It’s nigh the end of another year here in Chicago, and what a year it’s been. I’m even finishing it out with a migraine—this one with nearly festive gold-colored auras!
I would much rather go without the migraine, and the festive aura, but it also feels rather fitting that I’d end 2023 with yet more migraines. It’s been yet another year of trying to get my health managed, which, while it gives me some answers (sometimes), mostly just seems to throw me into mountains of medical debt coupled with the knowledge that the body I inherited simply doesn’t work. On the bright side, I suppose, I have for the most part finally managed to haul myself into a better mental space than I’ve had in years, or maybe ever.
My family has a long, long history of depression, on both sides. I often wonder if any of us produce any serotonin at all. In my case, while therapy was helpful (and expensive—I’ll be paying it off for a long while), I think that the two fibromyalgia drugs which just so happen to be antidepressants as well are probably why my mind has been so much clearer. On in-office days I walk the Chicago River, sometimes going all the way from the Riverwalk entrance at Lake Street to the Michigan Avenue bridge; on work from home days and days off, I’m at my local yoga studio. (That $119 monthly membership is probably the best money I spend in a month.)
But 2023 has also been my Year of No Time. Part of the lack of time has been, I suppose, my fault: I’ve prioritized my writing, putting in anywhere from fifteen minutes to three hours a day, nearly every day. (I’ve had months when I’ve written 30,000 words or more—which is not something I’ve ever done before.) As much as I love the August Sealey Challenge, this year’s felt as though it brought me pretty close to my breaking point. I was absolutely, utterly, out of time, and I was stretched far too thin. This coming year, I might need to re-think about I go about my poetry binging—because I don’t think I can handle another August quite that cramped.
And so I will emerge into 2024, likely still with a migraine, but with plans to attend a morning yoga session and then do some household work and then, I hope, write. And also read, because without reading, how can I refill my own well?
I’d like to be able to catch my breath in 2024, which seems, after the year I’ve had, like a pipe dream. I’d also like to make more time for friends—and that I’ll plan to start off by making sure I make the time to attend all my romance writing crew’s meetups, because there’s nothing quite like one’s fellows for companionship.
Here’s to 2024! I’ll be starting it with a migraine, but also with my cat. May it be a kinder year, to all of us and to our battered world.
Essentially a Nerd 