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?
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