Everything Everywhere All At Once

I loved today. Today was the first time in 4 months that I laughed out loud, choking on my own silly words. 

I’ve been running around juggling two jobs and working on side projects. I feel like a dead man walking. Or more like… a functional corpse. Replying to emails. Attending meetings. Nodding at things I’m not fully processing.

It’s such a strange state to exist in— I feel so tired to think, when I’m not even thinking. I’ve been struggling with my working memory for a while and have been trying to fix it, but it only seems to be getting worse. My brain is just not activating. 

I’m doing the work. But I’m not excelling at it. Which, if you know me, is deeply offensive to my identity. I don’t recognize this version of me. She cuts corners. She submits things that are just… “fine.” Who is she? And why is she wearing my face?

Lately I’ve been wondering if this is a depressive episode, or if this is just what prolonged exhaustion looks like when it puts on a philosophical coat. Either way, I am not myself. And the worst part is, I don’t even know where to go looking for her.

And then, today at work, something unusual happened. We stopped. 

My friends and I went into the meeting room and closed the door on us. We all just collapsed into complaining.

One had just had a baby. Another just came out of shoulder surgery. The rest of us were just… spiritually unwell.

The thing was, we had deadlines. We have deadlines. Ones that just a few months ago we would’ve killed ourselves to meet. 

And yet there we were, sitting in front of the chaotic board like it was a crime scene we were too tired to investigate. And strangely… it felt good. So good.  

There is something deeply human about collective wallowing. It’s the closest thing we have to a group therapy session where we all speak the exact same language.

These are the people who know me most in work, in a way that feels almost invasive. We’ve suffered through the same timelines for years. We carried the same pressure. Operated on the same frequency. It is not easy to find that in our industry. And we found each other. 

We just sync. Or at least… we used to.

Because today, for the first time, we were all slightly disconnected from ourselves. And in that moment, we finally admitted something we all were hiding from: We need rest.

But of course— we can’t afford that. We do not have the luxury to breathe, not now, not in the next six months. So complaining it is. 

After we left, I sat in my car and thought to myself: I miss living, bruh. 

Then one of them called. “Let’s go to dinner. Now.”

And before I could come up with an excuse, she jumped in: “We need this, FFB. We need to disconnect.”

– 

We met again at the restaurant.

Eating, talking over each other, interrupting, laughing. No one fully understanding anyone. The brain fog was too thick in all of us. So we turned it into a joke. We called it miscommunication night. Say whatever you want. It doesn’t have to make sense.

The chaos was beautiful. The laughter was even better.

We got cake!

The waiter asked what we wanted written on it. What we were “celebrating”. We chose an inside joke so incriminating it could legally ruin all of us immediately, but we didn’t care. Which, somehow, made it taste a 100x better.

We stayed there, made it our little home, until they had to kick us out. So we stood outside for hours, continuing the same nonsense conversations. Miscommunicating. Nothing was going to stop us until we decided we are done.

Completely abandoning the project. As if it didn’t exist. As if we didn’t exist within it.

And for a few hours, we weren’t writers, we weren’t directors or producers or or or… We weren’t responsible. We weren’t behind. We were just… people. Confused, tired, slightly unhinged people.

And it was exactly what I needed.

To feel like I’m not alone in this feeling. To feel understood, even when no one is making sense. To feel like we’re all… going through the same thing. Together.

And maybe that’s enough for now, just to sit in it together. Laughing. Miscommunicating. Eating cake that probably wasn’t even that good. And convincing ourselves, just for a moment; that this counts as living.

And that was it, my dear readers. Today was a good day. 

XOXO 

FFB