...

I'm blogging during work because I'm fried and it's giving me the strength to sit through this meeting. I'm using LibreOffice Writer entirely for writing and editting today. It's color-coded similarly to Neocities but doesn't have suggestions or error notices.

Lunch break.

Someday I'll be doing something aligned more closely with my skill set and within my stimulation limitations.

Here is the ferment on the right next to their older sibling on the left because I feel like I've been dancing around sharing for a couple days now and haven't gotten to it yet. It is no longer building pressure. The liquid is now very sour, but I'm not ready to call it finished yet. I want the cabbage shreds to become a bit more translucent like the older one on the left, and give it a bit more time to "marinate". My dad just started making bread and seems to have found a recipe that works well for sandwich bread. I have time to maybe learn the recipe before the ferment is ready, so I can put this ferment on a sandwich.

I got my acoustic guitar out to try to play a piano song I wrote between meetings yesterday, but the song's bounds are outside of my guitar's range and it didn't sound right to me if I forced bits of it down and up octaves to fit. My guitar teacher sold this guitar to me before he moved to a warmer state--I forget which one. It was my first adult-size guitar. I started lessons when I was 6 years old. I stopped playing when he left, many, many years later. He was patient and soft spoken. He always wore long sleeve button-ups and sunglasses, regardless of the time of year, time of day, or where he was.

I took guitar lessons at his house a few cities over. It was a small, attractive bungalow with a large back yard that featured a small crab apple tree. He had a kind, calm, geriatric brown labrador. Inside the house, he and his wife had sliding glass display cases. I made him a new Christmas ornament each year over the years, and these were displayed in the cases alongside expertly-crafted glass figurines, ceramic idols, and personal keepsakes.

I felt both honored and self-conscious that my gifts were prized highly enough to be in the case. On reflection, maybe he shifted the objects for each student before the student arrived. My grandmother does this; she changes out the pictures she has on display in her house to reflect which of her children or grandchildren are visiting her. She used to do this as a hostess for friends and professional acquaintances. I wonder in instances like this, what is on display when no one is visiting? I appreciate the consideration, even if it can seem contrived on the surface. I try to do this in our apartment, when we had guests (before the pandemic). I hope they take it as a recognition of them being important to us, even if many of these objects get put away when they leave. It's like a little, private ceremony.

There are pictures of me, growing up, smiling at practice and at recitals in oversized t-shirts over long-sleeve shirts, and him in the background calmly smiling. I have his email, or maybe his old email at this point? But I've never written to him because I don't know if he'll remember me, or recognize me as who I am now. What do you say in these circumstances? Do teachers or tutors care about their students once the formal relationship is dissolved? Do they in the first place or is it a job like retail, where you are supposed to be kind to everyone as a professional courtesy? Was I the one they didn't want to see?

I visited teachers I had in middle school with my old classmates as high school students during the middle school's open house. None of the teachers remembered me or my name, but remembered my classmates' as well as details and stories about my classmates. Sometimes I prefer to wonder rather than potentially be disappointed and feel left out.

There were teachers and coaches I developed better relationships with in high school, and I got to know some of my college professors reasonably well. I'm not sure where I would be without some of them. I don't know if I should tell them that, or if it's too vulnerable. Vulnerability is a popular internet phenomenon now (in some cases, a gimmick), one I'm engaging in right now with you obviously, but where I grew up and in the household I grew up in, honest emotional vulnerability was generally seen as perverse and inappropriate. I'm trying to grow past that and recognize sometimes vulnerability is an important element of even professional relationships.

My dad told me he loves me on the phone for the first time I can consciously recall in my life last month. It sounded hard for him to get out. I reciprocated with an even voice; I've been practicing for years now telling my partner I love them everyday. I don't know where his hesitation comes from or why he started working on this skill, but I'm glad he did.

Thanks for stopping by! Reach out to people who mean a lot to you, if you want to. Seeya next time.