(Whine warning.) Have you ever had a nightmare where you are running away from something scary, but you feel like you are running in slow motion and unable to make forward progress? Then of course you wake up and it was only a dream. I feel like I woke up to find that it really was my life. That feeling of slow motion has enveloped me and I am trying frantically to get back to normal.

In this case, I’m not exactly living a nightmare, though I would dearly love to run from my current day-to-day crazy, chaotic, never-stop business life into a happily calmer writing life. I’m stuck in a quagmire between the two worlds. For a while, I did both. I wrote in the early mornings then went through my daily life knowing that I put time into something that I loved doing. Right now, though, I’m so tired every day that all I do is survive the day then go to sleep as soon as I can, then get up as late as I can.

Last summer I felt bad and got a COVID test. It wasn’t COVID but the exhaustion I felt that week turned into chronic fatigue. Lab tests came up normal and my doctor told me “I was just stressed”. My naturopath found evidence of low thyroid, so I have been on a supplement for about six months. For a while I thought I had more energy but the last couple of months have been rough. It’s like every fiber of my being is exhausted and no one can tell me why. I just had another lab work-up done and am hoping that someone sees something that would explain what is going on.

I am not sick; I sleep but wake up exhausted. I look normal and I don’t let on to our employees that I feel as bad as I do. My husband takes what load he can off me but he can’t take everything as we are still running short staffed to keep the business healthy. From a business perspective we are still in the pandemic so everyone is carrying more of a work load than normal. In our industry, we still don’t have event signage back and the great quantities of COVID signage that we printed last year have for the most part stopped now.

If I were perfect, I would carry on uncomplainingly regardless of how I felt. I’m human though and sometimes I just want to vent. I really want to feel normal again. I want a medical person to tell me what is going on and how we can fix it so I can get back to the old me, not this shell of me. In the meantime, I’m trying to be grateful for little things. I got to see my husband’s grandmother this weekend. I had fun making banana bread with my granddaughter yesterday afternoon. I’m writing something right now. Things will get better. I will figure this out.