I had reached literal weeks of short nights, busy days, crowded thoughts… waking too groggy to write, crashing out at the end of each day hoping to sleep through to morning… but… not. Every conversation was seeming to interrupt a thought, or cause me to feel as if I had just then forgotten something I needed to remember. My “brain buffer” was full to over-flowing, but I wasn’t getting the rest I needed to properly push new information into long-term memory. I felt chronically foggy, and perpetually frustrated, unable to “hear my own thoughts”. Days slipped by, and I wasn’t even thinking about writing… I definitely wasn’t sitting down to do it, regularly. Even personal correspondence stalled.

The morning my Traveling Partner got ready to go to the airport (was that yesterday?), he observed with a questioning tone, “you haven’t been writing in your blog…?” I had an awareness he was correct, but a lack of perspective on how long it had been… nearly a week. Wow. Rare. I mumbled something to myself about fatigue and made an empty promise about doing…something. I grabbed another hour of sleep after he left… after I stood in the kitchen window, bare feet cold on the kitchen floor, watching as the car service pulled out of the driveway. I woke still so groggy. Unrested. I careened around the house for some minutes, getting dressed, getting my backpack ready for the day, finding my car keys (mysteriously on the hook next to the hook I usually put them on, a search that should not have required 10 minutes of my time). I went to work.

I was so stupid with exhaustion that I was not particularly effective. I got done what urgently had to be done, and I went home. To sleep? I hoped… to rest, at least.

…The house was so… empty. I’ve grown quite accustomed to the delight of my Love being present every day. Hugs, kisses, jokes… things getting done, even when I’m not at home. Sex. Warmth. Intimacy. Shared joy. Shared effort. A shared journey. I looked around, disoriented by fatigue. I already didn’t recall the drive home, at all. So tired. I “sat down for a minute” on the couch and answered a text from my Traveling Partner. I took a breath, exhaled, relaxed… and flipped on YouTube, and put on a sort of random video playlist of favorite content creators’ latest stuff…

…I woke to the sound of my partner’s voice, and tried earnestly to reply – I was unable to do so, which is what woke me, that and the recognition that I was hearing, not his voice, just the phone ringing – but he was calling, and I smiled as I answered the phone. A few minutes of conversation, and connection, and then… no idea. I may have watched a couple more videos. I woke later, from napping, and went to bed. So many hours later, and finally I wake to the alarm (which I’m doubly glad I set, yesterday), although I woke from dreaming that I had already awakened ahead of the alarm. lol.

I shower, dress, and make coffee, smiling. I feel rested. I feel as though I can assemble thoughts into sentences and possibly communicate with others clearly and sound, you know, fairly rational. 🙂 I glance around the room and beyond the open studio door – plenty to do. I feel rested enough to tackle it. I didn’t stumble or wander into the wall even once this morning, and my eye-balls don’t feel like I’ve recently tried to splash sand into them. I feel rested. Pleasant. 😀

Sooo…. yeah. I’m fine. I am regretful of any worry I may have caused you. I’m not “gone”, or suddenly silenced by some grim pit of despair. I was only unable to overcome the ennui of being deeply fatigued, and needed to yield to the necessity of taking care of this fragile vessel. 🙂

…Now it’s time to begin again. 😉