Another month has gone by, somehow. In such a short time period, I’ve fallen back to a place between forgetting how to write and simply losing the motivation to do it. The days bleed together. The thoughts in the back of my head persist. I’ve retreated from what provides me fulfillment. The monotony weighs me down.
Nothing particularly bad happened; I just feel my knees starting to buckle under the weight of everyday life—sometimes, literally. Work is steady enough to be neither boring nor stressful, my exercise and self-care routines are on track and I’ve actually felt pretty energetic and emotionally stable lately. I guess it’s the hundreds of throwaway moments that have tipped the scales, more than any one thing.
The most annoying part of it all is looking back at how much time I’ve had this month to put effort toward any kind of self-motivated task. While it’s not like I didn’t accomplish anything, the lack of red X marks on the calendar above my desk tells a story in its own way. 30 minutes of creative time during any given day of the week should not be a particularly heavy lift, and yet.
The old mattress I’m about to replace has strained my ability to get quality rest throughout the month. In response, I spent a week or two trying out sleeping on the floor to mixed results. Some days it helped alleviate my lower back pain quite a bit, other days I slept so poorly that I thought I might have to give up on the concept of sleep altogether. Shopping for a mattress in the current market is its own kind of torment nexus. I spent way too much time diving headfirst into rabbit holes to the point that I was losing progress, and finally just committed to picking something out so I could be done. Here’s hoping I made the right choice. Sleep problems have become a core part of my identity and a recurring theme on this journal, so I could really use a win here.
In times like this, it’s good to remember that I have somebody who I can confide in—somebody who I trust completely to keep my emotional wellbeing in mind. Fighting against this unseen enemy that traps me in these mental prisons is an impossible task to perform by myself. Typing words at a similar kind of shrouded visage on the other side of the screen can be helpful to a point, but perhaps what I truly need is to get out of my own head, face to face, in the real world.