Time can be a fickle thing…especially when it disappears without so much as a ‘by your leave.’ One minute, it’s a lovely June day. Sunshine, peaceful morning, a day full of promise. Then, out of nowhere, I fell. Hard.

Not physically; metaphysically. Energy gone. Ideas, drive, focus…all of it, vanished in an unexplained poof. Like someone in the sky shook the giant Etch-a-Sketch that is my mind and I’m left with a blank slate and it’s August.

I can’t even pinpoint when it happened. Suddenly, I’m doom scrolling, falling into the lives of people I will never meet and an entire month is gone. I told myself I was just taking a little break. After all, I deserve one, right?

Don’t get me wrong; I still met my obligations. Edits came in and I handled them. Bills got paid. Clothes got washed. Meals were fixed. But I felt like I was just going through the motions. One day, it was so bad, hubby commented that I hadn’t left the couch all day. What was my answer? “I’ll get off the couch tomorrow.”

Tomorrow?

Oh, okay, Miss Scarlett. So it’s come to “I’ll worry about that tomorrow.” Now, I have run out of free tomorrows. In a matter of hours, I will have to return to the day job that rules most of my life. Now, I have to make the most of these last few fleeting moments; play catch-up so I don’t feel like those lost days will come back to haunt me.

We all make choices. Consciously, unconsciously, even subconsciously. But even the choice to do nothing is a choice. Entropy is a real thing and it can be a dangerous element. For those of you who truly know me, I don’t stop. Part of the fun that is being an ADHD poster child. But it’s also one of the side effects: hitting that wall so hard, it takes an act of Congress to get the momentum going again. I’m finding that the older I get, the harder it is to restart things.

Am I going to cry over the lost days? Why? It won’t make them magically reappear. It just means I’ll need to work harder. Not the first time I’ve made myself work twice as hard as I needed to, and sadly, I’m sure it’s not the last.

Will I watch my time next time? Oh, who am I kidding on that one? I will simply need to make accountability lists for each day. That way, I know what I must get accomplished.

Will I learn to forgive myself for not working at Warp 10 every day? I wish I could say yes, but I know me. I am getting better, though. I know that even the Enterprise used Impulse power in nearly every episode.

So while the summer of 2025 passed by in all-too-quick haze, things are far from over. I still have stories to tell, readers eager for these stories, and very soon, the words will flow.