The Midweek Weather

Did you know that I love taking mushrooms?

Settle that into your brainpan a little bit before I proceed.

Ready?

Without wading into far too much detail about the clinical side of life, I do have certain tendencies that make it harder for me to concentrate on a single task. And when I don't have a buffer, the world changes.

Without help and support, I feel like a rock skipping across a pond, thrown viciously enough to never feel appreciative of the wetness of the water, the crisp humidity of the air, or the quiet strength of the hand that threw me. I'm just skimming the surface of my own life, bouncing frantically from one task to the next, never actually touching down.

Which brings me to right now, as I sit in my chair, trying to focus on writing this quick bit. Struggling mightily.

I am currently knee-deep in the crash of losing my support. The brain fog is back, the jitters are settling in, and my focus is shattered. What makes it humiliating is that this is the third time this has happened to me. I run out, the chaos returns, I realize how vital they are, and yet... I still don't learn.

But since I am stuck in this foggy, skipping-stone state today, I figured I'd do a bit of public service. I mentioned that I take mushrooms.

Lion's Mane. Reishi. Cordyceps. Turkey Tail. Chaga. Maitake. What sounds like Michael Scott's laundry list of troublesome illicit drugs is, I have come to find, the difference between a regular Tuesday and a really shitty one.

To be certain and clear, I know that almost everything I'm experiencing is anecdotal and reliant upon how I feel. But my anecdotal experience aligns perfectly with the expressed purpose of these ingredients.

And it's always in the details that this matters, because our brains lie to us, taking whatever feels germane and grounded as the source of truth. So never mind that I spent two-thirds of my day wondering just what in the actual hell was happening to me. What is more important is that I was clairvoyant enough to realize that I'd missed the last two days of mushrooms before my brain told me that all evidence pointed to me going nuts.

So yes, I look forward to my Amazon Prime same-day delivery. It will be nice to cut the brain fog, curb a tiny bit of the anxiety, and get my gut back to a baseline of normal that allows me to enjoy this box of Mike and Ike RedRageous fruit-flavored candies. Otherwise, the stress wins, and not even my nightly ritual of Confetti Cheerios will tame the clumsy dinosaur within me.

I hate that I believe in this stuff, but having now taken it for well over a year, I have enough evidence that it works. If it didn't, I wouldn't have spent over $200 maintaining a subscription to it.

This isn't an ad. I am not even providing the link to the product. I just felt like writing about it. Because writing and working without it?

Completely different experience.