Get it done, or put it off, try it out, or shy away, pursue a dream, or watch TV, regardlessly, time will pass.

Recognize, or disregard, brush it off, or shake with fear, you can pay it no attention, or give it every time of day,

it does not matter what you do or do not do, it does not matter if you care or do not care,

so you may as well do something cos this life ain’t built to last, and the only thing we know of it is time will pass. Time will pass.

Everything hurts a little more. Movies and TV shows depicting harm to children have become unbearable; that suffering superimposes on the image of my own child, now, and I long to run upstairs and rouse her from sleep, my eyes wide open and ready like deep, empty wells, ready to have every second of every experience with her poured into them; and perhaps that’s why I keep crying, because I am constantly full-to-the-brim and overflowing with ‘you’.

The long thread must continue in the background. Your underlying endeavors silently achieving, even as your family duties take center-stage (as well they should), but all the while, your projects progress; the long thread pulls, it draws success.

I feel like a ghost.

When you’re sick, everyone says they don’t blame you, but it cannot relieve the heavy burden - the viral load - that inescapably weighs upon you - within you.

I can be present, but I can’t get too close, I can’t hold my baby or kiss my wife, I daren’t even open my mouth to speak for risk of sharing more than words. So I am mute, out-of-reach, untouchable, unable to support my family, unwilling to cheer up or smile, as requested, for I am a ghost. I am good only for haunting.

Creativity is therapy, self-discovery, a way to reduce your thoughts like a sauce in a pan, till all you’re left with is a concentrated, thick syrup, preserved and bottled, but on canvases, notebooks, and diner napkins.

The greatest effect that creativity has on my life is not in its existence, but in its dire absence; my heart and mind speaks to me in riddles that only creativity can help decipher, so without it, I am awash with tangles and short tempers, until at last the tantrums drive me to write, play, sing, or simply express aloud, my volcanic eruption of unsolidified self careening down my cheeks and leaving scars on my face (and grey hairs on my head).

Better that I indulge the creativity, more for what it helps relieve, than for what it helps provide.