ROUGH morning. SO rough.

It was a VERY rough morning.

Just another day of feeling super-big feelings, after I upped my Wellbutrin dose (as directed) and the thoughts came flooding through my head, punctuated by a LOT of Fuck You’s.

A bicycle ride in the sunshine helped immensely to clear my head. 

And since I no longer have much to lose, I’m enjoying my hard-won clarity and giving out fucks freely today.

— to my third grade math teacher Mrs. Merriweather (relax. She was already in her fifties when she was my teacher and is long dead by now), for not caring about my struggles with math and for mocking me loudly and repeatedly in front of the class, Fuck you. You sucked as a teacher. I should know, because I became one and it’s possible to teach without destroying kids.

— all the bullies in grade school, middle school and high school, for deciding it was easier to bully me physically and emotionally than to leave me alone and just get on with your pathetic lives. Fuck your parents for raising you to be so damned cruel and unfeeling. I hope you survived and got some help.

— The healthcare industry that has compelled doctors to no longer take Medicaid patients because you and the State of Oregon can’t work well together. And for discouraging doctors from being curious enough to offer more than stock diagnoses and de rigeur meds to women whose ADHD was constantly misdiagnosed as depression or anxiety, and for not funding research that might actually help women instead of sending them down the cattle chute of medical apathy. And as a result the doctors threw your stock drugs at them which did not serve them much or at all. Drugs that you wanted to produce because they were easy and profitable, regardless of who got them or why. All you did was make doctors throw spaghetti at the wall to see what would stick, and then limit their treatment choices to your menu of meds. As a result I took SSRIs that were inappropriate and unhelpful for ten years. It is no small wonder that there’s so much burnout among healthcare professionals today. Healthcare corporate leaders don’t trust doctors enough to respect their knowledge and skills. Fuck you and the corporate practices that made you rich. And fuck the governments that you’ve bought along the way. If I could commit tax fraud to cheat you all I would. But I couldn’t earn enough for it to make a difference, even when I worked full time. So fuck you super bigtime.

— The rabbi I’d worked for a decade ago who was cold, distant and formal, who admitted to me “we’ve watched you struggle for some time, so your outburst comes as no surprise,” when I’d had my nervous breakdown and behaved badly in a moment of terrible pain and rage. In the moment you told me that you had watched me struggle for some time, but didn’t say a word until after my struggling erupted into a mental health crisis and then you sat there looking superior while you knew it was coming. In that moment you chose to remain silent and watch me collapse, you utterly failed as a helping professional, and you failed abysmally as a rabbi. And you weren’t interested in any form of teshuvah — making amends on a personal and spiritual level — that I spent the year offering you. Instead, you tacitly encouraged my shame rather than reach out to work with me to understand what might be going on, and it took me the better part of those ten years to begin healing from it. A Little League coach with a slumping batter handles it better than this. So yeah, fuck you too.

— A society and  values system based on cold, hard capitalism that favors men, that favors the young until it works them nearly to death and then tosses them aside when they get too old and infirm. And which has fucked women and girls over since infinity. To everyone who doesn’t stop to ask themselves why they benefit from their male privilege and doesn’t care about the women who get left behind, fuck you.

I am done educating all of you. I am done making excuses for myself, and I am done feeling shame for being weird and different for sixty years and not knowing why, or even if it was okay to trust myself. I’m in the midst of a seismic shift so profound that I can’t predict how it’s going to play out. But I can predict that I will get a lot better about accepting myself as I am and ignoring the people and institutions that treat me like a failure. And if I see something that’s completely wrong I will gladly hand out more fucks where appropriate.

I did not fail. I lived, and I’m still here, and I am so grateful for everything I have learned and am learning.

And I’m beyond grateful for my people who are reaching out to remind me they love me, in spite of all my fucks. SO grateful.

If the Book of Job was a cartoon

This is why it’s so hard right now. 

I’ll do my best to keep the chronology clear.

I was on the verge of a potential Big Break in early 2020, when I released my fourth album, performed at a national Jewish conference, and was generating some buzz that was getting me inquiries about future work. I felt pretty healthy (for someone with autoimmune issues, anyway), felt secure in who I was and what I was doing and why, I was in a long term, loving and committed relationship and it was a good time in my life.

Then, three weeks after I released my fourth album, the world closed down and I could not tour and promote the new album, could not perform or teach anywhere except my living room, and everything dried up. We were shut up in our very little house, unable to do much of anything. 

When things began to inch open a little in early 2021, I took a gig and promptly caught Covid. I did not fully recover. I became dizzy whenever I changed positions or rolled over in bed, had shortness of breath and severe brain fog and fatigue, and could not work at all. Eventually, and only by making a lot of noise, my doctor was able to get me into the city’s only Long Covid clinic, where my Long Covid diagnosis was confirmed and a modicum of “treatment” was offered, coordinated by someone I could only see online because she was working from home while fighting cancer. Haltingly, slowly, my symptoms began to fade after eighteen months, and I was able to return to gigging in earnest in 2022. But the gigs just weren’t there to the same extent as before; Covid had  forced a few synagogues to close and others to merge, and far fewer could afford to hire even someone as affordable as me to be  visiting artist.

I was tired, depressed and out of shape, and if I caught a mild cold, the Long Covid symptoms would return in a milder form. Things had been difficult for the both of us, but Sweetie was returning to work as an annotator when concert venues reopened and orchestras began welcoming live audiences again.

Meanwhile, I took the few out of town gigs I could, and while I was still recovering from the last vestiges of Long Covid I made a fifth album at home, using the simplest computer program I could find. Friends mixed and mastered it and I released it in January of 2023. But things weren’t progressing very well. I was beginning to struggle emotionally again, in a way hadn’t since I had stared perimenopause in my late 40s. 

I was also struggling physically. Recovery from Long Covid was slow and frustrating. I’d begun playing out at local mics in an effort to get my music in front of a new, more local audience and hopefully land some gigs. I was able to land a very part-time job at a local synagogue, playing service music twice a month for an appreciative congregation and working with a very kind, thoughtful rabbi. I was also able to schedule an out of town gig for December and I looked forward to traveling again.

Then, in early September, I returned to Washington State to fulfill my duties as cantorial soloist during the High Holy Days, for a small community I’d been serving for six years. But I was having difficulty with my hands, which began to hurt painfully if played guitar for too long. I muscled through the services, gritting my teeth and popping Tylenol like candy. I went for multiple X-rays, tests and examinations and waited for an answer and possible treatment. I gritted my teeth through the early December Artist residency, came home and got the news that, in addition to advancing arthritis I also had a severe case of tendinitis in both hands, exacerbated by playing guitar. I was advised to stop playing completely for a minimum of four months, and warned that, while it might be possible to return to playing guitar for pleasure on an occasional basis, my days of daily, high-octane practicing and performing were likely at an end.

So I decided, after talking with Sweetie, to file for disability. At my age, with the multiple health issues I was dealing with, I was hard-pressed to find an employer who’d accommodate them all, and I was too old to qualify for subsidized retraining programs available to younger workers. So filing for disability made sense.

While dealing with all the physical issues and waiting for a diagnosis about my hands, I found in my files a discharge letter from a counselor I’d seen in 2018-19. The letter had stated a diagnosis of depression, which I’d been diagnosed with in 2014, and it also stated a diagnosis of ADHD, which I had not noticed at the time. 

That’s right.

I’d been diagnosed with ADHD in 2019, but did not know it, nor had it been discussed at all in my sessions with that counselor because Medicaid only covered so many sessions with her and I was running out of paid sessions. (In retrospect, I recall that all I did at our sessions was talk and she responded only occasionally with a question of her own. She was probably a poor fit for me, but what did I know? And what could I hope to accomplish in only fifteen sessions anyway?)  So the diagnosis of ADHD didn’t actually reach my brain until 2023, after the Covid lockdown and my failure to restart my music career afterwards.

When I began researching what ADHD  was and how it played out in women (differently than in men), it all began to make sense. It rocked my world, causing me to look back and question so much about myself. Who was I really? What was I meant to do with my life, and had a gotten all that wrong? I’ve been reeling since October when the diagnosis finally sank in. My doctor referred me to an ADHD clinic with a nine-month wait list, so I went looking for counseling on my own, and eventually found someone who accepted Medicaid patients. We began working together in November. 

There’s a fair amount of overlap to all these things, so as you can imagine, every time I got more information about my health it was mostly bad, and emotionally cumulative.

Here I am in late March 2024. I feel a little bit like a cartoon version of the Book of Job, in that it’s been one thing after another and every time I think I can get up I trip again. I really hope I can stop tripping for awhile.

My rabbi and I have agreed that I can lead services without guitar and everyone would be fine with that. So at least I still have that to look forward to each month. 

But unpacking the ADHD diagnosis has been far more difficult. It has invited a host of questions, as I’ve wondered about the path of my life and how much of it was based on choices inappropriate to who I was and how I’ve moved through the world. I am doing this work with some help, as I am in counseling and have started taking medication to help with mood regulation that is a challenge for people with ADHD. I’ve come to understand that my lifelong pursuit of “interestingness” and my decision to work with my hands for most of my adult life were probably extensions of the ADHD search for dopamine. (People with ADHD have brains that are wired differently, and which do not produce nearly as much dopamine as neurotypical brains. So we chase dopamine by doing all sorts of different things, often jumping from one to another because the interestingness is what’s required for our brains to make dopamine.)

Related to this, people with ADHD also take more risks than the average neurotypical human, because they’re chasing dopamine. When we can’t get it by pursuing interestingness actively, we will often do so stupidly by eating crap filled with salt and sugar, shopping (because shopping is simply another form of pursuit). We struggle with math, with money management (bad math and shopping!), and with self-discipline (Risk taking! Interestingness!).

We also struggle with executive function — doing something that needs getting done when it doesn’t interest us will take an agonizingly long time — while at the very same time we can devote ourselves to something of interest indefinitely because if we’re interested we can hyper-focus on it and accomplish all sorts of knowledge and skill. 

In hindsight, it’s possible that some of my choices made perfect sense for who I was and would come to be. I got so good at music because I really enjoyed playing musical instruments and playing daily was likely a way to chase dopamine while I was also getting better at them. In fact, I spent a great deal of my life using my hands. I disassembled and rebuilt a mechanical alarm clock when I was a kid, and later graduated to learning how to repair bicycles, which led to a thirty-year career as a professional bicycle mechanic. The bike career overlapped with the music career, and I spent nearly all of my adult life using my hands.

When I was diagnosed with tendinitis and had to stop playing guitar, and could only play drums in moderation, it was like being handcuffed, physically, mentally and emotionally. And it came at a time when my ADHD diagnosis was still new and I didn’t know how to live with it.

So I have been very hard to live with. 

I am fortunate that my Sweetie still loves me, and I am sorry for whatever stress I am creating right now.

I hope that my disability claim will be accepted, because it will help make material things easier.

As for trying to figure out what I’m meant to do with my life going forward, I still have no idea. And that unknowing has been incredibly difficult to live with. I find myself in a time when my emotions are all over the map, when I feel intensely vulnerable and uncertain of so many things. And my emotions are swirling every day, sometimes by the hour. This is, I’m sure, making me even harder to live with.

To my beloveds: I am really sorry for this time. I think that under the circumstances it’s unavoidable. So thank you for being patient with me while I go through this. It will take more time while I figure out how to live with my unasked self and what I’ll do going forward.

To everyone else: it’s a very interesting time, even as it’s also really frustrating and scary. My friends will be patient and anyone who can’t be will let me know by their absence. In this moment I’m okay with that possibility.

In a couple of hours I might feel some other way. I just don’t know.

..::sigh::..

Fuck it. I’m going for a bike ride.

Happy Friday.

The adult ADHD support group scheduled to begin next week has been postponed until the fall due to low enrollment.

As you can imagine I feel disappointed and a little angry at this outcome.

Searches for other adult-focused ADHD groups are proving challenging. So far, they do not take Medicaid patients, or they’re in the suburbs far away and not transit adjacent, or they focus on kids and their parents.

The more I look, the more isolated I feel, mostly because of how old I am and how what I’m finding so far seems geared towards much younger adults with their careers and health still ahead of them.

Fuck it.

I’m going for a bike ride.

Have a nice weekend.

Today's Bonus Content: A medical report card, 2020-2024

I live in Oregon.
I have been on Medicaid since before the Affordable Care Act, back when the Oregon health Plan first started.
And in the past I seldom felt angry at my doctors or at the healthcare system.
I figured I should be glad to have healthcare I could afford on next to nothing.
But since unmasking my ADHD, since lining up all the medical stuff I have personally experienced since 2020, and dealing with the changes in my doctor's office over this time, well, I have begun to feel angry.

Some of this is simply the bad luck of my last four years; a foiled album release followed by Covid lockdown, getting Covid and then Long Covid, followed by relatively little meaningful Long Covid coordination due to massive understaffing; ; and now living with the results of all of that foced inactivity and watching my body age and slow down so badly; and finally the ADHD diagnosis and all of that. The last four years have checked off a host of boxes for me with increasingly negative results all around.

I know I need to walk in gratitude, and I make a heroic effort at that every day for so many reasons. But I find that with every medical disappointment or setback, I am now feeling angry, too.
Angry, older and forgotten -- by my government, by healthcare agencies who tell me to stay where I am because it wont be better at any other practice taking Medicaid patients (and it may well be worse), by all the people and organizations that have the power to do better, and which haven't been.

So tonight I am not feeling especially grateful for the dregs which have constituted a great deal of my healthcare since 1985.

(Note: I have to say that the only doctor who has been there for me consistently this whole time has been my gastrointerologist, who has fought for me to get the meds and procedures I need because he knows how challenging a life with Crohn's can be.
He's a freaking rockstar and I am truly grateful for him.)

But what do I do with my anger when I am too exhausted to take to the streets, and when I feel pretty certain that my efforts to reach out to my elected officials will be meaningless because the world is too big and the means to make it better are too small?

Finding the others

Many years ago, there was a television show about an adolescent boy who was feeling shunned at school; he was bright, nerdy and definitely not one of the "cool" kids. He was best friends with a girl at school who liked him for who he was, and shared some interests with him (like theater, comic book art, hiking out in the countryside and other things the cool kids weren't generally drawn to). The two were each other's supports at school where both were thought of was weird and outcast, and there was a vague hint of something other than friendship out there in the future.

One day, the boy came home to find his parents in a frenzy of packing. "We have to leave tonight," his mother told him. "Go gather some things and pack your suitcase. I'll explain everything when your father gets home." The explanation was that the boy and his parents weren't humans at all, but another species who'd been sent to Earth to quietly live among humans and learn about them. His father had worked on earth as a scientist, but he was actually an explorer, and there was a fully functioning spaceship buried in a silo under the family's barn; this family was one of the go-to families for when the time came to return to their home planet.

The boy was shocked. His parents had come to Earth before he was born, so this human life was all he'd ever known. He asked his mother what life on the home planet was like, and his mother reassured him. "It's really beautiful there. You know how you like to go hiking n the hills around our town? Well, there are plenty of amazing, beautiful places you can hike there, too." The boy listened as his mother went on: "And we have our own language. It's beautiful. I'll help you learn it when we return."

"Tell me something in your language," the boy said. His mother obliged by saying she loves him, and he said, "It is beautiful. It sounds like a flowing water."

But the boy is also sad. Because the girl is his best friend in the whole world and he doesn't want to leave her. When he thinks of this he gets very upset, runs off to his room and locks the door.

The family gathered inside the spaceship with other families, all talking excitedly with each other. The boy sat glumly in a corner, still sad about leaving his best friend and the only life he'd ever known. It wasn't an easy life, especially among kids his age, but it was still a life, and he had no idea what he'd find on this other world where he'd have to start all over. He was scared and angry and very sad.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he sees his best friend walking towards him.
"I knew it!" she exclaimed. I just knew you had to be one of us too!"
They embraced and laughed and talked all night, looking forward to their new adventures. together.

(and fade)

*******

The more people I share my ADHD diagnosis with, the more I have found that a surprising number of them are also neurospicy, either with ADHD or some form of autism, or both.
And I suddenly remembered that old TV program, and realized that, even with a lifetime of masking, I had still found quite a few other neurospicy folks along the way, even if I or we hadn't known it at the time.

So I guess it is true that you and your people find each other, given enough time and honesty.

And in the midst of a momentary feeling of sadness and/or self-doubt tonight, I remembered that story and immediately felt better.

You will find your people, and they will find you.
Just have a little faith.

She’s a whole mood.

A whole mood.

Later while I napped, she settled in and curled hard against my ankles. Sometimes she does it at night while I’m falling asleep.

I love it when she does this. She’s like a little furry anchor.

#cleo

#kittylove

#purr

#unconditional

Finding wholeness while we're broken

I had lunch today with Gary, my Portland Rebbe.
He's a lovely human being and I really like working with him.
He's also become a friend.

Our conversation began with me holding back tears while I tried to let him know where I was at and all that I was struggling with. I worried that if I couldn't play guitar I would not be as useful in our monthly Friday evening gatherings at his shul.

He assured me that nothing could be further from the truth.
"So you'll sing what you can, and maybe play a little drum when you can, and you may feel broken right now but you'll still bring your whole self every month and N (the other fellow with whom we've been working this year, more grounded in tradition than I am) will be quite thrileld to see the guitar go for awhile. Nothing else has to change."

I admitted to him that when I led the tefilah service with the religious school kids, I felt so lost in my own faith right now that teaching them made me feel like a fraud.

"You're not a fraud," he said. "You're one of the most authentic Jews I've met. You're so honest about where your head and heart are and what that's like. You admit when you're struggling in a world where we are constantly told not to show our weaknesses. But our vulnerability is what makes us authentic. You have nothing to worry about."

I could have cried again. But I didn't.

And then, the Rabbi told me he'd been diagnosed with ADHD in his early forties, and his youngest child had been diagnosed at age seven. I was surprised. He said, "I don't know what it must be like to find this out in your sixties, but know that you're still you and you are loved by your people and that is really all you need to remind yourself of. The rest will become clear whenever it becomes clear. Do the counseling and the meds and the naps and everything else and keep being you."

Then we talked about a friend of his who had lived in Japan for years and had learned the craft of Kintsugi, the art of repairing broken pottery with precious metals.
Gary showed me photos of his friend's work on his iPhone and we talked about brokenness and wholeness. Then we talked about eyeglasses for people with color-blindness. Gary is color-blind, Using an app on his iPhone, he showed me what he sees when he looks at a bowl of Guacamole: it was a little bowl that looked like it was filled with baby shit. Then he flipped on the app and the guac became a respectable green.

"Reds are amazing," he gushed. "They're mind-blowing."

He told me he's going to get a pair of glasses that will allow him to see color. They've come down in price and he has sixty days to decide if he likes them or send them back for a refund.
I was shocked. I hadn't known there were special glasses to help you see color. I imagined it was rather like a deaf person turning on their new cochlear implant for the first time. Wild.

I gave Gary some Jewish text study books I knew I would no longer need. He'll find someone who wants them. (I kept my book-bound Torah and my copy of Pirke Avot, because they've always been my favorites and who knows? Maybe I'll want to dip into them again at some point. I'm taking my Mussar books to Powell's to sell, because someone in my current emotional state probably doesn't need to keep a notebook of their character flaws just now. If I want to stydu Mussar it will wait for me.)

And when I got home, my head was stil "fwip"-ing like mad and I felt SO drained and exhausted, but also better. I still don't know where I am or where God is, but I knw where my people are and that is a good thing to remind myself of whenever I need to.

About the "fwip":

I've experienced this for over ten years, since before I began perimenopause. The "fwip" is a tiny sound inside my head that happens when I'm depleted, emotionally ragged, and it sounds and feels like a little "fwip" sensation that shows up inside my head, in my ears and behind my eyes. I sometimes feel dizzy along with the sound/sensation. I've asked multiple doctors about it and one of them guessed it was a kind of pain-free migraine.The others had no clue. I still get the "fwip" now and then, especially when I'm really depleted. So I'll try to get decent sleep tonoght and hope it clears up. It can be annoying if it keeps going all day, whenever I turn my head or just my eyes in another direction. And it can be accompanied by dizziness. But at least there's no physical pain.

Tomorrow, counseling and hopefully no more "fwip" so I can take a walk or a little bike ride.

And while we’re at it…

I think I just hit upon why “somatic” or body-based trauma healing feels slightly suspect to me at this moment in my life. 

First, it’s always offered by younger women who, despite their prior health challenges, have somehow managed to arrive at a place where they glow with vibrancy, are put together nicely, and are financially secure. Then, they have the nerve to tell me that EVERY woman’s body can heal and get to the same healthy glow, if you sign up for their exclusive coaching program. 

And then, they treat my stuff as if I have all the time in the world.

Let me understand: you want me to, when a painful memory triggers a difficult emotional response, to focus on where the trauma resides in my body? And then you want me to figure out how old I was when the initial trauma happened and then somehow “Re-parent” myself at that age in all the ways my parents failed to parent me originally? And you are sure that I’ll be able to heal myself in this manner? 

Really?

I have several chronic conditions, two of which have caused me to spend at least a quarter of my entire waking life in the bathroom. 

I have another which is forcing me to stop working at everything I know how to do.

I have another which came on during the Covid lockdown, rendered me completely disabled for two years during lockdown, and which resurfaces a little bit every time I catch a cold.

I have yet another which has required me to start sleeping with a CPAP machine every night.

And the combination of all of them forced me to file for disability at 60, an age when most my friends are still fully active and productive.

And you want me to FOCUS on my BODY? Because apparently I’m not doing that enough already?

You know what?

With a very recent diagnosis of ADHD and six months of unmasking, my head’s not a lot better. But it’s still more interesting than the rest of my body. So yeah, I’m gonna chase some dopamine and be more honest and hang out in my head for awhile. 

Fuck you AND your healthy, expensive glow.

Because life is short when you’re older.

Watching a video just now, from a woman dispensing advice on how we need to ditch the story, the story we’ve told repeatedly about a trauma, and process the emotion, the residue of that trauma that is left in our bodies.

She lays out an exercise that she says takes “all of ten or fifteen minutes, that’s all” to process the emotion and where and how it feels in the body. 

Yeah. 

Ow.

My counselor wants me to do a lot more of this. She calls this “re-parenting” and while it seems fine on paper, it’s a lot harder for me to tell my younger self that she’s fine.

Because she wasn’t fine.

She wasn’t reassured by her parents that she was fine, or would be fine.

She wasn’t reassured by her doctors that it’s possible some of her several chronic conditions may have been exacerbated by the trauma she experienced and which she was never comforted over at the time.

My younger, highly sensitive self was, in hindsight, positively crushed by a string of traumas that began at age four and continued in earnest until I was in my late twenties. And I spent a long time trying to deny how crushed I had been. But the truth showed up in my body, amplifying the various chronic conditions that were part of my medical and genetic heritage. I spent a very long time downplaying them, trying to power through them so I could live my life.

Getting the diagnosis of ADHD has forced me to acknowledge just how battered I’d been by all the traumas of my youth. And my body is letting me know just how much emotional and physical damage had been done.

I think that the older you are when you begin to get all the information about what is happening in your brain and body, the harder it is to imagine that you will ever be able to re-parent all the selves at their respective times of trauma. 

And while that makes sense, when I ponder trying to do that with every emotion from the multitude of traumas, a lifetime of little traumas that came from not fitting in, from being regularly uprooted throughout my youth, from realizing that in some ways I was never fully rooted in my own family, all of that adds up to a mountain of wrong and hurt and pain held in my body and it’s overwhelming. 

If you’re trying to do this in your twenties, you have a hope of dealing with most of it.

But when you begin doing this in your sixties, and you imagine being able to process even some of it, you quickly become confronted with the terrible truth that you’re getting rather a late start, and you will be lucky to process even a quarter of it before you die. When you start late, there will remain a lot of unprocessed, unresolved pain and grief.

So you make a deal with yourself.

You tell yourself you will try to do what you can, you understand that it will never all be healed because you got such a late start, and you try to give yourself a break for what you can’t do.

You do this because you live in a world that does not offer nearly societal support for people who recognize that they have been broken by all the reminders that they did not fit into this society neatly. You do this because in the end, the only people who will cut you the slack you need are people who have been through this kind of life themselves and have owned up to the truth of it.

You do this because, in a society where medical and therapeutic resources are scarce for people without means, you will not get all the help or support you need. The world has already proven that to you hundreds of times, over and over again. (For reference, please refer to Covid and the resulting medical shutdown of the last four years, from which we as a society have not recovered.)

You do this because life is short. Because you got rather a late start.

And because you got that late start and lacked resources, you know that you simply do not have the luxury of time and means to fix the larger part of what’s broken in you.

Life is short. And you know in your bones that you don’t want to spend whatever you have left of it feeling like a walking hospital zone all the time. So you give yourself permission to fix what you can, rest when you need to, and still try to squeeze a little joy out of your life if you can.

******

I’ll own that this is some of my anger talking right now.

But I’m not angry at me so much anymore.

I am angry at people who are dead, who I can’t go back and ask “what the FUCK” or tell them how I am now.

I am angry at a family tree and a history and a world that made my parents ill-equipped and unable to parent well, and cousins who want to explore our familial past with me so we can discover just how messed up our grandparents were.

No thanks.

Maybe if I were twenty, and had time and energy.

Maybe.

But I’m sixty-one and goddamn it, I need a break.

So when I can re-parent myself and feel the feelings, I will, and I know it will be beneficial for me. 

And at the times when I cannot re-parent myself, I am going to give myself a break. I’m going to chase a little dopamine and drink my coffee and wait for a positive outcome from the disability panel. Because there are just too many days when I don’t feel optimal, and not enough days left in my life to make up for all that.

So I’ll do what I can do, and learn how to be at peace with being imperfect in an imperfect world.

Because I just don’t have enough spoons to tackle this any other way.

This found me on a day when I was exhausted and trying to recover from a better day when I blew up a ton of spoons, I expended a lot of energy. So everything feels closer to the surface. And the tears come more easily at times like this. So I just cry. And I tell myself to cry all I need to, to make up for the times when I was ridiculed for crying or for the times in adulthood that I finally learned how to close off my tears in order to be less vulnerable. Now, I cry when I feel the tears come, and I do not apologize.

And if anyone tells me I’ve become such a downer or needy, well, I’ll be done with them.

Because I’m older now. And life is short.

Losing My Religion, Part Two: who the hell AM I right now?

I lit Shabbat candles tonight with Sweetie.

I’m always glad to do this with her. We exhale the week just behind us, we light the candles, draw in the light, say the blessing and then we embrace and kiss, and that’s how we begin Shabbat. And I love it every time.

But the calendar is also heading into the big Spring festivals of Purim and Pesach (Passover), and I dont know how I feel about those right now.

I don’t know how I feel about doing much that’s Jewish at all, to be honest.

I have known that there were things about my life that were off since before I was diagnosed with ADHD. Getting the diagnosis only confirmed a lot of what I had been experiencing — a sense of disjointedness in the world, of being out of sync with things, while I struggled to know where I belonged and what I was meant to do and be in the world, especially after my career began winding down.

What surprised me, after the initial sadness at having to put my music career to bed, was how relieved I felt at not having to hustle for gigs that were getting harder and harder to find. I thought at the time that I could content myself with a once-monthly thing at the synagogue here in town. How difficult would it be to focus my energy and passion on that schedule?  

But as my hands became less able to play guitar, I found that my enthusiasm for playing Jewish music at all was flagging as well. I needed the money, but I felt like a fraud trying to lead kids in prayer and music earlier this month, when I struggled with my own sense of identity and belief.

Over then winter, so exhausted of carrying the weight of my sadness related to my membership at Havurah Shalom, and with Sweetie’s blessing, I resigned my membership and decided that I needed to be unaffiliated for awhile while I sorted things out. I felt better almost immediately after I did that. I’m still friends with people at Havurah and believe I will be no matter what as long as we stay in touch.

Purim is a holiday that, to be honest, has never held a ton of excitement for me. I’m terrible at getting properly drunk — I get sick before I’ve had enough alcohol to feel joyously wild — and I don’t enjoy dressing up in costume, mostly because I spent the first 25 years of my life with a core piece of myself in hiding and don’t want to hide any part of myself now. So scratch Purim. I honestly won’t miss it.

Pesach is another question. I used to greatly enjoy preparing the house and setting the table, welcoming guests and leading the Seder. Then Covid came, followed by Long Covid, and even though we were able to reunite with close relatives as early as 2022, I lost my enthusiasm and energy for cleaning and preparing the house. I lost my enthusiasm for leading a full Seder. So for the last two years we’ve mostly just made our favorite Pesach dishes and shared a meal with family, but nothing past that. And to be brutally honest, I haven’t yet found my former enthusiasm for doing a full-on Seder, so we’ll once again have Just A Nice Dinner with family and a few friends. We’ll recount the story in highly truncated form, or we may not. 

I’ve been going through an incredible time of pervasive grief, punctuated by shorter periods of apathy as regards the larger world. I just don’t have the energy to care about much beyond myself and my closest beloveds right now, and I don’t know when my field of concern will expand again.

I informed my Bremerton Rabbi that she probably needs to start looking for another cantorial soloist for High Holy Days next fall, because I couldn’t promise to be able to play guitar again by then, if at all. (As it happens, that synagogue community doesn’t yet know if they could pay me as much as last year, which I honestly am not so worried about.) I have to admit that I was relieved to be able to back away from the commitment. 

I’ll meet with the local Rabbi on Monday to discuss my future at his synagogue. If there’s a way I can continue to help him out once a month through May or June, that’s fine (and like I said, I can use the money because it’s the only work I’m still doing at this point). But I cannot guarantee anything beyond that. Sweetie assures me that I cannot work at all we can still pay our bills (just), and that if I have to stop working it will only bolster my disability claim. 

The awful truth is that my sense of identity is all jumbled right now. Who am I now that I’m no longer trying to mask the more annoying parts of myself? Who am I if I feel SO disconnected from my Jewish identity, if my sense of Jewishness feels slightly suspect to me? Who am I if I don’t know who I am?

At the doctors office yesterday, they did a depression assessment. Am I depressed? Well, yeah, probably at least a little. Since 2020, my life has fallen down farther and farther and right now it feels like it has gone almost completely to hell, with NO a sense of when or if any recovery is in store.

I feel quite alone these days. Forcing myself to go to bicycle events when I can is good, but I don't always have the energy to do so. (I’m still debating whether I’ll go to Coffee Outside tomorrow morning or not, and may not decide until just before I go to bed.) Jewish communal events don’t seem to grab my interest these days. And of course, I find myself hiding in a corner while my Zionist and anti-Zionist friends continue to fight over whether Israel should exist as a Jewish state. I feel like it doesn’t matter if I have skin in that fight, since someone will find a reason to hate me for being Jewish No Matter What, honestly. What’s a little strip of desert the size of Delaware in the big picture when people will hate or love me anyway?

I start the Wellbutrin tomorrow. 

Wellbutrin

I finally got seen by one of my doctors today.

First off, I shared all my concerns with her, including how abandoned I’ve felt since the Covid pandemic began. It helped to name everything I was feeling and had been feeling for a long time. She was kind and sympathetic, and said that she would do what she could.

We started with getting help with my hands, which have not improved with refraining from playing guitar. I’m getting referred to an occupational therapist who may be able to help me find new ways to use my hands that won’t hurt as much. They may also be able to give me a more accurate template of when and how to rest my hands so there can be improvement. I’ve been advised not to hold out hope for a return to full, professional-level guitar playing — my hands have decades of honest wear in them — but at this point it would be great to find some pain relief and still be able to use my hands for daily, basic things.

Then we turned to my ADHD, which has been wreaking havoc because of all the unmasking. I’ve been gaining weight again thanks to dopamine chasing (I’m hopelessly addicted to sugar and have had a difficult time with emotional regulation), and the doctor asked if I’d be open to trying non-stimulant medication. After researching possible side effects and making sure it would play nice with all the meds I already take, we decided I would begin taking Wellbutrin, a drug that’s often used to treat ADHD and some of its depressive side issues. Wellbutrin also helps to curb cravings and is often used for people trying to quit smoking, so it may help me eat a little less sugar. It’s totally safe to use with my other meds and I hope it prove useful.

I’m also signed up for an ADHD support group beginning next month. I hope it will help me find some strategies to manage basic things, like money and time, and to keep better track of the growing list of medications I’m now on.

It is a LOT of work to deal with all the things right now, and it is exhausting. So I may not go to Bike Farm tonight as I’d previously planned. I’m kinda beat.

Layers upon layers (Grand Canyon, but also maybe my brain)

Losing My Religion? Part one in a possible series

I am Jewish. I was born of Jewish parents, and though they weren't religious and did not raise me fully steeped in Jewish life at home or out in the world, I am still Jewish. Because the most murderous of the antisemites say so, and that is good enough for them to kill me if they ever get the chance.

I did not really find my way into Jewish communal life until my early thirties, when I walked through the door of a synagogue, liked what I found, and stayed. It was not until I had found my way into Jewish community that I began to feel Jewish.

Along the way, I learned early and often to not ask uncomfortable questions about Israel. I learned this because I had not grown up in a Zionist home; because I could never afford a trip to Israel or even to an American-Zionist summer camp experience; and because very early in my adult exploration of Jewish communal life I learned that Zionism was for people with enough money to express and explore it.

To my strange -- and estranged -- way of thinking, Israel seemed like a Jewish theme park to which American Jewish parents sent their kids each summer, in hopes that the kids would fall in love with Israel, come back changed, and spend the rest of their lives working in white collar professions and donating tons of money to Israel and other Jewish causes. In short, you sent your kid to Israel to teach them how to grow up to be a good macher.
Since I had not come from such a family, and since I was working for peanuts both in and out of the Jewish world, I would never become a macher myself. And yet, when I began teaching in Jewish religious school, it became clear that my job was to help raise up good Jews, Jews who would be faithful to Judaism, to Jewish community and to Israel.

I think this is where I began to struggle.

While I loved teaching music, Jewish life cycle and later on, Hebrew, to my young students, and I loved their energy and silliness, I struggled inside with my own sense of authenticity. How could I teach what I did not know for myself, what I did not feel for myself? With only a couple of exceptions, there was no one to help me in this struggle. Eventually, I learned to say NO whenever I was asked to teach about Israel. I was not equipped, and in certain ways I never would be. It mostly worked, and I mostly never had to teach about Israel, which got me off a very large hook.

Over time, as I grew in my Jewish knowledge and in my love of "doing Jewish," I became part of one, and then another, synagogue community. I went to services. I tried to pray, though I almost never knew if it was making a big difference. It was often very hard to sit still. When I learned that I could get up and go out into the foyer for short breaks, it was a revelation and a gift.
I grew in my understanding of phonetic Hebrew, and learned the meanings of the most important words. If I didn't always have what I'd call a relationship with God, well, who did? We all wrestled with that; as Jews we were supposed to.

As my gifts and skills became more apparent, and lots of voices suggested I put them to work professionally, I did so. Teaching in religious school, learning to lead services, and eventually even trying cantorial school (where I crashed and burned after one semester that showed me how far outside the bubble I still was). It was all highly informative and I am grateful for the experiences that came my way. I was able to fashion a sort of career for over twenty-five years, writing songs and touring as a Jewish artist- and educator-in-residence at synagogues across the country. And it was an amazing, wonderful time.

But there has been a hurdle I can't get over. And while you'd think it might be Israel, it's mostly not. I will leave it to others to argue whether Israel is a Jewish homeland or just another white colonial state.
I can't really answer that for myself, because the answer I keep coming up with is that it's probably a little of both, and that there is no solution, this war will never end until the world does.
That's not a popular stance to hold in the world, and I seldom discuss it with my friends, Jewish or not.

But I digress.

The real stumbling blocks for me have always been class and belonging.

It costs money, a lot of money, to Jewishly belong in an active way. There's an expected path and one simply sets their feet on it and starts walking. More accurately, one has their feet set on it in childhood and is supported along that path until they can walk it on their own.
For the less-monied, there's Torah study and a host of online possibilities, of course; but these more passive things simply don't stand in for the live, in-person experience of belonging in a group -- of knowing the lingo and having the right passwords and the shared comfort in common experiences of synagogue life and summer camp and all that goes with that.
And while it is possible to do some of those things in adulthood, as I did, it is not the same.
It cannot be the same because along with the commonality of those experiences comes a level of belonging that is simply not open to me. It never was. It never will be.

I am the daughter of The People Who Left. And who left again and again, never putting down roots in the places we lived, or even in their own marriage.
My parents were nomads of a sort and they never could really stop wandering.
My restless father spent more than half his life running away from who he really was; and my mother spent her life trying unsuccessfully to escape a truly horrible childhood, reinventing herself with each telling of her story to someone new.
How was I to learn about community, about putting down roots, from parents like these?
It was impossible, though I tried as hard as I could.

When I tried to "do community" in the Jewish world, I was successful to varying degrees.
What held me back every time was my lack of a Jewish youth and my lack of funds.
I'd watch as other Jewish artists enjoyed success after hard-won success, cranking out albums and making enough money on tour to keep going to conferences and getting their name and their songs out there every single year, three or four times a year, until finally they became the "it" folks, the people who were invited to do the super-cool things like become paid faculty at the very same conferences, or travel to Limmud UK (all expenses paid) to teach and perform. On top of this, many were also able to have children and pay synagogue dues and give their kids the Jewish education they'd had, or even better. How did they do it? Where did they come up with the money? How did they gain access? How did such a progression work?

I never got a single answer from an authoritative source. Instead, I cobbled bits and pieces of information together, and those pieces included:

-- growing up Jewish and Jewishly connected. This gets your foot in the door better and faster than anything else, including actual talent or skill. In fact, talent and skill rank farther down the ladder than you might think.

-- having a spouse who earns good, steady money doing something non-musical, and which usually comes with good health insurance and access to quality medical providers. In short, financial security that a musician can't usually earn on their own.

-- they or their spouse is full-time Jewish clergy with a pulpit. This is often a better paying gig than you might think, especially in the more liberal movements (though that is slowly changing, and I may address this in a later post). A starting full-time Rabbi in the Reform movement can generally earn at least $75,000 a year, and by the time they've been at it five years or more it's up over 100K. Plus they get an incredible benefits package.

For someone whose annual gross income topped out at under $30,000 -- and that was almost 20 years ago -- this is mindblowing. Equal parts "How have I lived on so little?" and "What on earth are these people spending so much money on?"

-- They know the right people because they all grew up doing Jewish together, or they know friends of friends who did. It's Jewish geography. I can play it to a small extent because of my years as a Jewish artist-in-residence, but my mileage is teeny-tiny compared to anyone who grew up in the bubble. Connections matter.

*****

Congregation Beth Israel, 2008

How on earth did I even get a foothold in this scene? In retrospect, I'd have to say it was a combination of:

-- having talent and skills. I came into this scene in my thirties, already a trained musician with performing, teaching and arranging experience. Composing followed soon after and was a logical next step.

-- Being just quirky enough to get noticed. Coming from Oregon (not a Jewishly dense place) and talking about things like sustainability and using once's resources definitely caught peoples' attention.

-- not taking anything for granted. Lacking the entitlements that a Jewish upbringing and sense of belonging came with, I had to create a lot of myself and my music from scratch, and find more affordable ways to make and distribute my music. I'm fortunate in that I began my career before the internet had become ubiquitous and a hands-on approach could still be rewarded.

-- Being grateful for every scrap I could find. Because I knew I didn't have anything just coming to me. I was so tickled that anyone wanted to actually pay me to make music, how could I not be thrilled whenever a chance was offered? Even if it was for free, or for peanuts, it beat pulling lattes for a living.

*****

But I had stumbling blocks, too:

-- No Jewish connection while growing up, and a highly mobile childhood. They can't find you if you keep moving around.

-- Inconsistent and/or poor healthcare in my youth. My parents didn't always have insurance, and I couldn't always be seen by doctor when needed. As a young adult living in the time before the ACA/Obamacare, I had to live with chronic autoimmune conditions without insurance or medication, and this did make a big difference on my overall well-being and energy.

-- Coming out as a dyke in the 1980s. While I don't regret my choice to come out when I did, it was rough. I lost jobs and housing and got physically beaten up because of it. Coming into Jewish communal life in the late 90's as an openly queer woman was rough, too; synagogues weren't yet ready to accept me as I was, lending another layer to my sense of non-belonging. Hanging in there and waiting for the times to catch up with my reality wasn't easy. In hindsight, I know it had an averse effect on my mental and physical health, both in the short-term and the long-term.

-- marrying a woman. No matter what people say, women still earn less than men on the whole, and it costs a hell of a lot more to try and have a baby. During our infertility struggle we did not receive nearly as much support or empathy as a straight couple would. While we are in a much better place with our childlessness now, it was difficult and lonely to get to where we are now.

-- a highly evolved understanding of classism in the world, and in the Jewish world. When you grow up dreaming of things you can't have, and you end up earning even less than your parents did, it informs the way you see society. I don't apologize for that. It's just a thing.

In short, even with my ability and resourcefulness, I simply had too many strikes against me to end up where I saw so many of my colleagues ending up professionally. And personally.
Now that I am at the end of that career, it does take on a different glow. I am staring down an old age in which I will be physically limited, and low-income. I struggle to know my place in Jewish communal life, and twenty-five years of doing the dance and wearing the right clothes and facial expressions leave me wondering if that's all it ever was. Today, I don't feel drawn to synagogue attendance, or most Jewish rituals (though I still love lighting candles on Friday nights), and right now I honestly don't know how to be in or move through the world.

Joshua Tree National Park, 2013

 



















I believe that this is a direct result of my recent ADHD diagnosis, and all the unmasking that has come with it. I am still reeling, and wondering who in the hell I even am. I am afraid that one day my partner will wake up and tell me she doesn't know who I am anymore, either. This makes me feel terribly alone and sad. And emotionally exhausted.

I wonder if or when I might feel differently. And where I will find myself.

When everything happens all at once, or close to it.

It has been difficult to live with everything lately.
I've had Crohn's nearly my whole life, and it's mostly under control with medication.

I've had IBS probably since my thirties, though not diagnosed till my fifties. I could control that with some pretty radical changes in diet, but since food prep and I don't get along too well (see ADHD, below) I've decided that, as long as it's not killing me, I can live with more bathroom trips.

I was diagnosed with sleep apnea last summer, but it took forever to get set up with a machine. I have one now and I can't tell if it's helping a whole lot (because of the ADHD, below).

I got the diagnosis of ADHD in October. On October 7, to be exact. Since then, my unmasking has been insane and my understanding of a great deal of my life in the past has become clearer, and frankly kind of depressing in some ways. Conversely, I can understand that some of my more "foolhardy" life choices (like learning to live on less money so I wouldn't piss it all away and so I wouldn't have to work forty-plus hours a week at a well-paying job I wouldn't love) might be seen in hindsight as steps towards a kind of self-preservation, a way of knowing that I was different and that typical life choices (aka "The American Dream") might not work so well for me.
Unmasking continues to be challenging.

Around the same time -- maybe a few weeks later -- I began to have serious pain in my hands that was exacerbated when I played guitar. By my last gig of 2023, a three-day Shabbaton in California, I was in so much pain that getting through a concert required gritting my teeth and slathering CBD balm on my hands afterwards. By late January, I'd been diagnosed with a combination or already-existing Crohn's arthritis, mild osteoarthritis and [newly diagnosed] severe tendinitis. I was forced to stop playing guitar and give my hands some rest for at least three to four months. At that time I'd be reassessed to see if there was any improvement. However, I found that drumming didn't hurt so I continued to playa little bit each day at home. Now, my hands hurt every day whether I drum or not, and typing for more than about ten minutes also causes pain.
But it was clear to me that my days of touring as a Jewish singer-songwriter and high octane daily guitar plkaying would probably be done. I cried for about ten minutes on the bus ride home from the doctor's realizing this. Then I went home, looked around my studio and began letting go of my career. I swear it was that quick.

Which leads me back to ADHD and unmasking. The truth is that I was already feeling like I had gone as far as I could go in my genre with the resources and connections I possessed, and that five albums and twenty-five years of hustling for gigs was a good run. So I had to admit to myself that some of what was sloughing off was some kind of burnout from the whole Jewish music thing, and burnout about my marginal place at the edges of the Jewish communal bubble. I'll write more about this in particular later. But it's pretty damned big.

So tonight, I found myself stuck. I had run some errands, taken care of a few tasks and come home again on the last sunny, warm day before the rains return. And I found myself wondering how to deal with my life in that moment. Unmasking has meant that I'm beginning to understand that I look for dopamine hits, because my brain doesn't make dopamine regularly the way neurotypical brains do. Dopamine jonesing can result in overshopping, eating too much sugar and/or salt, and avoiding things I "need" to do (like laundry, for example) in favor of things that will bring me another hit of dopamine (like playing musical instruments).

But right now, playing instruments, even drumming too much, hurts my hands, and I cannot enjoy recreational reading the way regular brains do. I'm used to doing, not being. Being is painful; I cannot sit still long enough for it to be beneficial (except when I'm asleep). But even sleeping has gotten harder wth the addition of the CPAP machine about a month ago. I can't tell if I'm getting enough good sleep. I toss and turn a lot, and I wake up early to use the toilet, and it takes me awhile to actually fall asleep, and all of this may be about wrestling with ADHD.

Right now, I cannot do the things I know how to do enough to earn a living at them, or really to find a job at all. I cannot find an employer who will accommodate all my stuff in the workplace -- the many bathroom breaks, the need to nap or just rest my eyes every afternoon, the challenges with impulse control and executive function -- and becaues of all this I'm working with a lawyer to file a claim for disability. Because at 61, no one is going to pay for me to be retrained in a new career, either.

There's more to this, but typing hurts, so I will stop here. Stay tuned.

Next up: Losing My Religion

Individual choices don’t generally overpower corporate actions anymore.

Reading an article about “making better for choices” and generally getting away from processed food angered me today. What angers me even more were some of the comments.

I really should just skip the comments. Every time.

Talking about steps people can take to get away from highly-processed foods, including: 

— shopping local and organic; 

— making up whole meals in advance; 

— exercising the body to promote the kind of well-being that makes the body “want” more nutritious foods;

— removing yourself from the dependency on corporate food by growing your own;

All of these are lovely ideas, but they do not take into account those who are trapped by those same corporate policies:

— working multiple low-wage jobs to stay housed and keep the lights and heat on;

— living in neighborhoods that are filled with low-rent properties, which are poorly maintained by absentee landlords and zoned against green spaces and large-scale gardening;

— not having enough time or energy to prepare whole meals from scratch (because you have three jobs);

— not earning enough money to pay the higher cost of whole, healthy foods;

— highly-processed foods are subsidized by the government and corporations, while fresh produce is not;

— virtual wholesale control of large-scale farming and production, at the deliberate cost of family-owned operations;

— reduced access to post-high school education for the majority of Americans, especially those who are poor and/or of color.

Tell me that this is NOT some sixty-year conspiracy to shrink the middle class and return this country to the semi-feudal state of affairs that existed 150 years ago. 

I won’t be convinced.

The never-ending slog

Yesterday I went for a slow but rewarding, lovely bike ride.

I thought I’d sleep better for all the physical activity, but NO. I only managed about six hours of sleep, and woke up groggy and slow.

Today, I took advantage of time alone in the house to play some drums at real-life volume, do some crafty stuff and by the time Sweetie got home, I was wiped. I went back to bed around noon and woke up at 5pm.

I can predict another night of poor sleep.

Worse, it was another gorgeous day and I feel like I wasted it inside.

I wish I could know what lies ahead for me, that I could have something to give me hope for my future. I feel so unproductive and slow, and very alone most days. My whole world feels like it’s shattered dry clay that’s being crushed and prepared for re-mixing and remolding, and it’s incredibly draining and slow.

At the same time, my interest in Jewish communal life has shriveled to almost nothing.

I’m no longer attending services, I’ve informed the Bremerton community that I will likely not be available for High Holy Days next fall (and if by some miracle I am, I won’t be the same cantorial soloist I was last year). I admit that I hope they will look for someone else. I look at my Machzorim (High Holy Days prayer books) and I just can’t get excited.

So much f what I’ve done over the last quarter-century suddenly feels equal turns pointless, inauthentic and exhausting. It’s pointless because after twenty-five years of plugging away, I’m no closer to the cushy center of job security, no closer to the near circle of the folks who really can do this all year and not have to kill themselves looking for paying work. It feels inauthentic because I’ve arrived at a place where I currently don’t feel drawn to sustaining this work (for myself or for others). And it’s exhausting because I recognize that, ever since Covid shut my career down in 2020, I just haven’t felt as truly valued and supported as I might have once been. There has been nowhere for me to turn without my feeling the tension of being seen as a human resource more than I feel seen as a soul.

Somehow, all of these threads have twisted into a time and place that finds me really depleted, isolated and sad — and at the same time, totally out of the energy I’ve needed to sustain my end of the relationship [between me and Jewish community]. I’m bonked. My pitcher is empty and I am so clearly burned out on pouring myself into what I’ve been doing for all this time. I am mentally, emotionally and physically drained and hurt. I have nothing left to offer right now.

While it may not always be this way, I’ve arrived at this point at a time when I’m in my 60s and pondering the downward slope of my working arc, and finding a new career at this point seems unlikely. I’ve arrived at this point as my body is beginning to falter from a host of issues, and really the only way forward for me is a kind of retirement, funded by Social Security, Disability or a combination of both.

That’s not something I could have foretold in early 2020, when I hade just released my fourth album and felt like I was on the verge of something that resembled a Big Break. Three weeks later, the world shut down and my Big Break never came.

So now I find myself in a netherworld of exhaustion, sadness, self-realization and waiting.

I have no idea where it will lead, or how much help I can hope to find in a world that’s on fire, both figuratively and literally. I wish I knew the way forward that would make the most sense.

Which button blows up Cleveland?

I've never been a digital native.  My first computer, in 1995, was a dummy terminal in a shared household. I paid five bucks a month to have access. The terminal had a black screen with green letters and no graphics. The internet was via a large mainframe somewhere in the bowels of downtown Portland, and communication was slow and very primitive by today's standards. But it was fascinating to be able to communicate with people from all over the world.

When I moved out of that household and into an apartment in spring 1997, I had to get my own personal computer. Friends with skills raided the dumpsters behind Circuit City at Jantzen Beach, and cobbled the mismatched parts together into a sort of Frankentower that had minimal graphic capabilities (this was 1997-98, remember, so computer graphics were still in the Neanderthal phase anyway).  When my friends sat me down in front of it, I asked, "Which button blows up Cleveland?" and they laughed. But I was serious. I didn’t want to press a button that would undo everything they had put together for me, because I wouldn't know how to put it back myself.

It had a dial-up modem and ran Windows 3.1 while everyone else had moved on to Windows 98, so I never got spam and I never got hacked. It was slow, but so was I, and I was gloriously happy. Six months later when I went back to college to finish my degree, I found janitors throwing out a bunch of dot-matrix printers, toner cartridges and paper. I asked if I could help myself, they said sure, and I loaded up my bike trailer with a printer, four toner cartridges and three boxes of printer paper. I was set for at least a couple of years, all for free.

I took that computer to grad school in the fall of 2001, and used it until I crashed and burned out of grad school. At that point, in February 2002, it was cheaper to donate it to a school than to ship it home. 

Upon my return to Portland, I went back to the bike industry and no longer needed a computer for professional purposes. So over the next decade, I burned through a successiuon of donated computers from friends who were constantly upgrading; switched from PC to Mac (which I found more intuitive and visually-oriented) and got more comfortable with things over time. As long as I could just turn it on and go, I was mostly fine.

By 2013, I was working with a Mac Book, but things grew steadily more complex. 

I never updated the operating systems on my Macs. It seemed like Apple was issuing updates and whole new operating systems like every other week, and I would just become nominally comfortable with The Way Things Were when it would be time to update or change the operating system altogether. I did it once, was SO stymied by the differences -- new! bigger! better! faster! and everything is in different colors and shapes to boot! -- that I stopped changing systems.

On my current Macbook, which I got three years ago, I am still working with Catalina, copyright 2020. I simply loaded everything from the external hard drive when I got the new laptop, and voila! I was back in action.
So far, everything seems okay.
Except that the Microsoft Office Suite I had with my previous laptop has sort of expired, and now I can't use it. I think that's what happened, anyway.

But it doesn't matter a whole lot, since I've never learned how to use the tool bar in Word. And I've never had to make a PowerPoint presentation, so whatever.

Meanwhile, I had also gotten into iPhones. a friend gave me her outdated iPhone 4 in 2015. Then in 2019 it stopped working with all the apps or whatever, because the apps have constantly been splitting and updating like so many ameobas. So while my i4 slowly creaked to a halt, someone gave me an iPhone 6 in 2019, and I've been using that ever since.

Now, mind you, I've never used it like a phone. I can't afford a mobile phone account with a smartphone, so I've basically just used it like a pocket iPad, hopping onto free wifi whenever I'm out of the house and need to message Sweetie about something. If someone needs to call me, they can leave a message on the answering machine that comes with our landline at home. (I'm sure if I'd had a kid things might be different. But I didn't, and they're not. So we still have a landline.)

Sweetie, being a professional freelance writer, basically LIVES on her computer. So she's a lot harder on the hardware than I am, and she has to get her computer fixed or replaced more often.
Today, her computer did the cockroach, and the repair shop rented her a laptop to use while they retreive her stuff off the old computer. She brought the rental home, and I spent over half an hour trying to find the wifi password to our home network on my computer. It took me basically forever to find it, by which time she was out the door taking the rental back. I found it five minutes after she left, called the repair shop and asked them to let her know. Then I took a screenshot of the info and emailed that to her so she'd have it always.

But the fact that it took me almost 45 minutes to find a damned password should tell you something about how I get along with computers. When I switched to a laptop, it took me a week to remember how to find "System Preferences." It took me literally three years to remember how to find my password keychain in the damned thing. This is because, unlike the majority of computer owners in this world, I almost NEVER go looking under the hood. I simply do not open the little gray windows that get you inside the Big Brain of this thing, because what if I hit a wrong button and finally blow up Cleveland after all?

At this point in my life, having never needed massive computer skills for employment, I'm content to stick with the things that feel the most intuitive to me, like taking and sharing photos and videos, surfing the web for information and posting on social media (though I avoid Twitstorm and TikTok like the portals to damnation that they are). That is more than enough for me, and if I never learn how to format a thing into another thing, the corporate world can take a hike.

Because honestly, computers just shouldn't this damned hard to run.

Unmasking, part umpteen-point-three

This morning, I opened my Facebook and found responses to a post I’d left last night.

Here’s what I shared.

I took great comfort in this idea and wanted to share it with friends.  

And while most of the responses were predictably in agreement, one stood out.

“Ben” responded: “Insert ‘Jews can’t quit Judaism’ and it remains true.”

I was a little taken aback at what felt like a bit of a non sequitur. So, after taking a few breaths, I decided to send him a personal message:

****

Hi Ben. I saw your response to my post and felt like responding.

Musician is something I was literally born to be. My musician parents sang to me in the belly. My home was filled with music from day one. Pounding out beats on my sister’s Hoppity Hop to whatever was on the turntable felt like breathing.

Conversely, while I was born to Jewish parents, they didn’t raise me with much in the way of Judaism, or in the bosom of Jewish community. For those who grew up in the mushy center, perhaps your statement rings true. For those of us who’ve spent a lifetime on the margins, it’s true some days and not true on others.

All I’m saying is, as with so many things, Your Mileage May Vary.

Peace.

*****

Before October 7, I probably wouldn’t have responded this way. Before Hamas invaded southern Israel, lots of things remained Not Up For Open Discussion in my world, especially one’s devotion to Israel. I’ve been largely silent, choosing to focus on messages of peace and praying for the return of the hostages. Because of my lack of deep communal connection, I’ve always struggled with developing a strong sense of connection to Israel. That lack of connection has shut me out of certain corners of fellow feeling, of belonging, of missing out on the decoder ring and all that comes with it.

Now I am finding myself in a deep phase of burnout, and finding that my experience of Jewish communal life doesn’t — and maybe never could — match what’s in the brochure. As a result, I find myself less drawn to certain rituals of Jewish belonging, and far more sensitive to the gaps in my Jewish experience, the places where I lost the plot, or never got the memo, or never could have the memo.

Being at the shul on Sunday for religious school, I felt utterly blank. Empty. Unconnected to the folks there, even though a few of them knew me from my musical work on Friday evenings. When I finished my work, I left. It was Just A Gig, and nothing more. And while that seemed a little sad, at least it was a truly honest feeling.

Below, a photo from 2019. I was one of dozens of musicians attending the URJ Biennial, American Judaism’s version of The Show, the Majors, held that year in Boston. I’d been invited to attend and perform a little of my music, in a concert by “new” artists (though I’d been doing the Jewish Music thing since 1999). I scraped up the last of my frequent flier points, begged a spot to spread a sleeping bag on someone’s hotel floor, and the URJ gave me one free day at the event. I had to be gone the next morning. I arranged a gig in a nearby town, which got snowed out. Then I went home. 

But for one brief shining moment, I could be part of The Scene.

It was fun when I was busy. (See photo, below. My head is just below the “N” on the wall behind us.)

When I wasn’t Doing The Thing, it got boring and lonely. I spent a lot of time being left out of informal gatherings, and at the handful of such gatherings I found myself in, I lacked the commonality of communal history so many others shared. While I did engage in conversations (especially about my album The Watchman’s Chair which had just dropped online, or about the creative process of songwriting), I had many, many moments of the experience of watching myself from outside myself as I did the human thing. 

(I now know that this is a common experience of many neurodivergent people, especially if they grew up feeling other and othered as I did.)

I got through the weekend, went home, did another gig, and then the world shut down for four years.

While many of my colleagues found ways to pivot and adapt to the new reality, I struggled. I did a few online concerts with nothing more than a laptop computer and internal mic, and with shaky WiFi that sometimes cut out during a concert. Most of my colleagues got themselves set up with home studios, equipped with several mics, computers, and all sorts of DI boxes for recording online. It looked like they were more secure and comfortable, and while comparison is the thief of joy, there wasn’t much joy in my home. Sweetie and I were both dependent on live music for our work, and when that shut down, we stayed home and lived on government checks and food stamps. Then I got Covid, followed by Long Covid, and nothing has been the same for me since.

My inability to make connections, combined with the difficulties I encountered with my home shul at the time, led to my being sick largely in isolation. The few exceptions were the handful of good longtime friends (many from outside the Jewish community) who came by to sit outside with me while I slowly came back from Long Covid. I am so grateful for those friends and for my family, who sustained me during a time when I truly thought my life might end.

Today, a year and a half out from the worst of Long Covid, facing new medical and emotional issues as I experience the aches and pains of aging and the co-morbidities of multiple autoimmune issues, I find that I don’t really look forward to Jewish festivals as I once did. (To be honest, I’ve never liked dressing up for Purim — as someone who spent her youth in the closet and the rest of her life masking neurodivergence, I’d rather be myself all the time. And I enjoy Pesach, but frankly the month of cleaning beforehand has become utterly exhausting.)

I admit I am feeling my otherness especially hard right now. I am looking long and hard in the rear view mirror at a life that’s been truncated, too often on my best behavior, and for what? Right now I feel like so much is sloughing off me, like a fake skin, like a costume. I don’t yet know what my nakedly real Self looks like, but I am getting more clues all the time. Perhaps I’m meant to hover at the margins and mine the ground for the gold that particular to that place. I don’t know yet, but I’m trying to stay open, and to open more space in which to explore.

So I may be jettisoning some of the faces in the photo above from my Facebook feed, and from my friends list. The faces of the people who wish me happy birthday but from whom I hear nothing else the rest of the year. The faces of those whose trajectories are so far from mine that we share little in common other than a profession or a label. I’m going to conserve my energy now for things closer to home, and for people who have remained my friends this whole time. 

I have a sneaking suspicion that a few of the faces in that photo won’t even notice when I’ve let them go.

And that’s not anger or sadness, it’s just my experience colored by my lack of proximity to the cushy center of the bubble. It’s the way my life has been, and probably the way my life will continue to be until I get smaller and closer to a short list of good people. And this morning, that feels okay.

Peace.