The "Taking it Back" Blog posts

 I've decided to share some of the posts I wrote in the other blog I didn't invite anyone to read. They're kind of vulnerable, but also fill in some of the gaps. This one is from January 4th.

 

 I'm a writer, so I'm not going to stop being me. I don't deserve the controlling scrutiny that my regular blog is getting, so I'll just write here for awhile. Maybe forever, not sure. I really liked my old name and the whole concept, but I can always go back there for the subjects that it kind of devolved to: narcissism and bullying and the hostile takeover of the market. I don't see that getting better in the short term, though maybe eventually things will change. When all the money dries up the narcissist will lose interest.

But I need a life that is not dominated by that, as it has been debilitating and the costs have been high. I have zero trust in the power structure although I still have many friends and associates who believe me. It just isn't really part of our culture to defend each other, sadly. We tend to try to keep out of trouble for our own protection. I suppose this is how it works in most institutions and organizations and it isn't that surprising. 

So, other topics! I've been busy outside, pruning fruit trees, making fences and grape arbors with the filbert poles I trimmed out of my thickets. It's very fun. I've tried to get all the trees down to a size I can reach with the pole pruners (I have several) and without a ladder, but I did have to use the stepladder to finish up the pear trees. They're this odd combo pear of four different varieties, I think Bartlett, Red Bartlett, D'Anjou and Bosc, though I don't get all of those anymore. I rarely get good pears, though I try to fight the squirrels for them. They eat the buds, thin the blossoms, knock down the unripe pears, and at some point I start taking them and storing them inside to ripen, which doesn't result in a great crop. Late in the fruiting season I will cut down some of the better, bigger D'Anjou that remain in spots the squirrels can't get to, so I usually get a few. But as fruit trees, they're past their prime and although some parts are strong and healthy, I'm eventually going to have to take them out.

I hired someone to prune the giant fir in the front yard, and the top of the apple tree. It hasn't happened yet, but this will really be the first time I have hired someone to do things I used to be able to handle myself, in regard to my yard and house I guess. I tried to hire a roofer...hoping that happens this spring or summer as well. But climbing trees, though I still love it, has had to go the way of roller-skating. The possible accident risk is greater now with bigger consequences so I need to be a little wiser in accepting my limits. It's a prominent but subtle part of aging that just happens regardless of your will and I'm lucky I still get to make choices about it.

I have some fears about my upcoming surgeries (carpal tunnel and trigger finger release) but lots of people get the CP surgery and seem to move past it without trouble, and I am busy overpreparing for some period of disability, hopefully a short one. I'll clean up thoroughly, get set up to feed myself for the first week or so, remember all the things I couldn't do with one hand (zippers, shoelaces, can openers, and more) and get out ahead of those needs. No doubt I will still find things to be creatively problem-solving about. I'm clearing out February completely in case I don't recover as fast as the doctor seems to think I will. 

I've managed the bunion problem with shoes and careful planning, and the neck thing is on hold, so it will just be the hands. I hope I didn't really make my life impossible with my inattention to my body.

I surprise myself sometimes when I do experience pain and realize how much of it I have been ignoring or making excuses for. I don't inhabit my body very well. I'm sure the childhood trauma figures in that, as I can tell several stories that led to dissociation habits and they're well embedded in my psyche after decades of setting them aside. My son and I were talking about therapy and emotions and although I did okay with protecting him from actual trauma, my damage did become his damage, to some degree. I never burdened him with the stories, but he at least observed some of the healing practices and he of course suffered from some of the limits I was working with. I quit therapy when it got too challenging...I didn't really want to make some of the changes to make me a more normal person. 

There's a certain warmth to some of our pain and injury, a part of us that holds it close sometimes, maybe as proof of what we lived through or are living through. For most people, there is a juicy attraction to drama and I try to fight that. It's an addiction type of drive, and I have learned to recognize it, but with so many people around me intent on creating it I was just constantly dragged into it, at my expense. Unhooking, like creating this new place to write, is a process I am working hard at this month at least. I'm toying with the idea of getting off Facebook. It's the only social media I'm using, as I never go on Instagram anymore and resisted bluesky even though it sounds kind of friendly. I want fewer addiction tracks in my mind, so one by one I am trying to dissolve them. 

First I figured alcohol was pretty simple to give up. I knew I would miss it, and I haven't tested myself much, but it's time and I am pretty sure I'm past the biggest parts of it. Sugar, weed, bread, lots of other substances come to mind as addictions too, but I don't have a lot of avenues for joy and I can't become some kind of zealot. I just want to free myself a bit. It's a process. Like a lot of things.

I've always been really hard on myself. My Mom told me they didn't always have to discipline me, as I did it myself first, and I was pretty harsh sometimes. Catholic guilt was a big part of that, but Mom had to do something about religion for us. She didn't realize that Brownies and Girl Scouts would be plenty as far as teaching us values goes. Plus 50s and 60s schooling was pretty values-heavy. I worried about that with my own kid, but opted out of religion, and am glad I did. He's solid, got a lot of strong values just by being in this crafter lifestyle, and is also too smart to believe in ghosts who are omniscient and all that. Not the kind of person who goes for authoritarian cultures.

And neither am I, and I believe neither is a large part of my market community, though obviously many are fine with controlling and dominating behaviors, until they are directed at them anyway. I don't think a lot of people have given it a lot of thought. It's not as much about their whole lives as it is for those of us who have done it for decades. We've invested our lives...so we don't like being pushed out, bullied and oppressed. And lied to. And manipulated, and ignored.

So, I'm trying to disengage. I already said a thousand times I'm not going to fix this rather big break in our system. I've carried the weight a lot of times and it's a lot of hard work. I don't have time for it now.

I've been wondering what it would be like if I just start here with my book about the market. Just write about this time and my struggles with it, go back and explore how we got here, and put it all down on paper. You know when you write a book a lot of the beginning is going to be edited out, for too much exposition, lack of compelling scenes, false starts on the narrative you really want to tell. I really don't want what is happening now to be the story of market, though it will be there in the archives, there in the public record if you know how to look for it. I've dissected similar mysteries while reading the minutes and records from times I wasn't as aware of things as I could have been. Market deserves a really good book, a brilliant narrative that shows what we built, how we did it, and how it has endured to serve thousands, as well as our city and our region. It's a powerful story that is currently being mis-written, in an effort to reinvent something that is not really our community. I'm dedicated to telling a true story, so starting with now is not the worst idea. 

I have several journals in which I have started the book, a few times, enough to realize what a big and complex story I want to tell, and how badly I want it to be the brilliant and lasting take on it that will endure. The public record is wild. I don't expect to control it, I just want to give it a human perspective that takes it from a dry chronology to a juicy drama.

Wait, a juicy drama? That's gonna have to require some editing.