The passage of time

Happy 2024!

I've been silent for the last few months because there have been things going on of a legal nature that I need to keep quiet about until things settle. (To the point that I took down a handful of posts that I wrote while things were blowing up; maybe someday I'll repost them.) All I will say is that this is not just about me but about someone extremely vulnerable, and that heightens the need for me to be discrete until I've achieved a resolution. (No, I am not getting a divorce.)

Worst case scenario is that the resolution does not arrive for another two years, in part because there are at least three different parts of the legal system my family must navigate. There is always, of course, the possibility that it won't take two years, but in my experience with the other party, counting on "the worst case scenario" is the safest bet. That's made me bitter and desperate, if I'm honest...but it occurred to me last week that this is part of why we come up with the worst possible cases. We can be mentally prepared, but we can also have some perspective. Two years is too long--this is something that should have been resolved years ago--but two years isn't forever. (And while I'm firmly planted in middle age, perhaps the news that the average lifespan of modern Korean women is 90.7 years has informed my outlook.) So the question my family and I have been trying to answer is what the next two years will look like. It's still messy and it's definitely unfair, but being able to define a time frame makes it a little more manageable.

This is not, fortunately, my whole life. I did, as of December, start transcribing my saga, and I keep thinking, you know, this isn't as bad as thought it would be. (Don't worry, I also keep finding things I'm going to need to edit, and I'm not talking about grammar or typos.) As of the beginning of January I started stimulating those other parts of my brain that respond to numbers and logic. (There's really only so much a sudoku game is going to do for you.) Sticking up for my nineteen year old self was the reason why I wanted to get into Differential Equations, but it's my middle aged self that wants to stay with it. I am as daunted as anyone else by learning something new, but with math I'm inclined to stick with it because to me math has always felt like a puzzle, and I like solving puzzles. Chemistry has a similar attraction--those equations involve a lot of math!--but Korean is to reclaim something I feel I should have gotten when I was younger. Maybe we can't go back--and ugh, why would you want to?--but we can appreciate in maturity what we would have slogged through in youth.

This is a lot of fun, I swear

One of my sons will be leaving home at the end of the month to finish up his degree. It is bittersweet for me, as it is for most parents in this situation: I know he needs to leave, but I'm heartbroken that he has to. My husband and I will have only one child left at home after, but it is only a matter of time before he stretches his wings as well. 

In other news, I started playing with social media again, though between Discord and the Bullet Journal University community, I've been on it for longer than I'd thought. I've been dallying with Bluesky...and wow has it taken on toxic Twitter vibes really quickly. Signed up for Mastodon as well, but I suspect that won't be any better. I also suspect that I am just not cut out for this anymore. There was part of me that missed discussing things like politics with like-minded people on social media, but as I've encountered an incredible amount of people defending the Houthis this week, I'm starting to remember part of why I walked away in the first place. I am more than a little uncomfortable to realize that the spaces where I feel most comfortable are mission-focused and/or paid for. That is kind of awful. We shouldn't have to pay for a digital home anymore than we already are.

I have solved nothing, I know. I guess you can see some of the other appeal math has for me.

Deb in the City