Journal #18: Bittersweet slump
Slump
My wife left to go back to the UK yesterday.
We spent a month and a half together. It was the longest amount of time we've ever had together.
I got home late last night and faffed around until I passed out. Woke up today feeling pretty out of it and depressed. I fell back asleep late in the morning, so I didn't get out of bed until the afternoon.
Window shopping
I skipped over breakfast and brushed my teeth. Got on my laptop and jumped into anything I could to distract myself. Ended up going down a rabbit hole on travel backpacks. Bags are one of my biggest special interests; I've always liked them an inordinate amount since I was a kid, but I only discovered there's a niche market for them as an adult. I've amassed quite the collection over the past few years. I'll write about it one day.
Long story short, the bag maker I like makes their bags too heavy for me to use as a dedicated travel pack. I started looking elsewhere and found the Pantagonia Black Hole MLC Mini. It's pretty sweet. I won't have to buy a travel pack until I'm done moving to the UK in a year or so, but window shopping is always fun.
Dr. Bronner's soap experiment
I took another nap sometime between the afternoon and evening. After I got up I did a lot of dishes. I've been obsessed with Dr. Bronner's castile soap the past couple months. I've got hard water at my place, and I finally figured out a good system to reduce soapy residue: if you rinse off the soap completely then submerge dishes in a vinegar/water solution most of the soap will be gone. The scum is the product of minerals in the hard water getting left behind during evaporation; something about the vinegar cuts through everything. I tried it once before but didn't properly rinse the soap off. I'm happy to say this time the experiment worked, though I also hand dry dishes as an extra precautionary measure.
I'm really happy to have figured out a system that works for me. I want to really cut down on my stuff in between now and my move to the UK. I'm watching a lot of minimalist stuff on YouTube as well. I want to try using Dr. Bronner's soap for as much as I can. They also offer a detergent but it isn't available in the UK. Right now I'm using the soap for dishes, general cleaning, body wash, and face wash. I even tried using it as shampoo for a couple weeks (a lot of people have success with it) but my scalp was too sensitive/dry.
Preservative fridge memories
The kitchen is still a mess, but I managed to clean out the fridge. I tossed out a couple jars of overnight oats, a forgotten mango, half-eaten pomegranate, old spinach, the last third of a Biscoff banana cake my wife made, etc.
Cleaning out the fridge after my wife visits is always odd. She's here one day, then gone the next. Sometimes I'd like to keep things as evidence of her presence, but you can only hold on for so long.
Maybe I'll write a short story about someone keeping half-eaten food left behind by somebody they cared about until their fridge goes rotten. Each piece of food could have a its own story. You can't fit whole narrative would inside a refrigerator of course, but maybe that's where the tension would start.
Imagine a cup of yogurt half full, the foil wrapper folded over top to keep the remaining half fresh, and a spoon handle sticking out the side. Imagine memories of strawberry-flavored kisses, a cheerful grin around a spoonful of yogurt, a particularly bright morning at breakfast. Then cut to the interior of a fridge: overly spacious, cast in white fluorescent light, droning with a monotone hum. Are memories preserved here, or just entombed?
In any case, I threw all of it away.
Website stuff
I finally made food afterward. I went with breakfast, very overdue: scrambled tofu, toast, beans, and sausage with a decaf coffee. Then I got back online and did some webdev stuff. I built a new page on my site for my favorite stuff. It's pretty empty right now, though.
I also changed the link in my footer to link back to my main site. Issue is that it isn't mobile-friendly. I'll need to get on that soon. It's nearly caught up to my blog in terms of unique views, which is crazy to me considering I've only had it for two months compared to my blog which is over half a year old by now.
Another blogging sprint
I felt more restless as the night wore on. Couldn't pinpoint how I felt. I remembered how I did a blog sprint the other day and figured I could use another. So here we are.
I started with a five minute timer. I got into the groove pretty quick, and once the timer went off I still wanted to keep writing. I switched to a stopwatch after that; I'm now fifteen minutes in.
Trying my best
I really wanted to Be Productive today. I wanted to be busy and do things to deny myself the chance to be sad and lazy. I think it's unavoidable though. If my wife were here she'd tell me to take it easy and not be so hard on myself. It's a struggle when she isn't around and all I've got are my own thoughts.
We texted a little after we already said our goodbyes; she was waiting at her gate in the airport, and I was on a train back home. I told her that she needs to look after my wife for me. I guess I need to look after her husband for her, too.
I'll try my best. It's always been good enough for her; it should be good enough for me, too.
Sprint duration: 5 minutes
Total writing time: 25 minutes
✘ Posted on — 05/31/25
✘ Last modified — 2 months, 3 weeks ago
✘ Link — https://blog.xavierhm.com/journal-18-bittersweet-slump