Sunday evening I marked my 51st birthday quietly, after a hot day in coronavirus lockdown, and a disappointing dinner which I cooked incorrectly. Last year I had intended to celebrate this year, since I’d not had any chance to do anything nice on my 50th birthday due to being at a conference. This year, I was supposed to be in Belgium - I would’ve completed a conference on Friday, and had planned to spend a quiet Sunday with European friends and family. Now it will all have to wait until 52, if I can afford to make the trip next year and the conference is rescheduled to the same week.

We have passed 50 days of protesting the Portland Police Bureau here in the city. Now we are also contending with unwanted federal troops, who are not only brutalizing unarmed people doing nothing illegal by demonstrating in public, but are randomly grabbing people off the streets in unmarked vehicles for intimidation and arrests. This is not acceptable. We will continue to demonstrate until the feds go home and the PPB is defunded. Didn’t expect to mark the second half of my life in pandemic or martial law, but here we are?

This morning, I failed my medical tests so badly that the doctor stopped after the first two and told me to come back and try again next month. Didn’t even know that was possible! Oops.

Yesterday, I stepped down from day-to-day management responsibilities in my main job, so that I can focus on the things only I can do and delegate the rest to other people.

I expect these two situations are related, and hope to have better results in August.

Still hot, still busy. Internet went out Wednesday and I ended up having to reschedule four meetings. Thankfully everyone was gracious about it. New tiers for the Vodou related Patreon have gone live and I’m thrilled about them, because they allow me to budget time for some fun projects. I’ve learned that working on a manuscript is more difficult if it’s the only thing I’m beating on, and having something completely different to spin my brain around every few days is helpful and recharging. Good feedback from Kickstarter backers on how to convey the ongoing process to them as well.

I get to spend more time writing than doing busywork for a while again. This is very exciting to me.

It’s Tuesday. two counseling sessions, five divination sessions (with or without additional counseling), a class to teach, homework to read and grade, and a ton of email to catch up on. Super hot outside so I’m trying to stay ahead of it with the portable air conditioner. So far I haven’t melted into a puddle. It’s supposed to be more like Portland June by the weekend. Will I survive? Will all of us survive? Signs of the world reopening are more obvious: boarded up shops are opening, more people are on the street. It still feels too early and I’m going to stay home until my doctor’s appointment on the 2nd, when we finally work on finding out how the chemo did.

Today’s schedule

• four appointments (two Discord, two Zoom)
• editing for Coptic Encyclopedia
• grading Patreon homework
• scheduling the rest of the week’s appointments
• ongoing preparation for new beginners class in the temple

Today is the slowest day I have through Friday and it’s more than 8 hours. Hoping to be caught up on the work backlog by the 30th. It’s going to be stressful, and there’s much to be done, but I’m trying to stay confident.

Conversations about work started before I was even out of bed this morning. A full 10 hours of scheduled events follow for today, tomorrow, and Friday. Next week pretty much the same. Trying to get caught up on several weeks of slowdown due to two deaths in the family plus an already-existing work backlog. Sometimes I find myself wishing I had even a small bit of the coronavirus boredom/lack of things to do that others are reporting. If anything, my workload doubled once we entered lockdown.

A friend reminded me: “Pay yourself first.” Trying to keep that in mind and schedule in some payments.

My father would have been 71 today, had he lived. This is a random bit of trivia but my brain reminding me of it every few minutes hasn’t been random. Doesn’t matter that it’s been almost eight years now. I still try to phone him every now and then.