At some point fairly recently I finally acknowledged that a fair portion of my completely exhausting myself before noon has nothing to do with effort and everything to do with momentum. If I wake up with nothing structured or enforced ahead of me, I will either absolutely, deeply, fully do nothing… or I’ll ricochet from room to room, project to project, mess to mess. Not unlike a pinball stuck bouncing between two posts, burning energy without ever moving forward.

I keep searching for something in the moment that will make things better. But there is always so much to be done.

Like… on every front. Practically, literally, literarily, urgently, personally, intellectually, emotionally, statistically. Plenty more LY words I’m forgetting. And the thing about me is that unless someone coaxes me to slow the fuck down and choose a single path, I will fail to complete a single damn thing.

So this week I’ve been thinking back back back to that break. The crack. The moment at the doorway of my before and after.

What helped then when I knew nothing else? What did I lean on?

Well sugar. And weed. Yes. But more than that it was accepting that all I could really do was be.

Which, ironically, is the thing I am very not best at.

I’ve slipped away from the rigidity of my meditation routine. I let it soften and drift as I shaped it to my life. Found everyday and every moment ways to practice mindfulness and include it in my every action. Smoothed it into the life I’m living.

And I just now just this very moment realized that folding it into my life isn’t what I need.

I mean I’m grateful I can. It’s given me a million tiny moments I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise.

But I think I just realized that this meditative approach is more than something to let inside my life… right now it’s something to shape my life around. Again.

This week I’ve spent a lot of time in my head about how I expend my energy.

My frequently very unreliable energy.

It all goes back to that pinball feeling. All that chaotic motion but the momentum still coming from me… even as I lose control ricocheting between two goals, ringing that little scoring bell so loudly it hums in your bones. Wanting it to keep bouncing, keep racking up points, never knowing if it’ll ping back and forth forever or hit just the wrong angle and spin out too fast… slip right between the flippers… and game.

Which is really to say that instead of getting up and going going going, I’ve spent my mornings in bed trying to decide what deserves me. What is high enough priority to justify the precious, limited energy I have to expend.

What is worth the quarters I have left.

My mornings have been slow this week. Every one of them filled with some sort of written reflection while I bury one eye in my phone screen and the other into my pillow.

My two constant confidants.

And here I am still as I type this in. Knowing my time in my favorite cocoon should be up until tonight but stretching out every last moment in this coziest of safe spaces.

I’ve decided that today the task that deserves all of my attention is me. So I may be here a while. Mostly because figuring out what it means to prioritize myself is exactly the kind of thought that sets the silver ball pinging off the posts again… bouncing and ringing as I try to understand what choosing me even looks like today.

So I’m going to be extra slow. Slow to get out of bed. Taking my time with tea. Making sure I luxuriate in being fed and watered. Letting myself be held up by small comforts while I relearn how to meet my own needs.