Random thoughts at the end of a long, exhausting work week:
- I can’t function on 3 hours of sleep without burning out and melting down. So, I go to bed these days before midnight and, if I have work to do — and often these days, this is the case — I get up early, praying it doesn’t get in the way for the opportunity to go to weekday Mass in the morning. Thus far, no major meltdowns, and I’m grateful for that.
- The more I read about autism, the more I honestly think I’m on the spectrum (as are several undiagnosed people close to me). The woke rhetoric of a lot of the reading materials and social media is hard to stomach, but maybe I have something to learn from it.
- I honestly don’t know why I bother posting anything on Facebook anymore. At this point, I’m fine with posting F-related things there (and on its Meta sister site Instagram) and leaving it at that. Nobody online cares about my baseball thoughts or other uninvited opinions, which is part of the reason I have this space. Here, I can post purely for my own enjoyment, and I don’t have to be reminded by the visible lack of response that it’s being ignored.
- In some respects, I have become less empathetic as I grow older. I have slowly learned to be less thoughtful, less caring than I was in my youth. Some of it is laziness, I admit. Much of it is a defense mechanism after years of feeling overlooked and finding my own kindnesses — particularly toward those for whom I cared the most — unrecognized. Thoughtfulness eventually had become pointless to me. I’ve edited a lot of my friend circles for this reason.
- Caring hurts. That said, I also understand that I am still called to be charitable and kind. So, this is how I try to move forward, despite my unfortunate tendencies in recent years.
As always, onward.