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I’m struggling this week and have been in a bit of a functional freeze state. It’s this confusing mix of having many thoughts at once, each a tempting thread I tug on briefly and let go as the next thought tries to entice me. Part of it is being physically tired. My daughter was sick over the weekend and though she recovered, I always lose a lot of sleep fretting about her, jostling myself awake at the slightest sound. And there’s been odd things too that are not terrible, but collectively sap my attention.

There was a fire close by a few days ago and I can still smell the smoke when I walk out. The water bill portal is down. I’m nervous about a teacher parent conference, because my daughter is having a hard time at school and I feel helpless sometimes about how to help her. Work has been weird. Then I go to LinkedIn and everyone there is even weirder. My ex-boss told me the days that the demand for my role is numbered. I had to walk away from a friendship that I cared about. In other words, life is business as usual, but my filter is eroded and I feel so much that it’s hard to know how to exist.

Sometimes I wish life were simpler. That I could reject the noise, reject the things that hurt me. That I could hide for a week, a month. Until all the mental junk I accumulate is ejected, and I can walk out fresh and optimistic. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to travel. To take long walks around crisp lakes, sit on a park bench. Or sit at a window with no regard for time. Time is my god lately to function. I wake up, and set timer after timer after timer. I will have Siri set a time for 7:50, and be aghast that my break is precisely 5 minutes and 31 seconds. The stoic would say to control what you can and simply ignore the rest. But how can one reject the paralysis that comes from realizing that one can’t even control one’s sleep?

All I know is that lately the craving has been to shed, not accumulate. To converge, not diverge. I spent a long time answering everything life had to offer with a “why not?” But now I realize the folly in wanting to absorb the world so greedily. I hoarded complexity in my life, adding need upon artificial need, until I felt I would crumble under the weight of my own systems.

Maybe all I need is very little. A notebook, a pen, a good song, and a long walk. There is no point here. I’m still feeling a bit numb and sleepy and nervous so all I can do is simply try to stop thinking and writing about it and… what? Lean into it? Take a nap? Elope to Alaska for a week?

Aye, our lives are short and shaped by circumstance, and maybe we can’t control most of what’s to come. But we can control how we feel. We can savor the sweetness of a blackberry scone, and the company of our friends, and the warmth of the summer wind at night, and be grateful for it. We can be nothing, and choose to be miserable about it, like you—or we can be nothing, but choose to be happy, and let that be purpose enough. Which sounds more worthwhile to you?
– Julie Leong (The Teller of Small Fortunes)