Another Warp Speed Yet Oddly Suspended Year

 I’m sure if I ever bothered to do New Year’s resolutions, I could churn out some painfully misguided goals to burn out on before January is over, but regardless of how pointless I find those resolutions, I still like to give the year’s end some time for reflection.

It still blows my mind that only four years ago, I published my first book… and followed it with ten more. (I actually finished all nine books before I ever published the first, though.) Somewhere between there, my grandma and mom died and I published the tenth book on my mom’s birthday. I managed to finish UnSung but the final two books of that series are still in limbo. Before I was officially burnt out, the pandemic crept up and completely shattered my sense of time. 

At first, I used FaceBook to navigate but it was destroying my moods and making me avoid both the people I live with and the things I usually enjoy doing. I’ve spent much of the past almost-two years in a sort of haze, sometimes feeling like depression or anxiety but making me confused, restless and unfocused above all. I’ve been able to chip at some projects at a snail's pace but mostly just kept… acquiring things. Which temporarily alleviated anxiety but also caused it too. I’m surrounded by so many wonderful things to do and… still don’t really want to do anything. Oddly enough, it’s not the eyes of my many dolls passing judgement but the many I started projects without eyes that feel like they stare with the weight of judgement.

I bought a PS5 and rarely play it, even though I got a PS Plus subscription as well. I mostly poke at stupid phone games I’m not really paying attention to, with my TV playing shows I’m also not paying attention to, just trying to shut up a brain that is either racing in multiple directions or drooling with useless absurdities. 

I hate when I dream. Most of the time I just wake up remembering something weird but entirely too stupid to make into something interesting. Unless hiding in my grandma’s basement and smoking cigars made out of brown sugar is your idea of inspiration for a story. For me, that’s a hard pass. It’s only weird in that sort of way that Mad Libs are random. Mostly stupid but you try to be a good sport and laugh when you replay it.

I still edit for a friend, one of the bright spots in the year. I love his stories and I love remembering I’m really good at things, even when I’m neither confident nor motivated. I really never had hope that I’d ever get lucky creatively and become a name but just having the passion to be creative is too powerful to mourn that. This isn’t a world that rewards virtues I find necessary to live with myself and I have no desire for the misery of ‘compromise’. People seem to define ‘compromise’ as me giving up everything important and them tolerating my involvement. And the less work they actually do, the more credit they want. 

I’m proud of the changes I’ve made this year though. I’m taking better care of myself, which came in handy when I was put to the test, nearly losing my dad to COVID-19 and having to take care of everyone as if all was normal. Fasting has turned out to be a very helpful discipline, mentally and physically, and I will keep it up as long as it continues to be beneficial. Once I can break through the haze, this room I’ve been stocking and cleaning will be a powerhouse base for amazing projects again. One thing I’ve learned that can always float me through depression is maintaining a clean and tidy space so that when I hit the ground running, I’m not impeded by chaos and likely to fall right back into depression again. Depression can both cause paralysis and encourage inertia. It took a lot of time to discipline myself to the mind-over-matter state of telling myself to just move. Even if it just meant breathing and focusing on tightening muscle groups until I could even lift an arm. (You never ‘get over’ depression; in my case, there was a lot of building up to the will to want to bail out.)

There was always that scene in The Neverending Story that stuck with everyone who saw it. The horse just giving up in the Swamp of Despair and how much we didn’t get it like Atreyu yelling at it to just get moving. Until we did get it, the ones that became depressed when we got older. I think that scene is even more painful to think about now because I understood that loss of will. I remember the horse really looking afraid, confused, crying out towards the end but ultimately succumbing. But I also remember that life went on for Atreyu. It had to. Life is for the living and ultimately, once I’d hurt those I loved by giving up, they’d have to carry on letting my loss burden them in a way that they might have never really understood why I couldn’t just TRY.

So I do. Some days I just go through the motions but I know that ‘just’ doing anything is sometimes the best thing we can do for ourselves. To let ourselves cry in bed too, but to get up and prepare for the world we want to be in once the funk passes. To be the only ones to know how brave we have to be to fight those misunderstood battles and overcome.

So I go into the new year without expectations or goals or ultimatums on my healing paths. There is no shortcut to that breakthrough but it will come, sooner or later, and I must celebrate my victories and learn from the defeat. There are great things ahead, good and bad, and I only hope that my journey has more great adventures ahead.