Published September 4, 2024

My upended sleep situation has given me time to reflect on a lot. A review of my goals at the start of 2019 is one place my tired brain landed.

That was the last “normal” year from start to finish, although for me there was a major bump in the road. I spent 12 days in the hospital in April, had two surgeries, lost organs and a lot of strength and stamina, and ran up an impossible bottom line of billing. I was just beginning to feel like myself again when 2020 started.

We all know what happened after that.

Today I am finding, as I try to re-establish what normal can be for me amid so many limitations and restrictions, that the sky is not the limit. My hopes and dreams are as grounded as they’ve ever been. They barely feel like anything but a hope to maintain. They are mostly about what and who I am allowed to be. My world is mostly run by the Department of No. Or, the Department of the Review Boards and Committees and Ministry of Approvals While You Wait, Hoping.

I am sleeping more than I did during my 12-day hospital stay, but my body refuses to find whatever normal is. It was 8:25 p.m. as I sat down to write this, and I was wide awake. I slept all afternoon and evening. Rethinking goals has left me sad and depressed.

An emergency therapy session Thursday will help, I hope. What has been happening is unsustainable. But there are big questions about the capacity of the safety nets relative to the weight of the strain.

The future does not feel like a blank page as much as a Magic Slate, where someone can lift the plastic sheet and what was written disappears forever.

I don’t think many people in my orbit understand what being mostly in solitary confinement for 1,636 days in a row does to a person. There probably isn’t any coming back from this, especially without a restful, reliable sleep routine, but I keep trying.

How are you doing? Thanks for stopping by.

Coffee and 2019 goals by tomertu/via Shutterstock.