Where are you Matt?
What are you feeling?
Check in- what’s happening now?

This is the litany of questions that has gone through my head on repeat for the last few weeks. It’s one of the tools I use to ground and re-center myself when I catch my thoughts ruminating or spiraling.

You don’t “hate everything,” Matt. You are tired and sad. Hate and anger are easier to feel and parse than pain.

This is the other mantra I’ve found myself repeating over and over when I find myself slipping into depression. That’s been increasing over the last few months. The usual anxieties and tribulations of life seem to magnify themselves when you constantly poach yourself in a broth of bad news. It feels like everything hurts, and the world is too hard and painful to keep being kind in.

I insist on continuing to be kind, though.
My core values remain Patience and Compassion.
My “Way of the Floured Hand” dictates that “I choose love, I chose love, and I will always choose love.”
“It’s Chaos; Be Kind.”

I know that ideals like this will always be worth it in the end, always me– but that doesn’t mean it’ll always feel good.

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