Trying to Focus My Attention

Many things are swirling around in my mind now. I finished my Christmas shopping last week and have been doing holiday stuff this past week. I sure will be glad when the holidays are over.

They seems to really like me at the American Cancer Society. I have been helping the secretary Laurie out and helping her get a lot done. It is very rewarding.

And I have been fighting with Excel. This student of mine emailed me some files and I was all enthused about showing her how to make something into a table and sort by anything she wanted. Problem: the file she gave me was so huge that Excel basically vomited on us and informed us that there was not enough memory. So I couldn’t show her anything and she was very frustrated.So I went home and did some huge deleting of columns (like names and dates of hire) or anything not absolutely necessary to using the evaluation scores. And I found out how to make bell curves. I emailed her some. She is very happy and wants them for all the job codes and supervisors. This one sheet has 2,254 rows. I told her I would start working on the job codes for that sheet, but this would be unbelievably time-consuming. So I can do some amazing things on Excel, but that has been sucking up time and energy.

And I have been reading a book called “The Wild Edge of Sorrow.” It is fabulous. It talks about all sorts of different types of grief. Grief isn’t just about losing a person. It’s also about dead dreams and hopes, unmet needs from childhood, lost species, lost cultures and languages, and suffering of all kinds. It talks about the need for community and safe places to process feelings. Our culture basically sucks at that.

Part of why I have been reading so much is that I can’t watch TV. I can’t stomach it. When Barry got stage four cancer in 2008, he only had a 20% chance of living five years. I spent 2013 and 2014 watching TV with him and waiting for him to die. I spent 2015 praying for either of us to die (didn’t care which of us). So now, in my mind, TV=waiting for death. I know it hurts Barry that I don’t sit and watch TV with him much, because that is really all he can do, but I have to get on with my life. And TV is not a productive part of that. TV is not where I want to place my attention. I am moving on.