Balance

I am tired.

I've been working my butt off, taking on extra hours, and juggling more projects than I really should have taken on at once, in retrospect. I'm frazzled, and frayed around the edges, and counting the days until my time is my own again. I'm worn out, and exhausted from hoping and yet afraid to stop hoping.

And yet....

I'm still hopeful. I still smile when I wake up in the morning, and when I come home at night. I have so many things in my life that I'm looking forward to - baking and gardening, babies to meet and parties to go to, trips with friends and new projects to start. And I *am* looking forward to them, and enjoying it, instead of just looking at the calendar with dull-eyed blankness like I was three months ago.

I'm not perfect. I'm still rough around the edges, and I still have spots where I hate myself and want to do as much damage to myself and anyone in the blast radius as possible, and I still hit occasional mental landmines. But I'm recognizing them faster for what they are, and navigating around them.

I don't know if it's the change in weather that's making things easier; I'm a solar-powered life form at heart. Or maybe it's the work I've been doing to straighten out the inside of my head. Or maybe it's just sunspots, or coincidence, or happenstance. Either way, I'm not going to question it; I'm just going to do my best to enjoy it while it's here....