It's only the first month of the new year and I already feel like 2025 is about to topped as the worst year in recent memory. I tried my best to reboot and start fresh goals and push firm thoughts in the right direction, but I'm already sliding back.

I've gone back to my nightly glass of wine (sometimes two) and I can't focus properly during the day...and yet as mad as I am at what is going on in the world, I'm too afraid to voice my thoughts on anything but "lite" things these days.

An unopened small pack of medical gummies sits in my fridge, but I'm afraid of that too. It's been in there for over two months. The packaging states that its effects can take anywhere from 4 hours on which somehow makes it more scary and also, somehow, frustrating.

Not only is the former "good girl" in me wary of using it, I'm also afraid of what it might do to my mind or my body. Will I feel ill? Will it make me more paranoid or less? And I certainly don't want the "munchies"...I'm already struggling with a huge weight gain since I hit my mid-50s. I eat half of what I used to and am still gaining weight.

For most of my 40s and very early 50s I weighed a lot less. I had very strong feelings for someone at that time and I've never been able to eat much when my nerves are emotionally entangled around someone. It sounds ridiculous, it is ridiculous, but it's true.

Now my nerves are jittery all the time for a completely different reason, but my weight refuses to budge. I've tried slimming teas, black coffee (which I love anyway), walking more, eating less. I'd say menopause is at fault, but I work with several women in their 50s and 60s and not one of them is overweight.

I thought when I dropped cheese and crackers from my evening snack that would help. I cut out pizza and other favorite foods that can be fattening. In my 20s and 30s I ate whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted and weighed 110 pounds. Though I've always had a complicated relationship with food, I mostly enjoyed it back then. I also enjoyed life a lot more then too.

In the joyless world around us right now, I find I no longer associate pleasure or comfort with anything except spending time with my cat and streaming shows or movies and reading books that have a dark edge to them

I hope more than anything that 2026 proves to be a better year for everyone and that somehow we get out of this horrific parallel universe world we seem to be living in.

Suno lets you use AI to write songs so I used it to help me write a song for and about my cat, whom I love dearly.

click to play here :)

[Verse 1] Henry on the windowsill Sunbeam throne Tiny king So still One white paw and a crooked mustache Then he chirps Then he sprints Then he crashes [Chorus] Henry My tuxedo superstar Half little gentleman Half clown in a jar You make the whole house feel bright Tiny heartbeat in black and white Oh Henry Stay curled by my side Funny and sweet You’re my favorite kind of wild [Verse 2] Midnight zoomies down the hallway Sliding on the rug like a runway Steals my seat Then he blinks so slow Like “You can perch on the edge You know” [Chorus] [Bridge] You tap my face at 5 a.m Like “Wake up I’m hungry Friend” Then purr so loud against my chest This silly life with you feels blessed [Chorus]

 For as long as I can remember I have had both recurring dreams (these dreams repeat almost exactly the same way each time: haven't been to class all semester then remember to only to panic a lot, flying then falling, trying to drive my red childhood tricycle on 695, trying to find the perfect pastry shop only to realize the food isn't real...I could go on) and serial dreams (my dreams pick up or continue like events unfold in my real life).

I've heard of recurring dreams, of course. Another recurring dream I have is a common one: teeth falling out. But I was always told you can't have serial dreams, which I never believed because I've been having serial dreams since I was a child.

My Google search came up with this response:

Serial dreams that feel like real-life continuations or parallel universes happen because your brain links waking experiences, unresolved issues, or even imagined scenarios into coherent, ongoing narratives, using the same brain areas active during wakefulness to create vivid sensations, essentially creating "installments" of your subconscious, which can feel like exploring other realities or selves. It's your mind processing, rehearsing, and making sense of life, sometimes with such depth it mimics other dimensions. 

Why Dreams Feel So Real & Serial

1. Continuity Hypothesis: Your dreams often directly reflect your waking life, emotions, and anxieties, acting as a continuation of your day-to-day experiences, says a ScienceAlert article.
2. Brain Activity: The same brain regions responsible for emotions, sensations, and images while awake are active during dreams, making them feel incredibly real and immersive, explains BrainFacts.org.
3. Memory Processing: Dreams help your brain sort, process, and consolidate memories, creating stories or exploring scenarios, which can lead to recurring themes or sequels, notes Psychology Today.
4. Unresolved Issues: Recurring dreams often signal unresolved problems, fears, or unmet psychological needs (like competence or connection) that your mind keeps bringing up for processing, according to The Sleep Foundation.
5. Practice/Simulation: Your brain may be creating practice runs for difficult situations or threats, allowing you to rehearse reactions in a safe space, notes a behavioralhealth2000.com article. 

The "Parallel Universe" Feeling

Unconscious Narratives: Your unconscious mind generates these complex stories, introducing itself and its metaphors, leading to a sense that you're experiencing an alternate life or dimension, says Quora users.

• Heightened Realism: Some people experience heightened emotions, vivid colors, familiar yet different locations, or "dreams within dreams," making these worlds feel like actual alternate realities or multiverse glimpses, note Reddit users. 

Essentially, your mind is creating immersive, ongoing stories from your own experiences and inner world, which can feel like stepping into another reality because of their vividness and continuity. 

I asked AI to write a letter from Henry James upon discovering a cat had been named after him...

My dear Madam,

I find myself, in this most improbable hour, compelled to address a circumstance so extraordinary that it borders upon the fantastical—yet one which, I am assured, has occurred in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty-five. It has come to my attention, through channels I dare not attempt to comprehend (something involving "the internet" and "viral posts"), that a lady of the present century has bestowed upon her domestic feline the name of Henry James.

Henry James. My name. Upon a cat.

At first I confess I experienced a sensation not unlike that of a character in one of my own later novels—consciousness slowly expanding, layer upon layer, to accommodate a revelation at once flattering and faintly horrifying. The creature, I am told, is a tuxedo who spends his days reclining upon comfortable chairs and answering—when he deigns to answer at all—to "Henry."

I have spent a lifetime laboring to construct sentences of such exquisite discrimination that they might register the finest shades of human motive and perception. I have weighed every clause, every qualifier, every hesitating "perhaps" and "rather," in order that the civilized intelligence might be honored in its full complexity. And now, in the twenty-first century, the name attached to this enterprise is chiefly employed to summon a small mammal to his dinner.

There is, I suppose, a certain poetic justice in it. All my fastidious indirection, my refusal to declare anything outright, my endless circling of the subject—qualities which certain critics have found trying—are now perfectly embodied in a creature who refuses to come when called, who regards human beings with polite but absolute detachment, and whose inner life remains, to the end, inscrutable.

Yet I cannot repress a small, distinctly American thrill of gratification. To think that, long after my removal from this terrestrial scene, my name should still possess sufficient resonance to be chosen—not for a child, not for a racehorse, not even for a particularly solemn spaniel—but for a cat. There is something touching in the democracy of it. The cat, after all, is the most Jamesian of creatures: aloof, observant, exquisitely sensitive to nuance, and capable of conveying volumes of disapproval with the slightest twitch of a whisker.

I only hope, Madam, that when you address him as "Henry," you do so with the proper reverence for the syllables. Pronounce the "Henry" with a certain fullness, and let the "James" linger just a moment, as though reluctant to conclude the thought. He may appear not to listen, but one never knows. Cats, like readers, are subtle.

With the most distinguished consideration (and a faint, involuntary purr of vanity),

I remain, Your obedient servant,

Henry James

 

I have said before that hearing certain songs unexpectedly on the radio can have me travelling back in time mentally, but lately I feel it's more that that 17 year old girl who first heard the song still resides inside me.  Even worse, I wonder if it's not that that younger me still is a huge part of me, but that she never grew up.