August 25, 2026

Today’s update.

I couldn’t sleep again last night.

Apparently my brain has decided that sleeping on a normal schedule is optional again, so instead of staring at the ceiling getting increasingly pissed off about being awake, I decided to watch Sterling Point.

Great show.

Young love is so fucking adorable. Oh, to be that young again when everything feels enormous and exciting and complicated in a completely different way.

It was sweet, though. Really sweet. I highly recommend it.

I finally managed to get a few hours of sleep this morning and eventually dragged myself out of bed. I had planned on going out today and taking care of some more things, but that didn’t happen.

And I’m actually okay with that.

I’ve been thinking that maybe I need to start pacing myself when it comes to all of this emotionally draining shit I still have to do. I’ve been treating the estate like a giant checklist that I need to get through as quickly as possible, but every item on that list exists because my parents are dead.

That’s not normal paperwork.

It’s exhausting.

Even when the task itself only takes twenty minutes, there’s an emotional weight attached to it that I don’t think I’ve been giving myself enough credit for carrying.

So today, I stayed home.

I did some things around the house instead.

The paperwork will still be there tomorrow.

Unfortunately, today brought another kind of sadness I wasn’t expecting.

Dolly Parton died.

And I’m genuinely gutted.

A World Without Dolly

Celebrity deaths don’t usually hit me particularly hard.

I’m sad when someone I admire dies, obviously. Sometimes I’m shocked. Sometimes I’ll spend an evening watching their movies or listening to their music and thinking about the things they created.

But this one feels different.

Dolly was Dolly.

She was one of those people who seemed like she was just supposed to be here forever.

She was ridiculously talented, funny, unapologetically herself and somehow managed to become more than just a musician. She became this strange little piece of American culture that belonged to everybody.

She wrote incredible music. She made people laugh. She gave millions of books to children. She gave back. She seemed to understand that having an enormous platform meant you could actually use it to make people’s lives a little better.

We needed her.

And I genuinely cannot fathom a world without Dolly Parton in it.

Maybe that sentence feels particularly heavy to me right now because I’ve spent the last month trying to understand how I’m supposed to exist in a world without my mom.

And the last year trying to understand how I’m supposed to exist in a world without my dad.

Obviously, I didn’t know Dolly Parton. This isn’t the same kind of grief. I’m not trying to pretend that it is.

But grief has made me much more aware of absence.

Someone exists.

And then they don’t.

The world keeps moving anyway.

That’s the part that still fucks with my head.

There’s one thought that made me smile today, though.

If there really is a heaven, my mom and dad might have gotten to meet Dolly Parton today.

How fucking cool would that be?

I hope it’s true.

I hope Dad was charming. I hope Mom told Dolly she looked beautiful. I hope wherever they are, they’re together and laughing and somehow aware that I’m sitting down here thinking about them.

It’s probably a silly thought.

I don’t care.

Right now I’ll take the comforting thoughts wherever I can find them.

My heart is with Dolly’s family and the people who actually knew and loved her. The rest of us lost an icon today, but they lost a person they loved.

I understand that distinction a lot more than I used to.

Maybe I Need to Slow Down

I think today reinforced something I’ve been slowly figuring out.

I don’t have to accomplish everything immediately.

There are still things hanging over my head. There are forms to deal with, another bank to finish with, insurance paperwork, decisions about my parents’ house and approximately four billion other things that seem to appear every time I cross something off the list.

But maybe I need to pace myself.

Not because I’m giving up.

Because I have to make it through all of this.

There’s a difference.

I’ve spent the last several weeks bouncing between grief and productivity. Sometimes keeping busy helps. Sometimes cleaning my office or working in the shop keeps my brain occupied enough that I get a little break from everything happening inside it.

Other times, pushing myself too hard just means my body or my brain makes me pay for it the next day.

I’m still learning where that line is.

So today wasn’t enormously productive.

That’s okay.

I’m going to rest for a bit. Maybe later I’ll work on some more things in my office if I feel like it. Maybe I won’t.

The office isn’t going anywhere.

Neither is the paperwork.

Tonight, though, I think I’m going to listen to some Dolly.

The world feels a little emptier today.

I’ve had enough of that feeling lately.