THE FINISH LINE GOES STRAIGHT INTO THE NEXT RACE

Good morning! It’s the last day of 2025 and I’m on hold with UPS. I have decided this is the last day I am going to deal with crappy little problems for a while. So I am waiting patiently to check off another “try” task on my list. I’m trying to get compensated for a “signature required” package that was just left on my porch without said signature. The package isn’t lost, but it showing up on Christmas Eve with no one to sign for it, and the driver having left it made it look “delivered,” and thus voided a return window I desperately needed. It was a trial-buy arranged with the seller who was very excited that I missed the TWO day return window due to it being Christmas. Very cool. It was expensive and UPS just threw protocol to the wind. I had driven out of state to be with friends about two hours before the driver showed up, so the package should not have been delivered at all. Anyway, you know this song. We all do. Both UPS and the seller are really unhelpful and want no part in making things right. It feels so mercenary. I wish there was a spray or a blacklight pen you could use to see if something was being sold, delivered or performed by someone mercenary. It’s the coldest feeling of all.

I know you all go through these stupid things and are sometimes even badly harmed by them. How do we go forward avoiding, and/or un-training the mercenaries or at least neutralizing their effects? I don’t know. My first instinct is to withdraw from people, to withhold trust and to be suspicious which feels like a soak in toxic soup, so no, I shake it off. I want to believe in the goodness of people, I want to give people the benefit of the doubt. The fact that I am willing to trust in the first place is a fucking miracle, so I don’t want to dim it, I want it to be a strength. It IS a strength. It is authentic openness and a compliment to show a stranger a lack of fear or suspicion. I’m very tired of people seeing openness as a weakness, or giving you the “you should have known better..” bullshit. Connection. Community. That’s what I want, even with a stranger on the other end of a transaction. It’s NOT too much to ask.

How am I gonna get there? I’m gonna have to bushwack that trail as the moments require. Any suggestions are welcome as long as they are not related to any saccharine “Eat, Pray, Love” platitudes that are carved onto distressed plaques in AirBB kitchens across the world… haha! So today, I make all the shitty calls, leave messages, write down case numbers, etc. But tomorrow I’m done. Wanna come with me? Let’s be done. These annoying and hurtful things will come again, but I will not face them the same. I don’t know what that looks like yet, but I’m eager to find out. Well, not eager..

So it’s a new year coming and I don’t want to have expectations, but I also want to? As in, “This is gonna be a great year because I make it one!” I’m so tired of bad years! We all deserve some hope. It’s true, T**** should be in jail by now and I am brought so low by how little victims of sexual violence’s lives and pain matter to anyone. The apathy is so much worse than I thought. It hurts more than I can process. Don’t get me wrong, I am not surprised by it, just retraumatised. I’m sure a lot of you are. It feels like there is a garbage disposal always on in my stomach, complete with the signature jarring sound constantly in my ears.

I am not going out of this year defeated though. I want to be sunshine and rainbows for you, but I am only human. If things can get worse, they can get better, and I will push the nose of that fucking clown freighter toward the light myself if I have to, but I have a feeling you guys want to right the ship too. To the new year! I love you all. N

Marcia having pinned the tiger under the Christmas tree bolsters me some.