500 Words

Sometimes I really hate my brain. Today, as a totally random example, has been utterly awful. I woke up out of a nightmare half an hour before my alarm, spent the next 20 minutes fishing around for someone to distract me so I would make sure I didn’t fall back asleep (and resume being pursued by a creepy monster while stringing multiple men along romantically and trying not to miss a ferry) and the next hour trying to persuade myself to start my day.

Today Girl Scout cookies arrived at my office, care of one of my co-workers’ daughter. Every year I make sure to get cookies from at least two girls, more if I can stand to bring that many more cookies into the house. My husband has a serious addiction to Thin Mints - I’m more of a Trefoils girl myself but to each their own - and I believe deeply in scouting being a positive influence in girls lives, and want to support that as much as I can.

Another woman in the industry shared her experiences working at a tech company, yesterday. Reading it was heartbreaking, because no one should have to be propositioned by people with authority over them. No one should have their career held back because they asked for basic workplace protections. No one should be punished for following the rules. No one should have to balance their love of the thing they do with the toxic environment that surrounds it.

I can’t remember a time when sleep and I didn’t have what my friend would refer to as a “complex relationship”. When I was young, I would wait till my parents went to bed, and turn the light back on and read for another couple hours. As I got older, schoolwork started to be a good excuse to stay up later, although I was still running a morning routine timed to adults with hour-plus commutes.

I really like doing things for other people. My shrink says I’m very empathetic - which can be a bad thing, it turns out - and as a result, making other people happy is a pretty reliable way to give myself a boost, too. I’m just as likely to send a random person a present on a Thursday in June as I am to send an actual Christmas present. It turns out you can be both empathetic, and terrible at gift-giving holidays, who knew?

A twitter buddy of mine is committing to writing 500 words a day on some topic, and invited others to join her. Feel free to write alongside us, exercise those grammar muscles, and do a little wordsmithing. The hashtag on twitter is #500wordsAbout. I learned to knit from a friend at work. I saw it as a way to bond with other women I respected, to learn something new, and to get to play with soft and pretty things.