A dream: In the Waking Hours I Know My Name is Nessa

 My name is gone from my mind. I had it before I came here, but now that I need it, it seems to have fallen away -- like a dead leaf from a hibernating tree. 'Tis the season of forgetfulness.

Forgetful-ness. Forgetful Ness. There's something so familiar about that, but I can't recall what it should be.

I'm staring at this stranger who's staring right back at me, expectantly. I mumble something, but even I do not understand what I mean to say. She cocks her head, raises an eyebrow, and leans in as if the inches between us are causing the confusion. 

The cold wind blows. More memories fall away. I can almost see them, just for a few seconds, flitting away, tumbling across my timeline, dissipating into the emptiness. Flames flickering into ash.

Shit.

Well, at least that word is clear in my head. I haven't forgotten language altogether. I try to say it to my curious reflection, but she, too, has evaporated. 

This is worrisome. I lift my hands and stare at my fingers. They seem resolute. I wiggle them. I feel them. I am not fading away like everything else around here. I am solid and strong and loud and bold.

The freezing gusts slice into me like blades of ice. I stand against it. I turn to face it, and even though it takes all my strength to find my voice and bring it into my throat, I howl my name into the mighty darkness. 

The sound brings light and the light brings color and the color ripples through the memories, through the leaves of my life, printing words on every page and singing every song. 

I inhale light. I exhale warmth.

I know who I am now. I am Olivia, Forgetter of Names.

There's still some beach in my car.

There's absolutely nobody to hold me accountable to this, but I've got a list of 50 things I'd like to do the year I turn 50. And even if there were somebody to mark the list, it's not like they can take turning fifty away from me, because I already did it back in July. (Though I suppose they could keep me from turning fifty-one if they were a real stickler about it. I guess I better think about that.)

I've been accomplishing things. 

For instance, I went to Vegas. I had never done that before. I played some slots, but my friend who went with me made me stop, so now I've still got $70 of "slots money." Maybe I'll drive up to Guymon next weekend and get rid of it. I won't take the same friend. I'll take somebody who doesn't give a shit how much money I lose.

Went kayaking and later went to the ocean, and just after that went floating down the San Marcos River on a tube. I think I might only be happy on the water. Let me win the lotto and buy myself a houseboat.

Escaped an escape room on the USS Lexington, the one based on missing ghost hunters. Lights flickered, ghosts howled, voices whispered, and I screamed.

I forgot to say I got flashed in Vegas when we were walking The Strip, but that wasn't on my list of things to do, it was just a surprising bonus. We went to MeowWolf while we were there, Omega Mart. I like the one in Santa Fe a bit more. We went to a burlesque show and sat next to a grumpy old man and his joyful wife. We barely drank. 

I got a pet, a black molly who promptly got sucked up into the water filter, so I replace it with another black molly, and then another, and then one more. That final one lasted a bit longer than the first three, but two weeks into it, I packed up the entire aquarium and went back to being a no-pets household. Anything more than four would have been idiotic and cruel. 

I entered a writing contest - short story, but I didn't win. Now that I recall, it was flash fiction that I wrote in less than a day, so no hard feelings. Typically, I'll sit on a story for a while, nurturing it until I think it's ready for the world. This story never stood a chance. It might as well have been a black molly.

I've eaten at more than 50 separate restaurants with more than 50 unique people. 

I've created 50 pieces of art, but I haven't written 50 poems yet. I've almost done fifty little projects around the house. I've definitely read 50 books. 

I created a playlist and listened to my favorite songs from each of the 50 years of my life. 

I tipped $50 to a server and donated $50 to a good cause. 

The list goes on, and I've been having a wonderful year.

I've got all of October, November, and December to tackle whatever's left.

November I'm going to deep dive into NaNoWriMo. I've only ever committed to it once before, but working crazy hours in the stores held me back from being able to dedicate as much time as I'd like to the cause. And even when I did transition to a desk, the fucking pandemic had me tied to it. This year, I don't have any excuses. 

50,000 words in 30 days. What's the math on that? (Doesn't matter. Ima do it, no matter what.)

I Really Need to Cut Down on my Caffeine

I've been staring at this screen for over two hours telling me it's updating all the things. 18%. This may take a while, it says. 

It's my old college laptop. 

I really got my money out of it, but it was old and slow and clunky and grumpy, so I put it out to pasture and bought a shiny new thing about three years ago. Which was four years after I graduated college, so I guess that puts us at an eight year old laptop, which amounts to about 96 in laptop years, so it was an impressively lengthy life. Good old chap.

And I got along fine with the shiny new thing right up until last Thursday when my morning coffee decided to make itself cozy with the shiny new thing, which was by this time, let's just admit it, no longer shiny and not quite new. 

The not really new laptop, of course, had strong objections to becoming cozy with the coffee, and to properly demonstrate its grief, it up and died without any other comment. 

So it's back to the old college laptop.

The clunky, grumpy, not at all shiny or new laptop.

The laptop that worked for four jolly days, but has now decided it's much too old and much too grumpy to be subjected to this kid of elderly abuse so far into retirement. 

If it were human, it'd probably hit me with its cane. 

If I were inhuman, I'd show it what I did to the shiny new laptop that now sits in pieces at the bottom of the trash bin, bleeding coffee. 

22% Don't turn off your PC. This will take a while.

Couple Times a Week

The thing about meetings is...it's considered bad manners to dig a hole and disappear into it, dig all the way to the other side of the earth, start a new life where nobody knows you, abandon all social media, live forever in obscurity. 

Especially right in the middle of your presentation.