To think I once was once juggling a dozen blogs. And now? A post every quarter at one or two places… For the curious, or compulsive readers who must finish a paragraph, I once had this poetry blog, a cat-narrated blog, one for flash fiction, a vegan recipe blog, a daily life, and a poem-a-day, a daily selfie blog, a weekly portrait of B blog, one written by a sock monkey, a weekly in Spanish/French, a dream journal, a haiku one, all unhooked from each other because that much hyperglossia would look crazy, no? And I would often binge-write and then let it autopost in an orderly fashion to give the semblance of steadiness while I, behind the screen, crashed.
A difference is keeping things for myself these days. And rather than throw things indiscriminately, I share cautiously with those who have earned trust. Who actually are invested in me. Terribly at odds with being a poet, I know. 😉
The frantic train station of my head showing less traffic. Meds are good. Some high seasons are down. People have stopped dropping like flies so less concussive death. I’m processing more and doing more rather than reflecting. I previosuly used all my energy as an introvert on extraversion. People said I have so much energy but I had a boom-crash cycle where after an event I didn’t function or ran the red line of panic attacks and living inside headache constantly. I mean daily headaches from early 80s to 2015 or so.
I laughed more then but chuckled not at all. I was wrapped way tight, keeping myself hopped on excitement, hafta, hafta, gotta, and sugar to extend my comfort zone, keep the walls from crushing me, learning to talk. I was aways stacking triggers to prove myself I could do anything, then wondering why everything was hard.
It’s an interesting fast headspace and I could parse at speed but there’s the sensation of inspiration without..something. The sensation of being productive is not the same thing as useful. Or as being present.
Only by hyperfocus through text I could pull out one thread of purpose from the many tangled threads and find a piece of what felt like order.
Now order is slow and quiet. Of course there are structural changes to make that happen. Ghosting bad dynamics and being less passive, more intentionally choosing instead of drifting. Balking, refusing to play, giving up FOMO, letting go of more, givng myself space to see patterns, to act not only react.
Instead of having my hand in many pies, on committees and publishing, going to many events, trying to keep contact with many people, living in thin-walled places where neighbours scream at each other and traffic noise never stops, I read instead. Probably 3x as much as when I was peak “busy”.
At risk of going on too long for the medium’s attention span, now I make slow time face-to-face with people. I take less on as my responsibility. Indifference can be depressive trait, but it feels more centred than off-kilter. I am not constantly pushing myself to overstimulated for fear if I stop I will wither and atrophy and be forgotten. My place in the universe is less-ego driven than when I was trying to people-please.
I don’t want to lose days anymore to overdoing it. Maybe it is learning cause and effect, maybe it’s maturity, maybe it is a case of too old for that shed. I don’t have much energy and my body is liable to act up with nausea, vertigo and pain if it thinks I’m doing more than I should. It’s quite opinionated.
I’m more secure, and less self-defeating. My nature hasn’t changed but the balance has. And that’s, I think, something more sustainable.
