dawn at Lake Ella

4/27/2020 – Monday

Today is Monday, so I’m back at work at 8 am after a week of vacation! While it is officially finals week at FSU, my normally super busy whacked-out finals-week-schedule is, like everything else, suspended. So, it’ll be just another WFH week for me.

While I did not get up particularly early, we were out by 6 am and enjoyed watching the dawn spread over the very clear sky. It was nice and cool too, about 55°F with a breeze, which made it super pleasant. I tried to be artistic with this photo when I noticed one of the ducks managed to flap their way up a high branch. They are usually not so energetic, the lazy spoiled urban fowl that they are.

I spent most of the walk lost in thought; I can tell when my anxiety is kicking in because I can’t listen to any playlist all the way through, skipping some songs and not others as I chase some ephemeral kind of mental escape. I wrote a blog post on my personal website about why April is not a kind month even in the best of years; I’m still unspooling from that.

Writing is hard, yo’.

While I’m slowly dialing my energy and motivation back up — and still fighting the daily sinus headaches, which are a bitch — I’m thinking a lot about who I was at 18, and who I thought I’d be at 50. Did I think I’d be single, walking my rescue mutt around a small pond in Tallahassee, still fat, all but unknown, and generally living a boring life?

Then I realize that at 18, I didn’t think I had a future at all and never thought about it. I’m not entirely sure which part of that horrifies me more.