PRESENT DAY SNIPPET: WHAT WAS I DOING DURING MY TIME IN THE US?
Err…I meant to write this weeks ago
I’ve been home from Florida for just shy of a month now. I loved being there and I think it was part of a healing journey for me, seeing my mum, stepfather, and baby sister. Unfortunately, I pretty much only had weekends with them because, besides a day off here and there and two charity volunteer days (kindly paid for by my work), I was working my day job (as an editor) from 6 am to 2 pm Florida time (EST) – or on Wednesdays from 5 am to 1 pm to make my meeting with my boss in Singapore (and in general to align with my UK work schedule which is designed so that we can edit the tail end of Asia publications and news and the beginning of Europe before the US takes over on shift), so I was going to bed early or getting up super early. But either way, I had some time with them and that’s invaluable after not being back in the US for five years (besides missing my gorgeous husband).
I wrote about my travel journey a little below if you want to have a read.
But flying back right before the week between Christmas and the Christmas/Boxing Day break – during the absolute busiest publishing period at my day job – plus the Christmas madness, plus working the interim days between Christmas and the New Year (the copy editing department never gets to sleep because even if we aren’t publishing reports and news in Europe, Asia still has publishing deadlines), I got sidetracked. I didn’t have time to write. That may not strictly be true: I didn’t have the energy to write is more like it, with jet lag, dizziness, sleeping late, and then being drained after work.
Emma Gannon writes about it here about “What if we do have time” which is what I have found with this Substack venture all along. I am always so busy but I can spare an hour here or there in my day or week or weekend to write if I want to! (But I fully appreciate that’s because I have no children and my husband does more – way more – than his share of the domestic load, but that’s a post for another day. I don’t know how parents juggle it all.)
Then the new year rang in and blam, I was hit with the most devastating news ever: the passing of my beloved family friend, Derek. I wrote that piece during a deep period of mourning and sadness. I didn’t have my usual levels of motivation or energy.
From spending every week writing thousands of words, to having several weeks of zero words (or just my freelance words) was a new experience. But I started something, I’m 38 posts in and I plan to continue until the end: until I get to the story of meeting Michael and all I’ve learned in the culmination of that experience. Then, I still have places to go after that. I have reflections on being child-free, on friendships, travel stories, and so forth so it’ll be a long-term project.
I was thinking about this the other day about how in curating the stories about these men I encountered, I’m often leaving out a rich cast of characters. For example, HSS had a couple of really close friends whom I adored. One of them got a type of cancer really young and he was a virgin despite being really handsome and lovely. He did survive it and I hope he’s well and happy but I lost touch with him after the breakup. He had another friend he crashed with from time to time too and he’s happily married with children. I have other male and female friendships that I haven’t had time to explore too because, let’s face it, my posts are usually far too long anyway. Curation and writing are funny things. Novels capture slices of life but real life doesn’t have a cast of ten neatly boxed characters. I’ve known hundreds of people in my life, coming and going: significant people with lasting impact, acquaintances, people who had an impact on me (but maybe I had less impact on them), and people in between. There are many unique, funny, lovely, quirky people that I’ve met that I’ll unfortunately write little about but they’re there lurking on the edges of my stories: maybe after I’ve written the journey to get to Michael, I’ll be able to write a little about some of these other significant friendships as well.
Back to my time in Florida in November/December, I won’t go into long-winded stories (as I’m wont to do) but it was lovely seeing friends, friends who knew me during these fated undergrad and grad school days, days when I was a lot less “together.” They’d last seen me in person years ago when I was in the trough of my life: my divorce, where I was lost, shocked, and directionless.
It was lovely to catch up with Brittany and Kelly (her little sister) in Columbus for the weekend and see the beautiful home they’ve created together with Kelly’s dogs and Brittany’s cats (plus my Jack-Jack). I’ll be eternally grateful to Brittany for caring so well for him. We reminisced about old times, gossiped about people we knew and where they are now (not in a bad way), and ate at some amazing places. We went on the Riverwalk and went to a fun (read: sorta weird but amusing) museum exhibition of “awkward family photos.” Boy, did that not disappoint. I look forward to seeing Brittany again as during that weekend I was a little flat with jet lag and tired after adapting to my new schedule. You can’t have read any of my Substack without mention of Brittany. She’s been there for many years in my life.
I ran into my old stepsister, Carla, twice and her son, Liam. She’s Hannah’s half-sister on her father’s side and I’m Hannah’s half-sister on her mother's side. I’ve known Carla since she was about eight years old (and I was ten or eleven) and let’s just say she’s in her 30s now. She was as sweet as ever. She always did have a kind heart and I wish her nothing but good things for her future as she rebuilds her life (very sadly) as a young widow.
Kristy came to see me too (of Kristy and Cole, my grad school “parents”). She now has her PhD (yay!) and Cole is finishing up his. Kristy has one of those personalities that you can’t help but love. She is loud, bubbly, warm, and fun. My mama treated us all to dinner and we “about laughed the restaurant down” (to be read in your best Southern belle accent).
Then, finally, Chester came to visit for a few hours; he’s my long-suffering guy bestie. We went for sushi with Hannah because Hannah and I love sushi so much. He almost didn’t let me buy him dinner after all the dozens (hundreds?) of meals he bought for me as a broke grad student (thanks) because he was a real adult with a real job by then. He’s another one (like Dr Luke) that was of indeterminate age back then. But turns out he’s a year younger than Michael. And like my Michael doesn’t seem to age (do they have a painting in the attic or are they vampires?).
I spent my lunch breaks sitting on the front porch, looking out to the lake, or walking Teddy – Hannah’s Yorkshire terrier yappy lovely thing – around the lake but he was only a good companion if you didn’t run into other people (he’s a protective little arsehole) or other animals (he wants to chase the ducks and herons and whatever else – I’m thankful we didn’t spot a gator). If we saw another person, he spent his time walking behind me to bark his head off at the “threat” thus rendering our walk useless as I had to keep dragging him along (or carrying him home). And the lake is nearly a mile around.
Some lunches Hannah or Mum would bring me lunch or take me to lunch and that was lovely. We had dinners as a family. Mum and I watched the PBS version of Little Women, which was sweet and well done and the odd bit of trash TV. I spent time writing too – freelance and Substack – and overall, I had a wonderful time.
I’d love to go again and work from Florida if I could take Michael with me so we’d have to make it so we could go and he could take a week or two unpaid as I don’t want either of us to use up our annual leave balance on that for now. I plan for us to go to Florida for a longer visit on an actual holiday next year (2025), though – fingers crossed. We may do the whole tourist Disney thing and I’d love to take Michael to do things that I loved in grad school like tubing and going to the beach.
Some posts I earmarked last month to share and my snippet of thoughts on them (a sort of new roundup thing other Substackers sometimes do):
Alyssa Derogatis’ 21 things I would tell my 21-year-old self from her
Substack – I love the title and I completely relate. I could’ve done with this when I was 21, especially number 3 about chasing emotionally unavailable men as well as points 5 and 8 – ask yourself “do I like them” not “do they like me” and hooking up with someone will not make them like you, respectively. But then again, I think I chose who I hooked up with and enjoyed it! Still, it’s a good, short post.From
’s Jessica DeFino: 'Now that I’m a mother, I’m mourning my old, pretty self’ and just remove the word “mother.” I’m annoyed I didn’t realise how “attractive” I was back then and how I took it for granted and wasted so much life worrying about how I looked and being underconfident and insecure and wishing I was rail thin like a supermodel – and rationalising that I was ugly and disgusting if I wasn’t.Along those lines,
’s Anita Bhagwandas’s piece on “I’ve gone from ‘fat’ to ‘fluffy’” and how damaging “fat phobic” society is on women. I hard relate to many of Anita’s columns and even though, rationally, I know the media has pushed these ideals on me (on society), I still struggle. Body size and “beauty” are an identity and I realise now that I exist in a bigger body that I’m not happy with how much that has mattered to me always (but that’s my next therapy tackle).- ’s “Liberal women should not marry Republican men” – it’s depressing how much I relate to this topic having had a Republican first husband (but I’m sure I’ll discuss something like this when I get to the posts about him – which may be the most difficult ones to write). Thankfully, Michael and I are politically aligned.
- ’s piece on “How NOT to have children” deeply resonated with me. As someone who adores children, has no idea if I can have them, has a husband who doesn’t want them, and is sort of contemplating if I ever want one, especially given my already “geriatric maternal age,” it’s lovely to see women talk about the beauty of not having children. There are so many women who talk about how amazing it is to have children but not enough about not having them. I don’t think for a minute my life will be empty without children because I love my life as it is. How can I even know either way since I only know this way? Plus, I am very lucky to have a niece, two nephews, and my cousins’ children – and I’ve seen them all grow up. They’re all lovely and gorgeous and funny and cute but I can also give them back. In my pro-con list of “should I become a mother,” the cons always outweigh but people often say I’m overthinking. Also, my husband is already forty-five and would it even be fair to him? I married him knowing his position and he married me knowing my “maybe” position (but he said he wouldn’t deny me the chance but then does that alter his future in an unfair way?). All I know from observing mothers is that being a mother is very hard work and am I even prepared for that at my age? We have no idea if we can even have children, if we are fertile, and part of me thinks life will give us an answer either way. Watch this space before I hit forty maybe (which is closer than I’d like to admit).
Anything
writes on her Substack, It’ll be Fun, They Said, always makes me laugh like her post about a UTI and Finland but her Hot Husband post had me in stitches.- ’s post (from The Sober Millennial) about being a Grinch at Christmas and all the obligations that are stressful resonated with me too. A few years ago, I decided to cut back on my ever-mounting Christmas gift to focus on my niece and nephews – and grandmother and an occasional other person or two. Stress eliminated. It’s not that I don’t like giving gifts but I also have too many things and have been trying to streamline and downsize my life for years. I don’t give many gifts and don’t receive many in return which eliminates an extra 10+ items a year that I have to put away.
I also earmarked a post from
at Midlife Mess with Annie Scott, but it seems all past posts are archived as paid, but she wrote a brilliant piece about asserting Christmas boundaries.Plus, I always love
’s writing. Every piece resonates with me. And the financial updates from – really, check her out!
I meant to say some variation of the above after Boxing Day but life got in the way, but this weekend I hope to get ahead of myself and write half a dozen posts or so and get ahead on freelance too so that life won’t catch up with me so spectacularly.
I mean I also have to book an eye appointment, a teeth cleaning, call my car insurance to ask why it’s gone up (surely, I’m middle-aged now and it should be going down – oh the joys of adulting and that should have been the only benefit of ageing). Michael’s insurance has always been lower than mine by several hundred pounds and it keeps going down, which I’m more than a lot miffed off about. Who else hates all the constant “life admin”? I mean I do it because there’s not an option not to but I would say if I had lots and lots of money, I’d pay a PA but then what’s the point of not knowing how to do things or getting out of the habit? Good job I’m not “blessed” with this dilemma.
Next up, the hot Scandi Lit professor I briefly had a fling with before he left in the middle of the night.
Here are my last two present-day snippets.
Read my latest post in my regularly scheduled content.
Let me know if you have any thoughts you’d like to share.
Thanks for the shoutout. Though a little late, still, Happy New Year!!
Ahhh you’re so kind to recommend my piece! Thank you 🙏 I have removed the paywall in thanks - Happy New Year!