Tag Archives: personal

This year was interesting

personal

Had quite a few experiences this past year:

  • I visited Texas for the second time, and:
    • One sister got married in San Antonio
    • I drove an e-scooter for the first time
  • I met my oldest sister in person for the first time in 11 years, with her having driven down from Montana to Georgia;
  • Elections, elections, elections all over;
  • Briefly had a job canvassing for voter registration;
  • Elected to the DPG State Committee;
  • Went to two funerals, one in Fort Valley and one in Sandy Springs;
  • had my public student loans forgiven;
  • reached 150lb in weight, 29in in weight circumference, 0.42 in waist-height ratio for the first time since high school;
  • developed lots of flaking all over my face;
  • began driving my Mom’s car full-time;
  • saw our local Pride festival organization melt down because the director had drug charges thrown at him.

This year, my goals:

  • get a job
  • get therapy
  • get a PCP
  • get health insurance
  • buy an e-bike
  • date?
  • get a used car?
  • clear out the storage
  • get dental work done

As I Begin My 30s…

Uncategorized, ,

8 years ago, I was living with Mom in Warner Robins and attending my freshman year (spring quarter) at Macon State College for IT. Obama was about to be sworn into office as the 44th president. Connie still lived off Armour Road next to the North Columbus Library. We drove back and forth to take care of her two kids when she was at work. It wasn’t a banner year for me, but I was adapting to Macon State and enjoying a lot of the classes. Computers were big in my life. Net neutrality was a major topic on forums. Bittorrent was my primary means of watching movies.

4 years later, I was in my final semester of college. Obama was about to be sworn in for the next half of his presidency. While I was driving back and forth from Macon to Fort Benning to help take care of my sister Connie, I didn’t know what I was going to do with my degree. I was serving as president of the MGSU GSA, hustling my business cards to people in order to do some paid web design work, organizing LGBT awareness on campus, connecting to other GSAs in Macon. I wasn’t prepared for Connie dying of cancer in November, or for living full-time in the Columbus area.

Fast forward to now. I’ve worked as a political activist and web designer for a variety of clients. LGBT peoples’ freedoms have increased by quite a bit and technology has come to envelope more of our homes and bodies, while African Americans have seen police brutality exposed on web video to a mind-numbing extent and trans people are murdered and harassed by lawmakers. I saw an election which sought the participation of a weary nation, and I worked for the more progressive candidates (Bernie, then Hillary and Jim). They lost, and now a man who is sought by his followers for excitement and free-market nationalism about their country will come into office.

But I don’t know how much I’ve grown. I’ve gained much more non-collegiate experience than I could have ever gained in Macon/Warner Robins, but I’m still asked if I’m a CSU student by Columbus residents. 4 years after graduation, I still feel like I’m on extended work-study in college. 4 years later, I’m still not able to capture that feeling of “tech is making us better people” that I felt when taking on the Communications degree in college. I bought deeply into the

In 4 years, I’ll be in my mid-30s. I honestly don’t know where or what I’ll be by then. I don’t know if social media will be more weaponized than it is now. I don’t know if this incoming president will resign in favor of his VP by then. I hazard to think that this Congress will do a lot of damage by then, worse than under Bush Junior when I was in high school. And our tech seems to be moving in a dystopic direction.

No one has an idea as to how to unfuck this trajectory. Everything is supposedly inevitable. Unions will continue to die, global warming will continue, martial law will be declared in Black urban neighborhoods like Chicago, mass murders by gun will get worse, more anti-LGBT and anti-minimum wage increase laws will be enacted at the state level.

And I don’t know where I’ll be by then, in this dystopia.

Maybe I should take on some more student debt and go back to school. Maybe I left college at the wrong time.

Heading back to Albuquerque; or, Third time’s a charm

Uncategorized, , ,

My oldest sister (Wanda), her ex-husband and her youngest daughter have just moved out of Warner Robins back to Albuquerque as of 1:00 am this morning; her older daughter had already left some three weeks prior on a jet, as they had planned a few months ago. I teared up a bit after they pulled out of our driveway for the last time. From the onset, I kinda figured when they first moved here that my sister would move out of the area after a short stay (yes, for her, two years is for her a short stay compared to previous residences in Macon, Columbus, Great Falls, etc.), but I thought long and hard about what – or who – I would be missing now that they’re gone back to her ex-husband’s hometown. She did her washing at our house, she (and her kids) used our desktop when her Internet was out, she came to my college graduation, she moved stuff in and out of our shed, she brought food from Wal-Mart, she dropped me off or picked me up from school when our car was out, etc.; we gave her and her kids shelter when they moved down here, we shuttled her (and an acquaintance from church) to and from work in or near Centerville at night and in the early morning, we hosted two of her other three biological daughters (adopted by a couple in Montana in the 90s) when they came to visit in 2007, we often let her use our car until she was able to get her own used Saturn sedan, we rolled our eyes at every man she dated every week or two, and so on.

But we talked, and we talked often; we got in each others’ faces as well, but we made sure to air quite a bit of laundry when she and I were at our mother’s home. Depending on the subject, I talked more honestly and openly with her than with Mom, and vice-versa; I was more open with Wanda on sexuality (in which she has more experience), religion (in which she is more laissez-faire), and drugs (in which she’s a bit more divided, but not as utterly disdainful to the topic as Mom), while she talked to me most about my future (including whether I’d ever get a job, and in which field or industry). Ultimately, I don’t know how I’ll handle the fact that she and her family are no longer living within walking distance of the house, or that I’ll never be able to ask Wanda about Mom’s whereabouts, or that I’ll have to look outside Mom’s church and our family for….friendship and openness.

Of course, I’m trying, but I know that any further cultivation of ties with the outside world (and any effort on my part to make myself look less "using" of other acquaintances) would require me to reduce my time in Mom’s house, learn programming (and/or graphic design), find a job, get a car, get a phone, and plan to get on the highway to who-knows-where. But at 22, I’m stuck in school, and I fear moving to another area without first getting what I need out of college; programming is what I want to get under my belt before I entertain any serious thought of transferring my credits to another college or university out of state (yes, maybe UNM in Albuquerque).

So right now, I’m depressed about both what will be missing now that Wanda’s gone back and that we’ll be the only close familial kin in this part of Georgia (other than Connie and her two sons in Columbus), but I’m more depressed about not having the get-up-and-go that Wanda manages to assume when she sets her mind to moving to a completely-detached part of the continent. I’m depressed about not having taken earlier initiatives to prop myself up interdependently (if not independently) of Mom. I’m depressed about not getting to my most immediate goals earlier. I’m depressed about my own lack of maturity and my own overbearing sense of settledness.

But now, my mother is sick of her own condition, and of how she’s being treated by the various powers who govern her disability payments, and now I can no longer pine for domestic and financial stability and tranquility as a result. Things must be sold or given away, things must go up in smoke, things must be repaired, things must be paid off, things must be bought, things must be rearranged or moved.

I, or we, must be restless.