It seems as if every seven years, I go through some sort of housing crisis.

It's not intentional mind you.  Far from it.  There are days when I wonder if seven is simply the number at which momentous change is meant to occur for me.

My 7th Birthday was memorable because my mother brought a Cinderella cake to school for my birthday, and that was the year we went to see The Wiz.

I turned 14 during my freshman year in High School.


I turned 21 shortly after my son was born.  

By the age of 28, I was deeply mired in the Housing Issues that would plague me for the next 20+ years,

And here I am again, doing the one thing I swore that I would NEVER do again.  Unfortunately, I am also at my wit's end attempting to keep my daughter and I afloat while we wait for our housing situation to shake out.  Again.

Here is the ubiquitous GoFundMe link: https://gofund.me/03e35986

I appreciate any and all assistance, as well as anyone that would like to share.

​Thank you.

I am sitting here, in front of a laptop that I have had for several years now, preparing to tell you my thoughts of "home".

My now adult daughter is in the kitchen, preparing a salad for a late lunch, as we tend not to eat at prescribed times on weekends.

"Here" is a small, efficiency apartment, located on the premises of a motel, on a busy commercial strip in the City of Gardena, a working class suburb in the South Bay area of Los Angeles County.  We have lived here for the past 7 years, after leaving our last place which I chronicled in great detail here: www.houseofperpetualdistraction.com/thoughts-feelings-impressions-blog/understanding-job



Soon, we will need to move again.

The newest trend, since the start of the Pandemic is "renoviction": the removal of long-term tenants in order to renovate their apartments, and thus charge more money for them. claremont-courier.com/latest-news/longtime-tenants-blindsided-by-threat-of-mass-evictions-67391/?fbclid=IwAR2Ob--uqEHf4zdfZd4j0Y3woGduY-Vg2c_9JrdSoeQKyY853gvISYW2bMc

And this is far from a California only issue: youtu.be/KgTxzCe490Q

Everywhere you turn, anything evenly remotely affordable is being gobbled up by corporate entities, and the long term residents being forced out.  Although this has existed in some form for many years, it has recently reached epidemic proportions.  It is utterly heartbreaking, what is currently happening to the working class, the disabled and the elderly.

Being inside of the trend is no walk in the park, either.

I have spoken of my housing issues several times in this space.

I just sat down and calculated, that between 1992 (my first attempt at moving out and living on my own) and now, I have moved house no less than 20 times.  This includes one homeless shelter, one maternity home near the central part of California, two long term motel stays, two alternating stints of living with other people, and one attempt to live out of state.  And if you are doing the math, my son was on the majority of this journey with me, and took a lot of the brunt of my seeming inability to keep it together for more than a couple of years at a time.  In a lot of ways, I feel for him; it could not have been easy being the child of someone that was still in the process of growing up herself, and trying to cover all bases while trying not to look "weak", or seem as if she couldn't handle "it", whatever "it" happened to be at the moment.

I received the type of education that I would not wish on my worst enemy.

Although I knew that I was to get and keep a job and pay my bills, I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do when I didn't have enough money, and I didn't have the childcare available to cover either a 2nd job, or continuing education to get a better job.  I discovered that temp work in offices (Receptionist, Secretary, etc) paid better than retail, but found out the hard way that the only way to keep working was to be registered with more than one agency at a time, and try to string the assignments together with as little gap in between assignments as possible.  I also found out that most companies saw the majority of temps as tainted in some way, as well as VERY expensive (one place told me point blank that they would not pay for employees) and refused to hire permanent employees from temp agencies.  Up until I finally started working for the City in 2005, I had settled into the mostly horrific pattern of working for a while (usually, just long enough to settle into the apartment, and being able to make all of my payments on time), then not getting assignments for just long enough to lose whatever apartment I was living in (read that however you want), then getting picked back up in just enough time to find another place.  Rinse, Repeat.  During this time, a former friend also introduced me to the quick fix (with dire consequences!) of signature loans and payday loans.  The less this horror is discussed, the better.  I knew so little about credit, loans, and the like (the internet not being what it is now, back then) that I was living off information from dubious sources that did not have to directly deal with the consequences of my not knowing any better (or thinking I was smarter and knew better than I did at the time) until it was much too late in the game.

By the time I found a wonderful little place in Hawthorne in 2006, I had learned many hard lessons, I finally had a car, and I sincerely hoped that I could take what I learned and do better.

Well, yes and no.

Although I was able to remain in that place for 8 years, between a change of owners, and almost constant car issues (currently on my fifth car since 2003, between stints of not having one), History is a bitch that keeps on giving, and now here I am, this time through no fault of my own, back in the position of trying to overcome a need for housing on short notice with of course, inadequate funds.

The building we live in has been sold, and the new owners want to renovate.  Which means all long-term tenants need to leave.

Please know that I wasn't trying to live here indefinitely.  But I wanted to leave on MY terms: when I had adequate money and time to finally fix my credit issues once and for all, and wasn't rushed or in a panic.

I have been dealing with this, nearly non-stop, and eventually with two children, since I was 20 years old.  I am now 50.  Between my children and myself, there is definitely some collective PTSD around moving and housing security.

I will retire in the next 10-13 years,  It is my hope that by then, I will have finally landed somewhere permanent, and never have to move again.

I can only hope. And Pray.

Did you know that I hadn't been able to breathe through my nose since 2003?

It became a topic of conversation early last year when a former co-worker and I discovered that we would both be having sinus surgeries, albeit slightly different ones, within a couple of weeks of each other.

When we both returned to work after our surgeries, as people that have been through these situations tend to do, we started comparing surgery and recovery stories. Around a month into shared stories of low dose pain killers, constant bodily fluids, and grindingly slow healing, he dropped this line:  "You know?  It almost feels like learning to breathe all over again."

There is something to that.

A lot of my life has been holding my breath: waiting for some situation to end; waiting for the other shoe to drop; waiting for the next day, or payday, to handle business or just waiting for the calm after the storm.

​What is it like to breathe?

What is it like to finally get all of your credit cards paid off, without wondering how you will deal with an expensive emergency that you can't afford to ignore until you have the cash to pay for it outright, and you find yourself right back where you started?

What is it like to watch your child make progress and applaud without being constantly worried that it won't be long until, this, too, passes due to incident or circumstance?

What is it like to not wonder if you will EVER be able to change your housing situation for the better?

What is it like to breathe?

I am honest enough to admit that I have spent a lot of my life flailing: swimming against a tide of unfortunate circumstances, decisions made out of desperation due to aforementioned circumstances,  and merely trying to hold it together no matter what.  Oh Dear Dog, there was a great deal of "what".

I prayed. A lot.  I changed my approach to almost every area of my life: work, child rearing, relationships, financial management.  Some changes worked out, some definitely made everything worse, some were almost exceptionally neutral in that they produced zero net gains or losses, so I counted them as wins.  And Boy Howdy, did I learn some hard lessons along the way. Like don't take every success story you read at face value.  There is often some little tidbit that gets left out of the story that makes the end result a whole lot less heroic, or as easily achievable, as they are making it out to be.  And not every debt management plan is for everybody.  In fact, some plans will absolutely destroy your credit that you were trying so hard to build up.

In those rare moments when I have found time, space, and the ability to breathe a little, it finally occurred to me that these moments are fleeting.  For everyone. The most profound statement I ever heard regarding these fleeting moments came from a gentleman at church, speaking before the altar call: "Right now, either everyone has just come out of a storm, is going through one currently, or is about to go through one."

There is so much truth to that.

The key thing in learning to breathe again is just remembering that the physical process that you adopted to get through your difficulties doesn't have to go on indefinitely. Moving from only short inhalations through your nose because that was all you could do, and mostly breathing through your mouth because you had no choice, to full deep breaths; slowly in through your nose, then out through your mouth, quietly, rhythmically, filling your lungs and regulating your breathing in the healthiest possible way.

We will get through this.  All of us.  Whatever "this" is for us currently.  Some of us will pray, and lean on our faith.  Some of us will put our efforts into doing the absolute best we can, to the best of our knowledge, to help our situations .Some of us won't be able to do much but hope for the best, as we have already done all we can.

And it is my sincerest wish that somewhere in the middle of all of the striving, and praying, and hoping, and working, and occasional chaos,, that at some point, we all have the opportunity to stop for a quiet moment.  And breathe.





​

The picture on the left is on quite a few drains in and around Los Angeles County.  It warns people not to dump garbage into those particular sewers, as those drain directly to the ocean. Seeing as no one wants to swim in garbage, this seems like a pretty non controversial idea.  However there are those who would argue that it doesn't matter whether or not we dump things into the sewers that would pollute our waterways.  Garbage has to go somewhere, right?

Hold on to that thought for a minute.

I read an old Facebook post I made several years ago.  It dealt with my loose interpretation of Karma:  whatever you put out into the world, be it good, bad or indifferent, always comes back to you in some way. Although I have always tried to watch what I project, I haven't always been careful, and have let the negativity flow in my unguarded moments.  I spoke of this briefly in a post I made about my son's rough summer a few years ago.  Someone felt the need to kick me while I was already down, and feeling like I could not hit back (I did eventually), I let the garbage flow out of me onto whatever person, object, or behavior was the object of my ire at the particular moment.  After some amount of contrition, I reminded myself that everything we do has some residual effect on someone else.  I could have ruined someone's day over a minor slip, and I would never know it.

I do not have the time or energy for a mid-life crisis.  What I have had, instead, is a series of revelations that helped me put a great deal of what has gone on in my life into some sort of perspective.  It's that perspective that informs how I relate to the world around me, and thus, how I treat others.  I try to stay away from toxic positivity; mostly because that is merely hiding my own discomfort with another person's life issues and emotions behind meaningless platitudes meant to make me sound profound.  I strive to be genuine, and really be present for those I interact with.  Of course this isn't easy; what worth doing in life is?  The best any of us can do is navigate the path of our lives in all of it's glories and messiness without inadvertently taking any of the worst bits of it out on anyone else.

Like most social media users, I post a lot of memes: funny, sarcastic, uplifting, informative.  My attempt to keep from boring people by posting a lot of the same types of memes is also me projecting the kaleidoscope of my personality out there, in hopes that it is giving them the permission to do the same thing.

Walt Whitman was right.  We are indeed vast, and we do contain multitudes.

And, yes, while the negative is a part of that multitude, that's not the part I want to put on anyone else, if only because I want to lighten the load of the next person.  I have borne the burden of someone else's bad day, and I never want to burden anyone else that way if I can help it.

So I remind myself in many ways that my attitude is my responsibility, no matter what else is going on around me: by quiet morning meditation, by pleasant conversation, by smiling invocation.  By words, and pictures, and blue waves on concrete, am I reminded that I have the choice to either make, or ruin, someone's day.

​I choose peace.

"The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it." - Galadriel's Prologue from "Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the RIng" (Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens, 2001)

I haven't written a blog post since this day last year.

In between, I have started at least five different posts, but was never able to finish any of them. Between exhaustion, defeat, heartbreak, profound disappointment,  and good old writer's block, it was difficult for me to convey exactly what went on this year.

On the macro level, I have marveled from afar at man's increasingly open inhumanity to man, as they hide behind the anonymity of the internet to utter things they would never dare say to anyone's face for fear of retaliation.  Or at least some wouldn't say out loud.  Hatred now has many and varied soapboxes from which to shout, and uses them all as often, and as loudly as possible.  Insults and broad characterizations have replaced any kind of meaningful dialogue about differences, and we are further from any kind of understanding and moving towards the grey areas that unite us than ever before.  Social media has become a metaphorical slaughterhouse, where even the most innocent of comments can be targeted for a political bloodbath for any reason, or no reason at all.

There are glimmers of hope, and those working towards getting help to those that need it.  I find that I have to focus on those to keep from losing all faith in humanity.  That, and baby, puppy, and kitten videos to cleanse my social media palate.

As the circle moves closer in, I found people moving on in different ways:  changing jobs, either by choice or force; changing states: spiritually, emotionally, and sometimes physically; generally preparing for what would come next in life.

Here we get into the micro level:  2021 began a year of profound changes for my family and myself.  We are all preparing in some way for the next phase in our lives.  My older sister is preparing to become a 1st time grandmother.  My younger sisters both have toddlers, and are preparing for the K-12 marathon.  My son continued on his mission to create the life that he knows he is capable of, numerous hiccups aside.  My daughter started her Senior Year of high school in person, after a year and a half of distance learning, and suddenly returned to the kind of student she was at the beginning of her academic career.  She knows that this is the beginning of the end of her childhood, and there will be no more free do-overs.  Everything she does from now on goes straight toward her adult life: she got her first job, she is applying for colleges, yet still remaining flexible about how she would like the next part of her life to play out.

This is a profound change for me as well.  I turned 50 last month, and next month will become the parent of two adult children.  The everyday, day to day, hands on supervisory (Ok.  Micro-Management.  Who are we kidding,) part of my job will end, and my role will become more advisory:  I only step in when specifically asked, and then only to the extent specifically needed at that time.  

After nearly 30 years in the same role, this will be quite the transition for me.  As I will also now have to figure out who I am outside of my identity as "Damani and Ashley's mom".

All of us are in some stage or another of transition.  My family, Our government, The World at large.

I can't say anything profound right now.  But it is my sincerest hope that we are transitioning into the greatest possible version of ourselves; the loving, caring people we portray ourselves as, and show the very best of what we can be to the world.

See you on the other side.

Around a month or so ago, I found myself watching a documentary about Steven Spielberg on HBO Max.  Being a fan of biographies, documentaries, discussions of the creative process, and his movies, this seemed like a perfect way to wind down at the end of one of my usual busy days.  One thing that absolutely stuck out to me, was his realization that he had a tendency to re-visit the same subject repeatedly in his movies, albeit in different ways.  He posited that perhaps that was his way of dealing with the issue subliminally.  He sort of chuckled softly, then stated that "Art is therapy".

Hmmm.....

I haven't written much over the last three years.  I admit it has become hard for me to concentrate.  I have fallen into a pattern of barely getting out of bed in enough time to get to work, horrific eating habits, crawling home at the end of the day with only enough energy to eat, make sure my daughter is at least kinda, sorta okay, then engage in endless scrolling on social media to numb myself enough to kinda sorta sleep, so I can repeat the process the next day.

I participate in both individual and group therapy to deal with both current and lingering issues.  One thing that I notice that comes up in both instances is the suggestion of journaling:  writing down everything relevant to your journey in order to help you gain perspective and assist in your own healing.

I am almost 8 years into this exercise of writing and maintaining a blog.  For the first five years, when I was writing regularly, I admit that I didn't really know what the blog was about.  For me, it was a place to practice my gift, by jotting down whatever was going through my mind at any given time.  Sometimes funny, sometimes angry, sometimes thoughtful, and occasionally mundane, it was just me, unfiltered and mostly off the cuff.  Even through a few rough patches, sustaining the blog was the one thing I could regularly return to as an outlet for whatever was going on with, and around, me.

The last three years, especially this last year, has sorely tested everything that I thought I knew about myself and the world around me.  The exhaustion, the mean spiritedness, the loneliness, the isolation, and not always being able to adequately express it all in conversation led to the aforementioned mindless distraction tactics.

Then a mindless distraction tactic yielded a truth bomb that hit me where I lived.

Art IS Therapy.

What I never realized was that this blog was just me journaling.  I am happiest when I am writing, and when I began to doubt myself, and question whether or not I should write what I actually felt, the form of therapy that had served me well fell away from me almost as quickly as it came. It was never far away, as I made lengthy, thoughtful social media posts, but ultimately, the little angel on my right shoulder would whisper softly in my ear that I knew I missed writing, and that I should return to it.

What this blog is really about, then, is survival.

Through hills, valleys, depression, anxiety, triumphs, failures, exultant highs, and crushing lows.  Keep going.  Through people that spend as much time building you up as tearing you down, and they are often the same person.  Keep going.  Through that day job that you keep because jobs are scarce, rent doesn't pay itself and groceries are expensive, even though at times the job is absolutely soul-crushing.  Keep going.

For me, that means keep writing.  Writing is art is therapy is survival. 

If I take anything from this year of absolute clarity (2020 gave us more clarity than any of us asked for or wanted), it is that I am ultimately the architect of my own survival, and perhaps going into this New Year, I can finally begin to move from mere survival into actually living.  And continue writing, of course.

See you on the other side.

There are memes floating around about how that has been the Lentiest Lent most of us have ever experienced.

A global pandemic has challenged everything we thought we knew about the world around us, the people we interact with (or don't), and our very definition of the word normal.  Especially as we enter into the conclusion of a High Holy Season and find that all of our annual rituals have been disrupted by a disease that is no respecter of persons, class, creed, color, age, religious persuasion, or lack thereof.  All it needs is a host, and anybody will do.

This was going to be a post about how this will be the first Easter in almost 20 years that I have been un-churched.  I parted ways with my church home of 18 years late last year, and as with all long term relationships, I have chosen to make sure that I am healed, and have done some extensive internal work before entering into on another relationship.

But a global crisis was declared, and among many social distancing edicts issued, it was suggested that religious institutions move their observances online in order to reduce the spread to those most at risk of serious complications from this disease: the elderly, and those with underlying medical conditions that render them among the immuno-compromised.

So now, at least physically, we are all somewhat un-churched.

One of the rituals that we practice during this season is the stripping of the altar.  Performed in complete silence, it involves the removal of all of the vestments that are normally on the Altar, and the wiping down of the Altar itself.  And while I know that it is meant to symbolize one very specific thing, I can't help but find myself moved by the thought that there is something else being shown to us as believers as well.  

Everything we cling to as "normal" has been stripped away during this Lenten season.  We may have chosen something to fast from on Ash Wednesday, but perhaps our Spirit has been shown what we REALLY needed to eliminate not just during this season, but going forward:  the artifice that we construct to make our lives appear acceptable before others so that we can be acceptable to ourselves.  Our judgment of people that we see as beneath ourselves, even if all they are is different.  What the great Commandment ( Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” - Matt 22 37-40) really means, do we believe it, and are we prepared to follow that to wherever it leads, even if that place is only our couch.

What has been stripped away, I think anyway, is the "religion" part of our rituals, leaving us to focus on the relationship part of our connection, not necessarily one to another, but absolutely between God and ourselves.  Deep down in the most private parts of yourself that no one but God can see, who are you, really, and have you been honest enough with, and about, yourself to get real with God?  Spring cleaning isn't just about your material possessions.  Lent is the opportunity to clean out he internal mess that keeps us stuck in places that we should have moved on from long before we were ready to admit that we were in a place that was doing more harm than good, even if it didn't start out that way.  Habit is a brutal taskmaster, and our Lenten promises to replace bad habits with good shouldn't just include the physical manifestations of our internal struggles.  We should be moving to clear our mental and emotional closets as well.  Perhaps by having us forced to stay home, and abstain from everything we use to distract ourselves from ourselves, we have been given the opportunity to clear every closet in our minds and spirits, and finally let go of ideas, habits, rituals, and whatever else no longer serves it's intended purpose.

As we go forward into this Holy Weekend, we are of the belief that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ set us free from the sins of the world.  We hold ourselves in bondage by clinging to internal things that we consider sacred that have little or nothing to do with our relationship to God, but everything to do with wanting to maintain appearances of whatever gives us comfort.  This season has given us permission to finally, let these things go.

Go forth.

​Be free.

Well...not all my life.  I have been here, obviously.  Just not "here".

The last two and a half, almost three years, have been a Shakespearean mix of comedy and tragedy, with almost as much drama.

And I have talked about parts of it here in this space.  The struggles with my son.  My dream job descending into nightmare territory. Making the best of my housing situation.  But there is one struggle that I haven't really mentioned, and it's a question all writers grapple with from time to time:

What on Earth do I write about?

While I have run, walked, limped, and at times crawled through my personal issues, the question has always dangled just in the back of my mind: how much do I talk about on the blog? How much can I really share without fear of reprimand, or causing offense?  The same goes for the sharply political turn the world has taken in the last few years as well.  Where I thought my views were moderate, at best, there seems to be a running social media campaign against any kind of sensible discussion of actual issues, so much as those shouting rhetoric and insults, protected by the anonymity of the internet.

So, what on Earth do I write about?

My son's finally acknowledging, and slowly getting help for, his mental health issues?

The fact that while Black respectability politics had it's day, and still has a place in certain corridors, for most people it is a losing proposition?

My daughter's huge numbers of false starts with high school, while dealing with depression and anxiety?

The notion that we are so addicted to our feeling of superiority that we willingly ignore anything that reminds that we are all too human, and dare I say it, maybe not as great as we want to believe?

That with all of the people that I know for a fact are going through so much, are so afraid to talk about it, for fear of being labeled as negative, when in fact, all they are really searching for is acknowledgement, and maybe a little empathy?

Not everything is storm clouds, of course.  My fascination with chicken wings has become a delicious search for the ultimate savory addition to a sweet favorite, waffles.  I have discovered peace in unexpected places.  I have come to realize why conversation is an art form. And that binge watching is the last refuge of the procrastinator.

​But, what on Earth do I write about?

Good Afternoon Dear Reader:

Can you believe that we are already six years into this little experiment?

I know that my posts have been few and far between these last couple of years, and I can only apologize.  A combination, of exhaustion, stress, and exhaustion from stress, has kept me from you for far too long.  I promise you that we will meet again soon!  With apologies to Lewis Carroll:  The time will come, and very soon, to talk of many things: of mental health, and drop off lines, and proper chicken wings!

When next we catch up, we can talk about everything that's happened over the last couple of years, and Boy Howdy, has there been a lot.

​See you soon, Dear Reader.

Today, I committed a revolutionary act.

I let my daughter sleep.

We have both been taking turns dealing with various levels of illnesses over the last couple of months, and not always successfully, so for once, after a kinda rough night of alternating between sneezing and blowing her nose, I let her sleep.

During the week, she has to get up no later than 5:30 am, in order to be out of the house by no later than 6:20, so that she can be dropped off with the same sitter that she has had since she was 18 months old before I go to work.  From there, she will walk to school with the same kids she has known all her life.  We go through this exercise because, unfortunately, she is not good at waking up on her own to get to school on time, and truancy is a real thing that parents are held accountable for, and this is my way of making sure she gets to school on time every day.  Despite all of her activities, we do try hard to make sure that she is in bed by 9:00 on school nights.  Although it doesn't always happen that way.  Then she ends up not getting as much sleep as she should.

So today, I let her sleep.

Lately, our Saturdays have been busy.  After having to move her bi-weekly hair appointments from Friday afternoons to early Saturday mornings to accommodate both her new Drill Team schedule, and her very popular hair stylist (who just happens to be the salon's owner.  Who is just that GOOD!), and trying to accommodate her visitation schedule with her dad, balanced against church activities, a doctor that will mercifully see her on Saturdays, and everything else on her packed calendar, sometimes even a nap is asking too much.

For the past 17 years, we have gotten up and gone to same church almost every Sunday morning.  Up until a year or so ago, that meant unless one of the choirs we sing with was performing somewhere else, we were there.  Rain or shine, sick or tired or worn out, we showed up.  It finally occurred to me the year that I kept showing up to church so sick that I could hardly speak, that with the number of children and elderly people at church, that spreading what eventually turned out to be strep throat that morphed into an ear infection, amounted to nothing more than a foolish consistency that didn't impress anyone at best, and exposed vulnerable populations to very dangerous diseases for no real reason except ego, at worst.  I know how much I don't like it when people who are sick are spreading the germs around, so I decided not to do the one thing I quietly hate.

So today, I let her sleep.

In our push to make sure our kids are kept busy so as not to get into any kind of trouble, I think we forget that their bodies and brains are still developing.  Getting adequate food, water, exercise, and REST are huge parts of that development.  We adults love to brag about how little sleep we need to survive, and pass this unhealthy mentality on to our children, as examples of toughness, or fortitude, or whatever.  I admit to being steeped in these kind of attitudes, and this whole self care thing is new to me, and I am still learning when to push ahead, and when to slow down, for both my daughter and myself.  It takes time to learn to prioritize your family's and your own health and well being after a lifetime of not doing so.  One small step at a time.

​So today, I let her sleep.