There are times when my energy runs out. Yours too, probably. When that happens, I simply don’t find the strength to… write a post here, or simply get out of bed, for example.

People lose their cool. I lose my cool. Maybe I should stop reading news. They tell me that the virus is inventing new and grueling ways to kill us every day, and it cannot be avoided. And I can’t even begin to imagine the gore and suffering that healthcare workers have to watch, tied to their front-row seats.

But it must be OK to run out of energy. It’s not something that comes out of thin air, right? And when you run out and lose your cool, it’s probably too late to get lectured on what you should do.

Bad thoughts and bad dreams come. In last night’s nightmare. I got shot with a machine gun. It hurt. I woke up and saw that my right ring finger was bleeding. From all that hand-washing, probably. Pathetic at the same time.

It happens at the best of times, no pandemic is required. I dream that I’m old and I should probably be dead. It was a weird dream rather than a nightmare, really. I was 79 but I didn’t feel it, I was running up and down on stairs.

My ‘love tank’* is all but empty today. It’s a bit like being in the middle of a deep lake and realizing you don’t remember how to swim.

I can’t will my love tank full. I’m trying to find a place to fill it up. You would think —and some write—that there are rules, that you just pin down somewhere and whenever you go there, you find your energy. Bad news: it’s always somewhere else.

Listening to music usually helps, but today it took almost all day till I could put on something.

My point? I guess it’s OK to run out of energy or love, and it’s useless to feel guilty about it. Today, in my (virtual) compliance class, someone said “in the Covid crisis, great people will make some really bad decisions”.

I also think that the real power is to know this.

And maybe I should just shut my face and go for a walk.

* Gary Chapman coined this term while writing of the five love languages. It’s not scientific but I can relate. Just run a search for it.