Twenty-Five

Another year older. It never feels like I'm much older or any wiser and certainly doesn't feel like I ever have my life more put together...

In high school I hoped to be living in a studio apartment or cottage on a hill making art or publishing books and making a living out of it. Around five to four years ago I was planning to move out of town into a cold, empty studio and make art alongside working a low-stress, part-time job and apply to work in a brewery. Of course none of that worked out. Too much sleep deprivation, too many days without a night off work, too much stress from work and broken relationships and so on and so on, I repeatedly got too mentally unwell or physically ill to work and things fell apart. I decided to call it quits and refocus everything I could.

Years later, I've been technically unemployed since then but have worked dozens of odd jobs online from enthusiast brewing consultant to community and brand manager and consultant to freelance artist and graphic designer, to most recently a (very short-lived) freelance writer and game designer and, currently, caregiver to my grandfather. Thinking back on it, it's been a strange, nebulous and rocky trail, the path forward is utterly grey and unclear. With my grandfather's worsening conditions this past month, he had the option to undergo a dangerous surgery (dangerous due to his impressively old age) to hopefully permanently fix the issues, or have a minor (minimally invasive) procedure as a workaround that would inconvenience him every day. Thankfully, for everyone else, he went with his doctors' strong recommendations and chose the latter option which he went through yesterday.

Seeing family members struggle is always difficult. Yesterday had a lot of struggles, physically, mentally, emotionally. I'm glad I'm here, though. With my other grandparents I either wasn't around as much as I wanted to be — or when I was my stubborn grandparents insisted their grandchildren and even children would let other people (nurses, etc.) take care of them — or there simply and sadly was nothing that I could do to help when strokes and dementia were at work.

Right now I'm trying to maintain a balance between taking care of myself physically and mentally and being there for my grandfather, cleaning, cooking, assisting, teaching, and baking and sharing desserts and cocktails or warm bread and beer or wine when time and energy allow.

I turned a quarter of a century old today. Time always seems to fly by whenever I think about it.