My First Crush

I have had a number of crushes, a large number of crushes. Some of these were really intense and lasted years, others were fleeting. My first crush was one of the fleeting ones, seeing that it was in kindergarten.

His name was Randy. He lived around the block from me, by the railroad tracks in an asphalt-shingled house. He had a round face and shaggy blond hair and blue eyes. I don’t understand why I got a crush on him; it was part of that inexplicable kindergarten thinking. But I talked about him constantly.

My mom and I went over to his house to visit, and afterward my mother told me she ‘wasn’t comfortable’ with me going over to Randy’s house. I knew it was because of the house and that he didn’t have a father at home. I don’t know how I knew this unless my mother told me, and it didn’t make sense because my mother told me to be nice to everyone. The crush disappeared as soon as it was formed, because I didn’t want to disappoint my mother. Thus I internalized my first lesson on social class and bias.

I went on to have many crushes, some intense and some fleeting. I learned the most from my crush on Randy, things I look back on and wish I hadn’t learned.

A Good Day

It’s definitely a Monday morning. I woke up from annoying nightmares a few minutes early, and it was too late to go back to bed. I don’t really have words right now, just a lingering need to go back to sleep. Which I will not because of the danger of sleeping through that 11 o’clock appointment.

I now have my coffee. At the moment, it’s not accomplishing much. But the austere white house across the street has a rosy glow to it, and the day promises to be productive.

I will let it be a good day.

My Favorite Thing About Myself

Daily writing prompt

What’s your favorite thing about yourself?

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I feel like you could ask me on different days my favorite thing about myself, and I would have different answers. Some days it’s my sense of humor; other days my intelligence. Occasionally it’s my courage. Today, my favorite thing about myself is my sense of joy. I am, overall, a joyous person.

Joyous is not quite the same thing as happy. Happiness is a state, fleeting, full of excitement or pleasure. For example, when you visit someone. Joy, on the other hand, is a longer-lasting state of being, full of contentment and well-being. (Embark Behavioral Health, 2025).

Joy, to me, is the flow of a stream through my life, one which occasionally bubbles up. I feel the bubbles in my soul, and they sometimes come out in laughter. Laughing for no reason startles people sometimes. I can’t help it; it’s the bubbles.

I feel joy even when I’m depressed, which doesn’t make sense to most people. But joy is my love for the universe, which I feel even when I don’t feel any love back. That’s what depression feels like, like something has put a transparent wall between me and love. But joy is still there, beneath the despair.

Joy is a subversive quality. It does not depend on external factors. It is not a response to good things happening externally. It cannot be taken away, only pushed aside temporarily by things like disaster and depression. It is the thing I like most about myself, at least today.

Big Audacious Goal #2

I have another Big Audacious Goal I hadn’t counted on, and that is to lose some weight. I am way too plump for my doctor’s liking, and now I have to do something about it. My weight is starting to affect my health.

This is going to be a neverending goal, and that is a bit daunting for me. I have a sugar addiction (and I mean this in the most literal way possible). I have always had disordered eating in the form of sweet foods. My doctor said, “I mean you can have those things occasionally,” but given our game plan, I don’t know how.

The goal is to eat around 120 grams of carbs a day. That is not a SMART goal, so I need to work on it. I will set a goal of 127 grams of carbs, 48 grams of fat, and at least 60 grams of protein a day (give or take a few). This is based on a 1500 calorie a day intake. I will choose complex carbs like fruits and vegetables and whole grains. I will track my food intake daily to see if I meet those goals. I will weigh myself once a week. I will wean myself onto Ozempic according to my doctor’s instructions.

Notice I focused on my actions instead of the results. If I had said “I will lose 2 pounds a week”, I might have run into problems, as this doesn’t take into account my 62-year-old metabolism. Focusing on my actions makes more sense, because that’s what I can do something about. I made my goals realistic (I can do this!) and specific and measurable. The only thing is it isn’t time bound because it’s open-ended. I should be eating this way for the rest of my life, I suspect.

There are things this BAG needs. Like “how often can one diverge from this meal plan to have occasional ‘bad things’?” (I don’t care what dieticians say, there are ‘bad foods’ when an ice cream concrete leads to a sugar binge). A goal of how much weight to lose (at the moment, that’s 50 pounds. I have more than 50 pounds to lose, to be honest, but we’re being realistic).

So far, after two weeks of following this protocol, so good. I haven’t had a bad eating day and I have lost 3 pounds. Knowing my past attempts at losing weight, this stage is not the problem. The problem is keeping it off, especially when faced with desserts. Wish me luck.

What I’m Passionate About

I am passionate about many things; that’s just what kind of person I am.

I am passionate about hope. I think hope is one of the most powerful forces of the universe. It is my natural way of meeting with the world.

I proselytize about flow. This is Csikszentmihalyi’s concept, that there are activities that take us out of ordinary space and time, completely captivate our minds, and give us a sense of well-being. I tell my students that they need to find a flow activity eventually to help them deal with stress.

Then there’s coffee. It’s a small thing to be passionate about, but we roast and grind our own coffee in this household, and make it in a very good coffeepot. I am passionate about good coffee, and occasionally share the home-roasted stuff with others.

I have passion for my goals. I keep Big Audacious Goals on my list of things to do because they motivate me not just to act, but to be better. My BAGs for the moment are to lose weight and to get back into writing. (Although those are not SMART enough for goals, I am working on making them so.)

That’s enough to feel passionate about for now. If I were passionate about everything, would it really be passion?

Absolutely Nothing

It is 5:57 AM on June 5, 2025, and I am pretty sure nothing of note will happen to me today. And I’m glad of that.

One of the things about being over 60 is that the big good things are likely not to fall into one’s lap. They’re not likely to happen under 60, either, but younger people don’t know that. My younger years were brimming with possibility. Now that I’m older, I’m doing pretty good at work but not to the point of winning any awards, I know I’m not going to win the lottery, and I’m not getting a new kitten because I already have three.

Bad things, on the other hand, seem part and parcel of one’s 60s. Am I going to develop another health problem? Is social security going to be dismantled? Is my roof going to fall on my head? Those things would also be worthy of note, but I don’t want them to happen.

I don’t know when I became a pessimist, but I think it was when I started getting arthritis. So nothing of note will happen today, and I will be grateful.

Because I don’t want to lose my 300-day posting streak

I guess I have a Big Audacious Goal to post for 365 days straight. So posting daily is a thing, even when I’m tired and have nothing to post about. Even if I’m on the road and it’s raining out and I’d rather sleep a while longer. It’s good for me while I drag my feet on writing a new novel. It is purpose.

On the road again

I’m on the road today, hanging out while my husband attends a librarian conference. This hotel, which bills itself as an ‘executive center’, does not have a good work table anywhere in the lobby. I may have to go to Bux and write.

My Favorite Season

In the midwestern United States, winter brings cold and snow and dirty slush, summers are too hot, and spring nearly nonexistent. This leaves Autumn, a glorious time which starts in late September and goes on until November.

Autumn is a glorious season, with days in which trees in flaming red and orange stand against cloudless blue skies and soppy evenings with tumbled leaves tugging at people’s feet. Autumn sun brings with it the sense that the moment will last forever, while the thunderstorms bring memories of past loves.

Autumn is deep. It doesn’t flirt like Spring, or stupefy like Summer. Nor does it oppress like Winter. It delivers crisp afternoons for delight and cool evenings for shelter. It stays with us.

Luxury or Necessity?

This is a hard question to answer, because the one thing I “can’t live without” is my iPhone, and I don’t know whether that is a luxury or necessity these days. I use it for work, I use it for entertainment, I use it to record my carbs every day. I read and compose email, I keep up with people I know — it’s a tool that’s no longer a luxury to me.

At the same time, it’s a luxury. I pay a decent amount of money for my iPhone, although I only replace it after several years. I have lived without a smartphone, but I used to have a Palm Pilot back in the days before the iPhone. (I remember the Palm Pilot for its tendency to regurgitate all its data and become useless until synched on the computer.)

I suppose I could live without my iPhone, but it would have to be a different world, one in which I didn’t get daily emails from my students or have to fill out paperwork for them. One where I don’t need a handy reference for counting carbs. One where my life was a lot slower than it is now.