Formed - And Deformed - By the Same Forces

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   

    They may not mean to, but they do.   

They fill you with the faults they had

    And add some extra, just for you.

~ Philip Larkin “This Be The Verse”

My fraught relationship with my sister. I’d write at greater length about it, after returning from San Antonio where we stayed with her and her husband at their home, for “Hirning Sibling Xmas 2024!” - but it would surely only get me in trouble. These days I open my mouth and it seems to create more problems for us, so I am learning to shut it.

But all 4 of us sibs are, along with being lots of wonderful things: impatient, hyper-critical, defensive. Sister’s husband offered “too competitive” also! I don’t think that’s one of the main problems but that’s in the toxic mix as well for sure…and I appreciate the contribution to the self-analysis.

🤓

And we have our parents to thank for all of it, of course! Ah well, we will try to do better next year or at least, speaking strictly for myself (which recovery has taught me to do), I can promise that I will. But sometimes it sort of feels like the damage done is too great, the patterns of behaving and reacting, are too deeply entrenched by now, that I will never transcend them.

I do love my siblings so much, and the discord was only a small fraction of the whole week we spent together, it’s just that the blow out argument between me and Stephanie happened right before my older brother and I left town, and slightly filled my head for the two-days drive back. 

It left me ruminating and feeling a little depressed at the familial dysfunction, to be honest. But, I’m guessing it’s probably not much worse than many other families!

And speaking again, just for myself, I feel like I have a lot of work to do to get better. Focus for the new year and I can try to approach it with enthusiasm and self-compassion, taking it one step at at time, which will help with feelings of overwhelm. What are we here on this earth for anyway, if not to learn more about ourselves and the people we love, with whom we so badly want to connect?

The Dress…

…that made it to a million corporate Christmas parties! 

Well, ok at least three. And I have the photos to prove it, starting with the oldest when Erin Riley and I shared a cubicle at NM, where we were both placed on assignment, shortly after completing COBOL programming boot camp (which launched my IT career), and we adored each other so we requested the professional photographer take this photo of us (in addition to the ones we took with our dates) at the Compuware Christmas party.

I remember being so impressed with these parties, at least for the first few years. The decorations, the food, the drinks, the dancing! It was the late 90s and the IT money was flowing for sure.

The first one I recall was held at the fancy-pants Pfister hotel in downtown Milwaukee (and husband, also working for Compuware, attended with me and so we splurged on a room for the night); the second one was at the new Midwest Express convention center also in downtown Milwaukee. I think this first photo is from the second one and so it would have been December of 1999, if I’m not mistaken.

Fast-forward to 2013 when I attended the Catalina holiday party as my friend Danielle’s “plus-one” (being a contractor at the time, not an employee of Catalina, I did not have my own invitation). Danielle to my right, our manager Michelle to my left. At a very cool event space in downtown Tampa that used to be a bank (I think).

And finally, the dress reappears at this most recent party - 

I have no idea what decade the dress is from but it feels very 50s housewife to me. I’m pretty sure I got it at a thrift store or rummage sale in Seattle before moving to Milwaukee in 1995. 

Then there was another dress also bought second hand, I think for $1 at a thrift store in Ormond Beach, FL with my friend who used to live there. I loved it but sadly, it never made an appearance at a holiday party because I could never get skinny enough at the right time and finally I realized it was too threadbare to wear anyway, so I re-donated it. But damn, that would have been a fun dress to wear to a holiday party!

Worth It

Bonus Day! This is always the first Friday in December. It’s also the day our holiday party is held (they want us all in a good mood). So, it’s pretty much the adult equivalent of Christmas morning - Santa comes to town, signified by the extra money we find automatically deposited to our bank accounts.

We’re told it’s never guaranteed but I’m sure I’m not alone in how I’ve come to expect it, as the company has always been profitable and so we’ve gotten a bonus every year, for the 10 years I’ve been employed there now. 

And I’m very grateful. I know I’m paid quite well for the work I do, and I’m also fully aware of how lucky I was to stumble into this IT career, all those years ago. It has made so many things possible for me.

And yet.

Even with those extra dollars showing in my bank balance and the nice party this evening, and the overall comfort and security this job gives me, I’m struggling more and more to feel it is all worth it.

I recently read this book and it made me feel a new urgency to do more with the days and weeks I have left in this one lifetime. I’m 52 years old.

Can I really wait until 60 to break free from this corporate job that feels to me like a prison sometimes? Or do I need to make a move sooner because there is literally no time to waste? I remember hearing the phrase “golden handcuffs” from someone at Northwestern Mutual (NM) in Milwaukee, early on in my career and I think I’m understanding that now in a new way. 

What will our hero do?

😄😎😄

Stay tuned in 2025 to find out!

Making (And Not Unmaking) Another (Big Life) Decision

 

This is what people see on work zoom calls when I have my camera off (which would be every zoom call if it were up to me); a professional headshot taken a couple years after I joined the AML IT team at Raymond James, and the same day I received the service award, given to me by then CEO Paul Reilly and RJ founder Tom James.

Despite appearances such as this, I’ve always had an uneasy relationship with my corporate career in Information Technology. With only English degrees and thinking I’d end up being a professor or working for some sort of non-profit, Corporate America is not at all where I expected to find myself and certainly not where I thought I’d stay all these years (by April of 2028 it will have been 30 years!). 

And yet, I felt I had come to some sort of peace with it, upon joining RJ in March of 2015 and then shortly after when I finally quit drinking (it amazes me that this is almost 10 years ago now!). By staying sober for more than a few weeks or a month at a time, I learned that a large part of hating my job was due to the way my active alcoholism sort of poisoned my entire life. 

It seems pretty obvious I know, but what can I say, I’m a slower learner? I could only fully realize this truth for myself by finally doing what I had needed to do for years. I feel like I got sober just in time.

I settled into my role on the IT team for one of the most interesting business areas I’d ever worked in before - Anti-Money Laundering and Financial Crime Management. It felt like we were doing something with a higher purpose than just to make the firm money, we were fighting the bad guys! And the focus on patterns in data deemed “suspicious” signifying something nefarious might be going on, and systems used to detect and investigate such situations I also found more interesting than systems at my other jobs.

I became a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist and as a Senior, then Lead Business Analyst, I gained the trust and respect of our business partners; not every day was perfect but I was doing interesting work and getting paid well to do it. Life was good!

Fast forward about 8 years when an opportunity came for me to step into management last Fall and I took it. I had some fear that it was going to be way more work and responsibility for not that much more money and well - turns out I was right!

So, after giving it about a year, I’m going to soon transition back to being just “Lead BA” and also moving to another team. I’m making this move to escape a manager I wasn’t wild about reporting to and also the feelings of being sunk and despairing at systems that require so much hand-holding and no resources to truly fix them. Always being asked to do too much with too little and under ridiculous timelines. 

I just don’t want to do it anymore and I actually sort of felt like I would simply leave the firm if they didn’t let me leave the team. Fortunately, RJ is really good about letting employees have some control over their own careers and allowing moves like this one I’m making. 

I feel so much relief thinking about leaving those particular system problems behind and getting a fresh start with a new team, that I know it’s the right decision. Of course there will be new problems with the new team, new projects and less than perfect systems that I will have to learn from scratch. 

But at least they will be new! Sometimes all we want is have something new in our lives. And I’m actually really proud of myself, because I was pretty miserable and I did something about it. I decided not to suffer in silence, I chose to have the uncomfortable conversations that were part of making this change, and I’ll weather any further discomfort of final weeks as manager until they let me make the transition to the new team and back to the BA role. It will all be worth it! 

 

No Words

 Only feelings, of grief, anger, disbelief, fear and shame.

Monsters

It is quite possible that a week from tomorrow, we the American people will re-elect that monstrous man, despite all the best efforts even of mostly apolitical people like me (who at the urging of my very political older brother briefly went knocking on doors last weekend for Amendment 4 and did phone banking for Harris/Walz a couple times), to make it go differently. 

And in the aftermath, if we were to let him and his ilk turn this beautiful flawed country into the fascist far-right state they for some reason want, we would be Monsters then also.

For a thoughtful discussion on “art monsters” who at least have the small redemption of producing great works of art, unlike Trump, see Claire Dederer’s book Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma, which I recently read.

It Is Accomplished

Still can’t believe that you two are now just friends

You’ve got no lover and he’s free at weekends

I know he said when you first met

That you must always play the hand you get

But you're two years on a losing streak

Get back together

Get back together

It's something you could do next week

Get back together

Get back together

Why don't you get back

Try to get back together?

From the song “Get Back Together”

by Everything but the Girl

My husband moved back in yesterday. With my roommate older brother not yet really moved out, currently traveling in Europe with his two kids, and Hurricane Helene barreling down on us, causing David’s flights to Milwaukee (weekend Packer game and early celebration for his mother’s 101st bday!) to be cancelled, rebooked, then cancelled again, it’s not exactly ideal circumstances. 

Yet I recall when we first moved in together loooong ago in late Fall of 1997, it was also not ideal. We chose to take that big step way back then not necessarily because we were ready (though we had been dating each other exclusively for over a year) but mostly because my job situation was changing and I needed a place to live. In other words, it was a major relationship decision made largely for convenience. OR you could say we were “trusting the flow” as we later came to frequently say about how best to navigate life. You pick! 

This time again, we may not be ready - or I am, my attitude is “let’s rip off the bandaid and try cohabitating again already!” FFS but he’s been weirdly reluctant after convincing me to stay in it, had said he thought we should take a little more time - but here we are. And as he stressed about his storm-botched travel plans I’ve been a help and a comfort to him. Which is, at the end of the day, all we really want from our life partners right? To be a refuge from the storms of life for each other! Well, maybe not ALL we want, and there is the rub. 

Still, I can’t help but feel a certain sense of accomplishment and happiness, somewhat tempered by the chaotic circumstances. As we together put back up on the wall our beautiful wedding certificate, featured in the photo here.

Within the last year I lamented (probably more than once) to a friend (probably more than one friend): WHY is this relationship so HARD, why does this seem so much harder for ME than for anyone else? (meaning, this whole marriage business) Can you hear the whine in the words? My friend promptly responded that there was at least one simple answer to that question - because I didn’t leave. Until I did, for about two weeks, and then decided to try again. Because I stayed in it.

For good or for ill, I never fully gave up, have continued to stick with this marriage and maybe that is where the sort of weird sense of accomplishment comes from today. And maybe it’s all wrong and of course it can still go sideways, but for now, I hold on and feel hope, in this safe harbor of a relationship, while the storm rages on outside.

***************************************************************************

You can’t see bread rise, but it rises. If you could watch a lump of dough in the time-lapse photography so prevalent in the schoolroom filmstrips of my youth, you would see it rise. If you took time-lapse photos of a marriage, what would you see? Mutual diminishment? One partner slowly devouring the other? A mere string of fights and fucks, signifying nothing? Or would you see something strong, growing slowly? ~ Claire Dederer Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses (page 243)

The Big “Bangs!” Day and The Big D

(Trivial topic Trigger alert) 

About a week and a half ago, I got bangs! This MAJOR hair style decision was a long time in the making, and I probably had some extra trepidation because the last time I made such a big change to my hair, I chopped it completely off and pretty much immediately regretted it. 

I’m not known for big hairstyle changes and I haven’t had much success in this area so I felt weirdly brave doing it. Approaching it I kept thinking of it as the “Big Bangs! Day” - making myself laugh and feel very clever.

I’m happy to say that this time I did not regret it! Although it is taking some getting used to, because with my completely un-straight hair texture bangs are a bit unruly (like me) and a bit unpredictable (like life). And at first it felt like nothing so much as a small furry animal sitting on my forehead. Every day they turn out a bit different (again, like life).

So much wisdom to be drawn from a single haircut!

(And-now-for-something-completely-serious alert)

So.much.Death.

Since my mother died back in April of 2022, it’s like she opened a portal and everyone else just filed in after her. At least as far as her 7 remaining siblings are concerned.

Aunt Joan back in May of 2023, Uncle Doug last September, Uncle Tim so suddenly this past June and now, my poor Aunt Sheila, who was in so much pain and in the hospital for over 5 weeks. Thank goodness we were able to visit her when we were in town last July for family reunion BBQ but we didn’t realize it was the last time. Even if I thought it might be, I wasn’t ready for it to be the last time. But you never are.

And it was a double-whammy, with my Uncle John dying that very same night. While not one of my mom’s siblings, Uncle John was married for decades to her sister, my Aunt Patty, and so this one hits just as hard. He’d been living with terminal cancer for years, and so yeah sure, we knew he was going to die sooner rather than later but then the end came faster than expected. It sadly, so often does.

This all happens while I’m honestly still trying to come to terms with my friend Danielle’s death last February - so sudden, so shocking, so still completely unexplained: a mutual friend recently told me she heard the coroner’s report finally came back “death by natural causes” but how natural is it that a seemingly healthy, fully functional 50 year old woman just up and dies?!?! It doesn’t make any sense.

It’s easy to feel that Death doesn’t make sense, and yet it’s the most natural thing in the world. I think about the first breath we all take when we are born and that last breath we will take when we die. And all the breaths, the highlights and significant moments, the mundane days and trivialities, including every good and bad hair decision in between! We don’t usually realize it, but we are lucky to have any and all of it.

Emily: “Does anyone ever realize life while they live it…every, every minute?”

Stage Manager: “No. Saints and Poets maybe…they do some.”

~ from the play “Our Town” by Thornton Wilder

What I Was Made For

 I used to float, now I just fall down/I used to know but I’m not sure now/What I was made for/What was I made for? 

~ “What Was I Made For” by Billie Eilish

I’ve been listening to this song over and over since springtime and I know it’s sort of corny, it’s from the “Barbie” movie, I’m probably “too old” for Billie Eilish, blah blah blah but I just think it’s really evocative and beautiful. 

And I’ve decided that I was most definitely made for Joy. As well as to be in the driver’s seat (of my own life at least). Husband or no Husband, Job or no Job, whether I’m at my goal weight or not, or have saved enough yet for retirement…you get the picture.

It says on page 133 of the AA “Big Book” - “We are sure God wants us to be happy, joyous, and free.” - and I couldn’t agree more.

I’ve also heard it said that Joy is nothing but Sorrow overcome, and given everything I’ve been through in the last several years, this also makes perfect sense!

And I was thinking about this as I was phone banking last weekend for our “candidate of joy” who will be in the driver’s seat of our nation when she becomes our 47th president this Fall. 

I feel it in my bones it is BEYOND time for our first female presiden! And another person of color so we can show that Obama was not an aberration, we are NOT a country of racist assholes. 

We just had one in office for 4 unfortunate years, but we shall NOT make that mistake again! If I pray for anything these days I pray for this….

Making - And Unmaking - My Decision

It’s been a confusing time.

Back in May when when I was visiting Seattle with my older brother to do the famous “Beat the Bridge” 8k race, I took this photo of a flower in the neighborhood where we were staying.

I noticed and photographed it because I’d recently been to my college reunion with my flower-obsessed friend Meta. In just a few days she’d shown me what a gift it was to slow down and notice something as simple as the flowers in an ordinary front yard garden. I texted her the photo and said that this reminded me how good friends can lift us up & enrich our lives. Immediately followed by 2 spontaneous & important related thoughts:
#1 - I am so very fortunate to have many relationships that do that for me. 

#2 - I don’t think that my marriage is one of them.

For months I’d been bemoaning my state of indecision in regards to this, one of the longest and most significant relationships of my life. I had even joked about how I wished I had an algorithm available to me - in this age of AI it doesn’t seem too far a stretch of the imagination - so I could just input key data and magically out would pop my instructions, on what to do.

Then I found a book which seemed like the closest thing to it. 

I read it for the first time back in January, carefully answering all 36 “diagnostic questions” and when the answer was “Too Good to Leave” on one of our weekend visits I pushed my chips to the center of the table (metaphorically), and told my husband: I was all in. 

I waited to see what he did next. 

His job didn’t actually require him to be in Miami, it was fully remote from the beginning and he only had to be in the office maybe once a quarter. He could move back to St.Pete, get a short term lease on a place not far from me, we could go back to couples counseling, start “dating” again, reconnecting and figuring out if we were even still compatible. 

But he did none of those things.

He apparently was preparing to do those things - and a few more, like quitting smoking and resuming his yoga practice, to start taking better care of his health - but he neglected to tell me. Instead we continued in ambivalence and occasionally on the phone “arguing in such a way that there was no endpoint and we were bringing out the worst in each other” while I felt more and more hopeless. I read the book a 2nd time and this time the answer was the opposite. 

So, when he came to St.Pete the 2nd weekend in June, ostensibly to celebrate my birthday a bit early but also to visit his storage unit, I met up with him at the nice downtown hotel and took the in-person opportunity to say - “I need to tell you that this relationship is over for me” as well as “I don’t want to talk about whether or not this is the right decision” - which shut down any conversation in which he might have tried to convince me to reconsider. 

I was shocked that he was shocked! Leading up to it, I’d thought of several ways it could go down and I honestly never thought it would blindside him. Which showed me that he was just.not.hearing.me and that we were not at all experiencing the same reality of our relationship the past few dismal months.

It lasted only a couple hours, start to finish, but every minute was awful, after I told him, sitting with him in his shock and sad silence (since I had shut down all conversation about the decision), with the white hot glare of a summer day in Florida outside the hotel window, walking back down to the lobby, getting the car from the valet and finally driving away. I did not waver in my decision. And it was by far one of the hardest things I have ever done.

I really thought it was over. But then? I got new information. My husband started sharing with me more about what had been going on for him, the breakthroughs he’d been having, that he was moving back to St.Pete pretty much immediately, he was done with Miami, he thought we still had a shot, that being married to me was all he ever wanted. 

That in fact he felt that God had charged him to love me, as we included in this quote from our Quaker wedding program. 

And while I’m not sure that’s exactly true for me, I do know I still love him. So here we are several weeks later. Still Married. Still trying. We’ll see what happens next!

Get Yourself Free

We’d been arguing in such a way that there was no endpoint and we were bringing out the worst in each other. 

Pg. 143 First We Make the Beast Beautiful by Sarah Wilson

 

Hop on the bus, Gus

You don’t need to discuss much

Just drop off the key, Lee

And get yourself free

~ Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover ~ by Paul Simon

Today is a good day, no sadness for me. When I finish my prayer, I feel a free that I didn’t feel in a long time, and when I smile, it climb from inside my stomach and spread itself on my teeth. 

Pg. 248 The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Dare

It Would Take an Acrobat/And I Already Tried All That

 Let Him Fly 

By Patty Griffin

… Ain't no talkin' to this man

Ain't no pretty other side

Ain't no way to understand the stupid words of pride

It would take an acrobat and I already tried all that

So I'm gonna let him fly

(Gonna let him fly)

Things can move at such a pace

The second hand just waved goodbye

And though the light has left his face

But you can't recall just where or why

So there was really nothing to it

I just went and cut right through it

I said, I'm gonna let him fly, ooh yeah, yeah

There's no mercy in a live wire

No rest at all in freedom

Of the choices we are given

It's no choice at all, oh-huh

The proof is in the fire

You touch before it moves away, yeah

But you must always know how long to stay and when to go

And there ain't no talkin' to this man

He's been tryna tell me so

Took awhile to understand

The beauty of just letting go

'Cause it would take an acrobat and I already tried all that

… I'm gonna let him fly

I'm gonna let him fly, fly, oh

I'm gonna let him fly, fly, oh

I'm gonna let him fly

Ballerina, Song for My Beggar Heart

 “Ballerina” By Leona Naess

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=W_3aUAZI0OA&si=JplBHyEgKJ7PgVf1

I'll never feel the weight of your hands

Inside mine like diamonds

Lace so fine ballerina

Cupcake and my earthquake

Wakes me from my sleep that

Never comes, are you breathing

Waiting for me

I didn't really want you

But I want you now

Was so foolish of me

Feel you tumbling down

Into that empty room, the lights went out

I want to rescue, want to scream out loud

I didn't think I needed you

But I need you now

Was so empty in me

Feel you crashing down

Into the empty world, the music stops

I want to rescue, want to scream out loud

You will always be mine

The room spins 

they pull you from me, my body burns

Tell me all the rainbows

The colors that the rain throws

Ballerina, dance softly

She knows when to come only

When she's called on slowly coming to

I didn't really want you

But I need you

Was so foolish of me

Feel you tumbling down

Into that empty room, the lights went out

Want to rescue want to scream out loud

I didn't think I wanted you

But I want you now

Was so empty in me 

Feel you crashing down

Into the empty world, the music stops

I want to rescue, want to scream out loud

You will always be mine

So so sorry 

Just come back for me now

So so sorry

Just come back to me now

Or soon

I didn't think I wanted you

But I want you now

Was so foolish of me

Feel you tumbling down

Into that empty room, the lights went out

Wanted to rescue, want to scream out loud

I didn't think I needed you

But I need you now

Was so empty in me

Feel you tumbling down

Into that empty room, the lights went out

I want to rescue want to scream out loud

That you will always be mine