In late 2021, I started to realize that I was autistic. It was life-changing; it gave me permission to rest as I needed. I finally understood why socializing could be so exhausting instead of restorative. I wasn’t a failure; I was disabled. My husband encouraged me to stop looking for a job and find other ways to fill my time. I started this blog, began my conversion to Judaism, and joined the League of Women Voters. I took housekeeping as seriously as I could, considering my executive functioning issues and physical disabilities. This seemed reasonable.

It was not.

I only have to write my essays to complete my conversion, yet, I have found this difficult to fit in. I started one of the essays, and I have a plan to restart that same one because I didn’t like how it was started, which was too impersonal and formulaic. And this is something I really want to do! Like, deeply, in my soul, I want to finish my conversion and be a Jew. Out loud and in color, defending Israel, wearing a Star of David, telling people they are being antisemitic when they say they just don’t like Zionism. And I haven’t yet. And I am so close. I know some of this, again, is executive functioning difficulties. And a touch of perfectionism.

And a touch of “I have had 29 doctor’s appointments so far this year.” We’re six months into 2023.

I have two doctor’s appointments this week, and two next week, and it got me curious, how many doctor’s appointments have I had this year? I’ll be honest, 29 is way higher than I thought.

Plus appointments for my son, of which there have been many: he is also autistic and has some motor delays, which means lots of appointments. The animals have been going hard in the paint this year as well, lots of visits to the vet. My husband even made a cameo; I took him to a procedure yesterday.

I don’t think I have even tried to do any League of Women Voters stuff this year. And that’s actually a problem because my state is going crazy with the suppression of democracy. Like, it’s not okay that I’m not involved.

And the homemaking? It has its ups and downs, but I don’t think I am making much progress overall, like my husband continues to bring in new stuff, and I can’t get rid of the old stuff mindfully fast enough. He’s a hoarder, it’s hard. Everything’s hard. We can’t go outside because the air quality is so bad today from the Canadian wildfires.

I don’t know exactly what I am capable of right now. I have hopes that maybe my thyroid issues will be more obvious now that half of it is gone. I am certainly much more tired somehow even than I was before.

This is just living in America right now.

Have a good birthday America, I think you might be starting to show your age (empires last around 200 years).