We Be Learnin'

I'm going to try to write more blogs about various topics as they come up. I tend to get overly burdened mentally about certain topics I’ve gathered information on but still need to process and integrate—things I’ve known alongside new information, and figuring out where it all fits together.

I also won’t stress myself about the length of these posts. Some may be long; most will be short. I was going to work on a post series going over analyzing and reviewing beliefs. Focusing on one question at a time.

Many of these various topics are still a work in progress and won’t be fully comprehensive with everything I know. They may focus on just one aspect of something I’m trying to understand and connect.

For this post, I wanted to take note of some recent personal progress and discoveries for us. We had a chance to reflect on some things over the past two days.

The night before (and into the morning) we were heading up to see my sister at college to spend the day with her, both John and I found ourselves mentally preparing as if we were going on a long vacation. My mind suddenly rushed to making sure Sherlock had her water refilled, food ready, the heater off, packing this and that, etc. I had to pause and remind myself—we were only going up for half a day. We were going to be back before Sherlock’s second feeding in the evening (10 p.m.), so everything was fine. But before I knew it, my whole being (mind and body) was focused on being away for a long time.

John had a similar pattern, but his showed up the morning we were about to leave.

Why, you may ask?

Because we generally do not go out to enjoy ourselves. If we are headed out, it’s usually for work or errands nearby. And by “go out,” we mean places farther than 30 minutes away. At least in the past few years, due to low finances and the inability to afford the frequent use of our car. We get easily stressed when going out due to sensitivities and being around people. Most of what we enjoy doing, we can do at home: watching videos, talking together, reading/researching, crafting/creating, and playing with our cat—almost 100% home-based activities.

With that in mind, we realized that we haven’t eaten out at a restaurant—just the two of us—in almost two years. We only eat out if it’s with other people with more than half the time someone else paying, and even then, it’s maybe once every couple of months.

Now, things went extremely well. We happened to rest for two days beforehand—meaning not leaving the house, not having strict deadlines, and not really talking to anyone. That gave us enough energy for the day of. Normally, after an hour or two, I become tired again—sometimes exhausted—and almost need a nap (especially since poor sleep is normal for me). John always wakes up tired having at least one panicking nightmare a night since we've met. Last time we had this level of energy was back in September 2025. This does not happen often.

But the drive up went well. I had a minor headache from prolonged focus, but we actually stayed and hung out for nine hours while still feeling fairly functional.

For those of you familiar with spoon theory, we were definitely borrowing spoons from the next few days. But in the moment, things seemed to feel balanced.

At the end of the day, we even drove down to Buckey’s and had the energy to walk around and grab something to eat—then continued the hour and a half drive back home.

I used to do these longer drives more often. Back in California it was expected for drives to be 45 minutes minimum to get anywhere you really needed to be at.

That drive down went well too. We got ready for bed and passed out around 2 a.m. It took a while to unwind, since showering and preparing the house for the night took some time. When we say “unwind,” we mean waiting until our bodies stop jittering with anticipation—like we might need to jump up and complete some task—and until our minds slow down enough to let go of thought. That can take hours.

We eventually fell asleep, but this morning was rough. We were barely awake but still very much asleep—not asleep enough to rest, but not awake enough to function clearly.

My eyes were strained and had trouble focusing. John was so tired he could barely process visual words. Our dyslexia gets much worse the more tired we are trying to just read a packaging box with 3 words. We watched a video and caught none of it. We knew we were burnt out from these cues.

One of the videos we watched after our nap involved optical illusions, and some of them weren’t working for us. For John, it was an illusion where a blue circle between two red circles appears to move differently depending on focus—but nothing was happening for him.

For me, it was a black-and-white silhouette of a ballerina spinning in circles. You’re supposed to be able to see it rotate clockwise and then mentally switch it to counterclockwise. My mind was stuck only seeing it rotate counterclockwise. The YouTuber we were watching—and John—could see the switch, and I know I’ve been able to as well before, though with difficulty. But this time, it just wouldn’t switch. We both became curious about how tired someone has to be for the brain to essentially say, “Nope, we’re not doing this,” and lose the ability to process these illusions.

We are very exhausted. For events that require effort, we need at least two days to rest and build up energy beforehand. Then it takes anywhere from one day to a full week to recover afterward, depending on how the day went and who we interacted with.

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Just a heads up: I, Michelle, will be starting biofeedback therapy soon. Hopefully, it will help, but it will most likely make me more tired during the process. It’s expected to take 11 weeks, with one session per week (12 total, though the first is an intake appointment).

So please expect communication to go through my husband more often than through me. I’ll need the energy to keep up with home responsibilities and basic daily living.

I’ll also be working on a lot of personal art therapy pieces that won’t be publicly shared yet. There’s a lot I need to work through first over the next few months.

Thank you for understanding.

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Welp, that’s the update—something we’ve learned and will need to incorporate into our expectations moving forward. We hope that in a couple of years this will ease, but for now, as we work through trauma and unravel deeply rooted reflexes, we’ll be taking things slowly.

Thanks, and see you in the next post!