Saturday random stuff

The holiday letdown was harder this year. Christmas was pretty quiet but was as good as it could be, I think. Yesterday we went out to my parents’ British geographer friend. She has to be in her mid nineties somewhere: she remembers WWII as a teenager or older.

In a way, seeing her (she married a much older man, was widowed young, has probably been alone for fifty years) and the friend we went out to lunch with today - about ten years older than I am, never married - I see that it’s possible to make a solo life even older. (Jo had no children, as far as I know has no relatives left, but she has friends and is - I won’t say “pushy” but “assertive” - enough to mostly get what she wants. And Debbie has siblings and nieces and is also the kind of person you would have to be a real misanthrope to dislike - so she mostly gets what she needs.

I need to learn to be more assertive and not worry that I am taking up too much place in other people’s lives.

Debbie took us out to lunch today but now this evening I am feeling a little flat and sad. I’m trying to prepare the advanced biostatistics but I hit a wall this evening and I can see I won’t be along as far as I wanted to be. Nor have I had as much fun as I hoped.

Lots of talk of year end stuff and I am still sad and kind of angry that my only real accomplishment was surviving the year. And then I get angry that I’ve been so programmed by academia and our culture in general to tie my worth to what I’ve produced- and that in the narrow vein of things like publications.

I think of that day in early August, after I rushed to get up here, and my mom and I drove out to the funeral home to make the arrangements and she turned to me in the car before we went in and said, “When he passed before you got to the train station, I wanted to call you and tell you not to bother coming, but now I’m glad you came” and yes, that is something I am proud of, that I was able to be there for her those two weeks, but maddeningly, that doesn’t count on any measure of productivity that exists.

That sort of thing is why the “what did you do this year/this decade” stuff, where lots of people are talking about the books they wrote or the bands they’ve formed, or the art they’ve made or the raises they got make me sad - because I did nothing of that sort - and angry, because I feel like I have nothing to show for my time.

Maybe people who serve a lot feel that a lot? Or maybe I am simply less saintly than most people who spend much of their time serving others, in that I don’t always feel fulfilled and joyful about it?

But also, resolutions. That’s being talked up and I just can’t with them this year. I can never keep the “improving” kind like eating more vegetables and even ones like “have more fun” I fail at because I get busy and tired and it seems like the fun things I might do never happen at a time when I’m free.

Anyway: January is coming, it will be chilly and dark and nothing much but “civic” holidays for a long stretch (I don’t do Valentines Day or St. Patrick’s Day, and my birthday really only matters to me) so it’s hard to contemplate cutting back on spending or changing my diet or forcing more exercise..,