Today, quite out of the blue, I received an offer to purchase my domain name. I’ve had zanshin.net registered since February 1996; i.e., this site will be ten years old in just a few weeks.
I really don’t know what to think about the offer as I’ve never considered not having zanshin as my domain. My initial reaction is that it would be far to weird to not have it; besides I’m finally getting some good traffic to the site, and my google rank is growing, and zanshin.net is the number one result returned when you google my name.
Having just lost Michele, who came into my life ten years ago this month, I don’t think I’m in the mood to part with another, huge part of myself. For now anyway, I’ll be declining the offer.
The hardest part about going through this grief process isn’t that other people can’t experience what I am experiencing. They couldn’t experience what I was going through when everything was great either. No, the hardest part is the loss of the one place where I was assured of a response that worked for me. No matter what the situation I knew that I could vent, spew, cry, rage, sulk, or whatever until I had expressed the emotional reaction to an outside stimulus. Michele never tried to hurry that process or fix anything for me until I was done with my emotional work. I learned over time how to do that for her as well.
Today when something happens in my life that has a larger than normal emotional impact I have no safe place to discuss it or sort through it. I have tried to rely upon my friends but what I fear I am doing is driving them away with the sheet weight of the emotions I bring to bear on them. Michele and I forged an incredibly strong platform together that supported us through thick and thin. I am coming to realize that none of my friends will be able to step in and shore things up. Not all the way. Maybe all my friends combined and in rotation could give me most of what I lost and now need. But it isn’t what they signed up for, and I fear my lack of tack through grief is starting to damage some friendships.
We all have habits that support us and allow us to function in daily life. Over the course of the ten years I knew Michele I developed many habits that worked for me, and complimented our relationship. Those habits that she was a part of are now causing me more pain that comfort, more stress than relief, more sorrow than joy. Letting go of those parts of me that were exclusive to Michele is excruciatingly painful. It means letting go of a part of me, forever. Even if I find a new partner down the road, and even if I have a wonderful full relationship with that person, the Mark that Michele knew died with her. And the Mark that is left behind is struggling to develop new habits, new coping mechanisms for this strange and terrifying new reality. Leaning on my friends has helped, but it is adding to my pain. This new raw Mark doesn’t know how to interact with friends from before. Like a stroke survivor relearning how to walk or speak, I must relearn how to be in the friendships that have survived her death.
And learning anything new when all seems pointless is more difficult that I can imagine or overcome. I am afraid that I will now start to retreat even further from society as a whole and the small circle of friends I have in specific. I want their advice and I don’t want it, I want them to help and I want them to leave me alone. I am a mass of contradictions and opposing forces, ready to dissolve into tears or fly off the handle. I want to be cared for and I want to be left alone.
I no longer know who I am or recognize myself. I am having to learn a whole new personality while dealing with the world at large like nothing ever happened. I feel as if I am insane for the world makes no sense to me any more.
it was cold here last Friday.
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To my mind there are several kinds of naps, with a nap being any sleep outside of the normal go-to-bed-at-night-and-get-up-in-the-morning sleep.
Chair Nap Any nap where you are more or less upright in position. Chairs, couches, and airplane seats all provide locations for chair naps. These are usually more of a doze than actual sleep; often times you are dimly aware of what is going on around you and you cycle between wakefulness and sleep.
Couch Nap Couches support two kinds of napping, upright and supine. Laying down on the couch usually leads to a deeper nap, perhaps even longer. Sometimes an afghan or blanket is employed for warmth or comfort. Very satisfying overall.
On the Bed Nap Moving on from the couch we have naps taken on the bed. Here pillows can be employed, and you are already conditioned that this is a place for sleeping. These naps can be several hours and are quite decadent. Laying down in the middle of the day? Luxury.
In the Bed Nap At the top of the nap hierarchy is a form of napping barely distinguishable from overnight sleeping. All clothing is removed and whatever is worn to bed is put on. You nap under the sheet and covers. These are serious naps, usually taken when ill or extremely tired. However, on occasion they can be quite restorative and rejuvenating.
Today I had a short chair nap, followed by a longer on the bed nap with blanket. Very nice indeed.
As hard as it is to imagine, I am actually lower today than I’ve been in the two months since Michele died. The threat of losing my job in a month has taken the one “stable” part of my life and, not only made it unstable, but made it the biggest threat I’m facing. Most days I have a hard time getting up and facing the day, now I have to find the desire to search for, interview and evaluate, and select a new client/employer/engagement?
I don’t know how to do that. I mean I know how the process works, but I don’t have any desire to even think about the steps. For the past couple of weeks I’ve been coasting along, pleased with having successfully navigated Thanksgiving, and giving myself a break before facing Michele’s birthday and Christmas. Now I have to add to the stress of those events the stress of finding a new contract.
They say you shouldn’t make major decisions when you are hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. HALT. Well, I am angry (about two things now), as tired as I’ve ever been, and lonelier than I thought possible. And now I have to choose a new employment engagement. And choosing wrong means I’ll get to do it again soon.
I want so badly to talk to Michele tonight. I want to talk to her all the time, but I really miss her wisdom and counsel when the shit hits the fan like it did yesterday. She was so good at giving me a place to vent all the frustrations, hurts, and madness that comes from being blind sided. And about goading me until I was truly done with my venting. Then she was able to help me see alternatives and strategies for moving forward. I feel very helpless without the safe place to fall or the wise counsel.
My attitude tonight is one of “I don’t care” and that scares me a little because I know with the emotional period around her birthday and Christmas just a couple of weeks away it is only going to get worse before it gets better. If it gets better.
This is so very hard.
Ah the nomadic life of a technology knowledge worker in the free trade market. In what is becoming an all too familiar scene in my life, I was informed today that my contract will be ending on January 12, 2006. And on a Friday too, so I can spend the entire weekend feeling helpless and out of control.
Could it get any better?
Granted I am being given a month’s notice, which is very generous, and the local market is large and, seemingly, full of opportunity. Of course the next four weeks contain two of the largest holidays of the year and represent the low-point in annual productivity in most office settings. I suspect there aren’t a lot of hiring interviews the last week of December.
My biggest concern is how to measure any potential engagement at a time in my life when deciding what to watch on television is monumentally hard. I am not myself these days, and I shouldn’t have to be, after all, Michele just died 59 days ago. I haven’t even cleaned out her side of the closet yet.
And if you should be a potential employer who stumbled on this site and wonder if it is me, I assure you it some other guy with the same name. If it is the same guy just treat this as a sarcastic blowing off of steam, the regularly scheduled professionalism normally displayed here will return shortly.
I’ve written a two month letter to Michele over on her site. I find that expressing some of what I am thinking and feeling as if I were writing to her (something I did almost daily for most of our relationship) helps me.
After first becoming aware of Shaun Inman’s latest website statistics package, called Mint in September, I have been debating about switching from Shortstat, his previous offering. The new tool costs $30 per domain and the demo movie was really too small to see much detail.
Recently however, I noticed that there was now a viewable demo site, and I saw that Mint was good. Very good. So last evening around 9:00 I took the plunge and purchased a copy for this domain. Setup is a snap: setup a MySQL database through your host provider’s web interface, plug the database connection values into the configuration file for Mint, upload the whole deal to your domain, and add a single line of JavaScript to each page you want to track. What could be simpler?
Within minutes I was already seeing traffic reported via Mint’s very slick interface and, thanks to a nifty “block my visits” cookie option, no worries about counting my hits. While some might question the use of JavaScript to trigger statistics collection is prevents referrer spam from inflating the counts artificially. Best of all there is an API for extending Mint called Pepper.
Nothing better than highly useful software with a well-developed UI, and an even better sense of humor.
There aren’t too many things I regret from the past ten years of my life. Michele and I met online on December 28, 1995 and, until her death two months ago, we were inseparable.
1996 USAKF National Karate Championships The dojo I belonged to hosted the nationals in 1996. I was at the peak of my ability then and managed to place third in kata, behind my Sensei and one other 25+ year veteran, and 6th or 7th in kumite (sparring). Michele dearly wanted to come to Illinois for the proceeding but I was reluctant. I wanted my parents there and I wasn’t prepared to introduce them to each other for fear that my parents would say or do something to drive a wedge in our relationship. Also I knew that I would have virtually no time for Michele and I didn’t want to subject her to the rigors of 16 hour days at the tournament site.
Christmas 1999 We had moved to Charleston South Carolina for my job and neither of us was happy with life in the south. My seasonal depression was particularly bad that year and I didn’t really do much for either her birthday or Christmas. I know she was disappointed. I was disappointed in myself and her acceptance of who I was at the time only made me feel worse.
Winter 2005 Virginia, her mom, was very ill, in and out of the hospital and nursing home. Michele worked for hours every day setting up services for her mom, and she also struggled daily with her decision not to travel to Manteo to be with her mom. Michele knew all to well from past experiences that being around her mom would only make the situation worse and more difficult. Still it was brutally hard for Michele to not see her mom in the final months of her life. I regret that we hadn’t made a trip east in almost two years when Virginia died in June 2005.
Financial Chaos One of my life lessons this lifetime seems to involve extreme financial chaos. More than once Michele would lament the difficulty of living with constant seemingly out of control issues with money. She would always end by saying that she knew this was part of who I am before she agreed to marry me, and that it would always be a part of me. Still it hurt me to know that the chaos that follows my money matters frightened her at a very deep level, bringing up nightmares from her childhood and her parents chaotic financial lifestyle.
Losing Our Home in Illinois While I know she was thrilled to be an Adjunct Instructor at KCKCC, and that her position there never would have come about had we not moved to Kansas, losing our home in Illinois was a huge blow to both of us. We had discovered a very comfortable rhythm to our lives, we loved the house itself, and the pool we installed was more than special to us. That we lost our home in part due to actions on my part has always bothered me. More than once I tried to sort through this with Michele and she always stopped me by saying that I had done nothing wrong, and that she didn’t hold me responsible for what unfolded in the Spring of 2004.
Her grace and acceptance knew no bounds, her compassion for everyone and everything was endless, and her quest for growth and knowledge was inspiring.
I will always measure myself against her high water mark.
Okay. It’s been nearly two months since Michele shuffled off this mortal coil and I am starting to discover a rhythm to my daily existence. For what it is worth, here is a typical evening at Chez Mark.
Normally you arrive home between 4:30 and 5:00. There are chores. Cat water to fill, kitty litter to sift and empty. Perhaps a trash can to empty followed by a brief jaunt, in the now cold evening air, to the dumpster. Dinner is next. Depending upon the emotional barometer the previous weekend there maybe leftovers for easy heat-n-eat. Or not. Cooking, and the subsequent cleanup can easily consume an hour or so. (Get it?)
By now it’s 6:00 or maybe 6:30. Several hours loom before a reasonably bedtime. This is where buying a laptop three years ago really pays off. One laptop plus a WiFi router, a comfortable couch, a throw, and two cats makes for a cozy hour or two in front of whatever the Tivo has captured. The older, larger cat adores having her ears rubbed. But only when she is on the back of the couch or easy chair and you are seated in front of her; so you have to raise your arm uncomfortably to reach, she is the cat and you are the staff after all. Stopping before she is satisfied results in the top of your head being pawed relentlessly until you start again.
The smaller cat loves to curl up on the throw and sleep. This is nice as it warms your legs where she lays, and the companionship warms your soul. Various web surfing activities ensue while Alton Brown does his mad scientist routine or Jon Stewart pillories the day’s “news.” Eventually the battery runs low in the laptop or the Tivo’s collection of tripe wears thin and thoughts of sleep start to make sense. Perhaps a chapter or two in the latest Neal Stephenson novel, or an hour of CSI on the other Tivo before yanking the plug on another day and trying to sleep.
Sleep comes easily some nights and barely at all others. There is no reliable bellwether so you have learned to accept getting up and spending another hour or two puttering around the desk until exhaustion overcomes the internal slide show keeping sleep at bay. Some nights you give in and take a Xanax to chase the twin phantoms of what if and how come away. On those nights when sleep does come easily it does so quickly, and mercifully your dreams do not intrude on your waking in the morning.