By accident, JUST NOW, Reader, I learned what this little horseshoe shape on my toolbar means:
In all my years of writing stories here, I’ve never really been interested enough to simply HOVER over that and see what it could do. Well, let me just tell you, it offers up a whole host of special characters like ↵ Œ ™ © Ψ and other stuff I’ll never use, but it’s nice to just see the options.
I’ve also never changed my font color (that I can remember, Reader – maybe I have at one point, who knows), but in my lesson of discovery, that’s up there, too, so I made those special characters purple just for funzees.
This is definitely the oddest time in my lifetime, and probably yours, too, Reader. 9/11 was a very different time, too, but it was a different different.
I’m not sad or mad or anxious about being home. I’m relieved I have a nice home that I love to be sequestered in. I look around and have a lot of projects that need to be – and should be – being handled during this down time, yet it hasn’t been the time yet to do them, so there they are, still waiting.
And that’s okay. I’ve given myself permission to be okay with not doing them yet. I’ll get to them, but it doesn’t have to be all in one big swoop.
Yesterday I was down the rabbit hole of sadness and anxiety and feeling bereft and as if life just didn’t matter any more. I know, so dramatic, but it was the feelings and so I crawled under the covers and cried for probably a good three hours. The kinda crying where I couldn’t breath crying, and then I was convincing myself I had Covid-19, and that’s what I get for going out to buy food, which made me cry more. I’m fairly certain my Doom and Gloom mindset came from #1 too much News on the tv, #2 reading American Dirt and wow, I’m now sad for all refugees and want to find a job in the future where I can help them and #3 Tiger King which was one fucked-up group of people that frankly I don’t care about, but I do care about all those animals. So I trifecta-ed myself into feeling dismayed with the world.
I’m only sharing that with you, Reader, because sometimes it’s okay to not be positive all the time. Mostly I’m a sunny-outlook person, and generally find the funny twist in life. But sometimes you can also get sucked down by all the bullshit – the hypocrisy of people, the awful and selfish and racist buffoon of a president, the virus, the financial mess, etc… and sometimes you just have to wallow in it.
But it’s not okay to get stuck there. That’s when all The Bad Things happen, and the next thing you know you’re being featured on 600-lb Life and Hoarders all at the same time. One of those problems is handle-able, but not both at the same time. We have to space out our dysfunction.
So this morning (noon….ssssh…no judging, I’m still fragile-ish) I got up and did two things I could control: A good hard-scrubbing shower, and made the bed. And instead of signing right on to work, I took this next hour for myself and a cuppa coffee, and decided to write a smidge of words and get in my own head a little bit, but in a good way. And the first thing I found by complete accident is that sometimes – sometimes – there’s Special Characters right in front of you and you never took the moment to notice it before, and it could offer up some interesting little things for you. Reader,
I’m certain you have Special Characters around you – things you may not have noticed or paid attention to before. It could be a thing or a people or a flitter of a birds wing right outside your window. I’m not here to tell you what to do, Reader. Hell, I barely know what to do myself most of the time. But maybe, just because it’s a weird-o time, if you’re feeling a little overwhelmed or anxious or just want to cry, #1 go do it and #2 try to find that special character that you never noticed before and hover over it for a second and see what it offers up.