Published November 22, 2024

It takes an enormous amount of energy now to write and post. Technology — specifically, transcription software — helps a lot. I can “write” in bed, which is practically my new workstation now. Few things beat composing in a blanket fort.

My brain knows its way around the subject matter, which helps. This is eleventy billion times easier than navigating page after page of forms I am filling out these days. Few things beat you down like government forms, even if they are a path to much-needed help.

I’m trying. Getting out of bed has been a chore for weeks.

The past two nights, I have been thinking about all of the things that are wrong in my life. So many of them are outside my control. I am trying to keep from feeling trapped, but it’s not easy. Being terrified by current events has me in unprecedented and disorienting pain.

I’m twitching. I’m flinching. Spasming. Tremoring. Lurching. Shaking. Hurting in my bones. That’s no way to try to fall asleep or stay asleep. It’s no way to rest.

Will it ever stop, or is this a new normal?

Searching for a handle on a future

I’ve been at crossroads and felt stuck before. I left my hometown and hometown paper when I decided it was time to see if I was good enough to work anywhere else. Then I left my home state when it had little to offer me anymore.

I look at the image above when I need to remember. That’s right, I did that. I left everything behind and drove 3,100 miles to a new life. It’s important to remember I had it in me.

Now I need to reimagine my life again. Lying in bed, I can’t even tell you what that looks like. But it might be the only thing that saves me. I still can’t tell you all the details about how I’m trapped, but it’s as terrifying and suffocating as anything I’ve ever been through.

I’m tired of what I have to offer being wasted and undervalued, and it’s time to do something about that. But that’s only about 10 percent of what has been happening. That’s why I’ve been encouraging my brain to think outside the Death Star trash compactor we’re in.

Something that means something to people would be good to find, good to do. The trick is to find that thing and have it also be sustainable and sustaining.

So I’m looking. My life right now is untenable, unsustainable, unsatisfying. I need to reimagine it.

Before I run out of time.

I’m trying, Ringo. I’m trying real hard.

Maybe it starts with a new way of seeing everything. Everything.

What’s next?

I hope it’s peace.

For all of us.