They say it's my birthday

Yes, today is my birthday. I have reached level 46 of this video game of life. It's been a wild ride of a year, to be honest with you. It has been for everyone, mind you, but quite a lot has happened, even personally, that I feel the need to do a birthday edition of the year in review.

COVID, unfortunately, continues to be a thing we have to deal with. The biggest problem our society is facing right now, in my humble opinion, is greed. The pharmaceutical industry wants to make money on the treatments of this, so they patented the vaccines, and the rich (and white) countries are buying up all of the vaccines, double and now triple-vaccinating themselves, while poorer nations still haven't received one vaccine. As a result, of course, we keep seeing new "variants" cropping up. Then of course are the crazy anti-vaxxers, who are making everything worse for everyone involved... Well, it's not going away anytime soon. I guess I have made peace with having to wear a face mask everywhere I go publicly now... Although now health sites are telling us to replace our cloth masks as the old ones are probably gross by now, even with washing... Ugh! Whatever...

I have experienced quite a lot of emotions this year. Quite a few really low periods, one super really low period, and a few positive changes in my life as well that made me feel good. In March this year, I hit an all-time low that I've never quite experienced before. It was a little scary, now looking back, at how bleak my point of view was at that time. I felt absolutely hopeless and felt like "What's the point of all of this? I give up!" It was scary and confusing and I can't begin to tell you how painful that felt, in my mind, in my solar plexus, in my soul. It was the lowest I had ever felt before, and I've had some real lows in my life, but never like that. I didn't want to get out of bed. I didn't want to deal with anyone. I wasn't going in to work at all, and wasn't even calling to let them know I wasn't going in. I felt like giving up on life completely. I hated everything about my life and wanted to destroy what little I actually had working for me. I didn't care who was getting hurt in the process. I was so busy trying to hurt myself with self-sabotage that I didn't even realize my actions might have been hurting anyone else. I didn't care. I was done with everything.

When I was finally able to stumble out of bed and get to work, super late, my supervisor obviously had some words to say to me. That's when I realized my actions were hurting other people. I never realized that. I didn't feel like I was important at all in the grand scheme of life and no one would really miss me if I was gone. That apparently was not true. Realizing I may have hurt the best boss in the world really made me take a step back and I decided I really needed to break out of this funk but had no idea how I was going to do that. I went to the hospital, got turned away because of COVID, had a magical encounter with a couple of spirit animals that insisted I slowed down enough to hear my phone ring, and got directed to go to the ER. From there, I got into a program to temporarily assess me and put me on a healing path that I am still working on. I stopped one medication that was causing me to feel overwhelmed by everything, and finally got the diagnosis I had assumed I had for a number of years: ADD. I started using Ritalin and it has literally changed my life. I can actually read now without having my mind wander mid-sentence. I can follow a conversation and know what the other person is saying without drifting out of it, also mid-sentence. I also got connected with a new therapist that I immediately had a good vibe with.

Work has been... How best to describe it?... Chaotic? Unpredictable? Scary? Frightening? Troublesome? Stressful? Shit storm? All of the above? It has been one crazy year. Still recovering from all the various COVID closures of 2020, a backlog of shipping, a lack of shipping containers in China because they all shipped out for Christmas in 2020 and never came back... Causing a huge increase in costs of shipping, delays everywhere. The Suez Canal ship that destroyed everything! Then there was the weird weather... In China, massive floods from monsoon rains affected one of the regions we do most of our business in, causing major shipping delays. Then the prices raised to ridiculous levels for shipping containers or vessels leaving China, so most companies decided to wait it out until the prices went down, but guess what happened? They never went down, and now of course there is a huge demand for products and absolutely no way to get things out as ships are getting overbooked and some products get pushed aside for other customers who have the big bucks to influence them more. We've expanded our online presence, and even opened an Amazon store in our name, but... May have lost a huge key account recently. It's been quite a scary and stressful year for us all. With 3 weeks left to go in the year... I don't think I've wanted a vacation as much as I do now, ever.

Speaking of crazy weather, have you heard about how badly our weather was here in BC this year? We got everything! Heat domes and rain rivers. Forest fires, flooding, separated only by 2 months or so. All major roads leading into our region were out. Supplies are low. On the same day the government announces restrictions on fuel, all gas stations across the region were swamped with vehicles as many panicky people decided their needs outweighed the needs of the many, and yeah, many stations ran out of gas that weekend. This flooding is still in the region, we got hit with even more rain rivers, and it will take more time to fix.

Honestly, this last bit kind of put me in a bad mood again. It sometimes feels like we are experiencing a societal collapse or existential crisis, either from COVID, climate change, or greedy/selfish people, or again all of the above. So much is getting thrown at us all at once. If anything, this should sound off warning bells that we need to change our ways before things get even worse than this, which I would normally have said is unimaginable, but at this point seems more inevitable. Yet the same people in charge continue to do the same things over and over again expecting different results, and are making empty promises about changing things 30 years from now, instead of RIGHT NOW like we actually need. They are insane as far as I'm concerned. I was beginning to lose my faith in humanity. So yeah, the last couple of weeks, dealing with all these worries from the past couple of years, and still not fully recovered mentally from the horrible He Who Shall Not Be Named years in office in the U.S. really put me in a sour mood. I didn't want myself to end, as I did back in March, but was starting to think that maybe our society deserves to collapse.

Throughout the course of the year, and also as part of my recovery from the March madness I experienced (I might start calling it that now...), I have been trying to get back in touch with people again. I started going back to Emotions Anonymous meetings regularly again (though virtually), and am fully intending on working on the steps this time around. I also decided to combat my loneliness and tendencies to isolate myself and decided to look somewhere to find a place I could volunteer so I could meet some people with some similar interests and maybe make some friendships along the way. As a person recovering from severe bullying as a kid, I have often struggled to find friends or keep them, as it were. COVID has shown a lot of people who relied on others how devastating loneliness can be, but I was feeling that loneliness long before COVID hit. I felt if I continued to do the same things over and over again yet expecting different results, I was also as insane as I often feel the powers that be are. I found a website for volunteering and looked to see what was available for any interests I had. One of the first things to pop up was the Community Arts Council of Richmond. I asked to volunteer. From there, I got assigned to a Promotions committee, and now, just recently, I was elected to sit on the board of the CACR! Yes, I am now a Director, and I've attached myself to lead a new project I'm super excited about, but will get more in detail about later, so stay tuned for that announcement early next year.

When I found myself starting to feel like people are inherently stupid creatures and probably deserve to be destroyed, what made me feel better was both of those things. Sharing with EA, and speaking with a friend in the group on the phone, really helped me deal with those negative thoughts and I felt better after. Then I connected with the Chair of the CACR who wanted to sit down with me and meet face to face and suggested to meet today, which gave me an excuse to leave the house on my birthday. I was not feeling like being around people Friday evening because of my mood, but EA brought me out of that train of thought so I was able to say yes to this. We had a lovely conversation and I feel excited about being involved in an arts organization.

2021 and reaching my new level of 46 was quite the bumpy ride, indeed. I'm not sure if I will be as optimistic as my Sagittarius sun sign says I should be, or if I will find more reasons to determine that people suck. What I know for sure is things have definitely changed this year. What that change looks like and how I feel about it is up to me to figure out.

Thanks for reading, for those who do.