It’s turned into a month of impro­vi­sa­tion. Even my reg­u­lar events are being resched­uled, so I’ve lost the only anchors I have to a nor­mal week. It’s hard to make plans when I don’t know how I’ll feel from one day to the next. Harder when I don’t know the next chance I’ll have to spend with the peo­ple who love me the way I need to be loved. I can tell it’s been too long when I start to dwell on my inse­cu­ri­ties, and the days feel more and more heavy.

I’m let­ting this peri­od be a way for me to ease away from alter­nat­ing between iso­la­tion and anx­ious cling­ing. Being busy is forc­ing me to pay atten­tion to the cur­rent moment. To be present with the per­son I’m with, but more impor­tant­ly, with myself. Otherwise, I can’t han­dle the thought of how much stim­u­la­tion I’m fac­ing.

Dolly’s been sleep­ing on my duvet again, an old habit of hers. It’s a sign that fall is here, as she prefers to swad­dle in the dark when it gets too cold by the win­dow. She also recent­ly decid­ed to start sleep­ing on my pil­low¹, and I can feel her purring through my skull, a new and unex­pect­ed devel­op­ment in our rela­tion­ship. I love the fact that I’m still learn­ing things about her, that she’s still capa­ble of change as she approach­es a decade with me. As always, I have the fall to thank.

A lot of pro­gres­sive trance has been in the mix dur­ing all this upheaval. It’s a genre I’ve nev­er pur­pose­ly explored until recent­ly. I’ve been try­ing to fig­ure out how to make my own cov­ers inter­est­ing by adding lots of dynam­ic ele­ments and mak­ing sure phras­es aren’t used too often. These DJs do the exact oppo­site with lots of rep­e­ti­tion and min­i­mal ele­ments, yet some­how make each song a jour­ney in itself. It’s a pleas­ant puz­zle to try to solve. Now I have many new addic­tions that have been per­fect for night time rides and count­ing yel­low high­way lines.

I won­der if these songs will end up remind­ing me of a time I’m con­stant­ly being bro­ken down so I can heal prop­er­ly. The old ones don’t mean the same thing any­more.

1. Although I can’t fig­ure out how she fits on it by her­self to begin with. [↩]