i was in the middle of a cheeky menty b when this one showed up so i decided to sit on it for a bit lol

there's not really one thing that keeps me going. i think it's the variety in the combination of all the different things in my life to look forward to that keeps me going

like i've got creative outlets in my music, my bass playing, writing smut, the little doodles i do in my journal each evening.
then i've got social outlets like my online friends, the weekly and monthly meetups i go to locally, the friend i watch telly with once a week, looking forward to the times i get to spend with my boyfriend, my annual summer trips.
then there's all the other things, like the joy of doing pole dancing and watching my progress in that, or the music project i tutor on a few times a year that i've been doing since i was a kid.
also just, the world is really beautiful actually? one thing i love so much about summer is just how astonishingly beautiful everything is. bright blue skies, flowers, trees, all bathed in so much light. all the birdsong too. it's hard to see it when you sit inside all day though.

when i'm not doing well, it's so easy to just kind of forget all this stuff exists. i've found that the more i can fill my life with things to look forward to and the more i can push myself to keep engaging with them (just not when i really definitely need to stop for a bit), the more restorative they can be. if i have a pole class in the evening but i'm feeling miserable and i'm not sure if i wanna go, then i'll go anyway and i might need to mask for the first few minutes, but by the time i leave i'm beaming again.

i'm honestly very proud of where i've been able to get my life to. in spite of serious health problems and living in the middle of nowhere, i've managed to carve out enough joy in my life and enough things to look forward to that i can know that even when i'm doing really badly (like i was 3 weeks ago when this question was asked), that it will be temporary, that things will come around, and i'll always make it out.

also like, most of the horrible bastards around today will die in my lifetime and i wanna fucking party about it. no way i'm missing that.