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.

So… what a year, eh?

It’s a bit surreal to think that this time last year I was focused on last-minute plans for a holiday in Australia, and trying to remember to finish everything on my to-do list before leaving the office for three weeks. I did not expect to come home from “vacation” having not ever stepped foot in Australia — and taking my father home in my carry-on.

Mum and I thought we’d be able to work through the sudden upheaval of our lives this year. That we’d be able to focus on figuring out how to smash two homes (plus storage that sat unused for decades) into one, to get used to a new rhythm of life. Mum thought she’d get a job.

She didn’t expect to get cancer.

The first few months of covid lockdown are a bit blurry, since the time was spent at home, anyway, taking care of her post surgery, and then taking her to her treatments. She’s in remission now, and we’re thankful, but we’re also…

…tired.

So tired.

The exhaustion never stops. Every time we think we’re getting a break, something seems to come along and say, “No, not this time.”

All we really want to do is have some time to rest. You would think working from home so much this year that I would have more time on my hands. But funny how that’s not as logical as you’d think.

I realize that a large part is that we still haven’t had full time to process. We’ve been running to run crises to the next, like an endless video game, surviving each stage only to run into a new monster.

I want to get my life back under some modicum of routine and control. I need it for my own sanity.

But I also need to process, to sort out all the thoughts and things that I pretend don’t exist, to ignore the depression and insomnia in a desperate effort to remind myself that, all things considered, we are doing okay.

And we are. Doing okay. All things considered.

But I need to believe it. To feel it. To live it.

I want to be well. But I need to know I’m truly okay.

And I need to do that by journaling again. Life seems so much simpler when you can see it in black and white.

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.