Category: Random blogs

Year of transition

kroset Leave a comment

We are in the midst of a transition year. Having moved last July from one town to the next we are still adjusting to our new lives 9 months in. This of course is not unexpected as we knew it would take awhile for everything to start settling, but man, transition times are hard!

Everyone has their own list of hardships of course. I find that sometimes it can be helpful to read about others’ struggles to help feel less alone as well as to write out my feelings. With that in mind I’ve decided to share mine publicly, not to solicit sympathy but as way of recording and journaling my thoughts. Here are the biggest areas in which my family is currently feeling a transition in no particular order.

  • Managing construction projects to fix up our house.
    If you’ve ever gone through construction you know that it often takes longer than you thought and that unexpected issues come up, as has been the case in fixing up our new house. For instance replacing carpet with hardwood floors led to having to pause completing the flooring due to water damage on our floors under the windows due to water leakage that needed to be addressed immediately. This meant having to order and install new windows on two sides of our house. To put new windows in meant jackhammering out the stucco around our windows, putting the new windows in, re-stuccoing around the new windows, and then eventually painting the exterior of the house. Since flooring was top on our list of things to do, everything else was pushed back until the windows were properly installed. So currently all painting projects (interior and exterior) and other projects we wanted to do inside our house are on hold while the stucco guys (who are outside my house at this very moment) finish their job. What we hoped would be several months of construction has turned out to be a much longer process. Is this frustrating? You bet! But we know given time things will eventually get done and that we are lucky to have the funds to do any of this, but while in the midst of construction, being patient or grateful isn’t always easy.

  • Getting through a transition year of school.
    We knew it would be a challenge for our son to transition to a new middle school in 8th grade, especially since my son had been homeschooled since 4th grade and he was now entering back into the public school system where academic demands were not flexible. Thankfully my son rose to the challenge and has done very well this year academically and he might even manage to complete his high school language requirements during this academic year. What we didn’t count on was that socially at this particular school, my son is suffering due to lack of diversity in his classroom. The school that we chose for his transition year was great for people that don’t thrive in the normal public school setting since it’s a hybrid school with both an online and in-person classroom component. What we did not count on was that the in-person kids in the middle school were mostly from rougher neighborhoods with gang activity so it was clear very early on in the school year that my son did not fit in with these kids and actually had a lot of anxiety being around them. So socially he has suffered this year as he has no classroom friends. We are counting down our time at this school and know that the high school that we moved here for will be a much better fit for him socially. 6 weeks left!

  • Adjusting to a new dog with a health issue we weren’t aware existed.
    A deal we made with my son in moving homes during his middle school year was that we would adopt a dog once being in our new home for 6 months. So to honor our promise to our son, we adopted a 2 1/2 year old rescue dog on Feb. 11th of this year being unaware of a health issue that she had. Before adopting her there was a small wound that wasn’t healing near where she pees but the foster mom caring for her thought this wound was on the mend so the dog was released to us to adopt. One week after we had her we realized that this small wound was not healing. Flash forward 2 1/2 months and 3 surgical procedures later, we FINALLY have confirmation as to why the wound isn’t healing (a foxtail embedded in scar tissue near her vulva) and have a plan to remedy it later this week with what we hope will be the final surgery. For anyone familiar with foxtails, they know they are a little barbed plant that can get inside an animal and it will keep traveling forward until it either works its way out itself or wrecks havoc inside the animal. On the bright side of things our new dog is super sweet with a very nice temperament; the rescue organization we adopted from has covered the costs of many of our surgical expenses; and most importantly, once this foxtail is finally removed we have high hopes that our dog will recover fully, finally be de-coned after 3 solid months of coning her, and have a happy life going forth.

Greetings from the North Bay

kroset 2 Comments

I’m finally touching base again after our move in July. For those that haven’t heard yet, my family moved from our home of 19 years in San Jose, CA to a new home two hours north in Santa Rosa, CA. Proximity wise we are not terribly far from where we used to be, (this move took us from the South Bay, one hour SOUTH of San Francisco Bay, to the North Bay, one hour NORTH of San Francisco Bay), however we knew when we moved here that it was going to be different and we were not wrong. It really is a whole new world up here in so many different ways, some good and some not so ideal. It is interesting really that it would be so different being the exact same distance from San Francisco as we were before. But the South Bay, AKA: Silicon Valley, is a stark contrast from wine country of Sonoma County where we are now.

To say that I’d been nervous about our move this past summer was an understatement. The three of us all were literally starting all over again with our whole lives not knowing anyone when we entered this town. And as a warm weather lover I was especially apprehensive knowing we would be having cooler temperatures and more rain in the winter months as it is colder up here with significantly more precipitation in the winter months (as we are currently discovering). Would we like it here was the big question.

To answer that question, we do like it – for the most part. I believe our quality of life has improved substantially. I credit this to several different reasons:

  1. Better school options then in the South Bay area. Because the South Bay was so tech heavy, competitive and academically driven we found the schools there were lacking big time in the area of arts (there were literally zero high schools we could see our son attending in a town of 1 million people!) When we found a public high school that we liked with an art magnet program associated with it in Santa Rosa we jumped at the opportunity. My son’s future high school is the primary reason we are in Santa Rosa today. And if for whatever reason that public high school does not work out for us next year there are three or four other alternatives here that have a better balance of academic and creative study, both public and private, that I could see working as well.
  2. Slower pace that comes with living in a small town while still having access to amenities. Santa Rosa is a smaller town but not too small. Population wise it is under 200,000. Since the population here is so much smaller than San Jose’s one million people, freeways here are substantially less crowded then they were in the South Bay. We can get to anything we need in 15 minutes or less. And the stores that I regularly shopped at down south are all here for the most part.
  3. More affordable housing. Keep in mind we moved from one of the most expensive U.S. cities to where we are now, so some might argue that Santa Rosa is as affordable as many U.S. towns. In San Jose we owned a small home that was in need of a foundation replacement, in a good neighborhood. With the money we sold that house for we were able to buy a much larger house in a very nice Santa Rosa neighborhood.
  4. Easy access to many regional and state parks, the ocean and Redwood trees. I’m an outdoorsy person so I love the numerous regional parks all around us and how easy that they are to access. I also love that Santa Rosa is an easy drive to both the ocean and the Redwood forest. I bought a regional park pass within my first month living here and I’ve already used it to enter a handful of regional parks in the area and I still have so many more to explore.
  5. Friendly people. Our efforts in reaching out to the community have been well received so far as people up here have been very friendly, especially our neighbors. Within about 2 months we met about 35 of our neighbors, many of which have dogs and we would see them outside walking them.
  6. Centrally located and an easy driving distance to Santa Rosa’s downtown and several other different towns with cute downtown shopping areas. Each of these surrounding towns have their own unique personalities and draw tourists to the area and are only a 15 or 20 minute drive from our house.
  7. Weather is mild and appealing for the most part. Yes there is a lot more rain in the winter months than San Jose had and it’s significantly hotter than San Jose in the summer months, but it is rare that it would ever snow here in the winter. In the summer, even though it is really hot during the day it cools down here in the early evenings making it very pleasant most of the time.

The biggest down sides I see here are:

  1. The lack of ethnic diversity. We realized that this town was not nearly as racially diverse as it was in San Jose. The South Bay has a huge population of Asian and Indian people (many working in high tech), Latino people, and people from many other various countries around the world. Here the population is primarily white and Hispanic. It lacks the heavy Asian and Indian population since it isn’t as much of a tech hub as the South Bay.
  2. Poorer population. The main industries here are health care, tourism, retail and tech. Compared to Silicon Valley though the tech industry pales in comparison. My husband is one of few here who is working in a high tech job where down in the South Bay it seemed the majority of the population worked in high tech. Because of this we notice a much poorer population overall. Our son noticed a different dynamic up here right away at school when there was no longer talk of expensive vacations or exotic places his classmates visited over their summer breaks which would have been the case of many of his old classmates. Instead new classmates’ summer break highlights included going to local nearby parks or being at home with their families.
  3. Higher cost of health care. Healthcare is a primary industry up here, the 3 primary health care providers being: Kaiser, Sutter and Providence. I don’t understand why but I was amazed at how much higher my doctor’s bills were here in comparison to the cost of equivalent health care in the South Bay. It is very strange that costs are so high here as the population up here seems to be older, as there are more retired people here than down in the South Bay. Whatever the reason is, the higher healthcare costs seem to be a thing.
  4. Lack of established friends. There is no substitute for having good friends nearby. When we moved I had to really extend myself and reach out and start to meet people. Although we have already begun to make friends in neighbors we see frequently, it is going to take years for us to form close friendships and its hard starting over again. At least we aren’t too far from our old place and we can still make occasional visits down to visit old friends. I’m confident with effort and time I’ll make strong friendships up here as well.

Uprooting

kroset Leave a comment

If you haven’t heard yet… I’m moving.

My family is kicking ourselves out of our San Jose, CA nest that we’ve painstakingly made our own over these past 19 years and are heading 2 hours north to Santa Rosa. For over 20 years my husband and I have talked about getting out of Silicon Valley and going somewhere less hectic but we could never figure out where we wanted to go. It wasn’t until recently, when considering high school possibilities for our son and not liking our options in San Jose, that we knew that if we were ever going to make a move out of town it needed to be before his high school years. So here we are, literally yanking our roots out that have so firmly took hold into the Bay Area ground, and are packing our stuff, which raises some very important questions:

What IS all of this stuff? How much stuff does one actually need? And at what point did I become so complacent?

If you know me at all, you know I am a minimalist. “One in, one out” is my motto when bringing new things into the house. Besides valuing original artwork and experiences I really don’t need or desire a lot of physical stuff. Unfortunately for me, my husband does not always share my motto and he often keeps a steady stream of Amazon packages coming to our house. Plus having a kid in the house makes my meager attempt at minimalism laughable, particularly whenever I suggest that my son considers passing on an old toy. So years of this behavior from my house mates has resulted in endless days of packing! How is it possible to box up 7 boxes of kitchens stuff and STILL not be anywhere near done in the kitchen? We’ve literally been packing for weeks and are still not done? I honestly think there needs to be a limit to how long people should be allowed to stay in one place before being forced to clean out their stuff! 19 years is definitely too long!

The second thing you may or may not know about me is that I don’t usually shy away from adventure and travel. When I first left home and went to college I regularly moved to a different town about every 2-3 years. I started at a new town when I left my hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania for Michigan State in East Lansing, Michigan. Two years later I transferred to Ringling School of Art and Design landing myself in Sarasota, Florida. After 3 years there, my first job took me to Huntington, West Virginia. Two years later I got the itch to move again and sought out a new job in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Two years later the itch was back, this time leading me to San Jose, California in the midst of the Dot Com years. Like clockwork, two years later, the Dot Bomb years came along and I lost my job. Had I not met Scott, I’m quite certain I would have headed back east at that time since I’d been feeling the pull to move again. But Scott WAS in my life, and whether he knew it or not he had inadvertently rooted me in San Jose. And somewhere in the 20 plus years that I’ve been here I stopped taking as many risks.

But all of my complacency has gone by the wayside this last month when our 20 year question of where to move to has been answered driven by finding a fitting high school for our son – which was found in Santa Rosa. In seaching for a home there, I’ve driven through San Francisco and gone over the iconic Golden Gate Bridge more times in this last month than I have in the past 10 years. We’ve sold our existing home and bought a new house in this last month. I’ve withdrawn Nathan from his beloved middle school and enrolled him in another hybrid schooling program up in Santa Rosa. We finally sold our van after trying to sell it for over a year now. We had no luck until just recently when we found the perfect buyer for it who LOVES the van and who coincidentally also had a vacation home just north of Santa Rosa that we will be staying in during our brief time of being homeless inbetween houses. And lastly, we’ve picked a contractor that is going to help us fix up our new home.

So although I haven’t been as adventurous as I’d wanted to be in my most recent years, I think these past two months more then makes up for things. As our roots continue to be yanked up in San Jose I can feel my adventurous side continue to awaken. There are places in Santa Rosa that I want to explore and new towns nearby that I want to see. Although leaving Silicon Valley is a big deal, and many places and people here will be missed, I’m sure that once the dust settles in Santa Rosa I’m going to be OK and new roots can start growing…just maybe not quite so deep this time 🙂

Letting go of fear

kroset 2 Comments

This pandemic has taken a toll on me. I have a constant ache in my chest that consists of lots of fear and worry and a longing to connect. I find myself lonely a lot, despite being surrounded by a million people in the California Bay Area and living in close contact with my immediate family with friends and family near and far.

Overall, my main interaction with people onside my home has been limited since this pandemic began with outings (often solo) consisting mainly of walks around my neighborhood, errands, various small outings and occasional trips over to the Santa Cruz beaches or to hike in the Redwoods. It’s opened up for us more since my son was able to get vaccinated in late November and even more this month since my son’s Little League team started practicing. Many Bay Area people have been out and about for awhile now but since I tend to be more risk adverse than most my circle that I involve myself with is pretty small.

Three times now in the last two years my family of three ventured out of the state: once in our cross country trip in our van, once driving to Oregon and more recently flying to Florida. Upon exiting California it became very clear that much of the country is not carrying on as many people are here in the Bay Area. On our trip to Florida last month to visit my family it was hard to even know that Omicron was surging and as far as I could tell the deaths rates and case rate of Covid in Florida and California were not far different from each other. All the confusion of what to do about masking or not masking and distancing or not distancing is just so very confusing.

My husband and I had a long discussion (OK rather a fight turned into a discussion) a couple of nights ago over an upcoming trip he is planning with his group of friends to Las Vegas. I’m having trouble with it and in a not so loving way let him hear it. He in turn accused me of keeping him from his friends which was not at all my intention. After much back and forth we were able to see each other for what was really going on which is that we are both in different comfort zones with all of this and he is ready to begin living again and proceeding as usual and I’m…well…not quite there yet.

To try to alleviate the fear and loneliness I’ve been doing my best to meditate daily since the start of the year which has me regularly observing my feelings. They are so BIG and painful and sit in my chest surrounding my heart. It’s hard to not want to wish the feelings away like I want to do but I know I need to accept them for what they are and observe them. It aches so badly! I somewhat jokingly asked one of my friends the other day if anyone ever DIED from meditation?

I realize in the end how I choose to react to anything going on in life is my choice and my choice only. So I’ve made a conscience decision to really work on letting go of my fear. It is not an easy thing for me to do as I’ve always been a cautious person by nature. I’ve had trouble having faith, unlike another friend of mine, my so called “atheist” friend who somehow has a ton of it. I wish I too were that way. I am doing what I can to actively try to change.

The other day I took a hike with a friend into the green hills of California. We both basically willed each other to go out exploring beyond the safety of our small worlds. After catching up a bit in the beginning of our hike we decided to try an experiment with a silent hike together for the remainder of our hike. We’d be walking alone but together silently, and so began our mini retreat.

The thing both of us noticed right away in our silence was that we were noticing our surroundings whereas moments before we were caught up in our chatter and blind to our world. It was interesting and at times uncomfortable walking with her for so long in silence. We noticed our heart rates and footsteps (she walks faster than me going downhill, I walk faster than her going uphill); we observed the sounds in nature and saw animals at a farm; we waited patiently while a wild turkey we saw crossed onto our trail moved out of the way; we hiked while breathing in fresh air. It was a nice calm transition from feeling so alone to spending quality time with a friend who knows and supports me yet isn’t afraid to be with me without talking. Silent together.

When our hike had us pass through a working farm we saw many animals and I realized, like my friend and I, the animals were also together but silent. They were near each other but not communicating. In fact the only sounds I heard at all from all of them was noise over chickens fighting for food. They say that what separates us from some animals is that we are social creatures who need each other socially. But being social isn’t only talking with each other. Perhaps talking with each other is not even the most important part of socialization but rather having another person who cares in close proximity. I believe that’s what I’ve been lacking most over these last two years – the closeness of people. Being near my friend without talking was just as healing (if not more so) than chatting with her because I could still be near her, feel her support, and notice what was going on around me.

Getting out on hikes like this with a friend is definitely a step toward helping me move forward past my loneliness and fear. It was peaceful and beautiful, just what I needed. The heaviness that is sitting on my chest feels a little less achy today, less lonely and less raw.

Letting go of expectations

kroset Leave a comment

Yesterday I turned 51. This was the second birthday I celebrated since Covid began in the U.S. I feel as though I’ve been through several marathons and aged about 20 years since last year. A year ago on my birthday I wanted to surround myself virtually with family and friends via multiple Zoom video calls. This year was different. After a very tough year of dealing with Covid and everything else surrounding it my husband and I also dealt with (and are still dealing with) behavioral issues from my 9-year-old son which resulted in countless multi-hour, meltdowns throughout the year. I had no energy or patience left for Zoom. Instead I chose to spend my day solely with my husband and son and opted to go out for a hike in nature instead – something that I love to do.

I had a great birthday morning at home. My husband and son made me feel special by decorating the house for me and had gifts for me to open. They treated me well. I also enjoyed getting various phone calls and messages from friends and family throughout the day. Yet, the afternoon of my birthday did not go as I’d hoped it would as my son had a big meltdown which disrupted our afternoon and my vision of a perfect birthday. These expectations of how I feel things ‘should’ go are a problem as things rarely ever go as planned for anyone – especially for those living with a willful, defiant child. There is a simple equation for this: Expectations = Disappointment = Unhappiness.

During this past year this simple equation has become more and more in my face as I’ve told myself countless times that I would benefit greatly by letting go of my expectations. But my brain can not help but remain hopeful. I somehow think that if I just try hard enough I’ll be able to figure things out and control the outcome. Whether it be the problem of my son’s behavior or anything else. I’ll try to fix it, to make everything alright, but I am slowly learning that that this kind of thinking is not at all realistic and perhaps the most important thing for me to do right now is to let go of any expectations of how the outcome of something is going to turn out and to be OK with whatever it is now and whatever it becomes in the future. When I am able to successfully do this, I notice that I free myself from possible disappointment and in the end I am happier.

Yesterday, on my birthday, I WAS able to let go of my expectations. Instead of getting upset as I often do when my child blows up (in this case right when we were getting into the car to leave the house for our hike), instead of reacting as I might have done in the past, I stepped away and let my husband handle the meltdown and I took my cellphone to our backyard. I laid down on the grass and looked up toward the big walnut tree in our backyard and basked in the sunshine and talked on the phone with my sister. Sure there was some yelling and screaming happening in the background of our phone call at times. Sure I was annoyed that we weren’t leaving for the hike when we planned to leave for it and we actually left much later than I would have liked. However there was nothing to really do about any of it and in that moment in the grass talking with my sister I was as present and as real as I could get. I simply let it all go – and was fine with it – even slightly blissful if I dare say.

No Expectations = Fulfillment = Joy

If 2020 was a year of survival and of hanging on to unrealistic expectations that couldn’t possibly come to fruition; perhaps 2021 can be a more realistic and accepting year. May this be a year of letting go of dreams that didn’t happen just as we wanted them to. Let this be a year of whatever we end up with in the end is still alright and that we can grieve our losses but still be grateful for what we’ve got now. It might not be a year that we envisioned or as pretty looking on the outside as we’d want it to be, but it will be one that is a lot more freeing, realistic and real.

Cosmo the Llama

kroset

This art piece was inspired by my two night stay on in a yurt on a farm. Cosmo is the llama on the farm and he oversaw the sheep and other animals there. He was a very mellow and cool llama; I strive to be like him. Cosmo is Cool.

Yurt ART

kroset

We recently stayed on a small farm in the country in a yurt that had a beautifully painted ceiling. I was so inspired when I got back home that I needed to recreate the artwork in my sketchbook. So here it is… Yurt + ART = YART

A photo of the original ceiling which was too huge to capture in one picture

Black Lives Matter

kroset Leave a comment

About a week ago a Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest went right by our house and the people in the march ended up stopping for a water break and said a few words just houses away from us. My son had created his own ‘BLm’ sign on his own accord after hearing what was going on in the world and it was hanging in our front window so when we heard the marchers coming we grabbed his sign and the two of us ran out to our front porch to show our support for the protestors as they passed by.

Some of the protestors waved to us when they saw our sign, others motioned for us to come and join in the march. Ultimately we just stayed where we were on our front porch, not because we don’t support their cause, because we do, but because where we needed to be at the moment seemed to be the place we were right then – us watching them, listening to and really hearing what they had to say.

White privilege & identity

kroset Leave a comment

My head has been swirling the last couple of days in the wake of protests that have been happening around the country and in our city in response to George Floyd’s death. San Jose, CA now has a mandatory curfew set for the remainder of the week to help curtail further riots from happening. My heart, like many others, is hurting badly. Our country is in desperate need of change yet there is so much resistance to do so. I’ve been pondering on what needs to happen for real changes to take place and two key things came to surface: 1) people need to see the problems that exist and 2) people need to be willing to change.

I took a Masters course years ago at San Jose State University that touched on the topics of white privilege and identity, topics of which I’ve thought a lot about since the courses end. The professor of this class, an Indian man, wished to have an open discussion one day about white privilege in the “safe” confines of his very mixed race/gender classroom. Despite his assuring us repeatedly that his classroom was a safe place to express ourselves, many were not very vocal on the subject; myself and the only other white women were the most outspoken people in the class. I remember expressing that I knew that white privilege existed for the white man but I simply could not see that it existing for a white woman and remember being offended that they were suggesting it which shows how “blind” I was to it at the time. My limited thinking had me spew out examples focusing on jobs/salaries and overall treatment of women by men which to me seemed to be very unfair. I was not thinking more broadly about how simply moving through the world from day to day could be an issue, it never occurred to me to think about that which is where my blindness showed through. I wish the other students had educated me about this as I was open to hearing what they had to say.

Looking back on this day now I have no idea if this classroom really was the “safe” space my professor wished it to be when it came to this particular topic. Is there really a safe place to talk about such a loaded subject? It could be that the people of other races felt unsafe and uncomfortable speaking up about why I was so wrong in my arguments or perhaps they saw how blind I was, assumed I was unchangeable, and didn’t bother to give their point of view. It’s possible they did try to enlighten me that day but that I wasn’t ready to hear what they had to say.

In that same classroom on a different day we spoke about identity: the things that make up ones sense of self. We talked about what specific things make up ones identity, how attached people are to their identities, and how identities are very difficult to change.

The professor asked us to imagine our identity as an onion which has many layers, some layers you are born with and other layers you acquire over the years. At the core of the onion would be things about your identity that have been with you since you were born of which you relate most strongly to like gender, race and religion. The things at the core of one’s identity are very difficult to alter even if those things are things you do not relate to any more. So even if there is something about your identity that you no longer relate to and wish to change, doing so would be exceedingly hard to do as people are very attached to who they are, however, there is a most wonderful loophole: you can always add new layers to your identity/your onion. You don’t have to give up part of who you are to do or be something different. Who you are at your core will always be with you. Always.

Why is this so remarkably important to know and understand? Because then it is easier to see WHY people don’t change their ways even when they themselves might not like who they are being. You cannot change somebody’s mind if they feel their identity is threatened in any way. Understanding that identities can only continue to grow gives people FREEDOM to add new layers to who they are without having to worry about letting go of their sense of self. Knowing and understanding this can change everything!

After comprehending this I was finally able to resolve something in my own life that I’d been struggling with for a very, very long time. I had been wrestling with my identity as being Catholic (a religion I grew up in but I no longer could relate to). I was not able to formally join a new church that I related to very much despite the fact that I had been attending the church for years (a non-Denominational church that accepts people from various religions). Although in my heart I knew that I no longer related to the Catholic church and didn’t even agree anymore with its core fundamental beliefs, I couldn’t give it up because I felt that I’d be giving up a part my identity and I simply couldn’t do it. Once I saw that in joining a new church, I was only adding a new layer to my identity and not betraying anyone (including myself) I was able to move on easily and become a part of a community I did relate to and could be proud of.

If more people could begin to see the problems we are facing right now, a big one being that white privilege exists, and are able to free themselves from their own limited thinking about identities then real change will be able to happen. Imagine how these shifts in thinking could help our nation move forward. Unnecessary deaths like that of the late George Floyd could finally become a thing of the past.

Being my true self

kroset 1 Comment

I’ve been told that one quality about myself is that I’m always myself regardless of who I am around. I really, really like this trait about myself as I think it is admirable. However, since COVID-19 hit in the US and we’ve been in shelter-in-place now for about two months I’ve realized that a couple of things I’d been doing before shelter-in-place occurred didn’t actually line up with my “true self.”

For one, wearing contact lenses. I really hate them. I despise putting them in every day but I actually hate myself in glasses more. I’ve worn contact lenses for years – since high school. For about 15 years I had hard lenses, then I had LASIK eye surgery and was glasses free for about 12 years, then my vision worsened again (yes that can happen after LASIK) and I was back into contact lenses again but soft this time. I’ve never enjoyed sticking them into my eyes but I hate myself in glasses so much that I’m willing to tolerate doing this. Since shelter-in-place began two months ago I have not put them in once. Not once. It’s been glorious!

I’ve realized that I don’t put my contacts in for me but for other people. After all I’m not the one looking at myself, you are looking at me, so basically I’m wearing contacts for vanity reasons with the few exceptions of when contacts are truly a benefit, like when doing sports for instance when glasses can be a hinderance. And more recently I realized that wearing a mask with glasses is a pain since your own breath causes your glasses to fog up. In those instances when I have to wear a mask I simply take off my glasses and I deal with my blurry vision.

Contacts are simply NOT a necessity in my life during shelter-in-place. My eyes are not bad enough to be going without them in and around the house and when I do actually go out driving to the store or for walks around the neighborhood I simply wear my glasses because I am not interacting with people for the most part, I’m mostly solo.

The second area where I realized I wasn’t being my true self is with my clothing. Anyone who knows me can tell you that I’ve never been stylish with my clothing choices and have always preferred comfortable attire over clothes that are not. However, now I find that these days I barely leave my yoga pants, sweats or shorts. I mean really, what’s the point when they are clearly the most comfortable option and I’m mostly hanging out at home! I’ve been wearing the same tee shirts repeatedly and have noticed small holes in some of them. In the past this might have stopped me from wearing them out and about but these days it doesn’t stop me from wearing them. And if the clothes don’t smell after one wearing, why not wear them another day. Who cares if I’m wearing the same things two days in a row! Whoo hoo! The fashion police are nowhere in site.

So yes, my wardrobe that was already sorely lacking has now managed to go down yet another notch on the totem pole.

When shelter-in-place ends I wonder what I am going to do now that I’ve discovered my new true self? I love my new found freedom of being contact free and caring even less about my clothes. The thought of having to shove contacts in my eyes again daily and to care about what I look like for other people truly makes me cringe.

However pressure from society is strong and is too hard to resist and I know when this is over that I’ll wear my contact lenses again and put in more effort into trying to look nice again each day. But now that I have a clearer view of who my true self is and what makes me happy I’d be surprised if I don’t give myself more breaks from these things going forth. Only time will tell.