There were very little good intentions to begin with. Thank the Lord for that.

And I am oddly grateful for my own oversight. Still, the feeling that I am never doing enough is always present.

My overachiever millennial brain simply cannot accept, without extra coaching, that it’s fine to have a slow January. And this January, on top of being January, part of the house was veiled in grief: unable to remember basic information, unable to organize a single thing, leaving the other half to carry all the practical logistics of a full house.

It has been busy, to say the least. And more tiring than usual, because I have to step carefully on eggshells all day—making sure I express what I want and what needs to happen, while still holding space for empathy I don’t always have.

Empathy is a funny little thing. I always thought I had more of it than everyone else, only to realize that what I had wasn’t empathy at all, but a need to be liked.

Since I no longer care about that (being liked, I mean), my empathy has decreased severely. That, and aging, I assume.

Life sometimes sucks. It just is what it is. I get it, but I can’t do anything about it.