Brain fog & taking it easy on myself

Happy Monday, DMV! It’s April 20.

Oops.

The main thing I was looking forward to this past weekend was the D.C. Sing-Along. In fact, I’ve wanted to go for the past year since reading about it in the Washington Post. I’ve loved singing since my elementary school music classes with Miss Black in Red Bud, Illinois. Those music classes are some of my most vivid childhood memories.

Anyway, I had put the sing-along in my calendar for Saturday. I invited readers to join me. Then I missed it. 🤦🏻

Life happens. My calendar notes and alarms didn’t help. I forgot. And I only realized it Saturday night during an evening stroll with my family. I kicked myself (verbally). I got stressed about it. My daughter hugged me and said, “It’s ok, mama.” My husband suggested I write my newsletter about missing it and learning to take it easy on myself.

This layoff: It has been painfully drawn out and traumatic. The brain fog comes and goes. “Thinking through molasses,” as a reader who was laid off from USAID described it.

Last week, I decided to meet with my therapist. I explained the ups and downs. She asked me to describe how I felt inside and what it looked like.

It feels frenetic and looks like the electricity rays in those plasma globes you see at science centers. Or like the character Anxiety in the Pixar movie “Inside Out 2.”

She asked me to simply observe this frenetic ball of energy. Eventually, I envisioned myself lying on the ground in the desert, an amorphous cloud of energy floating above me, and above us both, the Milky Way and the wide night sky. It was beautiful. Finally, I felt calm.

All this to say: I’m bummed I missed the sing-along. I’ll try again in coming months.

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Pat Myers, 67, of Fort Washington, Maryland, sent in this pic she took one evening in late February.

“Reminding me of a Rothko painting, the sun drops behind the clouds over Piscataway Creek in southern Prince George’s County,” she wrote in her submission.

“I live a mile up the hill from the water and try to walk down at least once a day to see the sun rising or setting.”

She’d also sent this picture — with floating sheets of ice — taken just two weeks prior to the one above.

Share your recent photos of life in the DMV here.

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