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Thanking

Today has been a strange day held aloft on the cafeteria tray of an even stranger week.

A person I used to work closely with is coming into town, but didn't bother to tell me they were coming or even offer to stop in and say hello. That was a little strange.

Someone else close has very, very sick family members. I don't know how to help except to be here and to let them know that they are loved and that everyone around them wants to help. But we really can't and it's sad and frustrating, especially when it's one of the sweetest people you know being put through that ringer.

An online forum where I used to hang is having some growing pains and people have gotten really cranky and upset and are leaving, or even worse leaving in a huff, and it's made the owners stressed and probably a little sad because sometimes things you create that are supposed to be really fun and carefree turn into just the opposite and there's no way not to feel hurt by that. It's a neighborhood where I feel I used to live and no matter how far away you've moved, you never like to hear that bad things have gone down near your old home.

Someone in our office got sick and it threw the whole balance off the week and now we're all worried we'll get sick, too, and wondering what would happen if we all got sick at the same time and there was nobody here to put the paper out (not to mention being shortstaffed anyway during the holidays). That's the kind of stuff that keeps me awake at night.

But then I have a lot of hope for next year that things in my life that are stressful and a little hard to get over are going to clear up. Mostly because I've made some decisions, a tough process for me, but they're decisions that I'm truly happy about and that are a long time in coming and that I hope will lead me where I need to go, not just where I'm needed by others.

It makes me a little sad to miss out on Halloween and not be able to think much about Thanksgiving and to sort of let the Xbox360 launch roll right past without a glance because the way my life is structured right now, there's not really free time to sort of enjoy those moments. I hope that will change some.

Mostly I'm happy because I get these little precious pockets of time where I can write and really enjoy what I'm writing on some level (even if it's just a throwaway entry about TiVo on the work blog), or pockets of time with Rebecca or with the cats rolling around the bed or knocking stuff over and crashing into walls like completely furry buffoons, or a good LCP meeting where we're all laughing and creating something funny, or, shit, just watching Rome for 15 minutes before my brain makes me pause it and go take care of something else that's pressing.

They seem like inconsequential things, but goddamnned if they don't keep my mind off the unavoidable heartbreaks. I'm just finding a lot of pleasure in very tiny, wonderful moments and the best thing I've done so far this year, I think, is to not let the Big Awful Things ruin those better bits.

posted by Omar G. at 8:38 PM

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