it felt impossible.

Between a dose of jet lag and one particularly nasty cold (J is kindly referring to my cough as an “old-man-death-rattle”) my sleep patterns have been wacky this week. That means that it's 6am and I’ve been up for about an hour and a half already. I tried to lull myself back to sleep, but instead wound up reorganizing my Pinterest boards on my phone, in bed, while Ratcat slowly tried to claim my entire pillow.

So I’m up, mercifully coughing a bit less this morning, and chugging a hot mug of my healing tea, only this time I’ve boiled it down into a near syrup that tastes like fire. After more than a week of vacation, there’s too much work waiting at the office (the kind with deadlines fast approaching), so I’m rallying the best I can to get my butt into my cubicle today.

We went on a vacation last week, which I realize I only barely mentioned in passing. It was the first time in four years that J and I have taken a vacation just for us. It was also his first time out of the country. I’m still digesting it, but I’ll have more to say at some point. It was wonderful, expansive, challenging, and definitely not relaxing (but we didn’t mean for it to be). When I sort the slew of knots in my brain, I’ll tell you more.

Leading up to the trip, I let myself succumb to being overwhelmed, which generally has more to do with my own state of mind than the actual circumstances of my life. I can always find something to feel overwhelmed about (anxious brains are excellent at that). While I felt overwhelmed, it felt impossible to write. I wish I had powered through, pushed through, but I didn’t. I gave in. So I haven’t done any freewriting in exactly 18 days. Writing that out now, it doesn’t seem so bad - there have been many much longer hiatuses in my history. But I’ve been writing more intensely in the past months than I have in a long time, or ever, so 18 days feels like……..I’ve been holding my breath? 

I’m planning to journal on our trip in retrospect, just to get down some details and memories. I thought that writing would come more easily while we traveled, but again, it felt impossible. I do think that any creative person has to do a little personal math over experiencing vs. documenting and recording and making something out of it. Both are important, but I guess last week I felt desperate for pure experience, for just living, and beyond that, I didn’t feel capable of anything more.

A few years ago, I did a little exercise around the new year. I drew a mindmap of all of my daily (or regular) priorities. It included relationships, hobbies, work, passions, etc. etc. At the time, it surprised me with the sense of clarity I gained over what I fill my life with, and how I can make it all fit together. I had been feeling like there wasn’t enough time for everything, and drawing it on the page made it feel possible again. Diving hard into writing has caused some shifts in my priorities again, and I’ve realized that these past two months in particular have felt more strained because of it. I don’t necessarily mean strained in a bad way, but only in that I’ve felt scrambled at times over how to make it all fit and more, how to decide what it all is. I think I’m going to revisit the mindmap this week. I haven’t drawn one in a long while, and it feels necessary again.

Even in the occasional weeks when writing feels like more than I can manage, I need it. Despite my slightly puffy eyes and my manly hacking cough, I feel like I’m breathing again. I feel like myself again. I feel like the light is switched back on inside the body and brain that have been living my life. It feels so good. If you happen to be reading here now, whether you’ve been here for years or seconds, thank you. This space reminds me how to feel like myself. Your invisible eyes in internet-land bear the witness.