Caterwauling

On the fourth day of December, the tarot advent calendar said to me …

You’ve got plenty of time to sort out what you need to, if you pace it right.

GURL.

In 24 hours, I have my final dentist appointment of the year. Then back to work.

I have a chalkboard full of to-dos for work and home that I wanted to achieve during PTO.

I erased a lot, which is great. But there’s still a lot on the list.

I think about the remaining items and wonder, if not now, when? When it’s back to up at the crack o’ me, no lunch breaks other than turning off Teams for a half-hour and having to shop, cook and clean in the evening hours, when can I do the rest?

My friend JD reminds me that we all have the same 24 hours in a day. Get up early. Stay up late. Work smarter.

If he could write three books while working two jobs and traveling 14 times, so can you.

He’s not wrong. I don’t want to be THAT busy. But, maybe I could write one book over the course of a year instead?

The Two of Coins reminds us maintain balance BUT be careful because you can fall on your ass and twist your ankle during this delicate, never-ending dance.

How easy it is to fall out of balance and never get back. So prioritize the money-making shit and the “have to do” shit but also prioritize the fun shit.

So, basically, sleep when you’re dead, as Bon Jovi sang.

“A heartbroken person is unlike any other person. Their time moves at a completely different pace than ours,” she explained.

“It’s this mental, physical, emotional ache and feeling so conflicted. Nothing distracts you from it. Then time passes, and the more you live your life and create new habits, you get used to not having a text message every morning saying, ‘Hello, beautiful. Good morning.’ You get used to not calling someone at night to tell them how your day was.”

— <a href=”https://www.eonline.com/news/1356598/taylor-swift-and-harry-styles-went-on-their-iconic-central-park-date-10-years-ago-inspiring-these-songs“>Queen Taylor</a>

On the third day of December, the tarot advent calendar said to me …

Do a “future, festive you” some favors today.

I love wands because I love fire.

I also don’t use fire in my magick anymore because mom can’t stand the smell of candles or incense (scented or not — even the burning smell bothers her).

Also, catbutt. My furriest baby, Belly, always catches me sneaking a quick candle burn and walks across the flame. Then I have to hear about it that mom smells burning fur.

That’s my connection to the Three of Wands. You realized with the Two of Wands that there’s a whole world out there, and it’s your fiery little oyster. Which direction will you pick?

In the Three, you’ve got the vision. And you need to act on the desires before they flame out.

I feel like I am permanently stuck at three.

It’s good in a way because threes symbolize power. But if you don’t tap into that potential, even if it turns out to be a complete and utter disaster, you don’t get to the celebration stage that the Four of Wands represents.

How do I best serve future, festive me?

Right now I’ve been coming back from severe burnout. But I was met with an issue that messed up two days.

The issue got resolved this morning. And I have to thank past me for having the foresight to prepare for the fallout from a mess I didn’t know was coming.

And the issue only got resolved after I lay awake worrying about it. I told myself, go back to sleep — you’ll know what to do when you go to do it.

Sure enough, at 8 a.m. I chose the solution I wasn’t planning to choose. And it saved me a fortune as well as two more days of inconvenience.

Anyway, this post was supposed to be for future me, not past me.

But maybe there’s a lesson to be learned here about having two options and JUST KNOWING what to do … and then DOING it.

Future me has a choice of two different elements — water or earth.

Practical me (usually the winner) really wants earth. Go figure. Earth equals practicality. Stability.

The other Gemini Twin wants water. Flow to complement the ebb. Uncertainty, but balance.

I wonder if I just made a major life decision with this post.

On the second day of December, the tarot advent calendar said to me …

This year, whatever feels special to you is where the magic is.

Makes me think about what I wrote for day one of the advent calendar — what is my calling, if not this?

I think my calling is within this. I’ve loved having a hand in 40 different pots for the past 20 years.

But after two decades, having a skill set that’s an inch deep and a mile wide is disconcerting.

Being 30-ish for so long, I’m accepting that there are fewer years left than have been lived. That maybe the bucket list needs to be shorter or I need to start checking things off faster.

I think the pandemic taught me to find wonder in the ordinary. But it also taught me to stop seeking magic. Including my own, but mostly in others.

Where I expect to find magic is in an odd place … in discipline. That’s my word for 2023.

Lately I’ve been too tired to do anything that brings joy or satisfaction. So I give myself grace for doing the bare minimum, since my minimum is not others’ minimum.

But, this period of grace could last forever, as I’m still tired. I think the way to get un-tired is to do more. Rather, do different things, and more of them.

I wouldn’t say it’s a matter of finding magic in the mundane.

Now, lord knows I’ve read enough mundane tweets from enough mundane people to know there ain’t no magic there. And never will be.

But maybe the magic is in actively seeking it beyond what already happens on its own.

So when that cloud hands me yet another cup, as it always does, I’m “saying yes instead of no,” as T-Swift sang.

Except to meetings. God, what has been most wonderful about the last two weeks was getting rid of the useless meetings and conversations and people (just two, really) I do my level best to avoid.

How do I zap the time sucks and fill that time with more joyful things? Talk about a life resolution, not just a New Year’s one.

On the first day of December, the tarot advent calendar said to me …

You are Boss Santa, in charge of a magical run-up to the big day. What do you want to happen? What are you most looking forward to? What new activities or traditions could you try this year? What foreseeable snags or pitfalls do you want to ditch or delegate?

That’s a lot to unpack. Too much, really.

What am I looking forward to? How about not forgetting to buy turkey, as I did on Thanksgiving. Definitely don’t want to make “going to McDonald’s” a tradition.

The sad part is I was on vacation and had nothing BUT time to shop for everything else. Oy!

I like this whole “getting paid to not work” business. I intend to repeat it for Christmas. Preferably far, far away from here.

I’ve been closely following Christina Applegate and her battle with MS as she works on “Dead to Me.”

She’s worried this will be her last project, as her condition worsens and will impact her ability to be active for long periods of time.

She worries that she can ONLY work five hours a day.

A five-hour marathon sounds awesome.

I mean, yeah, she’s used to working all day and night. I used to be used to that, too. But I don’t want that anymore.

So I guess when thinking about what I would change for upcoming and future holidays, feeling OK with “just” working five hours seems like a good goal to have.

I mean, it probably means getting a different job and getting used to having less money. But it’s something I think increasingly more about.

I’ve been enjoying being supervisor/psychic healer to 25. But they keep talking about hiring someone to take the crypto half of the duties. Which makes me sad because that team is growing on me. But if I had my way about it, I’d pick one franchise (out of the remaining four) to really blow out of the water.

I always say “if I were editorial director, I’d …”

That’s what I’d do. Focus. Ditch the hags … I mean snags … and not need two weeks to try to recuperate from utter and complete exhaustion.

There’s a new goal for the new year. Not save up all my days and need a whole damn month to recuperate from burnout.

As for what to look forward to, I guess that depends on what I’m allowed to do.

Or maybe I’m allowed to do more (or, for the purpose of this conversation, LESS) than I think.

As one of my favorite seers wrote, “Use your energy to its best ability.”

I rag on B a lot. He earned it.

He was cruel to everyone who can be arsed to remember him. Acted like he was smarter, richer, better than us all.

Definitely had more money than us. I see the house he paid $400k for is under contract for $1.2M.

That mofo always falls in shit and comes out smelling like roses. Won’t lie — I hate him for that. The luck, not the money.

Dude could BS his way into or out of anything. Even though I hated his guts, I kissed his flat ass to keep my job and enjoy an occasional perk.

One of the perks was working on Atlantic Avenue and seeing the beach once a month when I could swing a lunch break.

Only getting lunch once a month sucked. But grabbing BurgerFi or Pizza Rustica by the ocean made it worthwhile.

In any event, I’m currently halfway through a two-week PTO stint. Unlike past years where I forfeited that time, I decided to take two weeks for Thanksgiving and one week for Christmas.

I don’t think anyone above me is pleased with my scheduling choices. But it’s also not like I haven’t been selectively working and attending meetings.

That’s the thing. I’ve Marie Kondo’d my to-do list and meeting schedule. I provide direction to my staff, run away and let them do it. Is it to my liking? More or less. Did I do the right thing by LETTING them do their job? Absotoothly.

(Oh yeah, wisdom teeth coming out today and tomorrow. Whee.)

Anyway, I got to thinking about B. He would force us to sit on a “monring” call for an hour every day. Then you’d never see him again because he couldn’t be bothered to come into work unless it was to poop in the bathroom that I was somehow responsible for cleaning.

I always said his wife kept his balls in his purse. And he stayed home in hopes that he could go steal them out of her handbag.

In any event, the one thing I appreciated about B — beyond the satellite office that I was pretty much the sole occupant of, even if I wasn’t allowed to work from home — was that he left me alone.

I worked hard. I worked A LOT. And I missed out on a ton of life events and social engagements and TIME OFF.

By choice, of course. I blame no one but myself for that.

He would always skip the “ediotrial” (sigh) call (our 1:1). So I was free to do my work in the way I saw fit after we hung up from that often-rambling group call.

In any event, I was just telling someone that I gained a new appreciation for B this week.

I work for an hour, maybe two.

I check in on those who need it.

I answer questions and provide direction and share stuff I gleaned from other conversations.

You know, like I usually do for 8-10 hours a day, every day. But, abbreviated.

Then I go fuck off and let everyone do their jobs and then I go enjoy my life for a goddamn minute.

If this is ACTUALLY what being a director is, I need to do this all the time. But with filling up the other six hours a day with real work — i.e., not inane meetings and putting out fires and reminding people of things they should know by now.

Anyway, today goes down in history as the day I started to loathe B less.

I mean, I wish I was making his salary to work two hours a day for five years.

But, I’m OK making mine as long as I can do the wild things I’m doing like CLEANING THE HOUSE and GOING TO THE DENTIST.

Seriously, I have been deep-cleaning this place for a week and I’m only halfway done, yeesh.

So, no, Cindy, I don’t have some “unemployed relative” doing it for me. How about send your maid over here if you pity me so much.

I have two getaways planned for next year. So I won’t get this trough of time off for the holidays. I mean, unless I channel my inner B and go take all my industry contacts to lunch and call it networking.

Hey, now there’s an idea …

When I said this ends here, I meant for me.

Who only knows what’s going on over there these days. Probably more unintentional hilarity.

In any event, I was searching my email and stumbled upon this ancient gem. Which of course I sent to Momma.

A friend asked me awhile back, why do you watch this train wreck.

I said for when they say something stupid and people call them out for their inanity.

For when divine justice comes knocking.

For when they say something intelligent. It has to happen, even by accident.

My friend said when has the karmic GPS found its intended destination when you were watching?

She’s not wrong.

Toodaloo, twuntzilla.

Oh and my friend sold his bakery. Dipshit can hold on to her imagined title of best customer ever since I quit going two years ago.

An old friend asked me to introduce him to my most recent ex-boss. He’s pitching a new venture and needs a home to do it from.

He clearly had no idea that this boss was now of the ex variety. So I said no I can’t, and I wouldn’t even want to if I could, knowing what I know now.

At the same time, a different friend posted about not being able to face one more day of his soul-crushing job. Four days later, he had a new job and quit the current one just in time to enjoy a stress-free holiday.

What do these things have in common? Other than good people in my life being sick of THEIR lot in life and deciding to make a change, nothing.

I was beyond the edge of burnout before I decided to take two weeks off. And we made a goof on Friday that I knew how to correct but when I told my team to “fix it,” I wasn’t specific about how I would have fixed it. And now it’s going to come back to bite me.

Will I lose my job over it? I hope not. Will my team? Not if I have a say.

Why didn’t I fix it the way I wanted? It would have been more complicated than usual. So I heaved a heavy sigh at the way the “light” fix was done and returned to whatever monumental task I was in the middle of.

I spent a lot of time last week fuming at how some person is a complete and absolute shit and yet has so much influence. But being nice and trying to be a leader (who understands that Fridays are miserable and the extra layer of complexity was only going to fuck up the two projects in line behind it) rather than a manager didn’t get me fuck all of anywhere in this situation that’s vexing me.

Anyway I think about my friends starting new ventures. I really don’t want to. Not right now. The one said very powerfully and poignantly that he felt like he was dying in his previous role.

I don’t feel that way. I mean, I felt dead and dug up from burnout, yes. And I’m hoping that my half-working two-week vacation sees some of that abate.

But I really am fortunate to like what I do, most of the time. With people I like, most of the time.

In any event, what really touched me was the one friend not wanting to make any waves or changes because he has bills, a car that’s almost paid off, a vacation scheduled. Can’t fuck yourself up financially to deal with your mental health.

Meanwhile I have tickets to a bunch of events next year and still have to figure out travel and accommodations. And I’m sitting over here nuts about making any wrong moves that could fuck up those plans.

Anyway, I wish them both all the best.

I’m sure the first friend will land on his feet. He takes big risks and loses big. But he wins big too.

The rest of us are just happy to stay off fate’s radar, lest shit get any worse.

The Club Q shooting got me to thinking about the Pulse shooting. And those got me to thinking about all the time I’ve spent in gay bars and all the friends I made there.

I’ve always had four-person barfly friend groups.

Thirty years ago, I’d go out dancing with Pinhead, Psychofag and Frumper.

Then I went with Kristin, Steve and Psychofag.

Then I went with Joe, Alan and the Queen of the Night.

Then back to Psychofag, now with Bryan and Paul.

There were other combinations. Other cities. And plenty of other states.

But there was always that group that looked out for you.

Even if they (or I) happened to be hitting on/hooking up with someone, we always made sure everyone had a friend to dance with … a way home … and, at the very least, a safety net should something happen.

But nothing happened, you know? We’d drink and dance and laugh and buy mixtapes (later CDs) from the DJs.

And now all that music is available on Utopia on SiriusXM.

In any event, everyone I mentioned is married off. I was an attendant at Bryan and Paul’s nuptials — long before it was legal. Another just had a baby with his husband.

None of the straight girls from that era ever had kids, go figure. Not even in my non-barfly friend foursomes.

Anyway, I type all of this to say that I am so glad my friends and I are alive.

That the only fucked up thing to happen was Psychofag tossing himself from the second floor of our parking garage onto Steve’s convertible as we sped away from the club.

Not even the unhoused guys in Southeast ever bothered us or our cars. We would hand them a couple bucks, and the only cars that weren’t rummaged through were ours.

That we could drink and dance and talk openly and grind up on random people we thought were attractive and make out with people we might never acknowledge in the light of day.

The things that happened between dusk and closing time are precious. You wear what you want. You be who you are. You pop some Molly and let your inhibitions that didn’t already melt away in the dark dissolve completely.

And you live to never tell if you don’t want to.

In any event, I love that a drag queen with a giant high heel kicked the shit out of the Club Q shooter while a straight male dad held his bitch ass down.

I’m just sad that the (non-binary) shooter, who was from the LDS sect, had so much self-loathing and a firearm he never should have possessed, that he turned another sacred space into a battleground.

I was blessed for a long time in that I loved just about everyone I worked with, and the ones I didn’t love were still pleasant and/or tolerable.

We’ve expanded a ton. And there’s a whole new regime in town. Which, I was all about the Brady Bunch-ing of our family and the extended family.

But I look around anymore and there are fewer of “us” than “them.” And it really feels like I could replace the “than” in that sentence with “vs.”

I dared to say that to HR awhile back. Surprised to still have a job, since they’re “Team Them.”

Other than having two unpleasant types to deal with these days, I’ve been mostly unaffected.

That is, till I got texts over the weekend with some casualties I wasn’t expecting.

I don’t mean to talk out of school. And I certainly don’t mean to draw straight lines where there aren’t even dotted ones.

But … “us” is definitely shrinking under the new regime.

You can’t tell me it’s performance. You also can’t tell me it makes any sense to yeet that depth of institutional knowledge.

I might have sent up another flag at that point. Like, WTAF, man.

I mean, if I were in charge of the yeeting, I’d definitely have chosen much differently.

In any event, one of those doing the yeeting actually told me to stop talking on a call the other day.

In front of 11 subordinates.

I was already furious over the yeeting. So I decided to hang up rather than get myself yeeted.

I crush this person’s head on video calls all the time. Goddess, why are you pinching the air? I’ll never tell.

I’ve heard of leaving because you hate your boss.

But I survived Brad and Ed, so I can survive just about any boss. Jesus what a pair of passive-aggressive pussies.

In fact, I rather love my current boss. I ran right back to him rather than find a new job. And I’m glad he welcomed me.

I would absolutely die if he retired. Or if yeet-a-licious somehow got into his head about me.

I’d really die if this yeeting foo ascends above me. I can call them Mudder Su-PEER-ior for now. Let’s keep it that way, mmkay?