I had a panic attack! December 19th. It struck me as I was cleaning the dishes, and noticed the grease that lined my overhead exhaust. Suddenly the world shifted and gravity multiplied by hundreds.

Everything had been tough. For months, I slogged. Barely on the right side of discipline and losing every lick of motivation. All at once, the dam seemed to break. What was the point of dishes, what was the point of anything? There is no fighting the entropy, the decay, the deterioration.

My first relationship was in shambles, my heart still shredded, no communications, no resolutions. It made me feel worthless, it made me feel undervalued, it made me feel like doing my best had amounted to less than nothing. A pile of memories that hurt. Loss. Grief. Anger.

My body still ached. The physical toll of the accident and the surgery had not passed. The work that remained was awful and the injuries had only grown. My right leg had an aggravated hip flexor that reached deep into my knee. I had stop running months ago help the healing process. My neck was a bundle of pain and tightness, crunching vertebrae and pinched nerves. I woke up every morning with restricted movement, and went to bed every night with pain.

Work was tasteless. Barely a few hours of productivity a day. Nothing remotely close to interesting. I felt tied to the computer but dying to leave again, and ungrateful that I was feeling so down. I couldn’t pretend to care about meetings. I was strangled by my phone, but bored out of my mind.

Whenever I feel bad, I try to do the dishes. Because the feeling doesn’t change but hey at least the dishes are clean.

But it didn’t fucking matter how good I had been at the dishes because the fucking overhang was dripping grease. Were you going to fix it now, or just add it to the mountain of tasks you never get around to, you over-ambitious, procrastinating, incomplete, unloved, insignificant, soulless, scum, FUCK!

The speed at which my brain can turn on me is frightening.

I took several deep breaths, forearm deep in the suds in my rice pot. I gently finished the dishes [just the dishes] and sat down on my couch.

Adulthood is knowing that if you want something done, you have to do it yourself. Wisdom is realizing that sometimes you can’t. You just can’t.

I called some friends. Peter. TB. Thanks for picking up. Thanks for following through. Thanks for being my friends.

I played some video games too. Just to get out of my head. Luckily, the right side of discipline meant I wasn’t lounging in filth. Just some strewn laundry. I picked those up too. Put them away.

It never makes the feeling go away, but it’s a little easier to sit in.

The panic subsided. I cried exactly two tears, but I couldn’t find more. Something was still holding the remnants of the dam in place. For good and for bad.

Dullness is no way to go about your life. But if it wasn’t dull, it was sharp, emotional shards that torn through my leaded heart, my anxiety-ridden brain.

That lasted two days.

Still. I did the dishes. I wrote and worked and worked out.

Lo and behold, the 21st is the Solstice. Ah! Timing is everything. Coincidences don’t exist.

Or that’s just my ever-strong protagonist syndrome kicking in.

Whatever. It seems like a good time for a ritual.

Or a terrible time. I don’t know. I hate to rely on the supernatural. Or more specifically, I do not think it is ever wise to depend on the metaphysical to remove what you need to mentally, physically, emotionally overcome yourself.

Nothing is going to magic away your problems. The elves never get to corners when vacuuming. Praying that your tarot cards are going to give you the solution is already a failure.

Nonetheless. I light some incense and candles. I flip my board and shuffle the cards. I roll a joint.

I have never done a full reading for myself. Single card pulls, no more than a handful of times.

But in the darkness of the solstice, I found some stuff worth remembering, including the cheeky answer that this deck does nothing against the mundane.

Afterwards I felt light. The days that followed were not only good, they were excellent. A goal I have since ascribed to myself consistently. It was the same exact shit I was doing before the panic attack, but moreso. A little step. A touch of focus. One extra rep. One extra email, right now.

Excellence is a joy

Excellence is a burden.

Excellence is me demanding myself to start the day right, to put down my phone, to make decisions that help me in the long run.

Because my best self is the one who believes in his own delusion. You do exactly what you want. You make yourself exactly as you wish. You know what you want and you will strive exactly to get it.