Post #268: Welcome

 . . . One more post than last year!

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#2024Goals

Reading Wil Wheaton's memoir last night, I felt my loss of contact with creative thinkers and makers, seekers and healers over the years--partly the normal loss of friends through time; partly because of working a job where a lot of people all around me are undernourished in every way; partly fallout from the isolation of Covid and the stress of social turmoil.

Also, honestly, partly me being cantankerous and complacent--sometimes for reasonable reasons, perhaps, but, eventually, aren't they self-defeating ones?
I think I should take that in hand--not to force myself to be gregarious, ohgodno, but to reach out a little more to people, even, eek, to ask for help.

I not just only "should" do this, I admit I want to. My “reasonable” reasons not to include a heightened irritation with people arising from a kind of social PTSD, like many of us developed in Trumptimes and Life in the Time of Covid. Plus, for those of us up and down Lake St. in Minneapolis, there's a special flavored PTSD from having witnessed (second-hand, but on streets we walk on) state-sanctioned murder in broad daylight, and the explosions of people's anger and frustration afterward, met—not by the powers-that-be with empathy and attempts at reconciliation—but with more state-sanctioned strong-arming.

I remember the day conveys of armed US troops in camouflage rolled past me as I walked home from work--I stopped at the little garage-gym I was going to at the time and wept with the owner.
The next day, Asst Man said, "How do I explain to my kids why there are soldiers with machine guns on the corner?"
At work, I was on my knees cleaning up shards of windows smashed by legitimately angry and frustrated (and sometimes just opportunistic) people.

So, maybe I want to try again to get some help/ to talk about all that with someone who understands the complexities? 

Which, I am remembering, is what blog friend Darwi who lived as a teenage girl through the BOSNIAN WAR urged me to do…

I know there’s plenty better than that clueless therapist I saw once last year. Someone who doesn't gaslight me, brushing off my feelings and thoughts as "overthinking" or telling me that “everyone is doing their best".

No wonder I don't want to socialize when these are literally some of the responses I get from people.

My dear coworkers mostly operate in survival mode--a grin-and-bear-it which can even be jolly and wise, in its way, but not what I'd call... healing? expansive?

This is a TINY door (2 inches high) in the outside wall of Dreamhaven bookstore. An invitation...
Welcome. Well come.