Venting helped, it was a healthy catharsis for such a shitty day. That feeling of anger, and disappointment, and ennui carried over, but it felt manageable. What else can you do other than accept it and move on to proactive resistance? I had distraction in getting the yard done today as well – cleaning up a weeks worth of dog shit from two dogs, mowing, trimming, pulling weeds, watering. I listened to Radiohead’s “Kid A” while at my task. It had the right tone for where my emotions were. Started early to beat the heat. There were more weeds to pull but the temperature was getting hot and I’d had enough. You can never get all the weeds anyway, the seem to spring up right behind your plucking.
I took a three mile walk yesterday evening instead of doing the treadmill in the garage. It was much needed and helped to calm my nerves and clear my mind a bit. I haven’t been getting out enough lately. I work from home and it’s easy to move around the perimeter of the house without venturing out. I’ll come up from the basement and stare out the living room windows instead of giving my legs a real stretch. Erin call’s it “surveying the estate”.
The walk was good last night so Erin and I took an afternoon stroll today as well. Afterward, back home to the dogs, expectant and happy, tails wagging as if we’d returned from a month long trip, always needing loads of attention and reassurance, driving me batty with the incessant barking. Once fed for the evening their batteries switch off and they wind down, plopping into our laps, or sauntering off to curl up on the couch or bed.
A simpler day, a bit of release. My brain able to glide and reset. We streamed a few episodes of “The Staircase” on HBO Max, decided we’d continue with it. After Erin went down for the night the dogs curled up with me downstairs while I spent over an hour mindlessly flipping around our streaming services in search of something to watch. There are times it seems I’ll spend most of my viewing allotment scrolling for something to watch, reading descriptions, watching previews, saving movies and documentaries for later, and never deciding on anything for that evening. Then more than half of those queued items are never watched. They sit there, molding over the ensuing weeks, each time I see them making me wonder what the hell I was thinking or feeling when I queued them, wondering who that person was. Most often it feels like the queue is where movies go to die.
Sunday tomorrow, got to get up early to go to church.
Hahahaha…just kidding.
Author: Jason Jacobs
Jason Jacobs is an artist, project manager, and frontend web designer living and working in Boise, Idaho. Beyond work he spends his time with family, as well as reading, writing articles for Uhmm, and working on his art. All words and opinions, etc., are his and do not reflect the positions or beliefs of anyone other than himself.