On the first day of 2025, I slept most of it. Either Exhaustion, Depression, Slothfulness, or Laziness was to blame. After weighing each agonizing choice upon which to build the next day, I decided to go with Exhaustion, for as of this typing, Rest has successfully been achieved. And I’m glad for it. It felt necessary. Tomorrow is a new day.
Exhaustion really is the heaviest cause, of course, and I’m not just saying that. Three weeks of driving an approximately 3,500 mile road trip has demonstrated that my body does not bounce back as quickly after sitting for extended periods of time, even if the books on audio stretched my mind. One gets older while the other gets younger.
Depression is a formidable seductress, and yet, I sometimes wonder why depression isn’t the default human condition of modernity. That it is actually the “normal.” How can I not feel some sort of hopelessness when waking on the first day of the new year to a “terror” attack, however defined, in New Orleans, on Bourbon Street, no less? I have to imagine there is a deep cut in all of us collectively when things like this happen, here or elsewhere. It would be despairing. But today, the winter road trip has invited some new perspectives, so thankfully, I remain hopeful overall. Despite it all.
Besides, the other reasons would only send me into spiraling shame and an overabundance of guilt, both of which are counterproductive to beginning the New Year optimistically despite whatever I did or did not do on the first day of 2025. Still, the chorus of judges that pass through the chambers of my mind bellow scoldings relentlessly at my complete lack of productivity (other than my tending to my little parrot, George, who shan’t be neglected even if I wanted to).
So today, I will blame Exhaustion for my stagnant start to this new year. Now that I am rested again, I take another breath…
P.S. Only to discover that I had inadvertently taken my nighttime medicines and supplements, which includes a sleeping aid, instead of my morning ones the first day of the new year. All of that ruminating on the meaning of my first day of 2025 was for naught. Nevertheless, I did learn that I’m framing this new year hopefully.
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