January heaviness is keeping me slow as I move through days. I wake up, I sit around, I eat. I have started going to ballet, yoga and pilates again and I enjoy those moments of human connection and of using my body and then the heaviness engulfs me again.

I listen to audio books, I watch series on the laptop, I sit and watch the birds in the garden, I play games on my tablet.

And I read stuff online.

As I move through the days, life feels like dark, sticky treacle and my mind goes to all kinds of places. So many strands of thoughts, so many layers of consciousness working away at various painful things. Processing, processing, processing.

As I move through the days I try to simultaneously experience and process the omnipresent pain and powerlessness. Because if I don’t I feel like I might drown and dissappear.

So I sleep (so grateful that I do sleep!) wake up and move through the hours of the day. I move through this moment, this hour, this day. One at a time. One at a time.

There are so many things I want to keep writing about. Things that I’ve written before but I continue to feel so passionate about that I don’t mind repeating myself into eternity.

But I am not writing. It feels like too much. Too much sharing, too much anger and too much vulnerability. Too much caring about things that I can do nothing about.

So I read and enjoy the words that other people have found to express themselves and share stories.

When the first virus panic hit and chaos and uncertainty was met with cries for restrictions, control and self-sacrifice, I kept asking myself: what kind of world do I want to live in and how can I be part of co-creating that world? And if I am to die soon, what kind of world do I want to die in? What kind of life do I want to live while I am dying? What really matters when we are faced with our mortality? If staying alive at any cost is an illusion then what do we do?

What if there are things much more important than survival? Survival of the individual, survival of the species.

What if there are things much more important than staying safe? Safe from harm, safe from illness, safe from chaos and safe from loss.

What if how we live and die is much more important than whether we live or die….