5:34 pm
…but, I didn’t. I let WordPress charge me for another year’s renewal of my DDG domain.
I have started and stopped a draft blog a few times since the last time I posted–um, February 2024!?–but, never finished and hit publish. Thing is, I guess I’ve both been sort of “taken down” by work and the busy-ness of life, and, I feel like this space has moved on. Yet, at the end of a long 12 months of navel-gazing and soul searching, I am sure of only one thing: I write and I am, and so I will continue to write and continue to be. And my beloved DDG blog and blogging community is still here, even if the shape and form of it all has changed and will continue to change. It’s all good, so, here goes:
Turning 50 last year was a fantabulous event–we had our trip to France in April (THE best trip I’ve taken in my life, I would say, due to my extreme excitement over the preparations and planning, which I took next level, and which had us see and do it all as well as stay at some really cool hotels, including a chateau in the Dordogne!) and then, summer came, I had a final celebratory dinner on the day of, and then, life started to happen again. Haha. By that, I mean, WORK started to happen, and that hasn’t stopped since last summer. It was like, all at once, while still coping with my burnout from working a TON during Covid, I was thrown into this bad team lead situation, then bad coworker situation, then work overload situation that hasn’t really stopped since last July.
It’s now August 2025, and while, of course, it hasn’t been all work, I am finally able to look up and go, well, that SO wasn’t worth all the mental effort, haha. The thing about this job is–and, it may be like this at a lot of places–I feel like we are always being pushed to do more, to learn more, to grow more, under the unspoken expectation that we will, and the unsaid threat that, if we don’t, we’ll be let go. It’s not just this company or this industry that has taken advantage of a global workforce and AI to cut costs; I guess it’s just, I somehow care a lot more about it now that we are homeowners. We flat-out own our home, but, but, but…I can’t help but feel like, I am grasping harder than ever at KEEPING what we have for fear of losing it and having to start all over to get it again. Hate that I am living and working out of fear of not having; what happened to my dreams, ya know? To writing, to owning a coffee shop? To anything that pays less but offers more, in terms of soul-filling stuff? I feel like I can’t even consider those choices anymore, I guess?
I don’t have a lot of perspective these days, and it seems that two months ago, I was a more fun person, a more centered person; and six months ago, wow, a totally different person altogether. I have to admit, lately, I’ve just been depressed. Void. Nothing. No creativity. Anxiety around that fact. Anxiety and irritation, I guess is the best word, around forcing myself to dive back into the world of self agency, creating in the midst of doldrum, starting again even though I have become a little terrified, I guess, of starting again.
It’s all been very strange, going from 50 to 51. Lots of thoughts that take me in and whirl me under. Maybe age has nothing to do with it; maybe it boils down to me taking too much testosterone cream, haha (one time, when the canister was low and it seemed to be dispensing too much, I felt SO paranoid and irritable, and of course, had no idea why until I started a new canister and saw how much less was coming out per click, those first few weeks on the new bottle!). Or, maybe it’s just being depressed in that, I am burnt on writing, burnt on working, burnt on trying to hold onto my life and life’s experiences and memories–I don’t know, but I have been having all these thoughts about “what is my life worth” and “what does any of this matter”? I mean, working from home has definitely become a bit of a mind-bend in that, I often feel like I just simply do not exist. And, while it gives me anxiety, it also makes me sad: who will know me if I never express me? Am I even alive, if I never express ME to the world? Yet, who is me? That has also become a huge question as I roll into my 50s–as I let go of the reins of all these stories around me, as I just let go of holding onto the memories of my 50 years of experiences, as I realize that they SO do not matter and that they are SO not important or relevant to anyone but me (and then, NOT, because I don’t have the energy to hold onto them anymore)–it just makes me wonder, what is the point of all this?
I can deal with the possibility that there is no point; that it is up to me to save and write down MY stories, those that involve people as characters who were and are important to me. I am just finding it difficult to get up every morning and do my work with such little investment. Maybe I just need a new job?
In any case, yeah, so work has been annoyingly taking up a huge part of my brain lately, and frankly, draining it and my soul. I just wish there was something I could do or change about it, but, I need the paycheck, I need the medical, and I need the savings. It’s a good job; it’s good people. I can freaking do it remotely! And I am grateful for all these things, yet…feel a void. Not sad, but a lack–of creativity, of desire to create?
Life has still been good, though (minus the fact, of late, I have had a nasty sciatica flare and it’s going on three weeks; starting to wonder if this numbness on my entire left butt and heel is my new norm), and we’ve taken some nice trips (hmm…Montreal and Quebec in July, me to NYC in June, Anguilla in February; Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, and Scottsdale in December; the Florida Keys last October, as well as a trip by me to Chicago; a few visits to see my family over the course of 2024 and 2025–for another blog post!); all is good, really. So, I keep plugging, keep staying grateful, and am now forcing “pen to paper,” as it were, because if anything has been constant, it’s been that; and if anything can possibly save my mind from itself, it’s writing (or, the very least, what I know has been true in the past).
Onward, friends and fellow bloggers (sure, there is Insta and Substack and yada yada, but I’m here for now!)…
Drunky Drunk Girl 