How are you?
I mean really — how are you?
It’s been a year.
Literally — it’s been nearly 12 months since I added a post to this blog.
And, well — it’s been some year, hasn’t it?
I finally decided to get this blog going, and we were plunged into a global pandemic. I posted a few times early on to try to share some helpful coping tips, but it all just got so overwhelming so quickly.
Then there was the unrest following George Floyd’s death, and I truly did not have words.
We lost my mother-in-law in July 2020. Although COVID-19 wasn’t the official cause of death, it pretty much was. (Maybe I’ll write more about that one day.)
And then not too long after, we had the election season and everything that went along with it.
I thought about posting, more than once. I started writing posts in my head. And then I got locked out of this site (more than once) by the security software. So y’know, one more thing. Back and forth with tech support, trying to figure out HTML coding.
It’s just seemed like everything, every day, has taken so much effort, hasn’t it? It can’t be just me.
So I was grateful to discover this recent article in the New York Times. Because frankly, I think I’m languishing.
As author Adam Grant explains, “Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield.” It’s the void between depression and flourishing.
He goes on to suggest that languishing could give us a socially acceptable response to “How are you?” Instead of saying “Great!” or “Fine,” we could answer, “Honestly, I’m languishing.” (He calls it “a refreshing foil for toxic positivity — that quintessentially American pressure to be upbeat at all times.”)
How am I doing?
Honestly, I’m languishing.
And now it’s time, as Grant suggests, to start lighting a path out of the void.
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