Sometimes I get the feeling I just want to let the water take me, let it's depths consume me. Just float in the void. A moment of stillness in a turbulent world.

Under the overwhelming demand to take a functioning role in society, or to just create means to have a comfortable life while working with art, the pressure to keep creating - or the right word would be "producing" instead - Like an assembly line, for fast content, for more views, more sales. The transformation of any creation or expression into products and consequently the sensation of being totally striped away from the original meaning to create in the first place.

But still the urge to create refuses to vanish, like a last strand of something that just can't give up... if so I also cease to be.
I plunge into the water, searching for it, for its meaning again.

I am currently running on too much coffee and not enough sleep so I'm asking myself introspective questions:

Do I have a sense of self?

Do I know what I really want?

Why am I afraid to do things outside the norm?

If I do not do now when will I?

Why am I all too willing to see myself as a failure?

Am I really beyond saving or am I just too negative?

Are there anymore chances for me or have they all passed me by?

Will I ever feel like I fit in anywhere?

Maybe this will all make sense after I get some rest. On the other hand I might think this is dumb and delete this later. Dunno.

A pair of unlikely encounters, one on the street and one later in the candy isle of the corner store, gave me a lot to think about as I reflected on the place I have in the lives of other people. Ultimately, it was kind of nice to see myself this way.

<I apologize for how privileged this experience is.

So, recently we found out that we have bad sleep apnea, and are getting a CPAP to deal with it. Apparently we've had sleep apnea for decades, which explains why we're always so exhausted and our health is very bad.

We are in a position that's stable, with savings, to afford it, but, we'll have like $210 less each month in our income because of it- and that means that we now have a really strict budget for affording things, and can't really save any more money this year.

This opens us up to a unique perspective; it's been decades since we felt like we really couldn't afford a necessity. We needed new shoes. A nice, feminine pair, that would work on the floors that we work on, which are concrete, and we stand all day.

We were really distraught that we felt like we couldn't afford something we needed for our wellness; would have to make due with what we had that was falling apart.

But our nesting partner, Allie, was there for us to help us afford it. It's not something that we expected her to do, or asked her to do, but that she offered to do, and

It was just this really vulnerable moment for me, where my partner was really there for me when it mattered and I've never been in a position to feel that. I've tried to design my life to avoid having to do that, I think, because there's just this expectation from my childhood and from a lot of partners who haven't been there for me that I can't trust that will be there for me.

And it was meaningful and it made me look at what is really deep insecurity in myself that I can't let myself be vulnerable and trust the good people in my life to be there for me and help me when I need it.

But, like, having been in that situation, I have more context to have a trust like that. I need to be vulnerable sometimes to get to feel trust and care. I need to stop building my life around safety.