Discomfort as Offering
About the wind chimes outside. About how as I've recovered my ability to enjoy sounds like these and like people's voices outside has grown. How sometimes building distress tolerance can only happen after distress has been decreased. How so much can only happen after distress has been decreased.
There's always that advice "make room for joy in your life". It's trite. It's meaningless and has been used to gesture vaguely towards so many meanings.
I think a better way to put it is sacrifice for Joy. Not as penance, not as self-flagellation. Because there isn't any joy to be had there (outside of joyously playing with these things in whatever manner you most enjoy). But as offering.
To joy I offer my perfectionism. To joy I offer my defences against being called lazy. To joy I offer my fears of not being good enough. To joy I offer saying the right thing.
I don't know that this is a New Years Resolution ( NYE2026 ). But I think pursuing joy - pursuing the many different joys - the joy of seeing my partner smile, the joy of being held, the joy of sharing meals, the joy of catching up, the joy of moving and music - is going to be a good framework. My distress has been significantly reduced. My pain is what it is. I offer my pain to joy.
I offer the tedium of organising my notes and sticking to a system to the joy of seeing my graph grow and knowledge build and connections move.
I offer the pain in my wrists to the joy of reading and annotating a physical book.