As Rock & Roll saves me

Yes, this is a day earlier than I have been posting. I am trying a little change. 

While I talk about it more on the Sunday blog, I am a religious person. When I talk about "saving"... no, rock and roll is not saving me from death and sin. That is an important distinction. It still really helps me in an important way.

As I have been listening to many new musician and bands for various reasons for a few months now -- much of which I really like -- in this difficult life and world I periodically need to get back to the songs that are for me. They lift me up and revive me. For the most part they would be classified as rock pretty reliably, though one can always quibble about genres.

I need that music. A life without it would be much more miserable than is necessary.

I realize there are people who automatically find that rock is the devil's music, and I don't respect that opinion, even though the rock sometimes references the sex and the drugs.

I also know that my taste is my own, and there is room for disagreement. Without hating them, I am not a really big fan of the Beatles or Led Zeppelin, and I stand by that firmly.

Now if I haven't lost everyone by my unique combination of religiosity and musical tastes (I can only be me), here is a lesson.

I was recently listening to one of my favorite playlists, and being made so happy by it. It occurred to me that it is a shame that I am so bad at playing music. I can hear things in my head that I can never manage to get out, there is not a lot of aptitude even with practice, and (despite the occasional spirited karaoke delivery) I am not really a good singer.

Not only that, but in addition to finding a lot of music through media, I personally know a lot of amazing musicians. Some have a deep understanding of music theory and for some it is much more instinctive. Some have studied and some are self-taught. With all of their variety, I am not like them.

At times in the past I could see a value in appreciating them, because everyone likes to get appreciated and I am good at that, but I still wish I could do it.

This time, just as I found my lack of ability a pity, it came to me that it can be good to like things and want things that we are not good at. 

Maybe it's good for humility (there's a good religious quality), or for persistence or resignation or for perspective on a larger picture where no one has all gifts but everyone can contribute.

It's okay that I am who and how I am. 

And I am grateful for rock. It often emerges from messy lives, but have you seen my life? It fits.

Now, about that listening and new thing I am trying... I have a lot of book and music material that I have not posted. That mainly relates to the various reading months I do, with a good 136 books (some children's) and movies that I could write about, as well as at least two music posts I could easily do.

I am going to try working those in on Friday now. I am switching the type of  post that I have been doing from Wednesday to Tuesday to spread them out a little.  

I hope it won't be overextending myself, but I am at least going to try it.

I have this idea that as I read more and write about everything that I will be able to create excellent reading lists for various purposes and audiences, and I am not there yet. 

It is okay that I am not good at everything I care about.

I am nonetheless pretty good at reading. And listening to rock.

In the way

Prior to my first trip to Italy in 2006, I had only met one aunt, who had been to visit us in the States three times over the years. As the only one without children, she had a little more ability to travel.

Even having spent time with her as a child and teenager, it was different seeing her as an adult and with a better grasp of Italian. I remember her watching me study one morning and saying "Ragazza stupenda!" ("Marvelous girl!", roughly.)

Spending time with people who will love you and appreciate you is amazing and good for the soul, but I was 34 before it happened. That beloved uncle only lived two more years after that. Of all of the beloved aunts and uncles, only one is left.

(The ties are not broken as there are many cousins.)

There are two reasons for my delay, and they do eventually relate.

The first one is the money. We were not a family that could afford to just hop on airplanes, and you can't drive to Italy. As it was, my first flight ever was on my way to the Missionary Training Center at the age of 21, and I had been considering the train before I learned that there was a travel agency that gave missionaries discount tickets.

When I was young we were still able to drive to some pretty cool places. When I have been doing better at some times in my life I have flown to some pretty cool places; I am luckier than lots of people. Economic inequality is nonetheless a real thing, and meritocracy is a myth. 

We should all have opportunities to connect with places and people.

I still could have gone sooner. The other chance that could have worked was when my mother and sisters went. I was focusing on college at the time, so it would have been a challenge, but probably not impossible.

In fact, I was reluctant to go because I was fat. At that time I was still trying to put off everything until I could no longer be fat. Then people would accept me more, and I would not hate pictures of the experience; every aspect of my life was going to be better once I lost weight!

Only I never did.

My extended family loved and accepted me as a fat person. 

(I'm not saying they didn't have any concerns about it, and I did hate that, but that didn't happen until the second trip.)

It was easy to hold off on meeting new people or going new places or even relating to people I already knew in new ways, because my life had to wait to start until I was worthy of it.

Yes, I tried for a long time to lose weight, and gained weight in that time. Stamina and muscle tone fluctuated, but the presence of fat never did. 

Since I stopped trying, I have evened out, but I have evened out as fat. 

It has surprisingly little to do with my health,  unless you know how much of what is generally believed comes via financing by the diet industry, and then it is less surprising. (Hey, there's capitalism again, along with the economic inequality part.)

It is not a moral judgment on my character, though you will find people who believe it is, and at 36 I still did.

That stigma on fatness -- which I fully accepted -- really held me back, without improving my life in any way. It has affected how other people see me. For some it still does, but the bigger impact was on what I did and how I navigated.

It did limit my ability to connect with others.

It isn't always the stigma on fat, because it can be race or class or gender or sexuality or so many other things that shouldn't be reasons to hate each other or abuse each other or have contempt for each other, and yet, here we are.

And obviously, these twin forces of capitalism and bigotry can be folded into dominator culture, that enemy of all that is good.

If what the world needs now is love (I maintain it is), dominator culture is what we are up against. 

It is personal, but it is also very political and religious and economic.

Mr. Rogers again

Back to Won't You Be My Neighbor..  there was another part that stayed with me, regarding his interaction with François Clemmons, the actor who played Officer Clemmons, a character I did not remember at all.

One of the key episodes featuring Officer Clemmons was from 1969, before I was born. The two men share a pool and a towel, just for cooling their feet, but sending a timely message about resistance to integrating pools. The scene was revisited in 1993, well after I had stopped watching.

https://www.biography.com/news/mister-rogers-officer-clemmons-pool

Won't You Be My Neighbor discusses that, and also François needing to stay closeted to keep his place on the show. I don't know if that led to the other story that made such an impression on me.

Mr. Rogers said to Officer Clemmons once, as part of a scene, “I love you just the way you are.” After, François asked, “Fred, were you talking to me?” “Yes, I've been telling you for two years, and you finally heard me."

They had known each other much longer than two years, so I don't know why there had been that length of time to receive the message. This is the man who sang the song "Many Ways to Say I Love You", so there could have been a wide range of efforts.

François said that he had never had a man say that to him before, including his father and stepfather. In that moment Mr. Rogers became a surrogate father to him.

Maybe two years before was when Fred realized that's what François needed.

I don't know that it's exactly a second chance, but there can be other love, at other times and in others ways, sometimes maybe similar ones.

My grandparents had all died before I was born, but there was a couple we knew from church that I really loved. I remember asking if I could call them Grandma and Grandpa. They said yes, but more than that they took it seriously. They never forgot a birthday after that, for any of us, and they were there for important events. They had five children of their own, and I am not sure how many grandchildren, but they accepted the extra five.

My mother left Italy as a young bride just before she turned 18. One aunt made it to visit us three times, but most of her family, even though we would hear things about them, was really unknown.

Finally, at the age of 34, I made it to Italy for the first time. All of them became vivid and real and beloved, but there was something else.

One of my uncles came to pick us up at the airport, along with the aunt I knew. Though this was his first time ever seeing me, I was instantly loved. He greeted me, "Gina! With a smile like the sun."

Later, we were talking about how things were with our father, with this actually being not long after the last disowning. I tried explaining it as best as I could, knowing it sounds wrong. He just said, "Ah Gina," but with such sympathy in his voice. His care was tangible.

With my father's family, it's not like I thought that anyone wished me harm, but love would seem like a pretty strong term. Here there was love and warmth and it was amazing.

Some people will be kind of glib about "found" family. Yes, it is a wonderful thing to happen, but there are no guarantees. When it happens, it is something to cherish.

I may not have had that consistent, reliable support that they'd asked about, but it wasn't all desolation either. I believe there can be more of that.

Deciding

A few years ago I went through many books relating to death and dementia and wholeness, and wasn't sure that it gave me what I needed.

At one point, I noticed that my reading list had a lot of books by Asian-American authors focused on fraught parental relationships. I really noticed when I got to one title, thought I had already read it, and realized, no, that was a different one.

I also had several books with "daughter" in the title. My bright idea was to read the books by the Asian-American authors, then the books with "daughter" in the titles, and then I would see what thoughts came up.

(If it is not already obvious, many of my feelings about death, dementia, and emotional wounds are strongly related to my daughter-hood.)

Now, if my reading ever followed its scheduled path and I only worked on one list at a time... actually, I don't know if I could even recognize my life. Regardless, other books got interspersed, and it appears that fraught parental relationships are more common than not, not bounded by race and ethnicity.

It is not unusual that you can love someone and they can love you, deeply and sincerely, and yet you can cause each other a lot of pain.

It does not always end the relationships. Often it shouldn't.

When I posted about not being in contact with my father, I did not get any negative comments; people were supportive and that is great. I did want to spend a little more time on that decision process, though, in case anyone else is dealing with doubts.

It was kind of in the the last message I sent: dealing with him is so emotionally hard and draining that it becomes physically stressful. If it were harmful to me but good for him, that might be a reason to do it anyway. Back when we were still trying, there was no sign that it made him any happier or better.

When others have pushed back in the past, the general point is that someday he will die, and I will regret it. 

I use that reasoning myself for a completely different scenario, when I discuss visiting Mom with siblings. They find those visits hard, as do I. It is not her fault, and it is questionable how much good it does her. No, she does not know she is seeing her family. We can give her some extra attention, but it may not make a difference. However, someday she will die, and we don't know if we will get much advance notice. Will we be able to live with it if we haven't seen her?  

I will feel bad about my father's death, but I already feel bad about his life. The biggest reason I don't see him is to spare me additional pain. I could be miscalculating, but I don't think so. 

Life is full of uncertainty and all we can do is the best we can. That should mean doing it with kindness and honesty, and that kindness should not only be directed outward from the self, but include the self.

When I was going over all of this before, it was important to me that I go over things that my parents did for me, and also good memories. 

The part that was horrible with my father was how few good memories I could find. Even when he was not actively causing pain, so much of the time there was this air of oppression. In the time before he left, he would leave at 6 in the morning and might not come back until 9 or 10 at night, implausible when he was working and more so when he was unemployed. 

We knew it was not right, and that he had been having a long term affair was not really a surprise, but it was still easy to accept because it was so much of a relief when he wasn't around. 

It wasn't good for him either; he started a late night drinking habit during this time period, but that was something that only he could change. I can accept that he didn't know how, but not that he wouldn't try, and not that he won't even be honest about it now.

I will add that one of the key things that he did provide was financial support and home maintenance throughout my childhood and adolescence. I don't need someone to do that for me now.

However, having recently dealt with home repairs, and being reminded of how overwhelming they feel, does that relate to him? When my inner voice for work-related issues is so harsh, and job issues devastate me so much, does that go back to him? Because yes, I have a pretty nasty inner critic in general, but it is worse for work-related things.

Some of these very harsh parents in the memoirs nonetheless had a lot of good memories and moments with their children too. That must have helped. Some of those parents are also dead now, which may help in a different way. 

I only know how it is for me, and how I am navigating now. Part of the honesty for me is being able to speak it, and not feel a shame and embarrassment about what I could never control.

Part of my kindness is that I will not hold a grudge against him. I do understand and have empathy for some of the things that led him to be this way. It also includes kindness to me in that I am not doing that to myself.

I don't need an apology to forgive him and move on with my life, but for that life to contain him there would need to be more good in the past or promise of change for the future, that was then carried out, even with slip ups. 

Because having boundaries means knowing that sometimes people will lie, and you do need to evaluate whether the efforts are enough, or sincere, or just ineffective but improving, or all of the range in between. Then you can see if new time is mostly good, or better, or subtly worse.

In my case, there is no trying, so there is nothing to evaluate. I know there are better possibilities, but I accept where we are.

Finally, if anyone is curious about the books...

Fraught parental relationships:

by Asian-American authors:
The Magical Language of Others by E. J. Koh
All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung
Crying In H-Mart by Michelle Zauner
Fresh Off the Boat: A Memoir by Eddie Huang
The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
(plus there are some I have not gotten to yet, and some YA that kind of relates ...)

not by Asian-American authors:
Will by Will Smith
Diary of a Misfit: A Memoir and a Mystery by Casey Parks

(The best parents read about recently were Michelle Obama's in Becoming.)

Daughter books: (I have not read any of these yet, but I will.)
Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution by Randal Keynes
Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love by Dava Sobel
The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent
The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter by Theodora Goss

An analogy taken from real life

In a process that is going much more quickly than my emotional growth and healing, we are replacing all the floors in the house. 

The house is a year older than I am, and maybe we have other similarities. However, they might finish today, and I certainly will not.

We are not doing the skilled work, but there has still been a lot for us to do. Everything needs to be moved away and moved back -- possibly with a few temporary moves in between -- for the floors to come up.

I have a few new bruises. I felt them before they appeared, but the one that really hurt took longer to appear than the other. I don't know why it was like that, but I could tell it was coming.

We are switching from mostly carpets to all vinyl plank. This is very practical with our penchant for taking in animals, including ones with certain problems.

It looks great, but there is some getting used to it, which we have barely started yet since everything is still in an uproar. One difference is that the sound reverberates more; the carpet dampened that some. It makes perfect sense but I had not thought of it before.

The contractors have had to remove all the carpet and padding, take care of any flooring issues underneath, and then install the planks. That part is done and now the baseboards are being applied, which also requires some removals and a lot of fitting.

This house is comparatively old, which means it has seen some wear. However, it was also built pretty sturdy. We have been pleasantly surprised to discover no dry rot. There was an area that was missing some boards underneath, apparently from when insulation was added. That took care of some creaking, but the biggest help for that was tightening loose boards, of which there were many. Still, the wood was solid; it just needed some reinforcement. 

There is so much garbage to haul away!

I also have been looking below and finding all sorts of things coming up, some with some pain (not always when and how I expect it). It really does make some things feel different, and maybe amplified.

The amazing thing is that I appear to be pretty sturdy. I am not sure where that came from.

A lot of garbage does come up.

And I will not be done tonight.

(I am aware of the C. S. Lewis analogy. It is more involved.)

On the paternal side...

I watched Encanto relatively late, so I saw a lot of comments without context. Regardless, I remember a lot of people tweeting about the relationships, especially with the grandmother.

They hated her.

One of the most interesting things (and this came up somewhat with Turning Red and Everything Everywhere All At Once too) was this understanding that we have moved from stories where there are dead parents not getting in your way to living parents that you have to deal with, trauma included.

Without really getting into the history of animated storytelling and fairy tale traditions, the other thing I remember pretty clearly was a divide, with Latinx people being more willing to retain a relationship with Grandma, understanding why she was the way she was, and recognizing the behavior patterns of other family members as well.

It seemed white people were more likely to cast off hurtful relatives forever. That was not an official study, just what seemed to be observable. Perhaps a certain amount of privilege makes people a little more callous, or maybe we focus more on boundaries now.

Personally, I can relate to being unable to deal with any imperfections backed by a fear so terrible that it can't even be openly acknowledged openly that any crack of imperfection will result in the collapse of everything else, and that gives me some sympathy for Abuela..

But I also don't talk to my father. For what it's worth, we're white.

I have written about that relationship a lot, and I don't intend to rehash everything here. The key points are that there was a lot of damage, I have been healing, and I am going over these things now as part of this last round of healing.

The last breakthrough was associating my feelings of inferiority with my father's unhappiness and with my need to overcompensate and fix everything for everyone. It is possible that came through because of something that happened in February.

Of my father's five children, he has one that is in contact with him, so we sometimes hear things. It had become clear that we could start talking to him again like nothing ever happened. We weren't interested, but without us being forgiven, we could have our deficiencies ignored.

Then, when he was digitizing old slides, he sent all of us e-mail with the slides attached. Through the grapevine we knew he asked if we had said anything.

I felt I needed to respond. I wrote a long message pouring everything out, and deleted it.

Then I wrote a shorter message:

Hello,

I know it's been a while since you sent these. I was worried that it was rude not to respond, but what I could say seemed like it would be worse than not responding. I think it is important to say this, and I hope you will read it.

The last time you disowned me (and everyone else), I decided I was not going to contact you until the divorce was done and the house secured. After that, I would reach out to you. I was thinking even then that I would say that it has to be different; that it can't always be me walking on eggshells trying not to set you off. By the time it was over, I was tired, and I didn't have it in me to reach out to you. Maybe it was because I could not believe that it would change, where you would try harder. It was always your way or the highway.

After the big one, where you didn't speak to me for two and a half years, I was so happy when you told me you wanted to start over, and so full of love for you, I did not even think about how you didn't say that you were sorry. I did know that if we ever fought again, there would be no coming back from it. That is why I was always remembering to send you messages about things you would find interesting, or finding things to say in conversation that backed up what you were saying, even though you would still contradict me. That was exhausting. Every time I would see e-mail from you I would get this knot in my stomach, wondering what it was now, even knowing that I had just written recently and it was probably just a reply. That's what having a relationship with you is like.

I want to be clear that I do love you. I don't even really feel angry at you, but if I look at the strength that I have and the strength that you take, I can't do it.

If I had made different choices and my life was easier, maybe I could. That's on me.

If I thought that there could be any joy in it for me, or that even if it were very hard that it could do you good, I could find a way to keep you in my life. That part is on you. That is from you never putting your love for us above your pride.

And that you would just send us an e-mail stuffed with photos, with no message, with no apologies or expressions of concern or anything, and then expect us to respond to that, shows me that nothing has changed.

For the way you have been, you are lucky that Misty is willing to stay in touch with you. I hope you appreciate her, and try and be good to her.

Gina

This is what I got back:

Hello Gina,

Sending those pictures was an afterthought. My thought was to send them to Misty and she could forward them but it occurred to me I could send them direct. One point, I never disowned any of you. It was the other way around. I sent a letter to each of you with the question of wanting to be in my life or not and all, with the exception of Lance said yes we want to be in your life. However that never happened. I am your father and you will never be out of my life. I do think about you all and what we are missing.

Dad

There was nothing to write back.

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2021/03/disowning-scoreboard.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2021/02/always-somehow-wrong.html

What Mr. Rogers said

Before I get to my father, I need to talk about someone very different from him: Fred Rogers.

Back in 2018 when Won't You Be My Neighbor, the Mr. Rogers documentary came out, my sisters and I went to see it in the theater.

There was a question that really unsettled me because I couldn't answer it. Then, after the movie, my sisters asked me about it because they couldn't either. 

I would sometimes think about it and try and find the exact quote, but I never could. As I started writing these last few posts, I could not stop thinking about it. I streamed the video and played and paused that part until I had the whole thing down.

It came just before the ending, and I think it was edited for clarity, so there are some ellipses. This is how we heard what affected us so strongly.

“From the time you were very little, you've had people who have smiled you into smiling, who have talked you into talking, sung you into singing, loved you into loving...

Now think about somebody who's helped you along the way. For one minute, I'm going to time you... Let's just take some time to think of those extra special people... Some of them may be right here. Some may be far away. Some may even be in Heaven. No matter where they are, deep down you know they've always wanted what was best for you. They've always cared about you beyond measure and have encouraged you to be true to the best within you.”

They showed different people who had been interviewed throughout the film, thinking, and then sometimes saying whom they had thought of. Most of them were teary, but smiling too. The last three they showed were his two sons and then his wife, and she just said "Thank you" and then it went into the credits. (Though there was a great addition during the credits.)

My memory had been about there not being someone that I could just count on and trust completely, which is not exactly what is says, but is implied. It felt wrong to not be able to think of someone, kind of awful if there wasn't, but also kind of awful if there had been and I'd never noticed.

Looking at the words now, as they were said, sure, there have been people who have helped me along the way, but there is so much more love implied in the rest of it. What it seems to be getting at is someone who cherishes you, and I don't think I have had that.

Again, I do not doubt that either of my parents loved me, but being able to feel it matters too. That's what was lacking.

That my sisters couldn't answer either at least makes it not just me.

I will be spending more time on parental trauma, but there is something else about Mr. Rogers: I didn't like his show that much.

The movie talks about his quietness, and how it shouldn't have worked. I liked the faster, louder, funnier shows better. My favorite was The Electric Company; I really only watched Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood for the puppets.

I see more clearly now that you need quiet times for learning and growth, but it can also be really uncomfortable. That pain that needs to come forward, well, it's coming forward: Shove it away! Away!

More than a decade ago I was blogging about my life and how after my father disowned me the first time (that will come up next week) I threw myself into a ton of activities and work, unable to be still. 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2010/08/club-sandwich.html

In retrospect, that may have started earlier. In fact, I did sit quietly all the time reading, but reading can be a great way of avoiding your own life. It doesn't have to function that way, but it can.

There was a gift that Mr. Rogers was offering that I was not ready to accept.

I think I have made some progress now, but it was a long time to wait.

Considering missing relationships, part 1

Two week ago in writing about grief, I wrote about how it can be reasonable to look at what spaces a relationship filled in your life (after a death), and if there were things that you should do to fill or rearrange those spaces.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2022/09/making-room-for-grief-and-healing.html

Those thoughts rose very logically from reading about other people and thinking about that, but then there was this ping, Oh, is that you?

The day after I posted the blog, I saw this Tweet:

https://twitter.com/mochamomma/status/1575612609096650752 

Today at grief group: when you consent to love another human being you're also consenting to grieve them.

Now I can think of nothing else.

It was very clear that I needed to go over both of my parental relationships. 

I didn't procrastinate, but I was not looking forward to it either.

One reason was that I was afraid I would turn out to be a total ingrate, not appreciating anything about my parents or acknowledging any need of them. I already have a fair amount of guilt knowing so many people whose parents are no longer living, and both of mine are and yet... we'll spend more time on that.

My other concern would be that it would turn out that I am heartless and cold because I don't tend to really miss people. 

Perhaps it is significant here that I had wondered if I should go over other people who had died or who were gone from my life for some other reason. Maybe someday that will be important, but it's not an issue for now.

I love people and enjoy spending time with them, but then when they are not around I function fine in their absence. Fortunately, my best friends are good about remembering me, and if someone actively needs me I am likely to have a dream or something telling me, but I don't think about it.

Having gone over it now, I believe that is more a matter of habit than heartlessness. There were times when I was friendless enough or on my own enough in my formative years that I just got very self-contained. Is it a completely positive trait? Doubtful, but it seems to mostly work out. Living alone might not be a great idea for me, though, especially with working from home.

I don't doubt that either of my parents loved me, though then those relationships diverge a lot, and there is too much there to treat them together.

Here is the background for anyone that doesn't know: my mother has advanced dementia. From 2016 to 2020 I was her full-time caregiver, and the "caregiver burnout" diagnosis remains on my medical record. 

Once she lost her memories of us, she needed more stimulation than I could provide, so we moved her into a facility with a lot of activities, and that has worked very well. I know we made the right choices at the right times, but there has been a lot of hurt over a long period of time. 

I see her every week or two (I do some medical testing that her anticoagulant requires), but she does not know me. The biggest parts of her care are handled by other people.

So even though she is living, and in my life, it is not the same; what potential holes does that leave?

I have been fiercely protective of her since the age of 9. Do I need someone to feel protective about? Probably not.

We had good times and generally got along well as adults. That was not just the two of us, usually, but also my younger sisters, whom I live with. When the three of us continue to have good times and get along pretty well, that absence is not as bad as it could be. Plus, I am the one who doesn't miss people so much.

When I was younger, I felt like she was always nagging about my weight and cleaning my room. I think now that I heard it more than she said it, but what was missing was knowing that I wasn't just fat and untidy. It was a weird thing finding out later that she always bragged about us to other people. That was not weird for her; you correct the flaws in your children, because they need to know. It was assumed that I would know the good things about myself. 

I did, actually. What I didn't know was that the good things could be enough for me to be loved and enjoyed and worth being around. I mostly know that now, but not knowing then was a real problem, and it's one I feel disloyal admitting now. Parental relationships can be complicated, and that will be even more true when we get to my father.

The hassles about my weight were very much built into the culture of the time, which hasn't improved that much, even if my understanding of it has. She constantly worried about her own weight as well.

For my room, I believe part of the problem was that cleaning was so much what Mom did, and what she was amazing at. Yes, you could say "acts of service" was her love language, but also cleaning was her avocation.

I miss how clean she kept the house. I can't keep up with it the way she could. 

Technically, I am probably a better cook than she was, but I liked the things she made. There were some of them that I never learned to make, and I can't ask now. 

Her taking care us of in those ways was her primary way of demonstrating her love, and I miss that. Whether that is more for the tangible results or because it meant there was someone there caring, well, it's probably a mix.

I have goals about getting the housecleaning on more of a schedule, and theoretically you can hire people for that (we can't afford it, but it's a thing people can do), but it will not be a manifestation of love and caring that way again. (Unless my sisters just take it over, but they have the same loss; all we can do is cooperate on that one.)

There is sadness here, and it is harder for this limbo state, where she is here but not really. It is appropriate to be sad about that.

It is also reasonable that limited healing is available while things are this way. I know there is a change that will come at some point, but those are all unknowns. Currently, it is sadness, but manageable.

I also believe that there is a future where all of those temporal problems are past. As she learns everything that she missed, that is going to hurt her, but we understand, and she will understand the things that we didn't handle better, because we love each other, and that will survive.

But for now what I need most for that loss is a cleaner house. 

That may make me unsentimental and hard-hearted, but it may also mean that sometimes when I despair about needing to clean the bathroom or figure out what to make for dinner again, maybe it isn't really that so much as that I miss Mom. 

If that's a factor, it's better to know. I can be more realistic about what is needed.

All better?

I had a breakthrough a few months ago. 

I am only writing about it now because at the time it was almost too easy to write about. Kind of anticlimactic, and not as resolved as one might hope. I did know I would get to it eventually.

I have written before about this unbearable grief that comes upon me during movies, where I am crying verging on hysteria. I have known there was sadness, and that it was connected to home and family, especially parents. I have worried that at some point it would all break out, and I would be left crying helplessly for days, which made me hesitant to pursue it that hard.

(I most recently wrote about this last year: https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2021/02/wild-abandon.html)

Then, the night of June 3rd, I did. 

Over the few months preceding I had watched Encanto, Seeing Red, and Everything Everywhere All At Once. The parental themes of those movies probably played a role, but also with the last one... it really shows how life beats you down. I related to that.

It had been on my mind, and after I went to bed I decided to just let it come.

My father was never happy with me. I could not fix that.

That was it.

To be fair, it was knowledge that I already had. I'd figured out a while ago that my sense of there always being something wrong with me came from my father's dissatisfaction with me, and figured out that the real problem was that he was dissatisfied with himself.

I had also been aware of my overinflated sense of responsibility and desire to fix the world, and known that it was not really possible.

Apparently I had not quite connected before that the first thing was the reason for the second thing, even though it is entirely logical. I was trying to make up for my shortcomings by taking care of everyone else.

Maybe what was different that night was the clarity with which I understood that this was not my responsibility.

It was so simple and easy that my reaction was "Huh."

I didn't need to cry about it. Maybe that's because it was all old news, or I had cried enough previously, but maybe it was just relief. So many times when there is a breakthrough it means more to work on. This was freeing.

I think that's where the hysteria came from: the sheer extent of how overwhelming it was to need to fix the whole world to be worth something. That was a big burden removed.

Even at the time I realized that there were still things to figure out. I still care about other people and want to do good things. There's still room for figuring out what I can do and doing it. That "Now what?" was already there.

I'm not saying I have that all figured out. 

I can say that Minari did not wreck me. I bet Coco still would, but I can probably be "normal" with most movies now. 

I do seem to feel things more now, in general. Apparently, recovering from the one really bad hangup requires less compartmentalization. That's okay; it is not overwhelming.

I suspect this is a good time to write about it because I just discovered something else that I really needed to do. 

Without saying that it's something I was eager to do, it was manageable.

That's worth a lot.

Making room for grief and healing

Last week's post had a reference to worrying about my dog.

At the time of that writing session we had a vet appointment. We ended up going to the emergency vet earlier and finding that her lungs were full of cancer. It was while writing that I decided we couldn't wait, and began to know what would happen.

Preparing for this post had another long journal session. Not everything that I needed to write for myself will matter for everyone, but I hope that what I write here can be practical for some.

Even with my belief in the afterlife, and that these separations are not permanent, they hurt. It's reasonable that they hurt. It's easy to try and skip to the comfort part, but that really only makes things worse. This is all part of being human.

As humans, we sometimes struggle with seeming contradictions, like the opposing needs to mourn and to be comforted. That can lead to the attempt to skip over mourning to get straight to healing, but it might also result is resisting the healing because of guilt. 

We have to accept that uneasy balance.

Actually, I am leading to a point of healing about something parental; we should get there next week. For now, there are three things about Adele from which I want to try and pull some lessons.

The first relates to the disruption in what you are used to.

I can feel very sad hearing about the death of someone that I care for but haven't seen for a while; we all have. With someone who has been playing a larger role in your life, there are more frequent reminders.

I first noticed this with our first greyhound, Jake. He was always at the door when you came in or out, and he did that for eleven years. Going in or out after he was gone left a sharp pain for a while.

Adele was my roommate for eight years. Every time I see her bed, or when it is time for her pill but I don't need to give it to her, or when we don't need to put the stick back in the door because she didn't go out into the back yard, I feel her absence. It has been less than two weeks; this is still pretty fresh. 

It probably makes sense to let the bed go, but that empty space will still be noticed. That just takes time. In other instances, there may be more changes to make. 

One of the great practical things about human healing is that you still need to eat and drink and go to the bathroom. That pulls you along -- maybe even forward -- whether you like it or not. For things that we can avoid, we may need to make changes but keep putting it off.

If you have lost someone who always did the cooking or the vacuuming, what are the new ways of taking care of that? Did you always used to sit with them? Are Tuesday nights suddenly free?

One of the books I have been thinking about is Crying in H-Mart by Michelle Zauner. After her mother's death, her father would call about the loss and his devastation, and then eventually he moved to Thailand. That seemed extreme, but sometimes things need shaking up. Truthfully, some shaking up already happened; now you're trying to regain equilibrium. 

It makes sense to look at not just the relationship, but the patterns that were built around it. Ideally, examining that can be a part of honoring the relationship. It also is accepting the right to heal. You will feel pain, but it shouldn't always hurt that much

One thing making Adele's loss a little harder is a certain sense of finality. This house has not been without a dog since 1978. At times, there have been as many as five dogs, but there was only one cat then. Now we have six cats, which could make introducing a new dog tricky.

Most of those cats and dogs were not exactly premeditated. I suspect at some point there will be at least one more dog who needs us, and we will take that dog in, because that's who we are. We are not in a position to seek out a new dog though, and there is some pain with that.

There are relationships you don't get back, at least not on this side, but there are roles that are still there. You can find other people who will care about you, listen to you, give you good advice, be glad to see you, need your help with things... not as replacements, but as an expansion of your connections. 

That is not easy, but it's beautiful.

It does require being willing to love more, which also means being willing to lose again. That takes courage, and effort, but it's worthwhile.

Speaking of that dog and six cats... I would worry sometimes about the cats getting more attention, because they can get in your laps or sit next to you and purr. Actually, when Jake first came to us, he got more attention than Laddie (collie) and RK (sheltie) because he asked for it more. With that worry I made sure to remember to talk to Adele and pet her and to not neglect her.

That's the thing that helps most with the guilt: we don't ever know how long we will have an animal, but while they are with us we can make their life good, and that's what we do.

That part of healing works better if you think of it before the separation.

Again, this is hard. I keep thinking of needing to reach out to people, and then finding other things I need to do. Then I will text three friends in one night, perhaps an over-correction, but that led to one long phone call with one friend, and getting together with another. Even if we can't spend as much time as we would like, we can keep the interactions that we do have kind.

Finally, just in case anyone is offended at comparisons between humans and dogs and cats, you're right, it is very different. My pets can never mess me up like a family member can, and I cannot choose to have any family members put down (which is probably for the best). 

Nonetheless, some of the emotions are the same.

Honoring your brain

Maybe you noticed I skipped last week.

There were two primary reasons that I did not feel able to write.

One is content. I was planning on spending more time on capitalism, and how it combines with racism as part of dominator culture. Writing about my job woes seemed like a reasonable springboard for that, and it is always relevant, but I think I need to spend some time on more emotional things.

The other is more technical, in that even though I had this idea for the switch, no words were flowing.

One of my job woes is less time for reading, where it wasn't even strictly time so much as the mental capacity and energy I had left after a work day or week. 

I have been doing really well recently at seizing time here and there and making progress in books. I have been taking in a lot of information.

It put me into this state... I am not sure that the right word is overstimulation, but there were too many concepts coming in, and not enough getting out.

That sounds like blogging would be an antidote: get some thoughts out. 

I do get into states where my ideas on a specific topic are very clear, and then writing about it is easy. Lots of thoughts on multiple topics does not flow.

Sometimes I will make lists, perhaps with little drawings, but this time I did a journal session where I was alternating between scheduling which e-books I was going to read and thoughts I'd had during my scripture study and which Marvel series I wanted to watch and my worries about the dog, plus working out the songs of the day.

It went on for four pages. It helped, though I believe I need at least one more session like that. 

On frequent thought lately is that you can't do everything. I don't like giving things up, but I keep having to do it. 

When feeling like I was actually getting better at accomplishing some of my goals there, but that it was possibly taking me away from other things (like being able to blog or even write a coherent journal entry about an emotional issue), that was a real concern.

It looks like I can maintain this pace, but it requires writing out things that I have been able to mentally track in my head or at least on a spreadsheet. There are more now.

I may still have to slow down some of it, at least to incorporate other things. However, it is helpful to understand how your own brain works and what it needs.

I suppose it is a form of self-care. Lowering my expectations could be another form, but does not seem to be the most needed form at this time.

Remember when I was telling mission stories? It took me a long time to figure out how to study Lao effectively for me. It turned out that I needed to write it. I remember someone had given us a box of old church magazines and I really wanted to spend time reading them (perhaps it was book withdrawal). If I had just realized sooner, writing translations of them would have been perfect. It would have given me new vocabulary and writing it out would have reinforced it in my brain.

When I was in school, before that, other than maybe an hour in TAG talking about the differences between visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning styles, we didn't really talk much about how to learn. Much like sports, it seemed like you were either good at it or you weren't. I was a natural at learning; sports not so much.

Learning was so easy, but I would periodically hit snags that I had to work out on my own. There was very little helpful advice out there.

Some things I have figured out by overanalyzing everything, but following a lot of neurodivergent people on Twitter helps. I don't even know if it is that I get that many tips, but it has done a lot to eliminate worrying about what is weird and normal or right.

Don't sell yourself short; you may just not have found the write method or combination of methods yet.

The Everything Bagel

"You've been feeling it too, haven't you? Something is off. Your clothes never wear as well the next day. Your hair never falls quite the same way. Even your coffee tastes wrong. Our institutions are crumbling. Nobody trusts their neighbor anymore. And you stay up at night wondering to yourself..."  Alpha Waymond, Everything Everywhere All At Once

The posts about me hating my job and exploring the factors that go into that (I hope) illustrated how things go wrong, often with capitalism as the primary culprit.

It is not the only culprit, and we will spend more time on that, but I remembered this part of the movie.

The quote can simply create a mood, but we may be surprised by the break down.

Your clothes never wear as well the next day:

I'll start with my weakest link, but it is still interesting.

One potential issue is use of fabric softener. These products coat your clothing, and may lead to your clothes not being (or smelling) truly clean. This may be a reason for the popularity of scent beads.

https://mygreencloset.com/never-use-fabric-softener/

These are things that are not good for you, your clothes, your appliances, or the planet, but they are still widely advertised.

It is probably more to the point that mass-produced clothes are often produced cheaply, where you will have threads coming out, making seams sloppy, or if they are the threads holding the elastic in place that can really mess with the structure. 

Plus, you may also notice that clothes being the same size, even for the same brand and design, don't always fit the same way. This could be a function of the fabric cutting, where multiple cloth segments are being cut at once, not all with the same amount of fabric, or where the stitching does not work out exactly the same.

https://www.thread.com/us/tips/men/style-sos/style-sos-why-does-same-size-fit-differently/

This is worse with cheaper brands, but only being able to afford cheap clothes probably means there are many areas that aren't going as well for you.

(And if you're fat... )

Your hair never falls quite the same way:

Personally, my hair texture is difficult tough to match. Pantene used to work really well for me. Hairdressers tended to hate Pantene, but I could afford it, and my hair felt good. They changed the formula. I found a good fit with Shea Moisture, but then they changed the formula for that.

The really annoying thing with that is apparently the change was to try and get more white customers. (I am not Black, but my hair has some similarities.) I was ditched again, though my sisters are still using Shea Moisture. (Their hair is more conventional.)

I keep bouncing around with different brands, some working better than others. If I had more disposable income, that would help, but there would be lots of other places to use that first.

Of course, climate changes that result in more hot, humid days can have a big effect on hair. Also the water we are getting may have some problems, but that may be more of a factor for...

Even your coffee tastes wrong:

https://www.discovery.com/science/unsafe-drinking-levels-in-rainwater

In the Willamette Valley, we drink rainwater, but it does come through the water district; one hopes it's fine, but food gets watered by rain. 

I don't drink coffee, but I eat fruits and vegetables and grain products; what is coming out of the sky matters. 

Plus, so much of that (and the food for the animals we eat) is grown in depleted soil.

Lately a lot of meat just doesn't taste that great. I still have my sense of smell, so it's not that. 

I have long been aware of the difference between beef grown on feeding lots versus beef raised by 4-H kids. I mostly understand the reasons for that, but what if everything is getting worse? What if you have depleted soil as the source of the grass or hay or alfalfa or corn, plus rain water full of chemicals, and that is what tired, overworked people find on their plates?

You can argue that the crumbling institutions and the neighbors not trusting each other are bigger issues, but the "small" issues all relate.

With my job getting busier, and medical offices getting busier, people are spending more time on hold. That is less of a problem than the other barriers to care and to healthy lifestyles, but it still sucks.

It's not because of a giant bagel across parallel realities, but many things -- big life issues and small pleasures that could take some edge off of the larger difficulties -- are collapsing inward in a vortex of suck.

Have you been feeling it too?

Musical Interlude

I will return to society's collapse and fighting it soon, but sometimes one needs to lighten up.

For daily songs I had been doing ten songs per year for the '80s, running from 1980 through 1989, and paused from May 1st through July 11th, as discussed in two other posts.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2022/06/messy-and-mattering-mays-daily-songs.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2022/07/black-music-month-pride-month.html

I just posted the last song from 1989 yesterday, but one thing I found with the songs from that year is I could really see the different trends that would be around in the 90s. There is more hip hop and dance, but also things that were heading toward alternative, and probably some things you could call neo-soul. I decided to do 1990 too. 

Often when I go over a daily song project I will list the songs by date at the end. In this case, that would be 120 songs, because 1984 was so notable for songs from soundtracks that I did ten songs from movies, and then ten not from movies.

I have listed more songs than that before, but I want to do something else instead.

Going over this, and getting some questions about our postponed 30 year class reunion, I started to think about a playlist that would encapsulate the class of 1990's time at Aloha High School. It was a three year school then, so going in the day after Labor Day, 1987, and coming out the second Sunday in June 1990, what were all of the number one songs for that time period?

I made that list. And then I didn't like it that much.

I mean, that's not surprising. I love a lot of songs that didn't really chart, and detest a few that did.

Amazingly, there is at least one song I have never heard, "Dirty Diana" by Michael Jackson. (There is a lot of Michael Jackson.) I have heard of the song, but having no memory of it I assumed it came earlier or later in time. No, it was right in the thick of things.

And Steve Winwood's "Roll With It" spent 4 weeks at number 1? Why?

I think it was a good musical time in general, though maybe not as good as 1984-1986, but yeah, not my favorites at number one.

I realize that questions of taste can become heated. If your musical taste is bad, it would be wrong of me to hold it against you.

So, for your own perusal, here are the Billboard Number One songs from September 7th, 1987 through June 10th, 1990

(I might make a playlist of the daily songs I chose from 1980 through 1990. Those were good.)

1987
“La Bamba” by Los Lobos
“I Just Can't Stop Loving You” by Michael Jackson
“Didn't We Almost Have It All” by Whitney Houston
“Here I Go Again” by Whitesnake
“Lost In Emotion” by Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam
“Bad” by Michael Jackson
“I Think We're Alone Now” by Tiffany
“Mony Mony (live)” by Billy Idol
“(I've Had)} The Time of My Life” by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes
“Heaven Is A Place On Earth” by Belinda Carlisle
“Faith” by George Michael

1988

(“Faith” by George Michael lasted into the new year)
”So Emotional” by Whitney Houston
“Got My Mind Set On You” by George Harrison
“The Way You Make Me Feel” by Michael Jackson
“Need You Tonight” by INXS
“Could've Been” by Tiffany
“Seasons Change” by Exposé
“Father Figure” by George Michael
“Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley
“Man in the Mirror” by Michael Jackson
“Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car” by Billy Ocean
“Where Do Broken Hearts Go” by Whitney Houston
“Wishing Well” by Terence Trent D'Arby
“Anything For You” by Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine
“One More Try” by George Michael
“Together Forever” by Rick Astley
“Foolish Beat” by Debbie Gibson
“Dirty Diana” by Michael Jackson
“The Flame” by Cheap Trick
“Hold On To the Nights” by Richard Marx
“Roll With It” by Steve Winwood
“Monkey” by George Michael
“Sweet Child O' Mine” by Guns N' Roses
“Don't Worry, Be Happy” by Bobby McFerrin
“Love Bites” by Def Leppard
“Red Red Wine” by UB40
“A Groovy Kind of Love” by Phil Collins
“Kokomo” by The Beach Boys
“Wild, Wild West” by The Escape Club
“Bad Medicine” by Bon Jovi
“Baby, I Love Your Way/Freebird Medley” by Will To Power
“Look Away” by Chicago
“Every Rose Has Its Thorn” by Poison

1989

(“Every Rose Has Its Thorn” by Poison lasted into the new year)
“My Prerogative” by Bobby Brown
“Two Hearts” by Phil Collins
“When I'm With You” by Sheriff
“Straight Up” by Paula Abdul
“Lost In Your Eyes” by Debbie Gibson
“The Living Years” by Mike + the Mechanics
“Eternal Flame” by The Bangles
“The Look” by Roxette
“She Drives Me Crazy” by Fine Young Cannibals
“Like A Prayer” by Madonna
“I'll Be There For You” by Bon Jovi
“Forever Your Girl” by Paula Abdul
“Rock On” by Michael Damian
“Wind Beneath My Wings” by Bette Midler
“I'll Be Loving You (Forever)” by New Kids on the Block
“Satisfied” by Richard Marx
“Baby Don't Forget My Number” by Milli Vanilli
“Good Thing” by Fine Young Cannibals
“If You Don't Know Me By Now” by Simply Red
“Toy Soldiers” by Martika
“Batdance” by Prince
“Right Here Waiting” by Richard Marx
“Cold Hearted” by Paula Abdul
“Hangin' Tough” by New Kids on the Block
“Don't Wanna Lose You” by Gloria Estefan
“Girl I'm Gonna Miss You” by Milli Vanilli
“Miss You Much” by Janet Jackson
“Listen To Your Heart” by Roxette
“When I See You Smile” by Band English
“Blame It On The Rain” by Milli Vanilli
“We Didn't Start the Fire” by Billy Joel
“Another Day in Paradise” by Phil Collins

1990 (through June 10th)

(“Another Day in Paradise” by Phil Collins lasted into the new year)
“How Am I Supposed To Live Without You” by Michael Bolton
“Opposites Attract” by Paula Abdul with The Wild Pair
“Escapade” by Janet Jackson
“Black Velvet” by Alannah Myles
“Love Will Lead You Back” by Taylor Dayne
“I'll Be Your Everything” by Tommy Page
“Nothing Compares 2 U” by Sinéad O'Connor
“Vogue” by Madonna
“Hold On” by Wilson Phillips

("It Must Have Been Love” by Roxette was the next number one for us new high school graduates.)

Falling apart: Global

There is one more factor driving call volume. 

It is not the one that gives us the most extra calls, but it has such a pronounced impact in other ways that addressing it is important.

Of course I am referring to global warming.

Medicaid programs frequently have a program attached for flexible funding. It can be used when there is something that would be helpful for health but is not a medical procedure. Perhaps the medical procedure you need is only done at a few locations, none of them close. Flexible funding could provide for travel. Perhaps eating healthy meals would be more possible with a small investment in cookware.

Usually those applications are filled out by doctors, who are familiar with the individual medical needs so can speak to the risks and benefits. However, offices are backed up, and for a seasonal need there is a good chance that the patient would not be able to get in on time.

That is why we are submitting the requests for assistance with air conditioning.

That is not ideal. We can't give a real medical reason. Sometimes they may mention a condition where heat would have an impact, but really, if they see that they can get assistance with air conditioning or purifying, of course that sounds good. They will call, and we will put the request in.

The obvious driver there is that we live in an area where the climate was once milder. Housing is not set up for the new reality, especially older housing. It does get hotter now, and less predictably. That affects comfort, ability to do other things, and yes, health.

It is perhaps less obvious that if we go back to the original staffing shortages caused by COVID, that climate change may play a role in the spread of new diseases.

It's not the only factor. Certainly as habitat loss causes humans and non-humans to come closer together, that increases the risk of zoonotic diseases spreading, and air pollution can have a profound effect on lung health even without a rise in overall temperature. The point is that environmental health and individual health are connected.

If the medical industry got short-staffed with COVID, what will happen when you add monkeypox and polio to the mix?

Last week when I was asking the wrapping up questions, like "is your sense of well-being wrapped up in other people not having their needs met in demonstration of the fact that you are worth more?"... that felt like I might be going a little too hard too early. It still seemed necessary.

This series sort of started with how unbearable my job is right now. I am just one person, but the factors that make my life difficult affect many others, and they are tied in with other factors that affect more people, with an influence that will continue to grow.

That sounds dire, but it doesn't have to be. We can make things better, if we decide to.

Please. Not just for me.

Staffing again: The Next Level

One factor driving call volume is that doctors' offices are overworked as well.

Members call because they need to change their primary care provider when the assigned one can't get them in until November. Maybe they got a referral to a specialist, but the specialist can't get them in.

I can't say that the only issue is a doctor shortage. When COVID first hit, many non-emergency surgeries were postponed, partly for safety and partly because hospitals were full. There could be some residual backlog from that. Once a backlog starts it is hard to get out.

However, we have also lost doctors and nurses to COVID. Some have died, some may now be disabled, and some are just burnt out.

I believe I made it pretty clear in the last post that I support universal health care. That doesn't need to be Medicare for all (there are ways in which Medicaid for all might be better), but there should be something.

However, we could probably change that structure far faster than we can change the amount of health care providers out there, and we will need more. 

I referred in an earlier post to the two months required for training for my job, but also then the time and experience required before you become adept. That affects the ability to make change.

What if the training takes eight years? (Depending on how you count it.)

What if that training is becoming more and more financially inaccessible?

Astronomical debt may increase stress in a way that contributes to burnout, but that's assuming someone still takes it on. How many people who would make great doctors are just deciding that it's out of reach?

The current system has its flaws; there can be some really good arguments for a training process that requires less sleep deprivation and substance abuse and the complete takeover of one's life. Changes that make the process better for the learners won't necessarily get them through faster.

Even Navy corpsman training takes fourteen weeks.

There are things we can do. 

College used to be a lot more affordable, and we should get back to that. It still takes time.

You have probably seen nurse practitioners and physician assistants doing more. That can be helpful.

We might be able to do a crash course, where lots of people take something similar to the corpsman training, and then work in association with medical doctors. Locating candidates, setting up training, and arranging places for them to practice also requires work.

Infrastructure isn't just roads and power lines. 

There is a lot that goes into a functioning society, but the giant first step is deciding priorities.

Do we want people to be well? When you're sick, do you want to be able to get care? When your mother falls, do you want her to have wait a few hours to be treated? 

For people you don't know, can you believe that they should also be able to receive medical care?

If not, is your sense of well-being wrapped up in other people not having their needs met in demonstration of the fact that you are worth more?

And just in case I have not spelled out enough complications, there is one more thing driving calls.

Falling apart: Systemic

One of the bad moments with this current job was when I realized that it is sucking the life out of me at a level similar to taking care of my mother did toward the end. The levels of mental beating down, the wearing on executive function, and the overall tiredness are similar.

This job definitely pays better, but the compensation with the care giving is that I knew what I was doing was important and necessary, at least based on the resources we had.

That is less clear in this case.

I provide phone support for a few different health plans. Two of them are Medicaid programs; the rest are Medicare supplements. That means that our members are on these plans due to disability, poverty, or old age, often with a certain vulnerability.

I understand the necessity of my job in that navigating health care can be confusing and require assistance. I can't help but know how much of that is because we make it hard to get health care. The  obstacles are put there to save money, prioritizing money over health.

That is not necessary.

When we are talking the worker shortage, understand that it requires thousands of people to administer insurance. We have built an entire industry around limiting health care, and then helping people navigate those limits.

Those are the people working for the insurance companies, definitely, but also the government employees trying to work out the alternatives need when medical care is tied to employment. It requires a whole field of people who are capable of translating medical reports into correctly coded claims that have a chance of being paid, then another field of people checking those claims for errors that can potentially result in non-payment.

I do not only talk to our members; I also talk to people checking the status of claims, or complaining about rejected claims or trying to understand them and get them corrected.

A large portion of these callers are based in call centers in India. While they are often very friendly and professional, the language barriers and the general complication of medical claims and insufficient training results in lengthy calls, where I may answer the exact same string of questions for every claim for the same member, then do it all over again for a different member.

This is not efficient! 

I mean, if they are paid cheaply enough it might be cost-efficient (though probably exploitative), but that is a big part of my volume increase, and it's hard to feel like it is benefiting anyone.

Placing obstacles to health care means some won't get it. It's not even always something where the plan says "NO', but there is an error in the navigation. 

More than once, I have had someone tell me that I saved their life. That was usually just sending an e-mail, but they needed someone to do it, and it hadn't been done yet.

The lie of capitalism is that through competition eventually there will be better results for everyone. 

That might have been more true when unions and protective legislation were strong, but we are past that now. I am not even proposing capitalism or socialism as the answer, at least not in the Marxist sense, for various reasons, but the preeminence of capitalism needs to be challenged.

I know that people are more important than profits. That makes an already difficult job -- and certainly not the highest in profits because of my specific area -- more difficult.

But I stay, because I need income.

"Essentially we all live in the same country, called capitalism." -- Bong Joon Ho

There are two specific things driving call volume that leads to even worse issues, so count on at least one more post.

Falling apart: Inter-organizational

I may be the only one really struggling with the call volume (I suspect I am not), but there is no question that the call volume is higher. 

Rather, I should specify that there is a combination of more calls coming in and fewer people to answer those calls. The increase is in both total call volume and the quantity of calls fielded by individual agents as our number decreases.

I was in a situation once (not a call center), where there was a lot of attrition, but due to automation and other factors, it did not increase the work load for anyone. That is not happening here.

I was on the team that helped determine the requirements for the automation process. As the volume kept declining and I got laid off, I could "joke" that I efficiently put myself out of a job. 

I would love to have some ideas for how to do that now.

There are a few factors driving the increase in total calls, but focusing first on the diminished work force, I think we have to look at COVID.

The obvious beginning is looking at deaths during the pandemic, and how that reduced the workforce. There are people who will tell you that it was only the elderly, and that they weren't working. Not only is that not true, but it also overlooks how some of those elderly may have been childcare providers, either for family members or in other settings. 

Child care is a serious factor in the ability of parents to work.

It may be less obvious but still in mind to consider those who have long COVID symptoms. Some of the people entering and exiting the work force may be exiting because they find that they cannot keep up. 

I have thought of that, but a recent thread that I read got me thinking more about people working through those symptoms. I am angry at myself for not bookmarking this thread, because I can't find it now. However, it pointed out that on any given day, there will probably be some people out sick, but also some people working through brain fog.

A lot of the volume that I deal with comes from human error. 

It's not always on our side; I may be talking to someone who has incomplete notes from a coworker, or they took down incorrect information.

Sometimes, though, someone is calling back, and as I check the details from previous calls I will notice something that was not previously noticed that is pertinent and wholly changes what needs to be done.

That is not necessarily due to brain fog either. We have a lot of newer people. I am unusually good in general about sussing out details and spotting inconsistencies, but I am better at it after a few months of looking at things. Medical claims are complex. If I spot something that someone much newer on the phones missed, that is not surprising. Even knowing where to look to see what you might miss takes time.

It's harder if they are dealing with brain fog, and if the reason they are newer is because we lost someone else to brain fog (or death), it becomes more of a web than a cycle. 

Webs are sticky.

That is not even taking into account the one relatively good result of the pandemic, in that employee shortages have increased wages. If someone finds that they can't do this job, the odds of them finding something else they can live on have increased.

(Bank of America and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers have some thoughts about this, as do I, but not right now.)

As it is, I am receiving more calls lately from people just checking to make sure certain faxes have been received. For this particular process, the total review is two weeks, so they know that won't have happened yet, but they don't trust it to have gotten in at all. There is a lack of confidence, whether it is on their side, ours, or the reliability of faxing.

We can keep hiring people away from other jobs, and we can keep losing people to still other jobs, but is this effective? Is it productive? Is it good?

And is it all related to another problem entirely?

Related links:

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-06-23/column-do-we-need-to-raise-unemployment-no-we-need-to-protect-jobs

https://theintercept.com/2022/07/29/bank-of-america-worker-conditions-worse/

Falling apart - personal

I hate my job.

I know that's not exactly the right way to say it. For the most part I like the type of work I do, which is helping people. 

I would not automatically hate that I am helping people over the phone, either, except that it is just too much. We are too busy.

That means that before I can finish logging one call, or any time I want to take a moment to check something, my line jangles again. That happening multiple times a day takes a toll on my nerves.

Sometimes at the end of a day, my ears are ringing. I can try and adjust volume to match what is needed for each caller, but it doesn't always work out.

Generally, my body -- even though I did purchase a better chair -- tenses up so much over the course of a day that I end up stiff and sore.

Consistently I grow hoarse from all the talking. I try and mitigate this with cough drops and water, but the cumulative effect means that when I am off work and wanting to talk socially, I get hoarse too easily. Also, I have never been a great singer, but I enjoy singing and this doesn't help.

Even worse is the mental tiredness, which seeps into my off hours when I should have time to do what I want for me and my life. I can't pull myself together right away. Writing may have taken the biggest hit, but I notice more when I can't focus on reading. That's a bad state for me.

I am not sure that five days of work to two days off is the best proportion, but if a large part of the two days off is required for recovering from the five days, then I want at least one more day. Flipping the ratio entirely would be even better.

As it is, too much of my waking life is now frustration, exhaustion, and despair.

Plus, because it is a public-facing job, every now and then someone will just go off on me because they can, or try and guilt me into things that I really have no power to do. Mostly, though, the interactions are fine; there are just too many, coming too close together.

I recently had a review where I expressed these concerns. They said they wanted to keep me, and that they were looking to hire more people soon, but last year that was me. It took a solid two months of training, we lost one person in the middle, another right as we were getting on the phones, and one just dropped out last week. Many other people have been leaving, and I don't know if it's because they feel the same way, or if I am the only one struggling this much. 

For health and time reasons I am glad to work from home, but you don't get to know your coworkers in the same way, or get the same sense of how they are doing.

As it is, when they send around trivia games and getting to know you things, I have tried to participate, but lately I am usually too stressed to even consider it. In fact, I get angry. It's not reasonable, but I created a file for it and had a hard time coming up with a name for the folder other than "Nonsense". (I ended up using "Social".)

Yes, I am looking; no, I have not had any luck.

I could be looking harder; the time and energy crunch is not helpful, but that's to be expected.

Another concern is that I want to continue telecommuting. For a while it looked like the plague was going to let up, but that's not happening. So a job with commuting, travel, or lots of time physically present with others, I could not consider safe.

I am concerned about money. Right now, my house payment is 60% of my take-home pay. Yes, that is also considered the wrong ratio. Regardless, it means I can't afford a pay cut.

My biggest concern, though, is that it won't help; that I will end up in another understaffed/overworked place after I have started over with training.

If it were super-busy, but the kind of busy you could concentrate on -- like answering e-mail in high volumes, or proof-reading, or checking files for accuracy and then publishing -- that would be okay. I might still have to take a pause at the end of the day to recover my concentration, but taking the pressure off my nerves and my voice would be huge.

I just don't know that I have any good options. 

I am trying to find something out there before the phone call that makes me burst into tears, or swear at someone, or just hang up and walk away.

If that got you down, please enjoy this interesting thread on the long history of people not wanting to work!

https://twitter.com/paulisci/status/1549527748950892544

Reading banned books

It's really more "challenged" books, but then we lose the alliteration.

There was a time when I read things based on whether I was interested in them, or if a teacher assigned them, not really thinking about who had a problem with it.

This means that while I haven't really read any Henry Miller or Lady Chatterley's Lover, I have read most Judy Blume books.

I have not read Forever, but that wasn't deliberate. I just never came across it and didn't care enough to seek it out. I know Blume has meant a great deal to many young people, and I appreciate that, but I am fairly neutral.

I did read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in school, and agreed with other friends that the challenges that claimed to be about the use of the N-word were really more about Jim's humanity, but there could be other books that would do that. 

Lately, with so many ridiculous book challenges, I find myself irresistibly drawn to them. Every time I see an article about terrible corrupting influences, I have to read them.

They are often quite good. They do not fill with respect for those challenging them. And yes, libraries are the ones coming through for me, so I know that makes libraries a target. I will defend libraries to the death.

Adding these books may sidetrack my already ambitious reading goals, but it has been a good thing.

Anyway, here are some relatively recent reads:

Big Wig by Jonathan Hillman

https://www.seattlemet.com/arts-and-culture/2022/06/pizza-hut-big-wig-drag-queen-childrens-book-levi-hastings 

A picture book about shyness, and how costumes can help you have confidence, but they are not the only things that help you have confidence. Yes, there is drag, though the wig does other things. Honestly, watching someone else exploring drag recently and finding it really affirming make this book seem more accurate. 

GenderQueer: A Story From A Different Closet by Allan D. Hunter*

This one was actually the worst, but it was also the wrong one. I mean, yes, the memoir's author is not completely gender-conforming, and sexual acts are described, additional reading indicates the actual book was Maia Kobabe's Gender Queer: A Memoir. Obviously I need to read that soon.

https://www.oif.ala.org/oif/gender-queer-most-challenged-of-2021/

Hunter's book is not terrible, but he thinks he is more interesting than he is. The best illustration is that once he started figuring out his issue -- white guy who does not always fit masculine norms, but likes his body and attracted to women, and yes, he did face abuse for that -- he started pressing his manifestos on everyone, including somewhat prominent strangers. That was aggressive enough to get him institutionalize, but even then he could have avoided it by reading the papers he was signing or asking key questions. There are more insightful people out there, but he feels his book is needed, and maybe he's right. There should be lots of books. 

It's Perfectly Normal: Growing Bodies, Changing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health by Robie H. Harris

https://www.npr.org/2014/09/21/350366435/it-may-be-perfectly-normal-but-its-also-frequently-banned

Your local school district protesters HATE this one, but it's really good. 

If any of you have read Peter Mayle's Where Did I Come From?, this is like that, but for adolescents so with information on puberty. As a more modern book, it also does better at incorporating different body types, skin tones, and sexual orientations, though the edition I read could use some updating for transgender inclusion.

The reassuring (and true) title is pretty well honored by the book. If you believe that more information and affirmation is a good thing, this is a good book. If you hate that stuff...

Front Desk by Kelly Yang

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/why-parents-tried-ban-childrens-book-143223253.html

I loved this one! There are now four books in the series, so more reading to look forward to, and I think it would make a great television series.

Complaints about the book that I saw focused on the portrayal of police being racist to a Black character at a hotel. That happened here not too long ago; it seems like fair game for a book.

Beyond that, the book is incredibly empowering as Mia finds solutions to help those around her, many of which come from author Kelly Yang's life. You can make a difference, even if you are young, or an immigrant, or poor, or scared. That's a great message.

Drama by Raina Telgemeier

https://smashpages.net/2022/01/31/florida-school-district-removes-telgemeiers-drama-15-other-books-from-shelves/ 

(Maus was included in this "quarantine", but I read that back in 2012,)

The worst thing about this book is that the play the characters are working on is set during the Civil War, a time that needs no romanticizing. 

Beyond that, the title is a clever wordplay for the characters actually acting, directing, and working on stage effects, but also having misunderstandings, crushes and emotions... drama!

The book also treats at least two homosexual characters (one definitely out, one questioning) as human, valid people, and Florida doesn't want that to happen.

Bone: Vol. 1 (Out of Boneville) by Jeff Smith

http://cbldf.org/banned-challenged-comics/case-study-bone/

I believe the issue here is that the most capitalist character is a jerk. Apparently there is some smoking and drinking in the 4th volume, and violence and horror in the whole series but especially in the 2nd volume.

Okay, there are rat creatures, and they are implied to be dangerous, but I haven't seen them get a single win, at least in the first volume. In the complaints of racism, the Bone cousins are super white, but there don't seem to be any negative depictions based on that. No, I think the issue is that greedy, wealth-obsessed Phoney Bone is a jerk, and it gets him ostracized from their society, dragging his cousins Fone and Smiley along with him. And even though the people who know Phoney do kick him out of town, his cousins still care about him.

How much deference do the capitalists need? Don't answer; that was rhetorical. 

I'm not saying that banned books are automatically the best books, but there have been some good ones. If that makes sense because the people most likely to uphold racism, homophobia, and misogyny are pro-ignorance, well, the logic is easy to understand.

And if you like seeing what I think about books, let's connect on Goodreads:

https://www.goodreads.com/gmharris

Black Music Month + Pride Month

I am reporting back on how the daily songs for June -- during which time I was celebrating Black queer musicians -- went.

I was worried about having enough artists to choose from. My initial brainstorm came up with fourteen, though it turns out that while Lil' Kim is an ally she is not herself queer. There is a reason I looked up every single person, just to make sure, even though I would normally find doing internet searches to find out whether people are gay pretty suspect.

I wanted to be able to feature Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender artists. I am not aware of any Black Intersex or Asexual artists, but at least one was non-binary, and I feel good about the overall representation.

With the help of a few articles, I ended up with 43 to choose from; I have not used every option (songs used appear at the end of the post), though I have listened to them all.

It is shallower than I would have liked, because -- like with the various Asian artists for May -- I only listened to their top ten songs, and only once. As frustrating as it is that I don't have more time for my pursuits, that I am still able to find and learn and manage something is affirming.

The other thing I did was link an article with each song. Some of the artists have historical significance, and I started with that, but then thought that if we are spotlighting and supporting, then I can probably find a link for everyone, and should. There were some really good articles.

My favorites at this point, at least for those who were new to me, are probably Lex Allen, Cakes da Killa, Victoria Monét, Todrick Hall, Joy Oladokun, and VINCINT.

The biggest concern (other than checking everyone's queerness) was that some of the songs used the N-word. Yes, that can be their choice, it can still feel weird for me, but this was so much a case where some people might be offended by the highlighting and support that I just went with it. There was no censorship. Some of those songs are about sex! 

But I am probably not going to use the song "Gay Sex" from Be Steadwell, because I like "Greens" better for her musically, though "Gay Sex" is more politically savvy.

On that note, I feel a little bad in that Lil Nas X has videos that are more overtly gay than the one I used, "Dead Right Now"; I really liked the song, though, and it also kind of fit my mood for the day. Realistically, once they are in my head, they can come back in at any time. 

(I will probably never use "Old Town Road" though, based on my general aversion to country. It's not personal.)

Other people that I could have used but did not came down to confusing information where I could not find a good article, only articles that were about a recent suicidal spell, and one person crossing a picket line. Those were things I worried about, but I had so many choices that it's okay. I can always use them at another time.

Something else I found interesting was that when you look at Queen Latifah's top ten songs, they are half numbers from musicals she has appeared in. That included "You Can't Stop the Beat" from Hairspray. I am fond of that song, but it is an ensemble peace, and its promise of forward progress rings a little hollow now. I used "Dance For Me" for June, but then "You Can't Stop the Beat" on July 1st, followed by Hozier's "Take Me to Church" on the 2nd. Hozier is not a queer Black artist, but his song is nevertheless accompanied by a powerful video and has become something of an anthem, apparently.

Through July 11th, I am using some Asian artists that I did not get to in May, plus some queer Black artists that I did not get to in June, and maybe some things related to reading and viewing. I have some Black music (though not specifically queer) reading and viewing slated for June also, but that will be happening mostly in July and August. Regardless, I would like to get in songs for Charlie Parker and Paris Is Burning.

Starting July 12th I am going back to picking ten songs from different years of the '80s, starting at 1985. That will be a bit of a break, because I am quite familiar with that content.

I like stretching and exploring, but the familiar has its charms.

Black Music Month and Pride Month

6/1 “Rock Me” by Sister Rosetta Tharpe
6/2 “Dead Right Now” by Lil Nas X
6/3 “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” by Sylvester
6/4 “Dance For Me” by Queen Latifah
6/5 “Baby Can I Hold You” by Tracy Chapman
6/6 “Thinkin Bout You” by Frank Ocean
6/7 “When I Get It Right” by Joan Armatrading
6/8 “Children” by Billy Porter
6/9 “Work It” by Missy Elliott
6/10 “Luvaroq” by serpentwithfeet
6/11 “Don Dada” by Cakes Da Killa x Proper Villains
6/12 “Sunday” by Joy Oladokun
6/13 “American Pie” by Shea Diamond
6/14 “Bye-Bye Blues” by Blackberri
6/15 “Great Gosh A'Mighty” by Little Richard
6/16 “Coastin'” by Victoria Monét
6/17 “Breath” by Todrick Hall
6/18 “spaces - Remix” by Dawn featuring Maliibu Mitch and Quay Dash
6/19 “Faithful” by Meshell Ndeogeocello
6/20 “Someday” by VINCINT
6/21 “You Go To My Head” by Billie Holiday
6/22 “Where You Are” by Rahsaan Patterson
6/23 “Where My Girls” by Dai Burger
6/24 “Stay High” by Brittany Howard
6/25 “American Dream Plan B” by Shirlette Ammons
6/26 “Key Changer” by Doug Pinnick
6/27 “Your Love” by Frankie Knuckles
6/28 “Black Queer Anthem” by Lazarus Lynch
6/29 “Explode” by Big Freedia
6/30 “Hope” by Arlo Parks