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As part of marking my new year, i am trying to record the mundane day to day aspects of my life. The larger arc doesn't change much. Big personal changes recently included our move to NC in mid 2016, Mom's stroke in late 2018, and my ceasing engagement with a (Quaker) Monthly Meeting in mid 2021.
--== ∞ ==--
I'm in my mid fifties, and have been married to Christine for over thirty years. She and i met in high school and married after college. I understood who she knew she was before we married: it took many years for her to be in a position where she was ready for expressing her true gender to everyone. She changed her name and gender markers in the early 2000s.
I attended college in North Carolina, graduate school in physics at the University of Pennsylvania. My long tenure as a graduate student was because i was also taking a life class in major depression. I eventually set a deadline for myself, got pneumonia that set me back and mde me miss my deadline. I took a job as a systems administrator for the Franklin Institute, and then, in 2000, and old friend recruited me for a job in San Francisco. In 2000, a non-profit had no chance of hiring technical staff in San Francisco as everyone chased the dot com boom. From our archive nonprofit, we watched the bust. Churn at that non-profit led me to a job at a non-profit that works for libraries, museums and archives. In 2006 that non-profit (the minnow) merged with a much larger but quite similar non-profit (the whale).
After some extremely stressful years, the management at The Whale became more stable for the technical teams. I moved from management to technical and systems architecture, and am very happy with my work in authentication and authorization systems.
In 2016 we left the Bay area -- the rising rents and the droughts -- and moved back to North Carolina. My family knew my mother's mind was declining: in late 2018 she had a massive stroke just days after receiving a diagnosis of Cerebral amyloid angiopathy, a condition in which proteins build up on the walls of the arteries in the brain. CAA increases the risk for stroke caused by bleeding and for dementia. My father became my mother's primary carer. While the prognosis was clear to me in the days after the stroke, it took several years for my father to understand that not only was my mother not going to "get over" the stroke, but that she was actually going to continue to decline. In mid 2021 he hired help, B--, a woman he met when she was tending bar at one of his pre-COVID hangouts.
My sister L-- lives nearby with her husband T--, and teen children W-- and E--. She quit her job in late 2019 for several reasons, one of which included spending more time caring for our Mom. My brother N-- lives in Singapore with his wife M--, and his teen boys Z-- and D-- and youngest daughter S---.
I was active in different Quaker monthly meetings over the past 20 years. The meeting i began attending in North Carolina I felt led to join as a stretch. It was not the large university or urban meeting, it came from a different branch of Friends. I felt comfortable and welcomed, but it took a long time for me to realize the meeting's understanding of Quakerism is rather different than mine. In mid 2021, i left the meeting informally, and currently am pursuing my spiritual leadings in a solitary way. I had engaged in Friends' community for the practice of community: i feel that bringing what i have learned to the community that is my family is where i should be at this time.
My engagement with photography and yarn craft has fallen by the side as i now passionately engaged in co-creating a sustainable, more ecologically balanced environment on our four acre lot. "Yard work" and "gardening" mean so many things to me, and they feed my energy.
--== ∞ ==--
I'm in my mid fifties, and have been married to Christine for over thirty years. She and i met in high school and married after college. I understood who she knew she was before we married: it took many years for her to be in a position where she was ready for expressing her true gender to everyone. She changed her name and gender markers in the early 2000s.
I attended college in North Carolina, graduate school in physics at the University of Pennsylvania. My long tenure as a graduate student was because i was also taking a life class in major depression. I eventually set a deadline for myself, got pneumonia that set me back and mde me miss my deadline. I took a job as a systems administrator for the Franklin Institute, and then, in 2000, and old friend recruited me for a job in San Francisco. In 2000, a non-profit had no chance of hiring technical staff in San Francisco as everyone chased the dot com boom. From our archive nonprofit, we watched the bust. Churn at that non-profit led me to a job at a non-profit that works for libraries, museums and archives. In 2006 that non-profit (the minnow) merged with a much larger but quite similar non-profit (the whale).
After some extremely stressful years, the management at The Whale became more stable for the technical teams. I moved from management to technical and systems architecture, and am very happy with my work in authentication and authorization systems.
In 2016 we left the Bay area -- the rising rents and the droughts -- and moved back to North Carolina. My family knew my mother's mind was declining: in late 2018 she had a massive stroke just days after receiving a diagnosis of Cerebral amyloid angiopathy, a condition in which proteins build up on the walls of the arteries in the brain. CAA increases the risk for stroke caused by bleeding and for dementia. My father became my mother's primary carer. While the prognosis was clear to me in the days after the stroke, it took several years for my father to understand that not only was my mother not going to "get over" the stroke, but that she was actually going to continue to decline. In mid 2021 he hired help, B--, a woman he met when she was tending bar at one of his pre-COVID hangouts.
My sister L-- lives nearby with her husband T--, and teen children W-- and E--. She quit her job in late 2019 for several reasons, one of which included spending more time caring for our Mom. My brother N-- lives in Singapore with his wife M--, and his teen boys Z-- and D-- and youngest daughter S---.
I was active in different Quaker monthly meetings over the past 20 years. The meeting i began attending in North Carolina I felt led to join as a stretch. It was not the large university or urban meeting, it came from a different branch of Friends. I felt comfortable and welcomed, but it took a long time for me to realize the meeting's understanding of Quakerism is rather different than mine. In mid 2021, i left the meeting informally, and currently am pursuing my spiritual leadings in a solitary way. I had engaged in Friends' community for the practice of community: i feel that bringing what i have learned to the community that is my family is where i should be at this time.
My engagement with photography and yarn craft has fallen by the side as i now passionately engaged in co-creating a sustainable, more ecologically balanced environment on our four acre lot. "Yard work" and "gardening" mean so many things to me, and they feed my energy.
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