Four months of this newsletter, can you even believe? Eventually I'll stop marking each new month like this, but it still feels noteworthy right now because I am notoriously bad at sticking with projects if they fail to provide me with my required dose of dopamine, and yet, here I am. I'm very proud of the work I've done here so far and I hope to do many more months of it, and thank you, thank you, thank you as always for being here and reading what I write every week. Or however often you read. I don't expect anyone reads every single one of these.

I've been thinking a lot lately about energy. Not only in the physical sense, although that too, but in the emotional. I have a bad habit of pouring and pouring into people who are happy to receive what I give them but who don't really care, and who are definitely not pouring into me the same way. I convince myself that one day, if I'm persistent and diligent enough, they'll see me and appreciate what I've offered and then they'll love me the way I need to be loved, and when it doesn't happen, because of course it was never going to, I become resentful and frustrated and wonder why I keep repeating this cycle over and over again. So much space in therapy has gone to unpacking this with very little result.