There are only two weeks until the New Year, so perhaps it is appropriate to star thinking about resolutions. My mother and I have been vaguely putting things off until “next year” the last few months, as we’ve been reeling and dealing with the chaos that was left in my father’s wake*. Not as much chaos as you would expect, and we are continually surprised at how well everything is going. But “no one expects the Spanish Inquisition… or leukemia,” as we now say.

(*Yes, this is a terrible pun, but what are puns not for if to throw some lightness on the dark?)

So resolutions for the New Year. I have some thoughts about how to better handle my finances, now that I’ve pushed back any freelancing gigs so I could be mentally and emotionally available for everything, as well as be home more often for Mum. Plus I’m still not in a headspace to really focus on anything that isn’t absolutely pressing (and sometimes, not even then, alas).

But one of the easier resolutions I’m contemplating is reading more often — specifically, a book a week.

I’m ashamed to admit I barely read anything last year. Or the year before. It’s just easier to scan articles and website with my phone than actually sit down and read, despite the convenience of the Kindle app (and an actual Kindle!).

I also need to find new ways to quiet my mind in the evening. My terrible habit of watching mindless TV until I fall asleep, the quiet drone in the background serving as my white noise, is perhaps not something to cultivate.

So instead I should like to read mindless books until I fall asleep, and have the quiet drone of a barely muffled radon-mitigation pipe (ah, old houses…) as my new white noise.

Which means that I now have a library card! I’ve had library cards before, and I do still have one for my old county somewhere in a pile of randomness that has yet to be packed up in my old apartment. But I have a new one, in my new county, for a nice library that’s only a ten-minute drive away and where I can actually park (for free!).

And I checked my first book out last Friday, and I finished it today! I have two more that I put on hold that are now waiting for me, finding a home in the “book corner” of my nightstand.

It’s still a bit of a battle for me to resist the urge to fiddle with my phone, to have something other than the sound of my own voice in my head, to seek distraction in a page instead of a screen (and the sweet librarian who gave me my card really tried to convince me to use their ebook program, which I will one day — but right now I need to hold paper and binding).

I’m also reminded that there are four bookshelves in my apartment that will need to be moved next month. As well as the dozen boxes of books from my father that will need to find homes.

So there should be no lack of reading material in my life. But nothing “educational.” Nothing high-brow. Just mindless entertainment so I can try to calm my brain at night and perhaps finally get some decent sleep.

Now, I’m thinking about book reviews. Just for me. So I can remember what I read, since I won’t be reading anything new or exciting (I obsessively went through a list of “cozy mysteries” to figure out what authors would be appealing to my taste, since I want to read new things and not something I’ve already read). I’m trying to sort out a “regular posting” schedule of sorts, just to keep me accountable. I’ve been so forgetful lately (thanks to being ADHD-inattentive compounded with grief and extreme upheavals in my daily routines).

Plus, I used to love reading. I used to be the reader. I used to love losing myself in a book.

Maybe I can lose myself again, if I just try a little harder.

 

Gradually, I’m growing a better sleep habit. Last night was the first time in months that I’ve slept longer than five hours, and even though I woke up after four hours, I managed to get back to sleep.

So I should feel rested, shouldn’t I? Yet I am barely able to stay awake this afternoon. I want to rest my head on my desk and take a nap. Shouldn’t a good night’s sleep give me more energy?

But my exhaustion isn’t just the insomnia that I’ve been battling. It’s the stress and anxiety — nothing obvious, just constant and low-key. “Solve your problems and you’ll sleep better!”

How can you solve grief? How can you solve the unknowing of what the next year will bring? How can you solve having your entire life uprooted and shaken and set back down willy-nilly?

Mum and I are gentle with each other. If she says, “Not much,” when I ask, “What did you do today?” I don’t judge. If she’s still in her pajamas when I get home from work, I understand. I know she feels pressure to unpack all the boxes and put everything away. But it was only four months ago that she was living in another house in another part of the world, completely unaware of what the next few weeks would bring.

I think we’re both just waiting for this holiday season and for this year to be over. Not that much will change next year, but at least 2019 will be behind us and we can start looking forward, at least a little bit.

For now, though, I would like a nap.

 

2019 has been a year of disruption and chaos. In order to maintain my sanity in dealing with the more pressing issues, I had to walk away from something I loved but that was becoming more stressful and time-consuming and that I no longer found joy in doing.

But I’m still in group chats with the people I associated with, and today I see them buzzing about the “end of the year” reports they’re working on, something that I used to be excited and stressed about for the past five years. But this year, I am no longer a part of it.

I can smile and share encouraging words, but I can not join in the group moaning about deadlines and how to decide on what makes the cut.

I am irrelevant.

It’s by my own choice — I suppose I could have found a way to keep going, but the stress and exhaustion would have led to a burn-out. Better to step aside before I reach that point.

Still.

I am irrelevant.

My opinion is no longer needed or wanted. I have no clout. I have no importance.

I have nothing to say.

I don’t know if I’ll go back to this industry. Every time I consider it, the exhaustion comes back and I remember the late nights of trying to meet deadlines and I think, “No, maybe this is not for me anymore.”

But it was such a huge part of my identity for the past five years, that to give it up — even with a good reason — feels like a failure on some part.

Who am I now? Just some boring person who works in the office and falls asleep to the Food Channel?

Yes. Maybe that’s who I need to be right now.

To be stable. To be boring. To allow myself a chance to rest and breathe and sort out the uncertain future ahead.

Still, it hurts to be irrelevant.

Oh, sleep, you fickle mistress.

I am attempting to wean myself off sleep aids this week. Except for melatonin, which I’m trying to wean myself, uh, on, so to speak, although I’m not sure that’s really doing anything. So it’s been going about as well as to be expected, which means maybe four hours of sleep a night. Hello, walking zombie.

It’s not that I don’t want to sleep. I love sleep! Naps are wonderful and I wish I could have them everyday!

But at night… I can’t seem to shut off my brain.

My “sleep hygiene” is terrible. I’m like Oscar the Grouch, living grumpily in my new soft bed with all the electronics ever and playing videos all night because who can bear utter silence. And snacks, because the gremlins must be fed at midnight.

Because in the silence, the brain decides it’s time to entertain itself and put on a show since there are no distractions.

Right now, I need distractions.

But also, I need more than four hours of sleep a night.

I just want to stop feeling tired all the time.

 

I forget why I created this space originally — it’s been almost four years since I came up with this hilariously unique username (don’t ask about the inspiration, partially because it’s dumb and unimportant, and mostly because I can’t remember). I just knew I was craving an anonymous corner of the internet, after my original anonymous corner had grown too big for me and people “knew” me and I had solidified myself as an “expert” in a highly specific niche subject.

Over the years, it’s been nice to make genuine good friends online that I would have never have met if it weren’t us being all-out dorks about the niche subject. It’s weird to think that an internet friend is such a good friend that she would even go out of her way to attend your father’s memorial.

Yeah.

Perhaps the real reason I’ve dusted this off, keeping myself from creating yet another ghost-town blog that would go ignored. If I’m going to forget to cancel the renewal payments, I might as well make good use of it.

So here I am, attempting to sort myself out with the written word, the way I have done ever since I was old enough to form proper sentences. I should just keep it all in a private diary, but who does that anymore?

And somehow writing it down… in pen… in my handwriting, in a book that will be there, sitting there, physical and real and something to touch… it’s just too much. Give me the ephemera of these 1’s and 0’s, where months from now I can pretend it never existed.

But for now, I need this space, to be me, to be real, to be in pain and confused and uncertain of the future. To slap on some lipstick and pretend that everything’s all right, to smile and get through the day.

Because I can. And I do. And I will.