As with many folk, this year has been exhausting. So much has happened beyond my control and I’ve just been running from one catastrophe to the next, and it seems like finally I have a chance to stop running and focus on just… existing… but it feels weird to just be standing still. Because when you stand still, you can no longer run from your problems.

Without any major life-altering projects to focus on and distract me, it seems like now the real grief processing has begun. As has what I can only assume is trauma-induced PTSD that I’ve pushed aside because there was no time or energy to deal with it. Not that I can push it aside forever, but I still need to stuck it up and focus on the daily life that I’ve been slacking on due to so many larger things clamoring for my attention.

One of the things my work coterie has been discussing is this idea of a line — you can be under the line, or over the line. The ideal is to be over the line, where your needs are taken care of and you can flourish creatively. But you can also tell someone when you’re below the line and that your mood is not conducive for Big Brain thought.

We’re meant to take this as short-hand, as a way to tell folk that today, in this meeting or planning process, we are “below the line” so don’t take our inability to function personally, we’re just, y’know, “having a bad day.”

A lot of my coworkers love the idea — that yeah, we can be dragged down below the line sometimes, but we have an awesome job and we do awesome work and creativity rocks!!!!!!

I wanted to be like… “But I’ve been below the line for at least a year, and I don’t know when I’ll be above it again.”

To be so brutally honest, however, might not be the wisest, especially in this economy.

But the point still stands.

I have been struggling creatively. I am someone who normally can’t function without some sort of creative outlet, bet it writing or music or art or, heck, just coloring in a book or doing a craft with kids. I used to be overflowing with ideas and dreams and passions.

And now I’m just relieved if I can maintain a decent sleep schedule for more than one night.

I’m not passionate about anything right now. A hobby I loved dearly no longer holds joy and I’ve walked away and not looked back (alas, burning some bridges, but I was too exhausted and burnt out to care).

I want to find my creative spark, the joy that has been missing in my life for far too long.

I don’t know how to do that.

But I do know that words have always been my saving grace, the outlet when I have been most bottled up.

So here we are.

I had so many plans for this blog, where I’d have a set schedule about set topics. I was going to be very mundane about my life but it was a way to get me focused again.

Then I thought maybe this could be the journal release of thought that I’ve avoided for years (because paper journals are for losers, she says while hiding the stacks of empty paper journals that are lurking in her closet).

But honestly, what I really need to do is focus on the joy. The happiness.

My life has felt like a black hole, and will continue to feel like a black hole, if I don’t remind myself of the weird little (or maybe sometimes larger) joys that have happened this year, or in recent years, or that I will hope will happen.

This world is such a struggle. I want to throw up my hands in despair and give in to the numb darkness that shrouds my hope and heart and voice.

But instead, I want to focus on the fact that my turtles are ridiculous and worthy of having an entire post about them, and that I have had silly encounters with adorable animals, and that I literally bit my tongue yesterday which was so surprising that I laughed until I cried (who knew that a sandwich could be so deadly?).

I’m a disaster. But so is the whole world.

And what I need right now — what the world needs right now — is some silly joy and to be reminded that while everything sucks, sometimes it doesn’t always suck so bad.