It’s been a very comfortable pleasant day. I slept in, and slept deeply. I walked to the farmer’s market, and assembled a very nice picnic lunch, and loaded it into my pack. I headed into the trees for a few more miles and hours of autumn leaves and birdsong.

Autumn rose hips along the trail.

Yesterday was okay, too. I did some great work, but had had so little rest I was more or less a zombie analyst, and didn’t notice the day go by, and don’t really remember that much about it. I got home shortly before 6 pm, and was crashed out not long after that. I was up again around 9, and stayed up some little while before returning to bed, and to a deep sleep rich with surreal dreams. Stress reaches this point where it both disrupts my sleep and requires ever so much more than usual amounts of rest to recover from it. I slept a lot last night. I napped this afternoon after my hike – one of those sudden urgent naps when sleep simply overcomes me and I must succumb to it.

Tonight is gentle and easy. The deep consciousness encompassing sleep of my nap this afternoon left me wrapped in drowsiness. I’ll probably go to bed early again tonight. No reason not to; one of the perks of adulthood is the opportunity to choose rest. That great boon is sometimes forgotten in the fuss and bother of all the other sorts of things I think I ‘have to’ get done; choosing rest, real rest, is sometimes the best thing I can do for myself – or my partners.

I am okay. I’ve still got work to do – this fragile vessel isn’t going to heal itself without some practices and some verbs. This broken brain needs a little support, structure, and patience to find some better ways to handle small challenges. Sometimes I am going to fall short of my expectations – or fail to meet my own needs in some important way. I’ll begin again. One step at a time, one practice at a time, one moment at a time – I can begin again.

It may not be the shortest path – but this journey isn’t a race, or a contest – I’ll just keep walking.