In a more perfect world I’d have a list of topics I wanted to talk about. Notes here and there. I’ve tried carrying a little notebook around and jotting things but that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works. 

The summer and in reality, the year feels like it’s melting away. Sliding off the table like some sort of Salvador Dali. Weeks sliding by in an accelerated nothingness. Day after day after day. New and odd challenges seemingly daily. 

You’d think with less “to do” that things would be slow but somehow that’s not the case. It’s like there’s just enough to keep yaou occupied but a lot of it is boring as hell. I heard recently that we are running out of new TV shows. I’ve just resorted to re starting Breaking Bad and letting it play in the background like Muzak. A bizarre soundtrack of meth, bad 2000’s apparel and marital disfunction. Maybe I need to rethink this. 

I stopped writing as often because my posts kept sliding too. Daily recaps and covidities (i made this word up). That may be an overstatement but it’s what it felt like. I process here so you get to process along with me. The slant had become rather “doom-y” so I went with that old adage “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”  Great in theory, but what of the processing?  The truth. I just ignored. 

There is a little heralded function of having “the shine” (my newest definition of ADD and its friends) and that is the art of ignoring. It’s the precursor to the chronic procrastination found in most adult ADD folks. If melting clocks (ergo time) were Salvador Dali’s most recognized image. Procrastinating and ignoring are my clocks. 

I can ignore things that take mere minutes to complete for years, maybe decades. This isn’t an exaggeration. There’s a shitty fluorescent light in my bathroom that I’ve thought about replacing since we moved into this house in 2006. 14 years later I’ll still flip the switch 2-27 times to get it to warm up and bask the room in middle school light. 

There’s a hundred fluorescent lights in my world. Open loops wreaking havoc on my mind and stunting its growth. An endless list that adds items weekly and removes one every month or so. A slow stacking of blocks up and up and up. 

You’re all getting a little taste of this “ignoring” right now. This pandemic begs to be ignored. We want our “old lives” back. Or at least we think we do because that’s what we were used to. It was the set of habits we’d grown accustomed to. A rolling rat race of carpool and email and “I’m super busy.”  So we have tried to ignore what’s going on in an attempt to get back to there. 

I’ve argued and said that “there” wasn’t as perfect as we thought. Being deliberate as we add back is important, but I’ll let you try and decide that. I think we need to realize that ignoring isn’t doing anything positive for us. This is where the world is. This is where we are. We have to figure out how to deal with it and make the best because it’s here. 

Unlike Monday, I don’t have an easy step by step approach other than the same one. You’ll need to go back and read it. It works. 

Today I won’t add a step or anything other than ask you to consider what you are ignoring. Hope doesn’t work when we ignore the reality of our situations. It works when we face the truth and deal with it. It’s hard and ignoring feels easier.  But ignoring is simply stacking anxiety for tomorrow and the next day and the next day until that wall feels insurmountable. I know. I’ve lived this way forever. 

There will be an other side to all of this. One where we can go to shows and sporting events. Where the world won’t feel like two different places at once. One where we are faking the old ways played against the reality of the new ways. We will all get through. My hope is that we all get through looking rumpled but not like a whacked out college professor, crazed and disheveled, wearing the same corduroy pants for what seemed like your whole college career. 

To do that we have to start accepting a little of the reality of our surroundings. Regardless (irregardless) if the cloak is sliding off the table. 

#hugsandhi5s