The text on the image reads
I've hardly slept for the last few days. I think it's latent anxiety. During the day, I'm managing well enough. Once I try to sleep, the brain weasels (to use a friend's term) start cackling and weaseling. (I don't actually know what weasels do with their time.)
My usual tricks to combat the brain weasels are falling short. I'm really tired. Yesterday, while happily looking information up about time and whathaveyou, I almost put the aux end of my headphones into my ear instead of the audio out end of them.
I'm not letting it get me down, though. I've had a lot of practice at being tired from poor sleep or lack of sleep. I don't think details on why would add anything much right now, so I'll vaguely state it had to do with things like chronic pain and/or having multiple jobs and still wanting to, you know, go out and live. While being over-tired is not the best feeling, it's familiar. It's a little like being hugged too tight by a friend. It's uncomfortable, most likely it'll be over before it does lasting damage, and even though you really want it to end, the amount of control you have over that seems limited in this moment.
"Please," I rasped into the dark embrace of Haramore, the brain weasel, "just let me sleep. Two more hours. Just two!"
He cackled and writhed and coiled himself tighter around that weird memory of a backhanded compliment from 1997 that you didn't realize was mean until Patadon, Haramore's twin weasel brother, swatted it just so.
"Gah!" I called out quietly so I wouldn't wake my husband. "I thought she did like my shoes! Noooooooo!"
Or some such nonsense.
Today, I cope with the sleepy-tired with a plan to work on a version of The Rhinoceros Sutra. When the coronapocalypse sent us all to ground, my friend and fellow-artist, Ashi Sisk, and I were working on illustrating the verses together. That will still happen. I just can't work on oil paintings at home due to fumes, so my part of it is on pause. In the meantime, I can work on a different version. Maybe it's a preliminary version. Maybe these will be sketches for the collaboration. I don't know. But I think that now is the perfect time to delve into what it can mean to "walk alone like a rhinoceros."
I'm also coping with my wedding dress, my favorite boots, and my dangly bee earrings. The husband and I are going out for a walk because we desperately need exercise beyond what we can do at home—and sunshine—and our governor released a list of acceptable outdoor health activities. So. Yeah. We're gonna mask up (He made us matching rocket ship masks!) and see what our little world looks like out there.