Oh guys, I’m writing this bit from March 1, 2024 .. below is what I wrote on New Year’s Day. I couldn’t publish it then, it was all too much. Things feel a little better now. I feel awfully vulnerable sharing this but also saying things out loud makes them easier and I could use a little easier lately.

01/01/2024***

Every year this review is daunting, this year I really don’t want to do it at all. I’m tired and I’m sick (round two of covid arrived the day after Christmas) and my spirits are … complicated. 

I started this year extraordinarily unhappy in my job. Returning from my 2022 holiday I wrote “I worry I am doing damage …” I was talking about returning to work, I was worried I was damaging myself. So I found a new job a few days later. 20 years at IU and it was all done.

And the change WAS wildly good for me. My stress levels started to drop and I decided to give up my pandemic smoking for good (I’d quit for many years but then dropped back into it during the pandemic)… so I did and that was brilliant. I decided I was worth the money but didn’t want to kill myself with anything so instead I pop $10 a day into my cashapp and I buy yoga classes or massages or facials or whatever trash my heart wants. 

And I started working on the retrospective of my first 10 years as an artist … and I built an archive of my work … and the retrospective is unfinished and I’m stalled and frustrated. It’s all just so much and it’s hard for me to look so closely at the person I was a decade ago. So much confusion and chaos and fear. I don’t know how to look at it and not live it again. So I am stalled and I feel weak.

And my youngest started driving and suddenly I wasn’t really a full time parent anymore, which is startling since I’ve been a solo parent since god was a boy and not needing to be on call all the time left me adrift! Who even am I? What am I worth? What’s the point now?

And I got Covid on my birthday after a haunting viewing of The Seventh Seal in the LivingRoom theater in Indianapolis. And my life jumped the tracks or slipped timelines or something but I was so sick and my mind was so muddy and it feels like I just never really did recover. Instead of recovery I saw my hormones plummet and my body said ‘dude, you’re FORTY-EIGHT!’ and I remembered that menopause happens and realized it was happening to me and I haven’t quite been the same since.

Guys, I just changed, everything changed. I don’t feel good and I do think maybe I should try to do this at another time when my spirits aren’t so miserable.

I have become extraordinarily disconnected from our greater shared history and experience. I want to sort out the fundamentals of myself. Health and safety and confidence and care. I am adrift.

****

Two months later and I am finding some peace with my changed self but I wonder now if I am just forever like this? Nebulous and unrooted, scattered and fluttering. I’m starting to feel care for my softer and larger body, a gentleness rather than a judgement. That feels like important progress.

Sometimes I can’t quite stand the racing of my own heart and the inexplicable fear that comes over me but it always passes in time. Once in awhile I remember to breathe, today I remembered to sing. I’m learning Creep on the ukulele, singing helps.

Sometimes I have to intentionally run through all the reasons I want to keep on keeping on. And I do both, the listing and the keeping on.

I have my first appointment with my new therapist next week, that’s a big deal. I am setting some boundaries in my life, that’s a big deal. I am also physically healthy, if weaker. I will get stronger and I will heal. Patience and grace, Heather. Patience and grace.

I don’t know what kind of things I will make this year I’ve been painting a tiny bit and that’s nice – but mostly I’ve been reading and watching movies and playing the ukulele. I’m trying hard to be okay with that. Oh and yoga, the regular yoga is keeping me going physically.

This is kinda a bleak post but I wanted to say hi but also, it seems kind of refreshing to share this. I’m not on FB or IG much anymore and this just feels good. I hope all of you are hanging in there. Sometimes it’s just so beautiful, this living thing, and sometimes it’s a magnificent shit show. I’m here for the ride, I hope you are too.

All my love, H