Post-vacation wrap-up

They say vacations stimulate your creativity.

I wasn’t so sure at first. I spent the week losing sleep, thinking about all the stuff that gives me anxiety every day anyway. That service we need to close, the product lineup. the kinds of people we need to hire who just don’t exist, shifts that need to happen that I can’t outline here, and basically the feeling of being so overwhelmed (and other adjectives) about it all.

But I started reading a book that I am not ready to talk about here. And it has helped me to be more aware of my role in things. Not that I feel like I can put out the fires by myself. But I can try to not feel so crushed, and it only takes some small fixes to do it.

When I travel, for example, I put my phone in “airplane” mode. It saves the battery and I don’t get 42 alerts an hour on whatever psycho the Orange Clownfish is appointing to his Cabinet. But when I turn the phone back on … woweee. Everything hits at once.

So I recognize, hey maybe I don’t need to be getting alerts from 20 news apps. I mean yes it helps because some write the headlines/nut grafs better (and more accurately) than others. But gah, the anxiety it triggers now that my candidate — the safe, lovely, experienced, charming grandma with whom I felt my future was safe — is hiding in the woods and this nutty fucker is up rage-tweeting against “Saturday Night Live” while I’m trying to watch it.

(Aside: As I tweeted to the orange menace himself, I agree — SNL isn’t funny. It’s FACTUAL because he’s a PARODY already.)

(Aside 2: I have never tweeted President Obama, or VP Biden, with anything other than a thank you or a congratulations. But this fucker? I wish I could say how I really feel about his Nazi-loving ass. Jesus. My grandfather fought the Nazis and now we are inviting them to run the country. I’m so glad he isn’t here to witness this.)

In any event, I think I also need to unsub from most eletters too. I found myself fascinated by politics when I thought competent people were going to be/remain in charge of them. Now it’s all such a joke. I might as well do something more productive with my downtime.

I know this isn’t creative, by any means. But it’s a start.

And I did get a really good idea that I’m not going to talk about. Because I don’t do anything once I’ve written it down. But I type this to say I wouldn’t have had the idea had I not been walking around paradise with nary a thought in my head other than, “What cocktail am I going to order next?”

(That’d be “coconut mojito,” for those playing along at home.)

OK, back to the salt mines. Good to be away. Good to have something to come back to. Even if it’s the same thing I left. My goal is for things to be better before my next escape. Even if my adherence to my values is the only thing that improves, that’ll still be a good thing.

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