Stress is like a drug. Once you’ve been stressed long enough, it’s like you can’t de-“stress”. Even after everything that needs to get done gets done, you still kind of twitch yourself into sleep, waking up every five minutes, thinking you forgot something. Something important.

The older we get, the more we realize that our work is never done. There’s always something that needs doing. But every once in a while there comes a time when there’s less to do than there has been, and we get a chance to wind down.

But is it possible to wind down?

I’ve noticed that the long term-effects of stress are both physical and mental. Not only does my health deteriorate, but I can’t focus on anything. It used to be I could walk through a day with my eyes open, looking around me, hunting for inspiration—inspiration for something to write about, specifically for this blog. But I now realize that for the past few weeks I’ve been walking around with my eyes shut, not noticing anything, inspired by nothing.

Maybe, just maybe, with enough sleep, this poor blog will be back to something worth reading.