August 16, 2026

It’s 1:35 in the afternoon, and I’m still in bed.

I mean, I’m awake. I’m not tired. I’m just not particularly inclined to move. I wanted to go to Dollar Tree today and start looking for Halloween stuff, but this humidity is straight-up draining me. Usually humidity doesn’t bother me this much, but this year it has really taken its toll. I desperately need the weather to calm the fuck down and cool off for a while.

I’m also gearing myself up for my big adventure into the city tomorrow to file my mom’s will, and maybe that’s contributing to how physically drained I feel today. I don’t know. Maybe my brain and my body have collectively decided that tomorrow requires enough energy, so today we’re apparently conserving it.

All I know is that I’m awake, I’m not particularly tired, and I have absolutely zero desire to get out of this bed.

I spent most of the morning watching art videos, hoping something would spark. And actually, something kind of did.

I even put some new canvases and paints into my shopping cart.

I have this idea for a painting with a black-and-white abstract background, with little tinges of blue and red running through it. Then I want to stencil a broken heart over the top. I can already see pieces of it in my head, although I don’t completely know what it looks like yet. Sometimes that’s the fun part. You start with a vague picture in your brain, put some paint on a canvas and see where the hell it takes you.

I haven’t painted in a long time.

I’ve been so wrapped up in building my company that somewhere along the way, I’ve neglected some of the other ways I create. Jewelry and everything I’ve been doing with FRDCreations are absolutely creative, but painting scratches a different part of my brain. So does mixed media. So does making something simply because I want to make it, without thinking about whether I can sell it afterward.

I think I need some of that again.

I also have an entire gumball machine full of art projects that I put together a long time ago. The whole idea was that whenever I wanted to create something but didn’t know what to make, I could pull something out of the machine and let it decide for me.

I loved that idea.

Then life became caregiving.

There wasn’t a lot of room left for random art projects. So much of my time, energy and brain space went toward taking care of my parents that parts of myself naturally took a back seat. I don’t regret that. They needed me, and I would make that choice again.

But maybe it’s time to start pulling some of those parts of myself back out.

Maybe I’ll use the gumball machine again.

Actually, no.

I should use the gumball machine again.

I will use the gumball machine again.

There. I’ve committed to something.

I just don’t know if today is the day.

That’s the strange space I keep finding myself in lately. The ideas are coming back before the motivation to actually do them. I can imagine the painting. I can picture myself downstairs making it. I can get excited about buying the supplies. But then there’s this enormous gap between wanting to create something and having enough drive to physically get up and create it.

Maybe that’s okay.

Maybe my brain is telling me to stop trying to schedule every part of my recovery and just go with the flow for a while. If inspiration and motivation happen to show up at the same time, I’ll paint. If the idea is there but the energy isn’t, I’ll write it down and save it for another day.

That’s difficult for me because patience has never exactly been my strong suit.

I really hate these darker moments of my life. I want to be me again, but I’m also beginning to realize that I don’t completely know who “me” is anymore. So much of my identity for the past several years was wrapped up in caregiving. Now that part of my life is suddenly over, and I’m left trying to figure out which pieces of the old me are still here, which pieces changed, and what new pieces haven’t even shown up yet.

I want to move.

I want to make things.

I want to paint.

I want to work.

I want to get out of this house and experience things again.

And at the exact same time, I don’t really want to get out of bed.

Both things are true.

Grief is fucking weird.

So maybe today isn’t about forcing myself to choose one or the other. Maybe I can want all those things and still spend an afternoon in bed. It hasn’t been very long. I’m allowed to have ideas I’m not ready to act on yet.

Tomorrow I’ll get up and go into the city. I’ll do the thing I’ve been putting off and file my mom’s will. Maybe afterward I’ll wander around Chicago for a little while if my body and the weather cooperate. Maybe getting out will shake something loose inside me.

We’ll see how I feel when I get home.

For now, I think I’m going to order the art supplies.

Not because I’m promising myself I’ll paint tomorrow or even this week. I just want them here.

The idea is there.

Eventually, the momentum will catch up with it.

And when it does, I’ll be ready.