D, to Me, in October: "Oh no, the dishwasher won't start!"
"Ok," says me. "This is fine: I'm a certified electronics tech, I CAN FIX ANYTHING!"
~~five hours later, emerging from the bowels of the dishwasher looking like I just learned that Harper got re-elected~~
NO.
NO, I CANNOT IN FACT FIX THIS.
Ten thousand side quests, tightly interlocked dependencies, time off for minor surgery and (unrelated) sickness, and now several missing walls later, there I was sitting surrounded by piles of wolf-spider-exoskeletons that showered down on us when we heaved out the last of the ductwork so we can access and reroute the water supply for the new dishwasher, and I felt... defeated.
It's ok. I got over it. But I felt it, for a second, and it wasn't great. But, I mean. This whole last few years have been so weird that maybe I needed that to set me on my heels and fix my attitude.
Because like the dishwasher saga, the final change to unlock all the progress I want in my life has been a doozie. And it's just the start of the actual work. Remember that post I wrote about change? Yeah, well. I got it.
I mean, I'm learning a lot right now. A LOT. A FUCKLOAD. A METRIC FUCKLOAD, IN FACT. (That's bigger than an imperial fuckload, but not as much as a complete fucktonne. Not sure I could do a whole fucktonne, this is just ~10yds or so, if you want to be scientific.) I'm quite tired of learning new things, but apparently life is like that forever until you die.
Most of what I'm learning about adulting is painful but fulfilling, and what I'm learning at work isn't strictly just building up my technical badassery, though a fair bit of it is. As usual the hard bits are the easy bits, and the easy bits are hard. But hey, I always tend to get what I want but not how I want it--my brain is a big ball of silly-string curses. And the current economic climate is making everything hard anyway.
So I'm working, and studying, and reflecting, and hoping I don't get laid off. Because I see so much potential here, and I'm so ready to start the hike up to where I want to be... but there's nothing I can do about the stuff outside of myself right now, no way to better clear the route. So I'm going ahead getting in shape with the hope that I will be here for awhile, and, well... starting the ascent to a mountaintop and hoping the clouds clear away as I go.
Also, I'm looking ahead to what this new post-pandy (hollow laugh) summer is going to look like. I'm not planning on throwing caution, or masks, to the wind, but I am planning on filling it up with Real Human Experiences, with Actual People, as much as I can.
And gosh I've missed people. I'm gonna squish you all with hugs and be totally weird about it.
My only other plans are to get terrible sunburns that age me horribly, surrounding myself with cats and friends and plants and music, and being deliberate about what I care about what what I don't. That's the absolute best thing anyone can do, objectively speaking.
The dishwasher still won't be installed by then, but who cares. We can do it another time.