We’ll just write about it. Mondays are historically stressful, and I feel like my body has some hardwired resistance at having to be on for work, or for anything outside its own desires. Today’s big R resistance was so large, both for writing and working, that I let my period migraine (a fact of life at this point) take over. I took a half-day leave to stare into nothingness and marinate in my pain.

I’m usually stronger than this. More than half the time I could marshal my acceptance into something resembling regular productivity, but today I didn’t even try. I mean, I got out of bed, something that sometimes wouldn’t even happen especially if it were the weekend, but yeah, I just wouldn’t or couldn’t.

I don’t know if there’s anything else to say. That I wish I’d taken a bath first thing, that I wish I woke up when the alarms went off at 5 and then 6, that I wish I had a good breakfast. It’s the end of the day right now so all that doesn’t matter now, but I just wonder what really got me hot and bothered.

It might have been a decision I’ve been putting off. I have to think about going to the Philippines this year and while I’m excited to see everyone I’m dreading everything else, the paperwork, the jetlag, the actual travel to and from, arranging accommodations, arranging to meet everybody, so I haven’t even looked up ticket prices yet.

Or maybe it’s the fact that my body’s feeling a bit worn down. I did take my first personal leaves of the year last week, but two days didn’t feel that much, even if I loved every minute of them. We have a long weekend coming up, so that’s something to look forward to. But sometimes I just think about retiring early.

I don’t really have big corporate career dreams, everyone who actually knows me knows I perform well at work because that’s just who I am (that’s not a brag, in some ways it’s sad). But I never really had that achiever gene some of my friends have when it comes to office work. Maybe it’s because I didn’t grow up around office workers. I’ve seen people be perfectly happy doing their own thing. So all my corporate success is really just me doing something that I was going to do anyway, by virtue of who I was. More and more I think about what I really want to be doing and while I’m doing way more of that now than I ever have, I wonder how much more me time I can extract out of life.

And is that greed? Ah, see, I don’t even care all that much. I’m too old, I’ve given too much of myself for other people’s dreams, I’ve thought about what other people think I should be doing when I was younger, but I never really got any answers so I’ve pretty much winged it. My true aspirations remain solely in the realm of art and literature, and maybe entertainment, and I wonder if I’ve already paid my dues.

I do have to say though, that this line of thinking does come up more often when I’m sad in the first place. It’s the feeling sad that comes first, then I find reasons for it. If I’m looking at true patterns, it’s probably hormones. Knowing that helps. Sleep helps. I hope tomorrow is better. Today was a Zoro-esque “Nothing happened” situation. Picture me standing amidst the bloody mess of what today turned out to be, arms crossed, breathing hard, staring at nothing in particular. Absolutely nothing happened today.

I did get to eat some butternut and choco butternut donuts from the neighbor-friend. There’s that, at least.