When I created this blog, back in November 2020, I had one clear guideline in mind: I was never going to post anything that made myself feel vulnerable. I’d done a fair bit of that on previous blogs in previous times, and honestly I always regretted it. Sometimes it feels good to get something off my chest in the heat of the moment, but in so doing I just create a piece of writing that’s going to make me wince when I go back and reread it later. I don’t want any more moments like that. I want to be a rock; I want to be invulnerable.

I’ve been in a weird state of mind recently. The other day I found out that this medication I’ve been on for six months has a very well-known and common side effect of “mood swings”, and I was like, “…huh. That explains a lot.” Lots of traumatic shit I haven’t really thought about in years has come bubbling to the surface; intrusive thoughts that won’t go away. I’m very used to intrusive dreams, but until recently those would be the only way this trauma played on my mind. Now it’s out of its box and prowling my mind even in the daytime, and it’s really annoying, to be honest.

A few weeks ago, someone I know picked up on the change in my demean­our. I seemed flat, she said. I was kind of like, “No, what are you talking about? I’m fine. Everything’s fine.” And on one level, I don’t think I was wrong. So long as everything just stays in its box and never bothers me, I’m fine. And all that means is I have to keep busy, filling my time with this and that – and I have so many projects and things to fill my time with; this should be easy, easy, easy.

It hasn’t really been that easy, in recent weeks. Of course, I don’t think blogging about it will help. And even if it would, I’d be longing for a format more like Live­Jour­nal friends-only posts; I don’t want to put my most intimate thoughts out there on the open web. So I don’t know what this entry is really for, except that I’m tired of feeling like I’m keeping this big secret as I instead fill my blog with photo posts (not that there’s anything wrong with those!) or complaining about the IndieWeb stuff I’ve found hard to set up. I wish I had something really good and meaty to write a full-length blog post about, but I just haven’t. I’ve read a bunch of really thoughtful and personal blog posts in recent days that were beautifully written, and I’ve just been like, “Wow, I wish I could write like that… or I wish I had something that didn’t make me feel utterly exposed that I could write like that about…” But I don’t, really; there’s just this. Hopefully we’ll be back to a greater variety of posts soon.