Pumpkin Pie, Advent Calendars, and A Disney Christmas (Already)

And so the days continue, with little to no writing. It’s been a hard week, made harder by the fact that I suspect a lot of the issues are coming down to the methotrexate. It’s disheartening, after 2 years of dealing with inflammatory arthritis that I’m still not on a treatment that works. It’s also disheartening that chronic illness is so isolating, and the tools that are most readily accessible for connection are made more difficult by the way they work. In short, algorithms and pay to play and influencing and hashtags and all that mean connecting is a lot harder than it used to be. But you know, that’s the social media kind of life.

There has been some quiet goodness - like more pumpkin pie (although I’m kinda thinking next ought to be pumpkin muffins because the whole pie thing is getting old). And I’ve taken last year’s sketchbook advent calendar and digitised it, which is kinda neat and fun. I’m not sure where I’ll be sharing that yet. Instagram, I guess. Behance, once it’s all done. And there’s an unabashed surrender to not doing the holidays this year beyond what feels ok and nice and easy. Frankly, the holidays are a hard time of year for us, and we’re both very tired of trying to find the festive cheer to make it less so. Some things are fine: holiday music without words has been on repeat since the beginning of the month, as soon as Disneyland turned on the holiday lights all the Disney livestreamers embraced it and I’m good with that, and lights are just necessary this time of year in England. But other than that, there’s nothing. And it feels ok. Easy. Sometimes nice.

There’s been no writing though, which makes me sad. And a little like sighing. When will I learn that grand projects and huge goals are not sustainable when they’re rushed and/or pushing. I’m slow at things. I have always been slow at things. The faster I rush, the worse I tend to do: I drop things, my thinking gets scattered, and my head begins to swim. I have to go slow. Methodical, thoughtful, with an extra big helping of remembering that I’m unwell and no amount of thinking my way better has ever worked. And you know, inflammatory arthritis really hurts. Because it’s destroying your joints, you see. I feel like that alone, not even counting the 9 billion other things, is enough.

Hope you have a good week and there’s a lot of whatever you rate as quiet goodness. I feel like the whole world could use more of that right now. 

Take care.