Tuesday Newsday

So here’s a thing I need to do — call in sick to writing ¹I realize that no one is like, taking attendance here. And that you mostly don’t care if I skip a day or 9. But I write these for me and I need to call in sick to myself. Which is tricky, because I know for a fact that I’m always faking it.. Instead of feeling bad about not doing it, and then feeling like it’s a burden to pick up again, I should just decide that I’m not doing it because my day is hard and I would better use what’s left of it on something else.

My day was hard on Tuesday. My brain felt spiky and I didn’t have enough sleep and Shanda was pretty spiky at me for most of the afternoon. We had a ton of errands to get done. Good things happened but so did hard things, and I wasn’t ready to write about them. Or to dedicate my next morning to “catching up”.

I know this seems simple, but admitting I’m too tired or sick or whatever to do my regular tasks — to do the things that keep me alive and sane — feels both very dangerous and somewhat shameful to me. My brain says I should fake it. I should do “enough” to be “done for now” and then work out the rest later. I worry that I won’t ever get back to it, that stopping will mean I never recover, or that the options are pushing through or depression. But in most non-survival situations stopping would make my life better. In most cases I don’t even need to “catch up” because the thing I’m skipping will just be folded into the rest of history in a couple of days.

So maybe I’ll write Wednesday night. Or maybe after therapy and prep for travel I will skip it again. Hopefully I will be able to choose and feel okay about it, instead of clinging to the idea that routine and the appearance of stability are the only options for interfacing with the world.

ZiB