Why? Why aren’t there six of me?

This is the post I would have written a few days ago when I was sick, if I’d had the spoons.

I am currently writing this from the precise center of a couch crater, covered by dogs who have decided that my personal space is a myth and my fever-sweat is a localized atmospheric event they’d like to study.

If you’re looking for the version of me that has her life together—the one who answers emails within forty-eight hours and doesn’t have a “floordrobe” (floor wardrobe! See what I did, there?!) that has officially gained squatter’s rights in the bedroom—please come back in 2027. Right now, I am operating at the speed of a heavily sedated slug trying to crawl through a vat of cold molasses.

My sinuses feel like they’ve been packed with wet concrete and my brain is a flickering neon sign in a dive bar. And because the universe has a truly sadistic sense of comedic timing, this physical collapse has coincided perfectly with a workload that would make a Victorian chimney sweep weep into his gruel. I don’t know if it’s post-GLAM-body-meltdown, or if standing in soaking wet shoes and socks and cold wet clothes for ten hours did me in, but either way, here we are. Sigh.

HaldeCraft custom orders are backed up. People—lovely, patient, probably-now-hating-me people—are waiting for things I promised would be done with days ago. I look at my to-do list and it doesn’t even look like English anymore; it looks like a ransom note cut out of magazine letters. Every time I think about the website updates I need to finish, I feel a physical twitch in my left eyelid – especially since I just read that story in the local newspaper about 41 restaurants and spas that have been sued for not having alt-tags on their website, making the sites non-ADA compliant. The back end of my website is a ticking time bomb. Sigh.

And then there’s the studio.

My studio used to be a place of creation. Now, it is a crime scene. There are piles of things and doom boxes I’m moving multiple times a day because no matter where they are, they’re always in the way. My studio needs a deep clean. No – it needs an exorcism. I need to be able to walk into it without having a panic attack. Everything is taking six times longer than it should (probably because I have to keep stopping to move things out of the way that I just moved half an hour ago because they were in my way then. How am I supposed to fulfill custom orders—things that require precision and soul—when I currently have the hand-eye coordination of a toddler in mittens?

There’s a little voice in my head whispering to me, “You are failing at everything. You are a fraud. Also, your plants are dying because you haven’t watered them in a week.” It’s the feeling that the world is spinning at 1,000 miles per hour and I’m just over here, vibrating at a frequency of “Low Battery,” trying to remember how to spell my own middle name.

Speaking of the guilt of unfinished custom orders, it’s mid-December. The rest of the world is apparently finished (I mean, other than the people shopping from me, hahahahaha, sob). I see people on social media with their color-coordinated gift wrapping and their peaceful holiday vibes, and I want to throw up a little in my mouth. I haven’t even bought a single roll of tape. My “shopping list” is currently just a series of panicked vibes and a vague hope that everyone I love will accept “I didn’t die this year” as a heartfelt gift. Ah, shit, I think that’s what I gave them all last year, too!

But here’s the thing. When you are physically incapable of being the “Productive Member of Society” you pretend to be, you’re forced to look at what’s left. And what’s left right now is the weight of a dog’s chin on my ankle. It’s the way the afternoon light is hitting the dust motes in the living room—dust I should be cleaning, but which looks like tiny galaxies dancing in the air… so at least it’s pretty.

I’m weary. I’m so, so tired of the hustle and the “sorry for the delay” emails and the feeling that I am perpetually behind some invisible finish line. I am a hot mess in a stained sweatshirt. But there is hope in the mess. There’s hope in the fact that the dogs don’t care that I’m behind on my orders. They don’t care that the studio is a disaster or that the website is glitching. They just want me to be here.

Maybe the universe isn’t fucking with me, maybe it isn’t indifferent. Maybe it’s just trying to tell me to shut up and sit down for five minutes. Maybe the reason everything is taking six times longer is because I was moving six times too fast to begin with.

I will get to the orders. I will clean the studio (eventually, possibly with a shovel). I will buy the gifts, even if they’re all from the “seasonal aisle” of a drugstore at 11 PM on Christmas Eve.

But for today? Today, the victory isn’t in the productivity. The victory is in the breathing. It’s in the vulnerability of admitting that I can’t do it all, and that the world hasn’t stopped turning just because I’m horizontal.

This week, this day, isn’t a failure; it’s a transit station. I’m just passing through on my way to something else. And if I have to stay in this station for a few more days, wrapped in a duvet and smelling like eucalyptus oil, then so be it. The fire can burn for a while. I’ll get the extinguisher tomorrow. Or Thursday.

Probably Thursday.