Nothing Happens Except When It Does

A lot can happen in a week; it was probably Calvin and Hobbes where I saw it observed that nothing appears to happen, but everything is different, nonetheless. Whoever said it, they have got a good point.

The drawback of taking a longer view is that it misses details, and the problem with too much focus on details is that you miss the longer view. Which is a way of saying that I feel conflicted. Last week was a bit of a roller coaster that ended very much back where it started. It is, like many things, unnecessary drama. But it is drama that has rattled me. I have been left feeling vulnerable and ill equipped. No one likes to feel powerless; coming as it has when I am struggling to cope with a very real loss of capacity, it is particularly unwelcome.

Pausing to reflect on the week, the summary is that I have been properly shaken up by circumstances beyond my control, I feel physically like I have been paint stripped and sanded on the inside and mentally like I have been put through a garlic press. I feel more than a little overwhelmed by the housekeeping of my life that still hasn’t been completed, which doesn’t help. My physical environment reflects how my abilities have declined, and that is getting to me. The positive that I am holding on to is that I don’t like it and that I still want to change things to make them how I actually want them, not how they have landed.

My current status is that I am tired, and my daily focus is on doing a little bit of the things that sustain me. I am keeping to a regular wake cycle and have a morning routine that has me sitting at my desk, journal at the ready, before saying “good morning” by text. In my journal, I make sure that I keep an eye on actual positives, that I don’t forget what I have built, and most of all, I remember to keep it real; no doom spirals are permitted. My journal is for building myself up, but most of all it is to start the day with the joy of writing. Literally using a pen and paper for nothing more than using a pen and paper, the primary purpose is the act of writing itself. Everything else I do after that is up to me, no expectations, no rules, just process.

This is how I am attempting to align the rest of my life. Start each day as I mean to go on; enjoying what I am doing for nothing more than the act of doing it. I look after myself for no other end than to look after myself. After years of everything having to be in service of a goal, years of chasing productivity, a change has been long overdue. Of course, I haven’t changed everything overnight; this is, in many ways, more manifesto than anything else. I am probably late to the party in realising that I have put pressure on myself, been my worst critic, and caused myself unnecessary heartache with unachievable expectations.

So, in the way of my daily journal, I am ending with the actual positives; I have written part of a story, I have completed an important stage in making my poetry zine, and the drama didn’t fall on my head and has resulted in me having help in its resolution. Things have, so far, worked out well, and the worst I became aware of isn’t going to happen. It may have come close, but it missed, which means I can keep on keeping on until next week.

A shorter blog this week, so a bonus blog exclusive poem:

Infinite Scroll

Notification interrupts regardless,

Even when it’s not there

Set to silent, we try to hear,

Enslaved to a distraction

Convinced it somehow liberates

Every conversation it dominates,

That’s what I have been told,

I’m mindless apparently

Brain rotted for all to see

Glued to the screen carried in my pocket

Missing life, head bowed to the ground

Scrolling for redemption that can’t be found.