4th of July Musings, Down Days, Facebook Breaks, and How to Cope
- At July 05, 2020
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Blog
- 0
Fourth of July Musings
We had the first sunny day in a while for the fourth, ironically, since all celebrations, parades, and fireworks are cancelled. Glenn and I took a solitary walk by the Sammamish river, taking note of the flowers in bloom. There were way more “home” fireworks than usual, though, which my cats didn’t enjoy, and they lasted a couple of days, starting at 3 PM today.
We, like probably a lot of people, watched Hamilton for the first time last night of Disney+ (even though Disney is the devil
™) and I was glad I kept some Kleenex on hand. I’d listened to the soundtrack but again, like a lot of people, couldn’t afford the tickets when the show came to Seattle, and it had more impact watching the faces of the performers. I particularly liked the “rewind” effect for the “Satisfied” song; I’d never seen that in musical theater before. Glenn and I couldn’t help doing some extra research on the characters during the movie, learning interesting tidbits (like Lafayette, who was a terrific hero in the American revolution, did not have the same luck in the French revolution, which he successfully led in the beginnings, including trying to abolish slavery and write a Declaration of Independence for France, and had to be rescued from jail after falling out of favor with radical factions. He ended up coming back to America later in life, and lived a long life.) Eliza Hamilton’s life was pretty inspiring outside of the musical, because of what she managed to accomplish despite having no voting rights (not many rights at all, actually), working for important causes, which made me think of the role of women in early America (basically, never getting credit for getting a lot done.) Anyway, the musical was much more fun and entertaining than my high school AP American history class, which I notoriously fell asleep in fairly often, and better than going to fireworks, which always give me asthma attacks, anyway. I posted a picture of a Northern Flicker in my flower planter as a better type of colorful display. What can I say? I’m not really a fireworks-and-the-4th kind of girl, in the best of times.
Down Days, Facebook Breaks, and How to Cope
I’ve been down this last week, I confess, a combination of me still recovering from that root canal and MS stuff acting up, Glenn getting sick (which he almost never does) and the overwhelming glut of bad news. One of my remedies is to try staying completely off of Facebook (which still means I’m checking in five minutes a day, but definitely not the hour+ I used to spend) which kind of combines the idea of getting away from Facebook because they’ve been doing some not-good-stuff and also experimenting on the effect of Facebook on well-being. Lately people have just been extra not-cool on social media, probably a combination of tension and frustration and constant stress and anxiety. I wondered if I had been posting mostly negative stuff, too, although I strive to post pictures of flowers and birds when I can, just to give people something nice to look at, at least. The social isolation might be getting to me, as well as not having a lot of the support mechanisms – like physical therapy, and in-person doctor appointments, seeing friends, going to bookstores and coffee shops or doing basic self-care – that I was really pretty used to. I’ve tried to spend some of the pent-up energy on writing, submitting and editing my two book manuscripts, but I haven’t been writing as much as I’d like to lately, and I’ve been sleeping more hours, with way more nightmares than usual.
So what are you doing to cope? Drinking your favorite grape soda, playing your favorite music in the morning, doing more or less work/physical activity/pet cuddling than usual? I totally recommend a Hamilton watch, if you haven’t seen it yet. Despite the the Kleenex, it was ultimately an uplifting watch, and it beats the hell out of Hallmark Christmas movies.