Crafting the Sword
2026-01-02
I feel well today. Yesterday, I ended up taking a long afternoon nap. I was fine with doing that because my body was still a bit sore from drinking the night before. This morning, though, I feel better. I think I'll have to stop drinking alcohol for a while. I'm fine with it, though. I don't get a whole lot out of drinking anyway. If I'm being honest, I never really did. It was never a fun time for me. Other substances were fun, once. I'm old enough to be more accepting of the mundane. There's comfort in it now.
A simple life has so much potential to be meaningful. I find that a rich internal world has always been more interesting than a busy relationship with the external one. I've lived on both sides of that coin, and I still find the former much more exciting. This is because I like to spend my time making things as opposed to doing things. I enjoy tinkering with things, figuring things out, and thinking about stuff.
I'd rather craft the sword than wield it, I suppose.
Still, I have confidence in the world I live in. I spent a lot of time in the proverbial labyrinth, trying to do whatever I could to get my way out of it. Alternatively, I felt like I was untangling a long cord, but now that I have to plug it in, I can't seem to find the right outlet. Truthfully, while untangling the cord, I didn't think I'd get far enough to even think about finding the right outlet.
I'm coming up on four months without a major mood episode. I'm starting to feel momentum again. I still have a ways to go, absolutely, but I now feel unsure of my overall direction. I have to do another calibration, think my way through the next steps. There's a lot of forks in the path ahead. For me, I'm not as much worried about picking the right path as I am staying consistent with my choices. I understand that I am a very top-down thinker. If my choices don't reflect the systems I make for myself, I get worried.
A lesson that I've come to understand the importance of, then, is one of accepting exceptions. It seems that the only hard rule is that there's always going to be exceptions, and so it makes more sense to ride the wave as opposed to trying to expect them and plan around them. Of course, it's still important to try and plan for things.
In the past, I was too confident in my improvisational approach to life. More than that, though, I have always been bad at planning for things. I always struggled with being prepared. This was always most apparent when doing any kind of trip. I was always bad at figuring out what I needed for trips and thinking of things to bring in case of certain situations. I've tried improving that, but it's still hard. My brain just isn't wired for that kind of thing. The problem, though, is that I really want it to be.
Even though I have a tough time being prepared for things, it's not something that is innate. It is a learned skill that can be taught and improved on. I can still make efforts to be organized and prepared for things, even if I fail. I can always seek help and iterate based on what works for me. There's no sense in feeling defeated about any of it.
I've been making progress as well. One of my cousins visited my house a few months ago. I also told her about my website so if she or her husband are reading, hi y'all! Anyways, I gave her a quick tour of my bedroom and she told me that it was "tidy," which was a great compliment. I've spent a lot of time figuring out how to organize my life and going through all these iterations of things and only having myself to judge them. Because of that, it can be hard to see progress. So when I got that tangible praise from someone who wasn't my mom (hi mom!), it was reassuring.
There's a lot more ahead.