I can't remember where I first saw this, "please hesitate to contact me" meme, complete with Lisa-Frank--esque dolphin and design (possibly one of the long hauler or covid safe accounts?) ... I can say it's something of a mantra lately.
Before times me prided herself on, being available. Available emotionally, physically, mentally, socially for family, friends, neighbors, students, colleagues ...
Since November of 2023, when a COVID infection nudged mostly invisible & mysterious chronic illness into full on disability, my view on for who, when, and why I make myself accessible and available has shifted almost 180 degrees.
Reading about the power of the decision part of becoming disabled, in How To Get On, I feel ground shifting.
The practice of this shift, struggling to walk the walk Is The Work of the season. Most days I spend 15+ hours/day in bed, resting.
This is lunar emergence from the rut pre-dawn of this initiating year. Cosmic, karmic, and comically mundane.
While my visible-tracked functional capacity hovers around half mast, I get to absorb a lot of TV.
Can't stop thinking about CONTINUUM a few days after the final episode gasped its last soliloquy, and how it began to collapse under its own self-aggrandizing weight in szn 3. Aside from an ensemble led by smart, sexy,badass women, t's a glut of ideology and unlubed consequence dicks in a famine of humor / playfulness.
Over breakfast at the table w/ feet up, TMFH helps me crystalize these thoughts, re-watched the whole series with me. We discuss how Stargate Universe suffers the same fate, but got more air time probably because the Patriarchy. He's perfected this weekly quiche.
For a quantum antidote to all the telly too real future creeps, turn to Eureka! Science, slapstick, and the authorities' quieter ways of disappearing people.
And, ever irreverently reveling in Tank Girl the movie and print matter including The Way of Tank Girl. In 2023, for reasons I can't remember exactly, I dedicated the month of May in my life as TANK month, dedicated to reading and re-watching, and made it complete with a special playlist.
image text reads:
you are beaten
you are berated
you are tortured
and isolated
you are caught
you are dissected
you are tested
you are infected
you are bought
you are sold
you're too young
you're too old
but you are loved
by me and booga
we both think
you are super
*
Lately I'm grateful to be consistently getting 1-3 up & functioning hours/per day. I was asked recently by a couple of well meaning friends, variations on what do I do with that "up time" and, "have you thought about doing xyz from bed?"
Truth is I think about doing SO MUCH all the time, but it doesn't give me the spoons to do anything about them, and when it comes to doing things in bed, on the couch, from the floor ... Sure, I've tried that. I do when i can.
Furthermore, I work to keep my actual bed a resting place, and when one is doing anything (even actively watching tv), they're not really resting. Brain work takes so much energy. Paradox upon paradox unfold, my head stays resting on a satin pilllow.
Sports viewing provides a perfect level of background noise and plot-less activity that can either draw focus & give one something to root for or fade into the background so the brain can be at rest when it becomes a quiet drone of sneakers on court floor or thuhd-heaving wrestlers going for frontal push out.
The May Sumo Tournament on NHK world and WNBA szn opening make it even sunnier.
Yesterday, I went on a fun date to the second half of the Phoenix Mercury home game vs the Mystics. It gave us the opportunity to try out some assistive tech (walking stick, neck brace, compression clothing, sensory protection wear). It really does make living and leaving the house significantly less painful and more possible.
It was great, even though I came home and crashed on the couch, too tired for a bath, barely energy to eat food made for me, then spent ~16 hours in bed and am still exhausted / on the couch today!
Without the planning & resting ahead, I know I would be way worse off today, and that also feels good. Just because progress and growth don't look like / feel like what I expected them to, doesn't mean it's not happening.
