Today a group of three men cut down the Ghost pine that family mythology says my grandmother and second uncle planted something like 60 years ago. It was at least 75-feet tall and leaned drunkenly toward the garage and new roof. It had to come down, the arborist said. It comes at nearly the exact same cost as a writing workshop I was accepted into, and so because of the tree and other necessary expenses, no workshop. I cannot figure out which thing makes me sadder. Also being and having recently been sick is always such a disappointment to me. Like my body has morally failed by failing to resist colonizing -phages. Add it to the list of papercuts.
I cried a lot off and on. I got overwhelmed and frustrated in the loneliness of my grief. (“It is such a secret place, the land of tears.”)
Ironically, I feel physically better in most ways than I did the last few, though wrung out nearly dry. I’m behind on all the things and have to leave town again on Friday for another week. This was a terrible month to try sticking to a schedule… like writing a budget up in December–who does that? Do I pick the tasks I know will fail just so I can keep telling myself the story of my failure? Or maybe I have just forgotten how to Do the Thing? This experiment seems lately only to inspire a brief week of optimism at the cost of three weeks of pessimism each month. Today is not the best day for me to assess, however, so I’ll sleep on it.