Sunday was a big deadline for me. My next deadline is already looming, but I'm making a little space to recuperate and clear my head, and that includes taking a moment for this space.

I'm actually pretty proud of myself. I was able to lend a hand with some extra work and not completely destroy my routine or mental well-being in the process.

It's amazing how strongly my inner voice is pushing for me to go back and delete the phrase "proud of myself," as though that's not okay. It's probably a byproduct of my upbringing. It's unfortunate that many of us grow up in environments where there's no room for nuance, spectra, or gray areas. We're told we shouldn't be proud of ourselves because we'll get an ego, but our parents are allowed to be proud of us... when we do the things they like. In my case, at least, the most widely accepted emotion was shame.

For me, the process of untangling who I am from the culture and environment I was raised in has been so incredibly long and slow. It may sound like a sad thing, and it's certainly something I've gotten angry about at different points in my life, but right now I'm not feeling much emotion surrounding it. If anything, I'm somewhat amused that I sat down to share a bit about what's going on in my life right now and managed to take a detour down childhood shame lane.

So, yeah, I dealt with a challenge, I got through it while respecting myself and my body, I'm proud of that, and that's okay.

In the hours that I haven't been working, I've been tidying up my home, taking care of a backlog of things that need dealing with, and reading a bit. I hope this post finds you well.

My current media list is:

• Sizing People Up: A Veteran FBI Agent's User Manual for Behavior Prediction by Robin Dreeke - This one was basically audiobook roulette at the library and has proven to be very interesting, not only for the content, but for the author's incredibly distinctive voice.
• All Systems Red by Martha Wells - I finally picked up the Murderbot Diaries and I'm enjoying the heck out of the first one. The themes, the themes! ❤️
• Eat Smarter by Shawn Stevenson - This book literally showed up unsolicited in a box with some protein powder I ordered, so as someone who pays way too much attention to what they eat... I'm reading it. It has some good information, but the author has weighed down that information with so many analogies and unnecessary humorous asides that it's a slog. It feels like a 50/50% info-to-entertainment ratio when a 80/20 or 90/10 ratio in a shorter book would have been much better. That's my opinion, at least. Regardless, the author provides a wealth of information on how the body actually processes food and addresses a lot of popular myths about food and diets.