Habits

I have gotten out of the habit of writing every night.

I do other things.

I play games, I watch Disney+ or YouTube. I paint. I draw. I shower. I do my night ritual so that I can get to sleep, when sleep wasn't a thing I was getting for many a night, the ritual has become important. I'm grateful I had a really good night's sleep last night. 

I was filling in all the new patient paperwork for my upcoming annual exam and trying to find a new doctor and a number of the questions had to do with sleep. I may still ask for a sleep study. We'll see if there are other issues with my sleep that I don't know about, or that John doesn't wake up enough to know. But I realized that after an entire month when I couldn't sleep worth a darn, it's amazing to know that I'm going to just sleep when I get to bed.

I had a good day. 

I got to get a massage. I got to play with Jet and Erin at Deep Rock Galactic before dinner. We've been playing once or twice a week for the last few months, and we really have a rhythm to it, and each deliberately pick different characters to play so that we fill in all the needs of a team, and I love that so much. I've stopped doing TF2 or Rainbow 6 every night. I've been filling in with Hades in some ways, but that's an obsession of a different color.

I got to go to the Rec Center with John, and I listened to The Code Breaker while I ran on the elliptical. The Anthem insurance site had a survey of my health and it says I need to do more strengthening exercises, like yoga or weight lifting. Maybe I'll start again. We'll see. I've been trying more audio books while exercising and really enjoyed The Hail Mary. I don't like the author of The Code Breaker, at all. I almost returned it because of the prologue. While some of the personality and historical accuracy is there, some of the pure speculation is just stupid. But the personality of Jennifer Doudna keeps bringing me back, as does the thread of real science behind what is being written all around. 

I'm starting to read non-fiction. Not a thing I did outside of schoolwork for my entire life. I always went right for the fiction. Those worlds made sense to me. The real world never did. The whole thing with Russia and the Ukraine and, hell, anything to do with Trump are fine examples. It doesn't make sense to me. It's real. Sure. But it makes no sense. Fiction has to make sense, on the most part, for me to like it. But it's a complicated kind of sense, I guess. Pratchett isn't simple, but all his characters, plots, and stories make sense to me.

Truth within the fiction of art. 

But I picked up Obama's first book about his time in the White House and I find it fascinating. I loved his feeling that writing on paper was the only real way to write because a computer made bad prose look good by being so neat. He's right. There's a lot I could learn from this Hawaiian kid who wanted a place for himself. 

Everything changes, nothing changes back.

I'll finish this, do my bullet journaling, and go to bed early because John and I need to do A/V for a memorial service in the morning. It's for the truck driving husband of a dear friend of John's, who is the head of the Montessori pre-school housed in our church. He was in a head-on accident when another truck jumped into his lane and he died of his injuries. Real life really doesn't make sense... but we'll be there as support for her, her family, and all her dear friends. 

My therapist noted that I'm in mourning. Not just for Linda, but also for all kinds of things: Jet going off to college, my hysterectomy, COVID, various elements of my health, and Isabel from a year ago. But he noted that people lose people all the time, and the great ones come out of it with more compassion and grace, more joy. Grief doesn't have to end in nothing but sorrow. People figure it out, figure out how to integrate the memories and the loss into their lives, their values, themselves. I am so grateful I had Linda and Isabel in my life. I want to emulate them. 

The other night, late, one of Jet's marching bandmates suddenly messaged me via Discord and wanted to talk with me about something they were having problems with. And I listened to them happily. I am so glad they trusted me to be receptive and to really listen. They felt a lot better after, and then, out of the blue, asked me how I was doing. I wrote "I'm fine." three times before actually putting a quick account of tooth and eye, and ending with, "It'll resolve eventually, but for now I'm dealing." And they were grateful back that I could be honest with them. I was so happy with that.

So I'm still building relationships. I want that. And I want to write again, so I'm doing that, too.  Take care and I hope you had a good night, too.