stop resisting your sadness and start embracing it.

it just might move you to paint a skunk wearing a hat.

Jul 13, 2025

i went to bed sad last night and that sadness bled into today the way a sharpie bleeds through a lot to the next page and a bit less to the page after that and still a bit less the page after that and so on and so forth.

what we’re talking about today is just good old sadness. not depression, not agony, not despair, but the kind of sadness that sticks to you like a peanut butter stain on jeans. you try to rub it away, you might even dab at it with a napkin dipped in water, but honey that peanut butter is there to stay until you run your next load of laundry.

we live in an age where people love to get to the root of their emotions.

i feel this way because it’s a trauma response.

i feel this way because this person said that.

i feel this way because my body doesn’t produce enough serotonin.

sometimes psychoanalyzing ourselves and our emotions is helpful. but sometimes, you just feel the way you feel and it’s okay to leave it at that.

so yes, i feel sad today. i woke up today in the same bad mood that lulled me to sleep the night before, and my first instinct was to go back to sleep for a couple hours and take another crack at the day after my nap.

instead, i talked to my sister upstairs, made a cold brew, facetimed my sister who lives in a different country, and accepted a wag! dog walk request for one of my regular clients. the walk was miserable because i had to pee so badly, but i was grateful for the connection with a creature simpler than i am and for the hydrangeas i saw.

speaking of which, i made a list yesterday of the things i want in this life. a big (HUGE) hydrangea plant is one of them. here are some others.

i’ve been trying to get this jumping spider thing off the ground for almost a year. please help me manifest this.

i came home, i took some photos for a piece i want to write about body acceptance, and i felt beautiful in my skin. i don’t think about my appearance very much anymore, but after a week of struggling a bit with my body image it felt good to see myself and feel beautiful. here is one of my favorites:

i read my book (the kite runner by khaled hosseini). i took a nap. and still, this sadness persisted.

if you’ll quickly return to the peanut butter stain metaphor with me for a moment, my sadness is the peanut butter, and talking to my sisters, getting out in nature, feeling confident in my skin, reading, sleeping, everything i did was just rubbing the stain around but the ghost of it still lingered. actually let’s go ahead and make that present tense. the ghost of my sadness still lingers.

i spoke to one of my best friends about this and came to the realization that some days you just don’t feel good and some of those days you can snap out of it, but some of those days you might just need to accept that that’s the kind of day it is.

i made the decision to turn off all my phone notifications for a few hours, work on some of my paintings, and that inspired me to do some writing about this wretched day.

that is one thing i would recommend if you’re feeling down: make something. i painted a rough outline of something i have been wanting to paint for a long time but just haven’t gotten around to. a skunk with a hat on.

is it good? no. but at the very least, something exists today that didn’t exist yesterday and that’s because i made it. that has to count for something.

today is not so good. that’s okay. some days are like that. i did all the things you are supposed to do and it didn’t help. let me reiterate: some days are like that.

but i sit here in my backyard at 7pm in my snoopy crocs, my tjmaxx pajama pants, my studio ghibli soot sprite shirt, listening to my writing animal crossing music, feeling a cool summer evening breeze and i know i am going to be okay. maybe not today. and maybe, if the aforementioned sharpie stain is strong enough, maybe not tomorrow either. but i will be.

you will be too.