slowly she turned

Almost got sucked down the social media rabbit hole again this morning. I’ve been trying to spend a lot less time on Facebook, but Threads is my major distraction these days. I highly recommend it as an alternative to Xitter, and it is increasingly populated by the major journalists and personalities that have abandoned that ruin of a platform.

My coffee pot takes longer to finish these days because since I am going to be home during the mornings in 2024 (so I gather at this point), I bought a larger one. Sandy likes to have a cup and I need at least two large mugfuls so now I can have three when I want to without brewing another pot. I haven’t graduated to a Keurig. It’s not that I don’t like them, but they do generate a lot of plastic waste and getting a non-disposable filter cup and filling it each time seems like a bit of a bother. I used to drink Maxwell House instant coffee all day long in my younger days and then my sister and brother-in-law spoiled me with freshly ground coffee beans and now I’m a bit of a coffee snob. I buy fair trade coffee beans and grind them every other morning or so. Equal Exchange is my brand for coffee and hot cocoa mix, which I put in the bottom of my cup before I pour my coffee. I get it at Deep Roots Market.

Speaking of Deep Roots, I need to send them a resume and application. It would be nice to have a part time job at a place that I care about. Years ago I volunteered there when they still allowed co-op owners to do so, and I loved to stock shelves and prepare bulk foods in smaller packages in the back. I think I would be happy on the front end too.

I sent Scuppernong Books a resume and cover letter about a month ago but never heard anything. I figure that if they didn’t need me for the Christmas season, they sure won’t need me in January. I checked Measurement Inc.’s website and they haven’t opened the application for remote temporary reader/evaluators yet. I had worked temp jobs for them twenty years ago. I would be a good editor/proofreader so maybe I’ll look for something like that.

Searching for job at age 62 with disabilities in January is not going to be a picnic. I’m not planning to count on it and will go ahead and apply for early Social Security around March or April. Because of my bone spur, I can’t stay on my feet all day and that is a challenge.

I applied for a scholarship at John C. Campbell Folk School in November and I have my fingers crossed that I’ll be able to get that. It would be lovely to be able to take a class in Spring and it would help keep my spirits up. I missed the scholarship application deadline for Penland and I don’t really know what my schedule might be like later in the year.

There are so many unknowns in my future and for an INTJ personality, this is difficult. We are the careful planners – the ones that have plans B, C, D, E, F, etc. My anxiety has been high and I’ve coped by cocooning in my bedroom with reading and games on my Kindle, which is not mentally healthy for a recovering agoraphobic. Even this morning, with fun activities planned for the rest of the day, I dread walking out the door. I’ve had several anxiety attacks in the past two weeks and they did not reach the level of panic, but the way of it is that I begin getting anxious about the anxiety and it starts to feed on itself.

I can say with certainty that the people that I work with in my department, staff, students, and faculty, have made me feel totally appreciated and loved. My retirement party is next week, and they  gathered letters, notes, and emails from present and past faculty and students and the students presented me with a notebook of them on Thursday afternoon at Oden Brewery. And this is not the first or second thing that the students have done for me that has made me weepy with gratitude since it was announced that I would be leaving at the end of this year.

(For people who missed it, my position was cut and I was being moved to another department to a budget job that has been a revolving door, so I used the only power that remained to me by choosing to retire instead.)

Okay, reading. I have been entranced with Patrick Rothfuss’ fantasy adventure saga about Kvothe. I checked them out on Libby, and tore through the first one, “The Name of the Wind,” and I’m now halfway through “The Wise Man’s Fear.” I always have a print book that I’m reading at the same time so I have something to read close to bedtime and occasionally on sleepless nights. Right now that’s “The Wheel of Fortune” by Susan Howatch, an old brick of a paperback I found in a Little Free Library that’s falling apart. At first, I didn’t think that I would finish it because of the unlikable characters, but I think that it has hooked me now and I want to see what happens to them. I picked it up because the setting is in Wales.

I don’t watch a lot of TV or movies. Not because I have anything against it, and honestly I wish that I could pay attention for more than an hour a night. Somewhere along the line in the past few years, I stopped being able to focus on video and audio. Generally, Sandy and I pick a show that doesn’t have much gore and violence to watch. My anxiety can’t support intense nail biters – even murder mysteries are hard for me. Right now we are watching “Russian Doll” and although it does have a lot of death, very little is shown on screen and the main gist of it involves twists in time. Definitely NSFW or kids because of sex and drug addiction, but it is fascinating. Now, Sandy is a horror fan and was a zombie movie expert before zombies became cool, and he watches all kinds of screamers and shooters. I’ve had to make a rule about volume after 11 p.m.

Okay, that’s enough for today. Tomorrow I’ll try to write about my art stuff and plans, such as they are, for that. I took another great workshop from Leslie Marsh about a month ago, and it needs a post.