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Archives from 2002-2006

I had a nasty bike crash a while back, which was sadly not due to some sort of badass Nitro Circus maneuver but the result of clumsily swerving to avoid a small child and promptly colliding with a whole lot of cement. Multiple places on my body took a beating but most of the impact was directly on my right shin, and if you’re wondering whether I reacted to the multiple horrified witnesses by allowing anyone to see if I was truly okay or if I instantly rode off in a wobbly trail of blood and humiliation while shouting through actual tears that “I’M FINE HA HA HA OH NO MY LEG ALWAYS LOOKS LIKE THAT,” well, I like that you gave me enough credit to even consider the first option.

After about a week of side-eying the giant lump that rose so majestically from my shin I thought about hanging some Tibetan prayer flags on it, I reluctantly dragged myself to urgent care for an x-ray, which was of course one of those self-fulfilling medical prophecies. Yea, though it may appeareth to be broken, choosing to get it checked shall instantly prove your complaint to be both baseless and frankly kind of whiny. Forsooth.

The lump was determined to be a hematoma, which is 1) one of those words that is just somehow gross without even trying (MOIST HEMATOMA PANTY), and 2) a huge relief to hear, as I definitely did not want to find out I had fractured something, yet somehow embarrassing? I mean no one laughed at me or gave me a Bad Luck Brian t-shirt that said “CAME IN FOR X-RAY, ONLY HAD BRUISE,” but still.

Eventually the hema-bleargh retreated but not before ever-so-slowly draining down into my foot, which briefly freaked me out one day when I managed to forget altogether that the injury had ever occurred while staring at my Wall-E cankle and frantically googling whether swelling appendages were a side effect of my typical diet which centers around large handfuls of cheddar/caramel popcorn eaten at 10 PM or maybe an advanced stage of cancer. Bitch, you’re definitely dying, said the Internet, and I was like I FUCKING KNEW IT.

Now, if this were a modern blog I would have a great inspiring wrap-up along with a perfectly-staged photo with lots of white space and a mystifying amount of highlighter applied to the tip of my nose plus a brand mention, but this is old school shit so we’re just gonna hit publish.

Last fall my days had a fairly enjoyable rhythm to them: I was working from home part time, helping in the middle school library two or three days a week, volunteering with hospice, and I had a regular gym routine.

This year there is only my job. Everything else is either upended or suspended, and I keep thinking how a year ago I probably would have said that I was living a small, repetitive life that was more than a little dull, and what I would not GIVE to have that ho-hum life back.

I’m grateful to be working, for sure. I miss being able to work from coffee shops (specifically, I miss being able to work somewhere, anywhere, other than my living room couch), but I recognize that I am lucky to still have work at all, much less work I actually enjoy at an organization I truly respect.

The gyms are open around here but masks are required during exercise, which feels so unpleasant to me I haven’t been able to stick with it. Instead I’ve been doing things outside or working out from home, which is fine-ish, except we’re heading into the inside-all-the-time season and I’m not working out nearly as much or as hard as a gym class will push me and honestly working out from home is kind of the worst when there is never a single solitary second of having the house to yourself.

I miss helping in the library so much. It was great to feel connected to the school and staff, it was nice to feel like I was providing some value to the overworked library clerk, it was unexpectedly soothing to put away books and dust shelves, it was delightful to chat with the kids.

It’s difficult to imagine when schools will even have in-person libraries again, never mind parent volunteers who are allowed to mingle with students. It’s even harder to imagine when hospice will bring back patient volunteers — I think back to how I would sit, so closely, next to a dying person’s bed, and maybe even touch their hands. How such a visit, even if it were to be allowed, would feel like being a loaded weapon now.

We are all missing things, we are all living different lives than we did a year ago. I realize I am extraordinarily lucky in many ways, but I still have a challenge before me to figure out how to make the most of this new way of life. How to get back into some sort of routine after all these endless weeks of not even knowing what the hell day it is, how to rediscover how I can feel useful, how to be more connected in this isolating and far-apart world we’ve found ourselves in.

Maybe some of it will be temporary, maybe some of it is changed forever, who knows, but I guess I’ve spent 6 months waiting to see what’s next and it’s time to decide what’s next.

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