If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed that on Friday I started counting days. I’m on Day #6 as of today. What is that? You might remember that last week I wrote a post about how I was in something of a dark place. And so many of us are for all different reasons. I think I’ve heard it described that we’re all in a storm. Each boat we inhabit is different and some are sinking faster. Our norms have been destroyed and our daily reality changes almost by the hour. Regardless of someone’s financial or personal situation, a dark place means the same thing, and it can lead to bad things no matter who you are. My count is the number of days since I’ve decided to focus on getting myself out of that dark place by focusing on ways to cope that aren’t self-destructive.

What have I been doing on those days? To start, on Wednesday, I wrote a blog post, forcing myself to recognize I needed to fix some things. Thursday, I spent time on the phone with a friend who is going through some shit. I’d argue his shit is shittier than any shit I’ve got, but it’s been good to connect with him. Don’t think we’ve spoken this much in years. On Friday, I took steps to actively recognize an accomplishment —it’s an esoteric thing relating to my day-job, but could become one of the biggest accomplishments of my whole career. Yesterday, I slept in, cleaned the house with my family, played Microsoft Flight Simulator (I have a YouTube channel about Alaska if you’re interested in a bit of demography, history, and general sight-seeing), and then we watched TV together. It was nice. Today, I spent most of my day on Twitter.

*insert record screech* – What? Twitter? A wellspring of dystopia – that can’t have been good, right?

A week ago, starting the day on Twitter meant dodging anger, vitriol, and honestly a hell of a lot of misinformation, plus general reports of the US coming apart at the seams. It wasn’t fun. Today, it was a totally different story. I was greeted by a great thread about road trips and a mad uncle. It it made me think of my own last road trip, nearly 20 years ago now. As you do, I put out a poll about the longest road trip. To my surprise, most people (and as I write this I’m up to about 90 votes) who responded have traveled in excess of 3000 miles on a road trip. My longest was around 4500 —not unusual for urban-dwelling Alaskans. Better than that though were all of the stories. I met new people and got to hear their tid-bit.

My whole point? I’m working on it still and still holding myself to it. Today is better than Tuesday last week, but I have a long way to go. As I said before, I’ll likely continue to use this blog to just talk, because it keeps me on track.

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