January 25, 2026

The tendinitis flare continued this week, and there were a couple of nights when I woke up in pain, but I made it through the week and have a few additional tools at the ready — night braces, a therapeutic hand massager, and ergonomic stress balls. Basically I have some tools for support and stabilization as well as for gradual stretching and strengthening. They’re helping. Physical breaks and rest help more, but it turns out that not using one’s hands is rather challenging.

One good thing about weekly accountability check-ins is that I realize when I let things go that help — like last week I mentioned that I hadn’t been taking many photos recently and could take photos to shape my mood instead of doing so when I was in the mood. Physically, I still wasn’t up to writing this week, which was frustrating, and the week had some unexpected twists that threw us off. Everything’s okay, but we had to deal with a few new issues just when we were starting to catch up after the last round of upheaval. But I took photos this week, and it helped to stop and look around.

In fact, one morning the kid noticed an interesting shadow on the wall that was both a shadow and a reflection, and we spent some time photographing it to try to capture and share what was so strange and interesting about it. The kid tried some pics, and then I did, and then I stuck my arm into the shadow/reflection, and we were surprised by the disjointed effect, so I posed while the kid tried to capture the new shadow.

I took photos of the sky and of trees and of snow. I read. I prepared for the snow storm and went to my child’s piano recital and thought too much because I couldn’t write and get it out of my head, but I did read.

Doomscrolling is physically painful right now, and my phone time has been severely curtailed, which is probably a good thing. I’ve been thinking a lot about Prof. Wiesel’s course “Literary Responses to Oppression” and the conversations we had back then about the power and the necessity of acts of witness and of Ariel’s book about the course, titled “Witness.” I’ve been looking through old notes and journal entries. Not being able to write is difficult at the moment. I can dictate an email, but I can’t think without putting pen to paper.