I have an inordinate amount of time to myself over the past few months, which has led to a lot of time for introspection. The nature of Don’s schedule requires we live in opposite-land– our waking schedules skidding past a small overlap every day–this is in the morning generally–he gets home after 5 am and nine times out of ten I am also awake at that time. I changed my schedule to start at 9–he’s sleeping until 6:30 anyways, so it just made sense for me to do this while not totally being ghosted by my own husband.

Of course he isn’t ghosting me exactly but it can feel like that sometimes. It’s part of why I have been screaming into the digital void about my lack of physical connection with the world around me, and most certainly lacking a lot of social elements as well. I feel almost that isolation you feel as a teenager, unable to make easy connections to the world around you and the realizations you are having seeing the connections between the things you CAN see. I feel that way in so many ways–and I realize that my experiences on a day-to-day basis anymore are not those of most women my age, and there’s sometime a smug satisfaction in that (I can do whatever I want most any time I want), and sometimes a hollow misery (I am missing the children I wanted to have)—at this point it’s been so very ingrained into me, the recognition and realization that children were not in my cards as of that first dissection, and every one since has made that more and more of a no. Every next surgery feeling like it was bringing me to the end rather that giving me a new chance–and who want a mother not around for long? Nobody with a choice anyways.

So..this time I have had has given me a lot more time to do what I want and also recognize I have developed some patterns that do not help me at all–and this is why I am trying to insert a clever discipline into my routine. This blog, the instagram I re-upped yesterday, the vlogging, the dream book so I can at least not forget the now like so much of my then. That’s the weirdest part, realizing this is the only way I can not not forget—I have forgotten and lived more of a life than most have imagined and all I have is maybe small imprints I have left on those around me and subconscious affects hard to connect right now. Sometimes I do remember a fact about someone I dated or a stranger I talked to, but rarely a face, never a face or a voice.

So the Discipline—every day. Get up, make coffee, have sex (it’ll keep me alive a lot longer than most other exercises), sit down, write, read a little on the news but spending as much time as I did? Nope. I spent a lot of time perusing news stories all over because I am concerned with the world around me, having been absolutely bored to tears by my own day-to-day, seems like a natural focus–the next thing you see outside of the person on the other side of the mirror is the world around you. I do not have a family to focus on, we’re both ok so yes, in order to connect to the world around me I would read news from all over the world. But at this point I am realizing that it hasn’t done much to make me feel happy or connected, hence I am trying to limit the compulsiveness of it all and yes, set some rules up to help up my moods and establish some better routines which will alleviate some of my loneliness while not exacerbating the pain of it all. Some of this will be ignoring the news stories for now–maybe setting up a time for it twice a day for a short period of time, MAYBE.

Early morning will be a chance to reflect and write–meditate and plan, AND progress on the copywriting courses. The afternoon is work, then dinner, then Don leaves and I read or make something, draw something. I am alone all day long–he slips into bed at 11 am the latest but by then I am working..and the cycle repeats 5 days a week for now.

I know…the time I have to myself would be a dream to many, I know, but there is an element of loneliness living in opposite land imposes. That is where good art and writing come out of sometimes…let’s hope.