is to schedule a pleasurable activity every day, something that can be used as a reward or incentive. Fifteen minutes seemed like the minimum duration. It's a little longer than i really want for a sort of "Spend an hour on the project management work and then you can do X" type reward. I spend so much time in this edge space of doing things that are a pleasure but also good for me, like reading your journals and writing my own. This is my social interactions, i can't not do it. I don't want to say this is contingent on something else. But it's also a pleasure (except for the part where i want to write a comment and don't know what to say, or when feel i need to reply to *your* kind comments and it's hard to think of the words with which to interact).

I explained my breathing misery and my plan to see if i could get into a specialist: it turns out the clinic needs a referral. And then i was explaining how hard it is to see my primary care, but i'd put in a request for a referral. The land line rang from my doctor's office with the option of a 7:45 am appointment on Friday (telepresence was OK!).

Thursday: After work i spent 15 min petting Edward, which he pretty much appreciated. I will admit to looking at my watch. I think i needed more distraction right after work than that, because my mind went to some work questions i needed to tease apart.

I also spent two hours hanging out and talking with the team about what we were committed to doing, various technical design issues, trying to help them organize releases. It was a bit draining to be on. I recognize i say extreme things ("Feel free to tell me i'm stupid") that stem from my discomfort in talking. It's not helpful. I need to find a way to be more grounded as we go forward with me being more active with them day to day.

Friday: Visit went well with primary care, on the same page. He sent me for an x-ray (negative), and will be making a referral. I am fuzzy about how magically the referral will work: i will send questions about next steps Monday evening if no other information appears.

At lunch i found myself in tears over my overwhelmend feelings with respect to facing holiday planning.

Another change at work: i'll be attending standup. It's been so long: i feel some stress about the visibility and the hyperawareness this will trigger for me about my effectiveness. Another place where i will need to be more grounded.

My after work reward/incentive was to read one of our many art books, Clifford Ross: Landscape Seen & Imagined. This was better in that my mind could have other things to hold onto, and i did not look at my watch.

Last night & this morning: read a novel, then stalled. Novels are hard for me to use as an incentive because i don't stop. It the complete binge that happens and then the fact i did not intend to spend all my time reading but needed to do other things that

Just had a trigger to my overwhelmend feelings with respect to not being outside and my stalled sense. Frustrated at the planning fail for my brother's visit. Dad wants us to be together tomorrow, didn't realize my brother will also be here Monday and that i have taken time off work for it. All very nebulous..... and sister L called, we've come up with a visit schedule, and [insert trenchant observation about who does the labor of coordinating schedules here].

This past week

Saturday: a chat with Dad as he's driving off to play poker at the American Legion. Background: He's been seeing the same person for almost a year, she's introduced him to all her friends and family members. He doesn't know "where things are with her". I think, she's in the bleeping twenty-first century Dad and you are in the 1940s. "She's in a relationship with you, you 'have' her," i tell him. Does he really need her to wear a ring to signify that she's (cough, cough) "his"? During this call he says he's thought about it and yeah, it's probably true. (I've not met the woman, my sister has only glanced at her. My brother did get to have lunch with her.)

Sunday: lovely, mad at Dad because he was rude when he called for tech support and i started explaining the fix and he cut me off. Also stressing about Monday.

Monday: long hard workday using up all my focus on tiny details and stay on task energy for the week (exec function)

Tuesday: Because i understand what i used up on Monday, i can watch myself and how it impacted on Tuesday. I also know Tuesday's work schedule will not need much of that capacity, so it all works out.

Tuesday: another colleague announces departure. For keeping score

* 2022 Spring New Exec Dir T hired
* beginning 2023 Exec Dir T moves to another division
* March 2023 New Exec Dir J hired
* June 2023 my manager goes to T's division
* Early Oct Director for the teams i work with goes to very different company - he's been passed over for the exec dir twice.
* Mid Oct Principal Engineer for the team i work most closely with (eg the leader for the team in engineering) goes to T's division
* Oct 31 Manager for the team i work most closely with goes to the same very different company

The team i work most closely with is probably shell shocked. I've reached out to them and said, i would help, how do they want me to support them on their support job? And feel free to ask me about anything they would have their manager, i have managed before.

Exec Dir J wants to talk to me about the team. I'm am trying to figure out how to be very clear. No, i do not want to be a manager, and i cannot provide the benefit to the organization that i do now if i try to also do that job.

Tuesday: provided Dad tech support. Still mad. He knows how to ask people about themselves, he does it with strangers etc. He doesn't know how to do it with his daughters.

Wednesday: I dress in a good mood. Look at me, putting on colorful hair extensions just because they will look good with the sweater, and earrings, and necklace! By end of day, feeling dreadful. Headaches. Asthma flare really bad. My sister is back home from a road trip with her family, i call and we rant about Dad. She shares his boorish behavior over the past week. I share a little about work situation. We plan to get together the next morning. Feeling even worse after grocery trip. Possible it's hair extensions pulling + asthma + a lunch of full grain barley and cabbage?

Thursday: Meet up with sis at co-op for breakfast and herbal tea. Talk about her trip, a little more about my work. Bought buckwheat and water for health equipment and other impulse buys. Home, spent a few hours reflecting on the future and came up with guiding statements that sort of say where i want to be in the next decade, and some more questions to think about. Back to work after lunch.

I'm actually peopling this week, having some social (and quasi social) zooms. Which is novel-ish. A sign my depression is fading! On the other hand, i'm leaning into "asthma flare so i can't" a lot. I tried reading about asthma advice and i can't tell if i am recalcitrant or if i should really get checked for COPD. I really don't feel like exercising or doing things that require exertion. You should exercise, says the asthma advice, but all the advice seems to be for people with regular asthma. Not "i've been coughing for a month."

I'll try to get in a walk down the hill today.

Work depression. Well, maybe it's not work. I just didn't get anything done but opening browser tabs.

I have some heavy ally work to do and i am not looking forward to it. Someone i know from twenty years ago popped up as a registrant at the virtual retreat for a Quaker queer community. They suggested they wanted an interest group to talk about the challenge of using "they" as a pronoun for a single person. This promptly raised alarms with other planning committee folks: people who are challenged by every time they are misgendered or dead named or all the other signals that respecting a person as they present themselves has less priority than making an attempt to remember a change.

I wrote, underscoring this community would focus more on the challenge of not being respected and would ask for her to rise to the challenge of using people's pronouns as they request. I offered to talk, and lo, the offer has been accepted.

"...for me, it is a serious communication impediment to use plural words for single people. I fear that this 'requirement' causes a wide-spread barrier for trans and similar people who yearn to be better accepted into the dominant culture."

Having watched people be challenged by calling Christine by her name or her correct pronouns for, eh, twenty years now i really don't think that using "they" in a singular sense is the important barrier.

And i am not entirely sure accepted *INTO* the dominant culture is exactly what the people i know want.

I remembered that George Fox had some pronoun rant that lead to Quaker's plain speech. I found that his explicit complaint (well, that part that was excerpted in someone's article) about the formal "you" was not the formality of it - the rank and class part - it was that "you" was a plural pronoun, not a singular. My correspondent did use "you" in the email to me, but i don't think that's where i should go.

I think my correspondent is probably honest that using "they" (for their grandchild) is a challenge for them. I think i will focus on their challenge, and not be dragged into quibbles over the use of "they" in the singular context -- plenty of grammar scholars willing to point out the hundreds of years of precedent, and plenty of style guides advise "just give up on 'he or she' and say 'they'." And i don't think i am going to be dragged into telling women that wearing pants is inappropriate and makes it harder to ... wait, no... telling Blacks that having natural hair is ... wait, no... No, i'm not going to discuss whether it's appropriate to tell people that they are asking for respect wrong. I think if i sit with my focus on their personal challenge, i can not redirect red hot rage at them when they derail.

Dad called and i spent an half hour with him playing therapist. He does have a therapist now, yay. I don't know how to ask for what i want, and i suspect he can't give it. I do feel he always calls for help, though, and never to give.

OK, my condition of enoughness is getting trees planted. And maybe getting tools in out of the weather.