In my last post, I alluded to things not going so well in 2023 and how I’ve coped. (Or maybe I just imagined that I mentioned that… it was late when I was typing up that post. I could go and look, but whatever.) Honestly, it hasn’t just been 2023 that’s sucked, but we’re going to go with just this year.
For the last 3 years, I’ve been my mother’s full-time primary caregiver, while holding down a full-time job. I was fortunate to be able to work from home, both before and after the pandemic, so I was able to fit the caregiving into my schedule relatively seamlessly. Well, my mother passed away in May and as you might be able to imagine, I’ve been at a loose end. So to help cope – or maybe to hide from the world, same diff – I threw myself into reading all the books. Anything that would distract me from the hurt, I read. Mom passed mid-month and I read 12 books by the end of the month, resulting in 22 read for the whole month.
June was much the same – I threw myself into more reading while planning all the things you do when someone passes away, when my dad decided that he needed to fracture two ribs in mid-June. To say that my mind wasn’t on my actual work is an understatement, but I persevered – and still managed to read 49 books that month. By this time, I was definitely not happy with my job – I was woefully out of my depth and not trained well for it, but I was trying. After coming back from bereavement leave and then after Dad’s accident, I started to wonder if I really needed to be that unhappy…
And then July happened. Yeah. My favorite month of the year because it’s my birthday month… and then work and I had a sit down and they decided to “let me go” because I wasn’t performing well. You know, I’m not going to argue with that, except to say that moving someone into a position they’ve never done and did not receive training to do (and did not go to school for) wasn’t the smartest move they made. But I dealt with by… you guessed it, more reading! July resulted in 40 books to add to my yearly total.
We’re still in the first half of August and it looks like I’m slowing down a bit. Only 8 books so far, but definitely a 9th will be finished before we hit the 15th. I don’t think that it’s an indication that I’m coming out of grief, because I’m not. But I do think that it’s an indication that I’ve started to do more things for me – I spent 4 days with some of my most favorite people in the world in the mountains of Pennsylvania last week. I’ll be spending Sunday with one of my besties going to a show. However, as I’m still doing things with Mom’s estate and handling stuff for Dad, I’m still channeling frustration into reading about people who always get a happy ending. Sometimes there’s angst and agita along the way, but there’s always an HEA. Which gives me a bit of hope.
Perhaps channeling my grief into 109 books in the last 3 and some months wasn’t the healthiest way to manage, but it’s helped. Do I need therapy? Abso-fucking-lutely. And when I have insurance again, I’ll get it. But for now, I’ll keep reading books that make me happy; perhaps I’ll actually write a review or two. We’ll see when I hit my yearly goal of 300. I’m currently at 208. Do the numbers matter? Nah. But I do love having a measurable goal to aim for. (And that might be why I was not the best product manager. Who would have thought?)
Right now, my Goodreads tracker is looking a bit like this:
Considering over half of those are from the past few months, grief hasn’t made me a tougher judge. Nor has it made me a softer touch. I have really had a great run of books lately… let’s just hope that continues into the rest of the month/year! I’ll do another post at some point about numbers – I know some people put a lot of importance on them and some don’t care at all. Where do you fall?
Bookish, Nerdy, and Curious 