The quality of life of yours has improved dramatically over the past few days!

I’m sleeping enough, I’m getting back to being focused, I’m thinking pretty alright – life is good, ya know what I mean?

I tend to get weird injuries. I sprain my thumb while sledding, I bruise my ankle, I’ve had several toenail injuries (sorry – they make my stomach turn, too, just thinking about them). I’ve broken a couple toes, never from running and always from just the most freakish things. I’m not gonna say what injury transpired today because that would leak some info, but know that it’s not important and know that I’ll recover expeditiously and know that my running will be unaffected.

My dad also gets weird injuries and my grandma got so many weird injuries. None matter at all: we recover perhaps faster (perhaps much faster) than other people would from the same injuries and same circumstances that cause the injuries. Falling down an entire flight of stone stairs? No recovery time needed, just some bruises. Slicing through a drying rack with a kitchen knife, the knife slips, cuts through a thumbnail but doesn’t damage the thumb? What the heck?? Running in the sand, something cuts directly into and through my toenail, but I clean it up and it’s alright?

I’d say my risk tolerance is low. It seems like somewhere, though, I’m/we’re taking dumb risks. Or perhaps we’re taking exactly the right risks. We barely get injured and barely require any recovery time, so it’s essentially inconsequential. I don’t get it at all. As long as the fast recoveries continue, I suppose I’m fine enough with the injuries, but it’s super weird. Beyond the three of us, I don’t know of any other people in my family or extended family who get these.

I feel like this post’s quality is a little low. Maybe it’s because I’m presently listening to Lil B (you know, the Based God? ANd this isn’t a criticism of the Based God – it’s just saying that his style is probably admittedly unpolished and this post is unpolished, and he might even say that not all of his 500-ish songs were as good as all the others). The stream-of-consciousness rappers are kind of cool. Churning out a song a day for a year (roughly), and making it listenable is a skill, but a very strange one. These posts are trying to be stream of consciousness. I do re-read what I’ve written, but I rarely restructure, and I try to just type type type along.

I think another reason for the blase-ness of this post is that, as said above, life is good. Well, definitionally it’s still pretty rough – after all, I’m still getting back into things – but the delta from a few days ago is so positive and has such large magnitude that, as Lil B just said, “Life is great” (or at least it feels that way).

Life is strange that way. It’s easy to get used to the state you’re in. When life is way down, you get used to it, you start to think this is normal. Sometimes things improve, I look back and think, “What the heck?? I did that? I made it through??” If I’m feeling frustrated with something or sad with something, I look back to those absolute grinds that I made it through, and I find strength in knowing that I did that. Another approach is to think of just how lucky I am to be doing what I love, and moreover to be here at all. I know some people in total McJobs, or in (no offense) semi-meaningless software or finance jobs, and I know some people who are just fully gone, and I realize that what I’m doing is pretty incredibly great. I really love what I’m doing, and I feel so so fortunate.

The title, made before any of this post was written, should be read as the return of me to where I was. Basically, things went through a bit of a valley. I knew from experience that the valley would go back up. I didn’t know when, but I kept faith in prior experiences and in myself, and here I am: clearly on the return path. The return isn’t linear and isn’t even monotonic non-decreasing, but I knew I’d gotten back from things like this before, and look: here I am.

I’m getting a little antsy because I’m still re-teaching myself to work focused-ly, but I think again I just have to accept that this stuff takes time. Well, actually I don’t – I think I’ve already accepted that this stuff takes time, and I think now it’s just a matter of continuing on through time and getting there. I’m (almost) definitely on the return, though, and I’m happy to be on my way back.