10/17/2025: Anesthesia

For the first time in a while, I’m feeling accomplished and content. 

After ten weeks of hard work, I now have a copyediting certificate, and I’m looking forward to future projects and prospects. I’m reading a great classic book for the first time and I’m enjoying all my fall events and movies. With a weekend filled with more good things on the horizon, I’m taking today to relax and take it all in, to embrace the lightness I feel compared to a week ago. 

The little things came to the forefront this week, like morning cups of tea and that peaceful hour of reading before bed. And I needed these things more than I knew. It’s been hard to feel accomplished when I haven’t really created anything new in the realm of writing lately—I decided to take a break from my own writing and editing endeavors until I finished my course and got some new knowledge under my belt. And even though I’m glad I did, I haven’t been myself since then.

I think I’m ready to dive back into my own stories, and I’m eager to see how well I can polish my novella and novel with fresh eyes. I’d also like to write more short stories, and I’m excited to see if I can reach one hundred stories in the near future. I know I’m still doing all of this for myself, but I also know that if I lose sight of that why then I should just hang it all up now. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: Fulfillment has to come from within, not from without. 

So many people have it backwards. And though I don’t claim to know everything, I do know that I’ve learned a lot on my own journey that has been crucial to my well-being and my growth, and I just wish more people could experience that too. The simple truth is, life’s too short to chase the wrong things, to live for others above ourselves. 

I read something recently that stuck with me, and I realized that most of us struggle with this daily. The quote said: “If your happiness disappears the moment the pleasure does, it was never happiness. It was just anesthesia.” To think that most of us are wandering around in a numb state of instant gratification and distraction is disheartening. And though there are definitely times when the happiness disappears with the pleasures of life for me, I also know these are the times I have to take it in stride as best I can, to not let despair and indifference consume me. 

There are simply things that are out of our control, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still pure happiness to be had, no matter how fleeting or small, no matter how lasting or larger than life. We just have to keep striving for that lasting joy, to stop chasing those temporary fixes that are depriving us of the things that can truly fulfill us.