Entry 104: 98 Days, or 78 Days, or Eternity in Much Ado About Nothing

WELL… Life will certainly do what it wants! I was going back and forth last night regarding the Blue Dot meeting and ultimately decided, “Why not?” It is better to be active and trying than to just be upset. So, I got in the car and started driving. NOW, my phone has been having ISSUES. Like, I’ll plug it in when I go to sleep and when I wake up it is only at 58%! Like, I’ll go to work and come home and my phone is already at 7%! I’d had the phone plugged in as soon as I got home from work, so when I checked it while driving to the next town over for the meeting.... 3% battery power. IT HAD BEEN CHARGING and was at 3% power! So that’s… unacceptable. And the phone died ENTIRELY en route so… I had to make a decision. Try to get to where I was going the way I knew… which was NOT the fastest or most direct route, and show up for a 6:30 meeting at 6:45… while not having a working phone from now until whenever I could get to a Verizon Store.... OR I could go to the Verizon Store to see if it is a problem with the phone or with my charging system! Honestly, considering the need for the phone for anything from checking e-mail to getting directions to texting to alarm clock… going a full 24 hours without my phone being able to work at all sounded like it was inviting too much disaster. SO, turn the car around and go to the Verizon Store! I arrived there a little before 7 p.m. and the sole clerk was helping a customer. And helping that customer for a while. It was a convoluted issue and the clerk was going above and beyond but the matter can be best summarized as “Older relative needed a new phone but didn’t or wasn’t able to come out and get it; so he sent his daughter and granddaughter, but they didn’t have any of his PIN or ACCOUNT or Information so every step of the process was more involved than it needed to be. I was perfectly understanding of the situation but it did… take… a while! Then when we got to my problem, we threw my phone on a wireless charger and powered it up to 13%… then watched when it went from 13% to 9% in less than five minutes. And because my phone is 4 years old… that’s practically ancient in our new Tech World. So, I wound up getting a new phone. And getting/setting up a new phone takes time. Store closes at 8 but I wasn’t done until around 8:30. Though, the clerk was chatty. Like… telling me about her dreams, family problems, goals kind of chatty. So I got to do a Pastor/Therapist kind of listening, questioning, and suggesting. I told her about Vicarious Trauma and cycles of abuse. Told her that however bad the family dynamic is, when her boyfriend gets out of Prison he can’t “settle things with his brother” because he’ll be on probation and unable to rely on violence to fix family issues but that can be motivation to get the family talking and trying to fix issues before he gets released. It was very much… like back in College when I was doing Peer Counseling in pursuit of my potential Seminary future.

Of course, I came home and had a lot of work still left to do to get the phone more than just “set up to use” but all of the accounts restored, passwords saved, everything. Which annoyed Nala to fuck because she didn’t get to go to the Dog Park over the weekend, she didn’t get to go to the Dog Park on Monday, it was pitch black so we couldn’t do a walk, and I’m just staring at my phone?! Yeah. She wasn’t thrilled. The trade off, the good news, is a weekend with my parents will be perfect for her. Dad walks her twice a day and she has a big yard to run around and another dog to hang out with and both a man and a woman and I know she likes having women around. So… it will be okay but… she was NOT happy. She did stay in bed while I got in and tried to sleep. It took another 2 hours to go from In Bed to Asleep and that’s the second night in a row!

When I woke up, Nala had moved to her chair in the living room. This may be because I’m still sleeping on the broken mattress, so tossed and turned in my sleep too much but… I’m theorizing something else. My bedroom was COLD when I woke up. COLD. Where Nala was on her chair was in direct sunlight. So, that could be it, too.

Hustled to work. Still no word from the Director on our first reading or cast list. Which… amplifies me being nervous. But I’m already spending time every day trying to memorize the script as it was first published, and we’ll make adjustments when we get the edited script… some time. Work was one of those days where, you sit in the desk and immediately start working. I’m back up to 164 Hearings this afternoon, which takes preparation. Then after those hearings, I have… my work cut out for me here at the office! But hopefully not too late so I can get Nala some Dog Park Time and do some minor cleaning in the house. And then tomorrow? ALSO going to be a lot a lot of work preparing for Pretrial Conferences and making sure I’m not massively behind when I’m not here on Friday.

Current plan?
Go to lunch. Text Laura. Come back. Do Hearings. Do Work. Go Home. Go Dog Park. Come Home. I’ll admit… I’m living in this weird limbo experience. I know that there is a lot to do. Whether that means cleaning/organizing/doing my house… or cleaning/organizing my office (I still don’t have my degrees on the wall here!)… or going through the Garage or the Kitchen.... like.... on some intellectual level I feel the weight of all of these things that are just never getting done at all. But the generational burnout is real and I think… I’ve just been running at “The Sky Is Falling” for so long, I don’t have it in me anymore.
I don’t think it would serve anyone well but personal and global traumas are… woof!
The same year I was trying to get away from the most abusive ex I’ve ever had, we had 9/11… and then 8 months later, I graduated from High School.
I graduated from College in 2007… just in time for the Great Recession!
Got married and started law school in 2011; which set us up for Law School Graduation in 2014… in time for massive cuts at the DOC which required my insane hours at the Law Library and the rise in psychopaths, drugs, and violence in the jail.
First Lawyer Job was in an openly racist small Iowa County in 2016- as Trump was running for President.
Fleeing from there and trying to save my marriage, signed on with a First Year Firm that didn’t know what the hell they were doing; but it was Immigration Law under a Trump Presidency.
COVID mutated the entire landscape as I was getting divorced and still working Domestic Violence and Sex Crimes… which were impacted by COVID. All while working a Juvenile Court system that had lost a million dollar lawsuit for abusing kids.
And now we have yet another “unprecedented” economic down turn on the heels of open discussion of the American President ignoring the Constitution and actively planning for Military Parades and possible Martial Law after the 20th. While working a job where the office has literally never been fully staffed to the point where our schedules still list things under “New Hire’s Responsibility” despite there not being a New Hire.
Soooooooooo… that’s where I am. Kind of in this perpetual recognition that there is shit I need to do.... but not getting it done because the repeated mantra has been “your burnout doesn’t go away and it doesn’t make anything better; but your entire adulthood has been marked by personal and professional and political calamity so it makes sense that you’re in a perpetual cycle of functional freeze.

Sorry, took a bleak turn there. Just… it is frustrating trying to do everything and feeling like I’m mostly doing nothing.