After having a streak of happy moments for several months, dark clouds have been hovering over my head more frequently. One of my contingency plans for dark days is watch a random episode of my favorite show, so I opened my laptop and watched one of the show’s last episodes. During the viewing, a favorite character said something that’s somehow relevant to my situation.
This is my 27th Notes to Self.
Pain tethers me to the world.
Harold Finch, Person of Interest: “Synecdoche” (Season 5, Episode 11)
It has been a blessing to have a happy streak for more than a month, so when I realized I couldn’t accomplish my plans within a certain time table (primarily because I’m not rich like Batman), it was overwhelmingly painful. It was so bad that I had to take multiple breaks from dealing with those. Multiple. And even those multiple breaks weren’t enough because I’m starting to feel physical pain as well.
Then I realized that, while the good days bring me to cloud nine, the bad days ground me back to reality. Not every day will be a good one; sometimes, days are just fine or incredibly sad, and that’s fine. Sometimes, the darkness of bad days makes me more appreciative of the light the good days have given me, even if it’s painful. Also, I must admit that I got too excited planning for the future because of my recent happy streak, so when I start executing those plans this year (slowly but surely), I feel like I’m biting off more than I can chew.
To quote Mr. Finch again:
Pain tethers me to the world.
After the pain of recent bad days, I need to recalibrate myself and reassess my plans. I need to accomplish some plans later, and maybe I need to sacrifice some plans to make way for better, more realistic ones… even if I don’t want to.
See you in the next post.
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Header image: Андрей Калянов of Pexels. Edited in Adobe Photoshop 2025.
The Diary of The Deranged Writer 