I took this picture while walking out near my house. Noticing the lone cart sitting atop a hill in the middle of the desert landscape that I call home was pretty striking. I felt like I related hard to this cart. Lost, empty, alone. As smoke filled my lungs, I pondered this cart for a bit. I thought over how in the last few weeks, I have been feeling mildly /not/ creative. Making any art, in whatever medium, feels wrong right now.

Lately, I've been sick as well. This is probably why my mental has shot all the way down to the lowest it could be. The antidepressants help me not linger on the thoughts for very long, but they're still there. The sleeping meds that I take make sure that I don't ruminate through the night, but the rumination still happens during the day. The anxiety that I normally feel is tempered with other medication, but my fears and insecurity about the future and what is to come still exist.

Nothing at all feels certain. For myself and many others, there are so many uncertainties to consider that to know what to do in the moment, that to know what to create and express and simply be is exhausting. There's enough that I need to do to simply survive that I worry not about what would make me thrive. There's work, there's studying I need to do for certifications, there's all of my medical issues, and then there's being a person of color, queer, and trans on top of that. If I had it my way, I could pick a struggle, but instead these are the cards that I'm dealt - and I've got to find a way to live with them.

WHAT NOW. That is how I currently feel for everything in my life. I talked to my best friends about life, catching up to what they're doing recently, and one of them openly asked, "is this it? is this all what our lives will be?" and it really shook the room. No one wants life to just be eat, work, sleep, and repeat. We want time for our hobbies, our passions, our loved ones. We want time that isn't beholden to a capitalistic clock, where we count the hours, minutes, seconds down to escape from corporate demands. How can one decide what to do next when time is but a scarce resource only really enjoyed in abundance by those who are privileged enough?

This isn't to say that I have completely no autonomy over my time. There are select hours that I choose to spend with my loved ones, to spend on this website, to spend on making food or sleeping an extra hour. But that's all that it is - a choice. A painful, irritating choice for one thing over another. What happens when you want everything? It's unrealistic, people say. It's reaching for too much, they say again.

In my miserable pool of tears, I wonder to myself if life really is a balancing act that those in the working class just have to deal with forever. I'll try not to think of that too much.

Waking up in the mornings is done so with strong reluctance. I shower with bleary eyes blinking away at the water, hands and legs going with the motions of getting myself clean for the day. Sustenance is typically a cup of coffee or tea with some sort of bread, a meal that I have at the start of every day. My bag is packed the same way, left the way I had it the day before from work. I leave 2 hours before the start of my shift because my commute is around an hour and a half, public transit being unpredictable along with traffic. I sleep on the bus, because I know I'll be sleepy at work if I don't. The hours at work blur because I do the same things that I did the last shift. I end work feeling unmotivated, unheard, and unhappy.

I am aware that all of this reads as complaining, because it is. Surely there is more to my life than just this nearly every day. Part of me questions how much of it is in my control. Maybe that's a blog post for another day.