Tag: 09 05

249 // Real Life

It’s a late start this Saturday morning, but that was entirely by design. In fact, this whole weekend is packed with plans for extra hours of peace and rest, as much as I can fit in around my wife’s continued birthday plans and a couple of small family gatherings and events.

Now that I’m up though it’s time to get moving the best I can and make the most of the daylight I’m given. I’ve already cooked breakfast and hope to push a few updates and page edits out here. There is a half finish blackout poem on my desk waiting to be shared and dishes piled in the kitchen waiting to be washed. What I would like not to do is spend too much time on my phone or watching too much TV.

It’s no secret I have been struggling with my physical health lately, and the impact on my mental health is increasing by the day. I’ve noticed I’m giving in to harmful cravings and losing time to mindless scrolling. Screens are an easy escape but at the end of the day I always feel worse than if I had done something else or even had done nothing.

I’m considering deleting all those tempting apps off of my phone, or at least get them off of my home screen. I need a little distance. I need space to remember how it is I want to spend my days before the icons and notifications decide for me. More than that, I want to get back to not even having my phone in hand. I have limited the notifications I receive both on my smartwatch and through my headphones to only the most important, so my phone never actually needs to be near me unless I need it.

Of course, that’s easier said than done, and it has to start with my mental state first. When you have no energy, when you feel isolated and down, social media can feel like a lifeline and there are times and circumstances when it is but not all times and not all circumstances and lately less and less. I need action. I need work I can do and feel. I need real life again.

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I woke up early this morning, too early to get ready for work and still too late to make going back to sleep worth it. I lay there in the dark worrying over recent frustrations, future to-do items, and all the ways I am failing in life. I lay there breathing hard and growing increasingly anxious and upset until I was practically vibrating.

I knew that if I didn’t get up and get some of this bad energy out of me I’d never recover the day. So I got up, grabbed my running shoes and the dog and ran it out as much as I could before I had to return and start the day.

Since then I’ve arrived at work early, eaten a healthy breakfast, gone for another walk, picked up a few groceries, and nearly hit my step goal for the whole day. It’s 7:30 A.M. and I feel amazing! I wonder what else I will accomplish today?

I’m picking up my old journal again tonight. Since I have been posting here, I stopped writing in the physical one, stopped carrying it around with me, hell, I couldn’t even tell you where it is at the moment, but, suddenly, I need it desperately.

Some stresses, misfortunes, and pain, and even some joys and expressions of love only half belong to us, more often even less, and telling a story that isn’t yours alone is, at best, not your place, and, at worst, a betrayal. Still, I must speak and writing has always been the only way, the only place I can speak as just myself with no filter, influence, or fear.