Focus on what I control; make peace with what I can't control.—affirmation from yesterday's youtube yoga session

The husband, mother-in-law, her sister and I are at a publicans' annual conference in Tullamore. The mother-in-law had been keen to attend; she used to go every year before Tommy died in 2019, and then the pandemic hit and there were no conferences anywhere.

The husband and I are probably the youngest people here. Everyone is in their 70s, and hungover from the gathering last night. There are some real characters, people used to being the centre of attention as publicans in whatever rural corner of the world they hailed from. One dude, a Sligo publican also in his 40s, isn't even attending the conference; he's just here for the craic. Another dude, a publican from outside Westport, is very fond of himself, telling me about how he came from wealth and made all his millions on his own (yeah, right). He kept going on and on about our childlessness, which felt spiteful at that time of the night, but on hindsight, it was probably the obliviousness of the very privileged.

Anyways, I've been trying to leave this hotel room for ages, to run errands and see the town but my mind keeps going to Galway, where my friend's family are preparing for her daughter's funeral on Thursday. I'm leaving the conference early tomorrow, to take the train to Galway, and I keep pacing around the hotel room, tidying and making several to-do lists.

When I'm anxious, I usually make lists, long lists of the most basic things, like, Get up at 8, shower, put on makeup, eat breakfast, pack, walk to train station, etc. With each stupid task, I compose myself, a future self, who can leave this room and focus on what I control. (Diary entries, I guess, function in a similar way.) That is, where I will go, what I will do, how I will treat each person I meet. I tell myself, Make peace with what you can't control. That is, make peace with my heartbreak.

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