Blind to time

Morning darklings,

This was meant to be a Little joys, but instead, I ask of you to picture this:

It's 7am, and you have an appointment at 3pm. You get up, brush your teeth, wash your face, pee, feed the cats, grab a tea, then settle in for the morning. It's 8am now. You must have walked slower than you thought, but that's okay.

You've only got two things to do today—text a friend back and balance your finances. Texting your friend should take five minutes, the finances maybe thirty, so you plan to enjoy your tea while you do a little writing (or whatever you love to do). But you feel fatigued and the clock says 8:20am. You just sat down, though. Thinking about your two things took 20 minutes.

Now you need to rest.

You choose a video essay that's an hour long. You turn it to 2x speed because you're in this for knowledge only. In half an hour, you'll get to work again.

It's 11am. You must have dissociated—temporarily mentally stepped away. You wonder if your alter was in control or if you were just gone.

It's 11:30am now. Thinking takes a while lately.

You decide to get an early lunch. You can still write for an hour, text your friend in 5 minutes, do your finances in 30, then drive the half hour away to your appt with a long lunch, getting ready time, and a buffer. You've got this.

Figuring out what you want to eat takes half an hour, despite the whole day of food noise having you think about what you want to eat. You look in the fridge then go sit down because fatigue. Three times later, you decide on cheese and crackers with grapes. After collecting your food and sitting down, you realize you need a water refill. Your husband is on a work call, so he's not meandering to the kitchen anytime soon. You can't wait, so you go get yourself a glass. It's 12:45pm now.

The back and forth has worn you out. You need another rest. Just til 1pm or so.

You keep an eye on the clock, listening to music and eating, but somehow it's 1:15pm when you register the time.

You pull up your texts and realize you need to answer 5 people now. Or maybe it was always 5 people, not 5 minutes. You know you don't have time. You scan to see if any are urgent. Not terribly. But one is from four days ago. That disappoints you.

It's 1:30pm when you open up all of your financial websites and balance your account. Being broke means this is a must 1-2x a week. It takes 45 minutes. It's now 2:15pm.

You need to leave in 15 minutes, but you're still in pajamas. Wait—the traffic looks worse than. You need to leave in 5-7 minutes.

You throw on clothes, toss your hair in a clip, put some blush on so you look less like you feel, and it's 2:30pm.

You're going to be late.

You grab your bag and shoes and toss an I love you over your shoulder.

When you slide in the seat of the car, it's 2:40pm.

You arrive at your appointment at 3:10pm, thankful that you had a shitty ex who taught you to whip in an out of traffic, which shaved off 10 minutes.

Parking, grabbing things, walking as fast as you can when your body feels like slinking to the floor sees you walk in the door at 3:20pm. Most offices would have told you the cutoff was 15 minutes past your appointment, but this office is a dream. They understand you dissociate, have time blindness, and operate on crip time. You're feel lucky and grateful.

On the drive back, you realize you didn't write today and you still have 5 friends to text back. Well, 6 now, because someone texts you as you are driving home. Also, you haven't responded to 4 emails from last week. But as you fall in through your doorway, your whole everything shuts down, and all you have left is verbs and an empty stomach.

There's always tomorrow.

That was me four times in the past two weeks. Once, I arrived on time, but I started getting ready two hours before I had to leave.

My brain is pretty worn out right now. But I'm still getting you this newsletter. It's past 9am on the Friday I planned to send it out because I didn't write it on Wednesday or Thursday or even earlier this morning like I'd planned.

I'm still showing up, though. I'm still getting words on the page so my nonfiction can be published next year. I'm still working on side projects and making things. I'm still trying. And that's all anyone can ask of themselves—of anyone, really.

I hope you all are continuing to try. It's enough. Truly. Sometimes, just opening your eyes and saying hello to world is all you have, and that's cool.

I'll be resting a lot this week because that PNW Miniature Show is this coming weekend—the 16th-18th. I may only be there for a few hours, but as you now see, that feels like an eternity. Still, I'm so fucking excited. I want more of this—more art to be seen, more work to be read, more authors of mine to be shared, more exposure. This takes so much out of me, but I do it because it's worth it.

Speaking of worth it: Dusty (our third baby) is ready to be integrated! He went to his checkup today and got his shots. This will save us so much energy, it's actually hard to fully explain.

On that note, I'm going to rest because I have periodicals to stuff, phone calls to make, signs to design, and emails to write. Will she do it all today? Well, that's anyone's guess really.

Until next time, harness the Little darknesses and embrace the Little things.