There’s probably some wise advice out there about not blogging when you’re down for fear of alienating or terrifying your audience. On the other hand, the discipline of continuing to write while arguably not in the best of places is one that I find useful. I do try to monitor myself, but low swings have this ability to seemingly act like spiteful ninjas. They creep up on you and cumulatively weigh in to slow you down.

A useful visual metaphor comes to mind from the most recent Wolverine film from a couple of years ago. There’s a scene where the doughty fast healing hero is making his way towards a Japanese castle at the end of a street, being shot at by ninjas with bows and arrows. Cords are attached to the arrows, so while he shrugs off the initial barrage he is continually slowing down as he comes more and more to resemble a pin cushion. In the end, constrained by many arrows anchored by many people, he can move forward no more, and falls to his knees.

That’s kind of how this feels at the moment, with an underlay of anger for feeling like it in the first place. Combined with blood sugars dipping because I’m still trying to lose weight, and therefore eating less, and I’m more aware than usual of the need to bite my tongue as angry snark combines with despair so that I don’t hack off and push away coworkers, friends and loved ones.

So I continue to keep on keeping on, because I know that this is temporary, things will get better, and life is frankly too short to keep banging my knees.