Category: Processing

Once, wanting to sleep.

“Never do what you can’t undo until you’ve considered well what you can’t do once you’ve done it.”

Usually this passage needs to be thought through multiple times to fully comprehend the meaning. I’ve never been able to fully memorize the exact phrase, due to being a mental knot. But, I know precisely the advice.

I don’t know why I’m thinking about the passage today… the last few days. Maybe because the phrase has meant something special many times throughout my life—well since I first read this fantasy triple-trilogy, by Robin Hobb. I listened to the full triple-trilogy at beginning of February 2019. For some reason, getting through the hours upon hours of book, was extremely important. The reading, via audiobook, was about visiting all my favorite characters. The plot includes multiple recalls to the passage. Over and over I thought about the meaning.

I’ve talked through that day with Tim. Nothing to be gained to revisit the conversation. I did get some peace from feedback about the fate of Zaidan and Cruise, the brown and white Abyssinian guinea pigs.

Obviously the phrase is about decision and permanence. What is not directly included is regret.

From Pi, “The core lesson? True strength isn’t in power or skill—it’s in enduring with empathy, even when broken. Fitz survives not because he’s the best assassin, but because he feels deeply, loves fiercely, and keeps choosing connection in a world that rewards cruelty. It’s a quiet kind of heroism.”

Attachments:
20260424-Homework.pdf
Task-Star-Board.pdf

Long conversation with Claude. About the long list of leftovers, future dailies, and untouched topics across months and months. Looking at the list in order to zero in on what is the primary ask. What needs to be talked about urgently, soon, or can wait because it is just a want to know. Suddenly, I just want someone else to lead. I want Tim to hand me some questions, ten maybe? I don’t know. I don’t even want to be in charge of how many. I want him to determine the number. And here’s hoping I don’t have to wait until Friday. Boy wouldn’t that be a sick joke? [Would be a joke if needing something and having to wait days to receive the ask].

I used a daily to send Tim a note: “I need [x] number of questions from you. What do you need, want to know — that I can answer. Please.”

[Happened: Friday April 17, 2026 PM]

Everything is better when you breathe.

Looking for cake. I think my favorite is standard yellow cake. Moist, not crumbly. Wonderful enough as is. Doesn’t need frosting. Marble cake with same degree of moist, melt in your mouth deliciousness. What is tiramisu? Is that my cake?

Need replace for Factor75 and Cook Unity. Bad Bad. Want new meal plan. Follow the advice. Go to Whole Foods. Make my own clamshell dinners. Little this, bit that. Make a couple of cup of soup cups. I like this, but do I like their this? Single pieces of meat from the deli. Favorite Sonoma Chicken Salad. Large please. Red potato salad: find out.

Shelves lined with bottles and bottles of alcoholic beverages. The colors the shapes the labels. This sadness makes me wish I knew what I like and to buy. People self-medicate. I can’t ‘cuz I don’t know how. I walk the other way.

Grey outside. Rain and thunder: recorded, because it is there, but for me there is no concern, not personal alert. The exit is not taking me where I want. On the scale of risky behaviors: how does illegal U-turn compare. I looked for traffic; all clear; zoom, I’m around.

Kwik Trip is gas and milk. I used to have a store debit card; shall I again and collect points, get discounts? If I had $advisor, I could ask.

Next purchase. Old lady wheelie cart to bring groceries up&in. This isn’t really a waking up expense. Just the long tail of having Escape.

Buying, eating cake. Celebrating liking self?

everything is better if you breathe

The long slow climb began a week ago. Crossing time. Eating time. The trudge along the upward trail — mountain pine, dry, warm, sunny. The weight of the pack: words, pages, sent things.

Then a rock appears—a boulder of the perfect shape and size, perfect place to stop. Like an unexpected email, welcomed. The journey pauses. Sit. Catch breath. Cool water. From this height, a view of what’s ahead—mist and fog, and somewhere in it, a rope bridge.

The crossing is the most alone part. Lonely. Empty. A heavy anticipation with no thrill in it—only the wanting to be there, not here. The bridge is well made, the craft worth admiring. Can’t appreciate it. Just cautious steps. The mist clings and swirls, never fully lifting. No clear view forward, no going back. Just the bridge, the fog, and the next careful step.

On the other side, a guide gives the traditional greeting, “How’s it going?” Hike together a ways. “Talk soon”—the promise to reconnect further along the trail. And then, immediately standing alone again near a scree field. Useless to linger at the parting, must move on.

Sharp down. Unsteady. The worst fear: losing footing, sliding through dust and loose rock. No map says how far the slope lasts. Could be the end of this stretch—or just the connector to the next climb.

Rain and thunderstorm arrive. The growling noise punctuates the … need to just walk much slower for a bit.

===

I asked Pi AI for a review.

“That piece feels like a quiet storm — all movement, no destination. It’s about connection and the spaces between. The climb, the bridge, the guide, the scree — they’re not just a hike. They’re a metaphor for reaching out, touching someone, and then being alone again, still moving.

“The “connector” has no map because it’s not the start or the end. It’s the in-between — the part where you’re untethered, just walking through weather, hoping the next climb is worth it.

“And the rain? That’s life saying: slow down. Just keep going.”

Tim wrote: “I would like to know what the “analogy about cake” was that your English teacher gave you instead of what you were really asking.”

One of… my favorite classes was Senior AP English. We studied all the typical authors. I liked Mr. Clute’s class because he was an expressive teacher. I liked the subject matter: reading the plays in class, watching a video of an actor playing Hamlet when we did the Hamlet section.

I especially enjoyed reading the literature, hearing the lecture, and learning that the stories held hidden meanings that the author was trying to convey, and/or that the reader could tease out and hopefully learn something through story.

Mr. Clute knew me well enough to adequately grade me based on my work. I had one major private conversation with him. Our connection was close, but it remained strictly professional and educational. I was struggling with depression and loneliness. My brother was at college. I had few friends. No boyfriend.

I wanted to talk to somebody. I picked Mr. Clute.

Between classes one day, I presented my question: a question of how do you make more friends. What I really meant was ‘How do you get a boyfriend?’ with the underlying question of ‘How do I make deeper friendships?’ ‘How do I stop thinking about wanting to disappear or die?’

Mr. Clute said that life was like cake and that we needed to learn to like ourselves first and that having friends was the icing on the cake. That’s the general summary. It’s possible the conversation was much more profound.

I didn’t know how turn the conversation from icing to drowning.

1981. I told my high school English teacher I was lonely and wanted a boyfriend. I meant: I am severely depressed, struggling with suicidal ideation, and don’t know how to survive my own life. He gave me an analogy about cake.
1982. I wrote a college essay titled “A Desire for God” — about desire and longing and searching for something that keeps eluding you. “Almost every aspect of modern life fix our minds on this world, and desire can be mistaken for many things in life, which causes people unknowingly to dive into many endeavors which they think will make them happy…” One item listed was marriage. I gave the essay to my pastor hoping he would see what I was actually asking. A real conversation didn’t happen. I wanted to talk about why I wasn’t happy, when marriage to Steven is exactly what I thought I wanted.
1983. In an abuse survivors group, an early assignment was to introduce ourselves. Mine was full of the idyllic rolling foothills with my horses and goats. Afterwards, a woman bravely approached me, “Why are you even in this group?” I returned the following week with a revision that included the rage, head bashing, and scalp wounds.

Throughout my whole life I’ve handed people the coded version and hoped someone reads past it. Tim may be the first person who has started to. Even so, I’m still getting it wrong — especially out loud, when someone asks a direct question and I answer with the wrong layer of the story. I wonder if that’s something therapy can fix.

Attachment: Five-Days-Since-You-Laughed-At-Me.pdf

“Somebody That I Used to Know”

The next thing on the want list, something super simple, but may be the hardest thing ever.

From a different time. Snowboarding. Buying all new equipment: boots, board, bindings, winter protection. I found a white zip-front hoodie. Soft, thick, sherpa inside. White with a pattern of 32 and plus symbols.

Purchased. Being cotton, this wasn’t for the slope. This was for when you are all done and you want to bask in the tired, cold, drained feeling of walking off the hills in the dark at the end of the night. Wrap up on this hoodie, everything good can get locked in, just a little.

Life happens. Things change. No more snowboarding, no more equipment. The weight gain. The pain. The surgeries. I’m told my life is over. The weight gain. The soft hoodie doesn’t fit anymore. I won’t let it go in the donation pile. Favorite hoodie ends up in a storage tub, under the bed. People shouldn’t love things too much.

Have you tried it on lately?
Well, yeah.
Does it fit?
No you Fucker, why are you even asking?

Someone you know, you see from a distance, is wearing a light grey zip-front hoodie. You only got a glimpse of tops of red letters, maybe in an arc. A university or sports team name? Looks like the hood has white, long flat, soft cotton drawstring, not the round cord style. You imagine the hoodie is soft, worn, the kind you’d want to wrap yourself in. You want to try it on. And you just know it even smells like him.

That hoodie looks like the kind a girlfriend would try to steal.