State of the Becka: where I've been.
Hey dudes.
So, festivids is happening. That's a thing. Apparently it's pretty cool and full of awesome vids you should be watching?
I really haven't had time to sit down and go through them like I wanted to. That's sort of a lie, I've had the time, but not the inclination. Basically January has been kicking my ass. I spent the first three weeks of it sick - I think I had a chest infection or something. I just had the most unshiftable gross cold and cough and sore throat combination of bullshit forever and it just sapped my will to do anything.
Plus I'm moving, which is super exciting because I sort of feel my life has been - in some ways - on pause for years now while I've had to (for reasons most of you know, but I'm not gonna get into) live out of my parent's house for so long. It's a confusing combination of emotions, though. Leaving, packing, physically moving everything. Also the fact I had help from family to get this place. I feel lucky, guilty, guilty for feeling guilty and acutely aware of how tenuous the financial strings that hold most of the world together are. How impassable and insurmountable these kinds of barriers are for people. For me, if I wasn't part of a wider network - one bestowed on me through chance and genetics.
Money can't buy happiness, but the lack of it sure robs you of it. I wasn't even that poor. But the hopelessness of reconciling the things you want with the things you think you can have.
I remember when my husband was really sick, more than one person was worried maybe I was depressed. I don't think I was. I think I was upset. I think I was devastated and sad and really fucking scared a lot of the time. But I don't think I was depressed.
I think the closest I've come to genuine depression was this last year and a half. When you feel like you got old waiting and now the chances are for other people. And you meet being rescued with a mix of hysterical relief and abiding anger that you needed it. I have spent so much of the last eighteen months angry. God I have. Just admitting that makes me feel like I'm going to cry.
So yeah. I have a house now. It's both amazing and overwhelming. There was a ton of bullshit regarding the state the house was left in, and then I couldn't sort everything out before Christmas like I wanted, so my parents and their ability to drive were gone by the time I was moving in, so extra costs there, and cleaning and building work...
My work screwed up my sick pay. It's a long story, and the short of it is I'm not financially out of pocket, but now I have to do a bunch of shit to fix it.
Dark Horse lost the Star Wars license. Irrelevant in the scheme of things. It still upset me.
When I get stressed I get weirdly productive in unpredictable directions. (Remember that? Yeah, that happened during that time I'm pretty sure I wasn't depressed). This time I decided to spent a ton of time trying to update non-urgent parts of the new Vidukon website.
My Grandpa died.
My Grandpa died the week my passport expired.
I really, really loved him. He drove me completely crazy, but I loved him so much.
Imagine Worf, you know, from Star Trek. Now replace all the talk of honour and battle and violence with engineering and history and oddly specific instructions. That's him. That's my Grandpa.
He would say things like, "Go down into the basement and turn West."
And I would say, "Grandpa, I'm seven, which way is West?"
My mother went down into his basement this morning, to retrieve some papers, to handle some legal things. There was a letter in it. "To the survivor distributing my estate," it said. "Greetings."
He grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the Depression, when they closed every other street down to cars so the kids could play, and no one had air conditioning so they all went to sleep out in Central Park in the summer. He was raised by a single mother, a German immigrant who spoke English as a second language. He was not neurotypical (autistic spectrum). He was surrounded by feats of miraculous engineering, suspension bridges and skyscrapers; he fell in love with them. He got a free placement in a high school that specialised in the sciences. He got to go to university, again at no cost. He worked nights at the New York Central Library, when the kids in the stacks wore skates and the kept all the books about sex locked in a cage. He designed battleships. He designed the deck where they signed the WWII peace treaty with Japan and when the war was over he went to night school and converted his engineering qualifications into architectural ones and designed every bagel shop and half the diners in North Jersey. He bought a home and expanded it with his own hands, according to his own designs. When I think about his life, I understand his unwavering nationalism, his real belief in a benign American Dream. Because he got one.
He took care of everyone in his family. Everyone. In his final months, my mother and my aunt were trying to convince him to move to residential care in Connecticut, closer to my aunt's house. He wouldn't even consider it until it was pointed out to him that he would save $40,000 in estate taxes. Suddenly he couldn't get there fast enough. He never made it, though.
My grandfather died after a brief illness and 95 years of independent, almost completely unmedicated living. He was loved, and he loved us. No one goes before their time. How wonderful that his was so long and filled with so many things.
How terrible that I will never see him again. I will never see him again. We were nothing alike. He lived far away. Despite this, he was a towering figure in my life. I will never see him again. I am devastated.
It's okay that I'm devastated. I know that I am doing okay because that's how I feel. My Grandpa, whom I loved so much, died, so right now I am devastated.
And trying to renew my passport and move house and be unsick for the first time in nearly a month and launch a con and unfuck my work sick record.
January 2014, ladies and gentleman. I will not miss you.
So, festivids is happening. That's a thing. Apparently it's pretty cool and full of awesome vids you should be watching?
I really haven't had time to sit down and go through them like I wanted to. That's sort of a lie, I've had the time, but not the inclination. Basically January has been kicking my ass. I spent the first three weeks of it sick - I think I had a chest infection or something. I just had the most unshiftable gross cold and cough and sore throat combination of bullshit forever and it just sapped my will to do anything.
Plus I'm moving, which is super exciting because I sort of feel my life has been - in some ways - on pause for years now while I've had to (for reasons most of you know, but I'm not gonna get into) live out of my parent's house for so long. It's a confusing combination of emotions, though. Leaving, packing, physically moving everything. Also the fact I had help from family to get this place. I feel lucky, guilty, guilty for feeling guilty and acutely aware of how tenuous the financial strings that hold most of the world together are. How impassable and insurmountable these kinds of barriers are for people. For me, if I wasn't part of a wider network - one bestowed on me through chance and genetics.
Money can't buy happiness, but the lack of it sure robs you of it. I wasn't even that poor. But the hopelessness of reconciling the things you want with the things you think you can have.
I remember when my husband was really sick, more than one person was worried maybe I was depressed. I don't think I was. I think I was upset. I think I was devastated and sad and really fucking scared a lot of the time. But I don't think I was depressed.
I think the closest I've come to genuine depression was this last year and a half. When you feel like you got old waiting and now the chances are for other people. And you meet being rescued with a mix of hysterical relief and abiding anger that you needed it. I have spent so much of the last eighteen months angry. God I have. Just admitting that makes me feel like I'm going to cry.
So yeah. I have a house now. It's both amazing and overwhelming. There was a ton of bullshit regarding the state the house was left in, and then I couldn't sort everything out before Christmas like I wanted, so my parents and their ability to drive were gone by the time I was moving in, so extra costs there, and cleaning and building work...
My work screwed up my sick pay. It's a long story, and the short of it is I'm not financially out of pocket, but now I have to do a bunch of shit to fix it.
Dark Horse lost the Star Wars license. Irrelevant in the scheme of things. It still upset me.
When I get stressed I get weirdly productive in unpredictable directions. (Remember that? Yeah, that happened during that time I'm pretty sure I wasn't depressed). This time I decided to spent a ton of time trying to update non-urgent parts of the new Vidukon website.
My Grandpa died.
My Grandpa died the week my passport expired.
I really, really loved him. He drove me completely crazy, but I loved him so much.
Imagine Worf, you know, from Star Trek. Now replace all the talk of honour and battle and violence with engineering and history and oddly specific instructions. That's him. That's my Grandpa.
He would say things like, "Go down into the basement and turn West."
And I would say, "Grandpa, I'm seven, which way is West?"
My mother went down into his basement this morning, to retrieve some papers, to handle some legal things. There was a letter in it. "To the survivor distributing my estate," it said. "Greetings."
He grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the Depression, when they closed every other street down to cars so the kids could play, and no one had air conditioning so they all went to sleep out in Central Park in the summer. He was raised by a single mother, a German immigrant who spoke English as a second language. He was not neurotypical (autistic spectrum). He was surrounded by feats of miraculous engineering, suspension bridges and skyscrapers; he fell in love with them. He got a free placement in a high school that specialised in the sciences. He got to go to university, again at no cost. He worked nights at the New York Central Library, when the kids in the stacks wore skates and the kept all the books about sex locked in a cage. He designed battleships. He designed the deck where they signed the WWII peace treaty with Japan and when the war was over he went to night school and converted his engineering qualifications into architectural ones and designed every bagel shop and half the diners in North Jersey. He bought a home and expanded it with his own hands, according to his own designs. When I think about his life, I understand his unwavering nationalism, his real belief in a benign American Dream. Because he got one.
He took care of everyone in his family. Everyone. In his final months, my mother and my aunt were trying to convince him to move to residential care in Connecticut, closer to my aunt's house. He wouldn't even consider it until it was pointed out to him that he would save $40,000 in estate taxes. Suddenly he couldn't get there fast enough. He never made it, though.
My grandfather died after a brief illness and 95 years of independent, almost completely unmedicated living. He was loved, and he loved us. No one goes before their time. How wonderful that his was so long and filled with so many things.
How terrible that I will never see him again. I will never see him again. We were nothing alike. He lived far away. Despite this, he was a towering figure in my life. I will never see him again. I am devastated.
It's okay that I'm devastated. I know that I am doing okay because that's how I feel. My Grandpa, whom I loved so much, died, so right now I am devastated.
And trying to renew my passport and move house and be unsick for the first time in nearly a month and launch a con and unfuck my work sick record.
January 2014, ladies and gentleman. I will not miss you.