I can’t sleep again. Another night where the overwhelming uncertainty of this new era is provoking anxiety. My mind is going a mile a minute trying to make sense of the day just had and trying to form predictions of what’s to come.

The world is falling apart. Institutions are crumbling. There seems the constant threat of war. Of digital invasion into my life and finances. And if none of those touch me, the global economy is stalling, which undoubtedly will affect mine and my family’s life going forward.

It’s my last day of vacation. I did my best to build a sort of architecture of my new life. I didn’t finish, but then again I don’t know if I ever will. Today, I’ll settle whatever tasks are on my plate and are within my power.

Then I’ll rush into another work week, starting off at the stifling office where I can’t speak a single truth for fear of being relegated into a category of people is prefer not to be relegated to. I’ll be in constant communication with people far away, who are the exact opposite of my immediate surroundings. With my coworkers at the corporate office who compose the immigrant nation the current politic resists. With a community of gay men who constitute my actual peers for the first time. With my family who loves me but doesn’t know how to talk to me and who is constantly changing themselves. So many costume changes, so much code switching. A demand to be a different person w an entirely different but still honest reading of my own history for every one I know.

I’ll be starting school, the second class in the graduate program I did not expect to be studying in. A deepening of the field where I am surprised to be working. More weekly compression and flattening of my time. Less daily resources for me to work with. And a sprawling crowd of people who don’t understand why I disappeared and still hold it against me for some reason.

From one angle this looks like bondage.

But from another, freedom.