Averil Dean's Blog, page 5

Trombone

Back to those new year’s intentions. What to do, where to place my focus. I found a local writing class starting up in January, an adult-ed sort of thing through the community college, with classes every Thursday evening from 6:30-8:00. If this were a Saturday morning meet-up, I’d be all in, but I’m on the fence with an evening gig. I get up early—very, very early—so usually I’m in bed by 8, taxiing down the runway toward sleep. It’s almost a job in itself, this pursuit of sleep, and I get crank...

Pots

I got a wonderful Christmas present from the therapist I work with. A plant stand with several tiers, mounted on white metal posts in the shape of a crescent moon. There’s a perfect spot for it at the clinic, just beside a west-facing window on a blank stretch of wall. This is real estate any plant will love.

The trouble now is how to decide which of my collection can be pried from their existing spots and come with mama to work. I have a lot of plants—for the sake of this post, I counted: 1...

Iceberg

I’ve been trying to decide what to do with the new year. Though resolutions are cliche and sometimes problematic, they can also provide a needed course correction, a multimedia cue that it’s time to regroup and gather your wits, make sure you’re headed where you mean to go. This optimistic momentum fades over time, and resolutions rarely succeed, but imperfect efforts can still be valuable. We don’t have to improve our lives like the hero in a rom-com, via soulmate and epiphany. We can meander i...

Oak

It’s Christmas Eve. Dinner’s at our place. A giant veggie lasagna, mainly, with some other bits and pieces on the side. Stuffed bread shaped like a wreath, a big green salad. Bananas foster for dessert, with that daring rum-fueled flame at the end. A couple of game hens as well, with roasted squash, because carbs are not for everyone. I did most of the work yesterday, so what I plan to do now is bedeck the rooms in twinkle lights and votive candles, set out bowls of crunchy things and chewy thin...

Vapor

Baby, it’s cold. The dogs’ water bowl is frozen over and the steps are outlined with frost. The trees are brittle, shivering in the wind, and the roads have dulled to gray under dangerous sheets of ice. It’s going to take some time to let my car warm up, and I intend to drive like a granny on my way to work this morning. Slowly, slowly around the turns. No long strides when walking.

I wonder how the homeless are coping out there. It’s common to see them on the sidewalks and under bus shelter...

Three

I’m supposed to complete a self-evaluation at work. You’ve seen one of these, I’m sure. A long series of questions covering various aspects of the job and how good you think you are at it. It’s divided into categories and subcategories: How organized you think you are, how careful, how accurate, how skilled. One to five, line by line. The bosses fill out the same assessment, and afterward you get together and compare the answers.

What kind of sadistic shit is this? Imagine the horror of rati...

Sweet Alyssum

Work is okay. Better than okay, when compared to the shit-show of 2021. That was an awful year. I’d lost my long-term job to COVID and had to find another. At first, it seemed I’d landed on my feet at a pediatric therapy clinic, where I worked the front desk and managed the schedule for ten providers and a passel of wild-eyed children. I loved those kids, by the way. One of my defining features as a human is how much I love children; it’s something everybody knows about me, including the kids, w...

Dots

So what am I doing here? The kids are all tiktocking, instawanking, tweeting each other the bird. They are creating content—or that modern kind of FOMO-incel discontent no one has yet learned to manage. It’s all about the algorithm, the views. It’s the subtle act of throwing oneself onto the hyperfueled bonfire for the sake of a thumbs-up emoji.

Is that me? Maybe. Maybe it is. I am, after all, here.

I’d like to think that it’s not me. That I give no fucks. I am, after all, here, in obscu...

Twig

Betsy says we should write every day. She doesn’t believe in writer’s block, and thinks it’s simply a manifestation of some other mental ailment. Depression, anxiety, fear, rage… There is resistance in the community to use the term “writer’s block,” as if to name the malady by its most distressing symptom is to give it air.

I can understand this. Writing is scary, and each person has to manage the fear in a way that minimizes the problem and makes it feel surmountable. Of course there are pr...

Apple

I didn’t stop writing. In case you’re wondering, I did not. Though the years have continued without my particular commentary, they’ve continued just the same, one upon the other, and I have not stopped noticing the slips and eddies of my own life and the lives of those around me. It’s been my habit to write and read what I’ve written to the point of satiation, then destroy it, Ethan Hunt style, five four three two one. I write when no one is watching and get rid of the evidence. I don’t have the...