Good Things Friday (122) and Link Love
June 25, 2021
1. Their pain, my gain: the terrible heat wave meant we got a couple nice days and I thoroughly soaked it up. Too much, in fact, and got myself quite a sunburn reading out in the sun. Whoops. (But I got to read A WHOLE BOOK on a Saturday afternoon. That hasn’t been possible for years!)
2. Therapy was helpful as I continue to work through my deep rooted instincts that flare up in times of hurt and vulnerability: to push everyone away, tell myself that I’m better off alone, that no one outside my innermost circles cares about me so it’s best to self isolate more and more. I’m not fixing anything, I’m learning to feel what I feel and understand why, and let it pass so I don’t need to revert to old habits to cover up pain. It also lets me be present for JB and teach them how to grieve instead of bottling it up.
3. I set up a subscription to The Bouqs to send flower to our recently widowed family member now, and again in a month. I may keep it up for a few more months, just because.
Challenges this week: Grieving. Too too many losses this year.
Fireworks started mid June. This is ridiculous and stressful for Sera.
I have a mouse (the computer peripheral) graveyard on my desk. I’ve been trying to get a mouse to work for weeks. It keeps disconnecting. I thought it was battery related, so I switched to a really old mouse for the interim while recharging the batteries, then trying replacement batteries, but the USB doohickey still keeps disconnecting. The old mouse is isn’t a good size and it’s LOUD whenever I click so I really don’t like using it. I finally unearthed an older version of the current mouse which works but the movement was lagging just enough to make my eye twitch. Thankfully it looks like changing the cursor speed in the mouse settings fixed that bit.
The SSI Restoration Act of 2021 doesn’t go nearly far enough but it’s a start. Please call your reps to support this.
If you have minor children and may be eligible for the Advance Child Tax Credit, Kay Bell has some info here. And Jonathan has IRS Tools to Track and Manage Enhanced Child Tax Credit Payments (Starts July 15th).
We don’t have Cinemax or HBO, I really want to watch this. “People don’t know this history”: Shannon Lee on the Chinatown Tong Wars in Bruce Lee’s “Warrior”
Lots of reasons to say what the HELL, Amazon, this is just the latest. I genuinely don’t understand why they’d do this: One Amazon warehouse destroys 130,000 items per week, including MacBooks, COVID-19 masks, and TVs, some of them new and unused, a report says
The NYPD’s Favored Punishment: Less Vacation Time
That minor inconvenience graphic really resonated. It’s so useful to step back & look at everything happening in our minds, instead of asking why one small thing is setting us off. It’s likely not that individual thing, but instead, a collection of giant weights that have settled on our shoulder, making that one small thing feel insurmountable.
It’s so true, I think it’s harder to see the bigger picture in the moment, at first, but getting in the habit is worthwhile.
Yeah, I was pretty fragile back in February, I just couldn’t any more. Hooray for letting people into your pain!
Hugs. I’m doing my best to START letting people in … wish me luck?
Been seeing that first trauma comic around – on point.
Had to laugh at the second one, too.
“I’m not fixing anything” – this made me think of Christine Hassler (you might like her podcast Over it and On With It). We’re not broken. But we are doing important and ongoing work for ourselves and our families. I really like her balanced approach to healing and development – it’s coaching but also feels therapeutic.
It’s very much THE THEME for last and this week, those two! 🙂
Sometimes I feel like I’m not fixing and sometimes I still feel very broken but I think I’m making that journey away from the latter and toward the former.