Good Morning
Nice to meet you
It’s a little early
I tossed and turned most of the night. I’m sure I got some sleep, but I couldn’t swear to it. So, about 6:30 this morning, I got up went to the bathroom, and took a “back to sleep” tablet. No, that’s literally what they’re called.
I did not get back to sleep. It didn’t really kick in; at least not at the time. An hour later, it’s competing with coffee. I gave up after about 20 minutes and decided coffee was the answer. I abandoned the hope of falling back to sleep and pursued the alternative.
Now, I’m awake but the kind of tired where you think it might actually hurt a little just to be alive, but you’re too tired to be certain.
So, after scrolling social media and reading a lot posts and watching a lot of videos I find I don’t actually care about, I opened up a document to see if I had anything to say. I had a couple threads to pull, but I’m not sure I have the focus to actually pull them yet. It’s as though I have a lot of words, I just don’t know if I can put them in any kind of order.
I decided then maybe what I’d do is write about that instead. I have written about writing before. I have written about not knowing what to write before. But, I have never tried to do it in state where a small part of my brain thinks I might actually be asleep and this is all a bit of an unpleasant dream.
I’m dressed. I did that before I made the coffee. I’m in sweats, a thing I recently discovered I like, and I have my sneakers on. I ambitiously put them on about a half an hour ago thinking I’d get my walk in early. But, I discovered my phone had not been seated properly on its charger last night and didn’t have enough juice to provide music as I amble around the park.
I say amble because, though I recently started paying attention to my pace in a growing attempt to take walking “seriously,” I know my pace is going to be akin to a geriatric mall-walker than someone thinking about an improved 5k time.
So now, I’m putting words together, waiting for my phone to charge, drinking my coffee, and eagerly awaiting reaching the bottom of the mug so I can pour my next one.
This is not a blog about mental health or self-improvement. This is not a blog about the writing process or my works in progress. It’s not even a blog where I try to share a bit of experience in hopes that it will benefit others with the same issues, concerns, or challenges I face or have faced. This is a blog I am not entirely sure will even see the light of day, but if it does maybe it will serve as a bit of introduction to who I am.
Hi. I’m Phillip.
I’m an elementary school teacher who thinks of himself as a writer and sometimes actually writes. I have a few books out and more than a few I’m still working on. Well, I should be working on them, but I am much better at procrastinating than I am at revising and editing.
I also think a lot about mental health. I’ve suffered from depression and anxiety most of my life. I’ve been diagnosed differently at different periods. And I have a bit of ADHD. It wasn’t diagnosed until quite recently. I manage it all pretty well these days, though it hasn’t always been easy.
I frequently wake up too early. I probably spend too much time on social media because I’m not very good at finding other ways to pass the time, and I’m a bit of a nerd.
Without getting in the circumstances of my day to day life, my relationships or family, where I live, or what I want to be when I grow up, that’s me in a nutshell. For clarity’s sake, I’m 46 at the time of writing this and have been teaching for 12 years. I’m just not very happy with that career and spend a lot of time thinking about what comes next.
That’s one of the other topics I may write about if I can find the focus and mental organization to create a compelling bit of text on the subject; teacher burn out and what the future might hold as well as the encouragement I have recently received about pursuing another direction.
Someone very special in my life said something quite poetic to me yesterday morning, and I have been thinking about since. I’d like to write about it, but I definitely can’t manage poetic this morning.
I’ve reach a bout two pages, 1.5x spaced in a Google Doc, and I think the coffee is starting to beat the “back to sleep” tablet. We’ll see what another cup and a stroll around the park brings. It’s going to be a long day.
Nice to meet you.
Phillip Davis is the author of Peppermint Lightning, Jack-o-’Lightning, and Justice for the Missing. He is an elementary school teacher, and mental-health advocate. He writes on the topics of writing, mental health, and self-improvement.
