That’s the card I pulled today. It feels like the card I needed first would be “Learn not to create unnecessary conflict”.

I slept poorly last night. A bit over four hours. And my first thought is to blame it on the memory work I have been doing this past week. But this happens a couple of times a month. Despite magnesium tablets, tart cherry, pranayama. I think it’s connected to the butterfly goo state of transition. I wonder if colic cries are just infants wanting to f-ing sleep. It is easy to mix-up cause and effect.

I want to cry this morning. Part frustration, part sleep-deprivation. And I keep reminding myself that now is not a time to make big life decisions. On the other hand it seems absurd to wait for “normal” to return.

I want to sit back and watch the storm pass, like some cartoon character who steps out of a brawl to watch their antagonist kicking up a little tornado alone. They say that every character a writer writes is a reflection of one aspect of themselves. I’m not sure how I feel about this. Cause and affect kind of thing. If our imagination can create it, it probably means we have witnessed it somehow, but inhabiting it as a writer does, which is similar to how an actor does, maybe be a reverse cause and effect. Maybe writers become what they write, if only temporarily.

There is research to suggest that personality is not fixed, but entirely contextual. We are not only self-fulfilling prophecies, we oblige the prophecies of those around us. And the thing is, it is rare that we can shake off enough of our context to begin again. There is something in us that will work to oblige even the dead.

It is a theory. For optimists.

I’ve also been thinking about antagonists and their roles in our lives. The triceps is the antagonist to the biceps. The muscles that pull in the opposite direction of where you want to go will engage first. There is a balance of tension in healthy movement. Not balanced tension, but a balance. Maybe we require a kind of opposing force in all things and that there is a functional difference between conflict and contrast?

And I can learn to keep the drama on the page.

I need to go for a run now.