I dunno, I guess I just feel… fuzzy? lately. Like my brain is full of cotton balls or something. I’m 49, been freelancing my whole life practically, writing stuff, and it used to just flow out, you know? Like, I’d sit down and it would come. Now? Forget about it. It’s taking me like, twice as long to do anything. A simple blog post for a client, something I could bang out in an hour before, now it’s like two, sometimes three hours. I stare at the screen and just… nothing. Just a big blank. Is that weird? Does everyone hit this wall eventually or is it just me getting old and kinda… losing it? I worry sometimes that people will notice, my clients, I mean. That I’m not as sharp as I used to be. Like I’m pretending, but really I’m just faking it till I make it, except the "make it" part isn’t happening anymore. I think maybe it has something to do with my mom. She… she passed away a few months ago. It was a long haul, you know, being her main person. Years of it. And when she went, I thought, okay, I’ll finally have my brain back. My time. My FOCUS. But it’s the opposite. It’s like this huge, empty space opened up where all the worry and the phone calls and the appointments used to be, and now there’s just… air. And grief, I guess. But also this weird, quiet relief that makes me feel really, really bad to even admit. Like, who feels relieved when their mom dies? I feel like a horrible person even typing that out, even anonymously. But it’s true. It’s this messy mix of sadness and this weird, quiet peace, and it’s totally messed up my head. I just feel so tired. All the time. Like, deep in my bones tired. And I used to LOVE writing. It was who I was, my identity. And now it feels like a chore, a heavy thing I have to drag myself through. I keep thinking, am I just done? Is this it for me? Am I just going to be this… less-than version of myself now? And what do you even DO when the one thing you were good at, the thing that paid the bills, starts to just… slip away like sand through your fingers? I don't know what comes next. Or if anything comes next. Just this fuzzy brain and the quiet. The QUIET is so loud sometimes.