1) Parasocial grief
I woke up on Tuesday morning to see that a new episode of The Popcast’s weekly Patreon episode had downloaded to my feed. The thing you need to know about The Popcast is that I consider this show my emotional support podcast. Whenever I need a pick-me-up, I’ll turn on an episode because it will immediately help me get out of my funk (or at least, help me forget about my worries for an hour). I love Knox and Jamie with the kind of parasocial fervor people save for their favorite celebrities. And I love their extended network of hosts and staff, specifically one Erin H. Moon. She co-hosts their reading podcast, Shelf Respect, as well as Faith Adjacent, a faith-based podcast that has really helped me heal some of my issues surrounding the church and my deconstruction.
In the show notes for this episode, there was a note about giving to a charity in memory of Gwen Hicks. No, no, no, no, no, was my immediate reaction, as I clicked over to Erin’s Instagram to discover that her mom had suddenly passed away. Erin was close to her mom like I am to mine. Erin talked about her mom on her podcast the way I talk about mine. Erin is going through the very thing I have spent years and years in therapy trying to unravel. She’s inside my worst nightmare, and I can’t stop thinking about her, about her family, about a community that lost a true angel on earth. Being an empath means I can’t hear news like this and get sad, but then move on. It’s not that I understand the depth of grief Erin and her family are experiencing, but my mind tries to step inside that pain and imagine what it must be like. I start crying randomly as I think about Erin preparing for her mom’s celebration of life. I’ll stop what I’m doing at any point in time and remember what Erin is going through right now and feel immeasurably sad for her. And I am so sad for her. Her mom was young, only five years older than my own mom, and the fact that Erin now has to face the rest of her life without her mom by her side is overwhelming. Because I know imagining life without my mom by my side is overwhelming.
I’m sending all of my love to Erin and her family, and have made a donation to Amarillo Angels, the nonprofit that Gwen founded to support the foster care community in the Texas Panhandle.
2) A week of forgetfulness
Switching topics… I have had an incredible week of forgetfulness. I’m not sure what is going on with me, but I’m starting to get concerned. First, there was the Chewy order. I ordered some wet food for the girls on Sunday and got a notification on Tuesday that the order had been delivered. It was not on my doorstep where they normally leave it, which is when I discovered I had sent it to my old apartment. You know, the place I haven’t lived in 9 months! Ughhh. Thankfully, Chewy’s customer service is top-tier, and when I messaged them about my dumb mistake and asked about a replacement order, they went ahead and shipped me a new box free of charge. I love Chewy so damn much!
Second, there was the Target curbside pickup order. I was running errands and had four things I needed to do: a quick stop at the grocery store, drop off a book at the library, pick up a Target curbside order, and get a prescription at my pharmacy. I did the grocery store and then opened my Target app to say I was coming to pick up my order. I dropped the book off at the library and then… zoomed right past Target to the pharmacy. It didn’t even cross my mind that I had forgotten about the pickup until I was leaving the pharmacy, and had to hurry over to Target where a kind woman was waiting with my items. Sigh.
And the grand finale was when I showed up to my dermatology appointment a whole day early. It was in my calendar as Thursday. I had gotten a reminder text a week prior about this Thursday appointment, and for some reason, I put it down in my planner as Wednesday and didn’t question it. We’re not going to talk about how upset I was at myself. Am I losing my mind? Are the steroids finally getting to me? Is this early-onset dementia? Stay tuned to find out!
3) Graduation
Speaking of my dermatology appointment, I’ve graduated to annual appointments! I had a few years where I continually had abnormal moles that had to be biopsied, so I’ve been getting skin checks every six months. My last abnormal mole was in 2023, which means it’s been almost three years of clear skin checks, and my dermatologist is comfortable with me coming in once a year now. Yay! These skin checks are pretty easy compared to other doctor’s appointments, but anything I can do to be in a doctor’s office less is fine by me.
4) Blog hosting woes
I mentioned last week that it was time to pay my blog hosting fees, which only come around every three years. Well, this time, I was astonished to find out my bill was over $1,000. It’s never been that high, but I thought, well, I’ve had this blog since 2009, and there are an insane number of pictures and posts. My host company told me I had to upgrade to their highest-tier package because of my blog’s size. I wasn’t happy about it, but I figured it is what it is. I love this blog, and I love writing here, so I need to suck it up.
And then I decided… let me just make sure this is reasonable for a personal blog. I went to ChatGPT and put in my stats, and then it had me go through some complicated processes involving my hosting’s cPanel and identifying different files. And from this journey, I found out that my disk usage (basically, how big my blog is) was 70GB, which is quite large for a personal blog. Further investigation led me to my site’s backup. Apparently, I had never correctly set up my backups to be sent to a different place (like Google Drive), so I was saving two full backups of my blog on my hosting server. Once I removed those backups and moved them to Drive (I had to upgrade my Google storage to 200 GB, but that’s only an extra dollar a month), I cleared up almost 40GB!
I was able to message with my blog hosting company and move back down to one of the lower-tier packages, and they refunded me $556! Spending $500 for three years of blogging feels much more reasonable. (Of course, after all this, I ran into all those stupid commenting issues, but I am hopeful things are back to normal now.)
5) Weekend plans
It’s a busy weekend for your girl! Luckily, I’m kicking things off with a mental health day today. I just needed a long weekend, so that’s what I have given myself. I would like to make some progress with my novel, but we’ll see if I’m motivated enough for that. In the evening, I’m going to Bri’s house to record some podcast episodes. Tomorrow, I have a brunch date with my friend Lynn, and we’ll likely hit up a bookstore (or two) as well. And Sunday, I have a writing date with Mikaela and some annoying errands to run. (Writing this all out, I realize this might seem like a low-key weekend for my extroverted friends. But for me, three social events in one weekend? I’m girding my loins.)
What was your last bout of forgetfulness?
Ugh, I hate feeling forgetful! I recently also showed up to an appointment a day early!!! This is why I am diligent about updating my calendar, but when I input info wrong, the whole system collapses!
Your weekend sounds busy and fun.
The parasocial grief sucks, Stephany. It sounds way too easy for your empathetic heart to absorb the horror and sadness of this particular loss. I’m glad you are taking a day for yourself. ❤️
The crazy thing was, the appointment was correct in my calendar. I just wrote it down wrong in my planner! I don’t know what was wrong with me. Arghhh.
Thank you <3 Shocking deaths like this are terrible for my anxiety, so thank goodness I have therapy this week!
That exact thing happened to me a while ago, re: hosting fees. They kept telling me I had to upgrade because of storage, and finally when they looked into it they found that when I had migrated to their hosting site from my old one, there was my entire blog in backup, doubled. I think my fees are similar to yours, which is honestly not bad for a “hobby,” which is how I think of this.
So sorry about that woman’s mom. My goodness, that is young. My husband will be 61 in October and whenever I hear about someone passing in their sixties I feel very glum. My aunt is very ill and she is only 69, it breaks my heart.
I have had lots of forgetful moments like that! I always feel a bit alarmed by it, like “am I losing it or…” Yikes!
I know other people have much more expensive hobbies so $500 every three years seems reasonable, especially with how much I blog and how many photos/posts I have! So crazy that we both had that backup thing happen to us!
I just cannot handle people passing away in their 60s. TOO YOUNG. And then I think about how my grandma died in her early 70s and like… THAT WAS TOO YOUNG, TOO!
I’ve been feeling forgetful too! Mine seems to be more about losing stuff. I never used to lose anything. I could always keep track of my stuff. Now I’m leaving gloves varioius places, losing my hat, losing my phone…it’s so frustrating!! It’s not that I’m putting them where they don’t belong, (Like putting my phone in the freezer or something) I’m just setting them down and leaving without them.
I hope you have a wonderful weekend! Yes, three social events would be enormous for me too!
Isn’t it SO FRUSTRATING when you can’t find something that you know is in your home? It drives me crazy! Maybe there’s something in the cool blogging water with all this forgetfulness, ha.
I feel you on the forgetfulness. From the front porch has a monthly patreon zoom. When I moved my flight up last Thursday I realized – oh now I can join! So I went to the zoom link and no one was there. I even posted in the patreon post to see if I had the wrong link/others were having this issue. Then I realized – um the meet up is on WEDNESDAY and today is THURSDAY. Sigh. I felt so dumb but I felt like I was running on fumes after not feeling well.
When I was listing out our weekend plans in my post yesterday I thought – this probably doesn’t sound super low key. We have a bday party for Will’s friend tomorrow morning, Phil golfs that afternoon with friends so we will go to the pool and then on Sunday we are having a family over for dinner. We will probably also go to the farmer’s market too. But that’s not too busy for us. But would be for others.
The forgetfulness is striking all of the cool bloggers community! That’s such a bummer about the Patreon Zoom, though!
Your weekends are VERY busy, but that’s the season of life you’re in! I totally get it.
I forgot to commit on Erin’s mom passing. I had to go back and relisten to the intro. I was multitasking and was like – wait, what is happening, no!!! I feel so bad for her, especially since it was sudden and her mom seems quite young! Poor Erin. Another blogger lost her mom last week, too – Jen of Peanut Butter Runner. Her mom had health problems but I thought she was doing fairly well after a double lung transplant but she passed last Friday. 🙁
I saw Jen’s post on Instagram, and was devastated for her, too! It all hits way too close to home.
Wow, $1000 is a lot! I have no idea where the backup of my blog is. None. My husband pays the fees because he has his blog, his podcast, and his website, and mine just goes in there somehow. Someday he’s going to catch on and pass me the bill, I’m sure. He pays annually though.
Forgetting to make a stop when I’m out running errands happens to me all of the time. Sometimes I bring a list and I still forget something (it’s being older and needing reading glasses…ugh.)
My BIL’s wife died last week, after a long illness. She was only 64, which is only a few years older than me. Scary. I’m sorry about the podcaster’s mom, that is really, really hard. There’s no good time to lose a mom (or a dad) but somehow it feels worse when they are still young.
Oh, I’m so sorry to hear about your BIL’s wife. 64 is SO damn young.
I was not excited to pay $1,000 for blog hosting fees, but I was willing to pay it because I love this space so much!
Well- I’ve done all those things. Not necessarily in the same week, so I can see why you’re wondering if you’re losing it (I’m sure you’re not!) Maybe your parasocial grief is affecting you? When my mom died, my sister told me she kept doing dumb things, LIKE… she “returned” her library books in a mailbox instead of the library book drop. Someone delivered them to the library for her, but she got a call from the library telling her the mailbox is not a book drop.
Your weekend definitely sounds busy to me! I would be exhausted, having an event on each day. But I’m practically a hermit, so I’m not a good person to measure by.
I wonder if part of the forgetfulness is the parasocial grief. I’ve done much better this week, but I also didn’t have any appointments to test myself, muahaha.
Oh geesh. I am really far behind on podcasts and had no idea about Erin’s mom. I’m so sad for her, and for you feeling it so much too. What a loss 🥺
What a week 🙁 The forgetfulness is frustrating and definitely worth tracking if it keeps up! In my life that is something that ebbs and flows with how busy I am and stressed out, and where I am in my cycle too.
Yay for going to annual at the derm!
Uff. Parasocial grief can feel so real. I am so sorry about Erin’s mom passing. Ever since my mother-in-law and my friend passed away last year, I am so “sensitive” to these kinds of news. I don’t know, it feels like I am feeling things on a new level and I don’t want to.
Blogging fees are real! But yeah, not having backups or HUGE files (like high resolution photos) on your hosting server helps! I am glad you were able to figure that out.
I was just moved up on my blogging host package too because I kept getting over the storage. I knew it was my back-ups and I kept deleting and deleting. (I save one week of daily back-ups) but for some reason it also does a monthly back-up. I have not figured out what the settings are and why this happened but I think it has something to do with the plugin I use. They made a change and I had to set up something new and I believe the old system just runs but is not visible. I need to sit down and deinstall the plugin and set it all up again. Sigh. Don’t want to be I usually make October a blog backend focus in preparation for NaBloPoMo so on that to-do list it goes. All that said… you fees are soooooo high. I pay 7,95€ a months and if I pay in advance for 1/2/3 years I save money. I just switched to 3 years which saved me another 60€.
I am sorry you keep forgetting stuff. I had a recent incident myself and forgot to lock my bike. It was lucky not stolen but this would have been a real expensive mistake. Sigh. Let’s hop either is just some overwhelm of things to do and nothing major. You certainly don’t need another medical thing.