The Mercurial Wordsmith

The sun is setting on 2020.  I'm always pensive this time of year, but perhaps even more so after surviving 2020. And it was just that, surviving. There have been expansive highs and lows, and it's been difficult to share those highs in a year marked by such tension, uncertainty and grief. I sometimes felt guilty for celebratory posts I shared on the new house, the new position at work, or even revisiting my creative passion for writing and designing. As much as I have shared, there is even more I've held back. I publicized my new blog and the Non-NaNoWriMo project with trepidation as I was opening up and sharing parts of myself to the world, and taking license to purposely avoid politics and the pandemic. I realize that has been a privilege and luxury that not everyone can afford. It was my way of escaping the extreme fatigue and stress associated with all of that, and gave me something else for my brain to focus on instead of the constant stress.  My thoughts around this ...

The changes presented slowly, at first. Nothing really raised an immediate red flag of alarm or worry. The first thing to go was my decent, consistent sleep schedule. Normally in bed by 10 (or sometimes, even earlier) and up by 6 for the work commute, the routine was clearly defined and set in place. Then, March arrived, and along with it, the shut down. We almost immediately shifted to remote work, and maintaining that sleep schedule was not only short lived, but eventually descended into a raging trash fire. What would start with staying up a little bit later each night, eventually turned into full-blown insomnia. I was noticing a pattern of pit-in-the-stomach anxiety each night, something I have never really felt before.  As the weeks and months wore on, it got to a point where I was regularly up until 3 or 4 am and still getting up to work the next day. Not an ideal way to function.  Not surprisingly, the quality of sleep was also compromised. Even when I would sleep in on...

I had my second experience with an edible this weekend. It wasn't much better than the first time I tried it, which was about a year ago.  I honestly think it's overrated. Maybe it loses the appeal and luster when you first try it in your 40s. Maybe I'm just too much of a newbie to appreciate it. Or maybe I just don't understand the so-called desired effect. Maybe all of the above? I partook of this most recent one at 5:30 pm on Friday. By 8:15, I was fast asleep. What transpired in between wasn't really all that impressive.  I really don't like the way it messes with the perception of time. Maybe I'm too much of a control freak to give that up. Forgetting why I kept going into the damn kitchen, and whatever it was I was doing there that seemingly took forever was not fun. Not at all. Kind of like a nightmare, I'd keep reminding myself that what I thought I was experiencing in terms of the time perception wasn't real. It was jarring and rather stres...