The oatmeal I ate had the pleasant mouth-feel of perfect mush—soft, yet varied enough to sense distinctness in each bite. It was generously dusted with cinnamon and two smallish nuggets of brown sugar that provided enough embellishment to elevate the “dish” from a chunky gruel to maybe one of those instant oatmeal packs, only less cloying and more wholesome. I paired my brownish food, with some brownish liquid: MudWtr, a coffee substitute with 1/7th the caffeine content made from various mushrooms that tastes like a chocolatey chai. Both were welcome companions to a recently initiated traveler’s notebook that I kept as a daily journal.

I wrote between steaming spoonfuls of oatmeal and tentative sips of my scalding fungus water.

My journal is most receptive to use in small hours after waking and before sleeping when it has the best vantage points for the horizons of future and past. Today, it surveyed the coming day with trepidation. A looming work meeting on Monday threatened to topple the growing sense of self-respect and good juju that accumulated through consecutive healthy choices made the day before.

“Looks like we’ve got a clash” it said, midway between rueful and weary. I pored through the list again:

– jumpstart car
– call Ale for her birthday
– grocery shopping
– cook food for the week
– prep for work meeting on Monday
– do Organisations that’s left
– write something for EoL
– self-care (working-out, stretching, meditating, etc.)

I understood what the inanimate collection of pages and hardly-worn leather was saying—there were some things I had to do, clearly things I should do and other things I felt like doing. The overlap, as it often is, between category three and the first two was minimal.

As commonplace as this daily drama is, The creeping anxiety it spawns is something for which I’m often unprepared and handle with an almost comedic sense of despair and resignation. Thank God for Sol, who frequently rescues my beleaguered journal and I from this sort of dark, cold, and rigid mindspace.

“Amor” I call out (she wears headphones most of the time) with a slight quiver, “I’m having trouble figuring out how to organize my day”.

“What?” she replies, still wearing headphones, startled by the sudden interruption.

“I’m having tro-”

“What?” she says again. She pulls one of the speakers off her ear, Realizing that perhaps the shell of foam around it is impeding her ability to hear my words.

“I’m ha-“

“Hang on”, She says while fiddling with her computer. I have a suspicion she is turning off whatever she was listening to, but I don’t bring it up. She turns back to me with a, “Ajá” (Venezuelans do not say, “Mhmm”). This is code for, “Ok, now you have my attention”.

Through our conversation some of the list falls away, several things lack the urgency the journal afforded them. The list now highlights the clash, onubstructed by erroneous information:

– jumpstart car
– call Ale for her birthday
– grocery shopping
– cook food for the week
– prep for work meeting on Monday
– do Organisations that’s left
– write something for EoL
– self-care (working-out, stretching, meditating, etc.)