A Flicker in the Fog

The room was dim, the weight of everything pressing in through the windows… the news, the noise, the relentless hum of a world that never seems to slow down. It had been like this for months. Since last summer. Since the upheaval. Since the job changed and the foundation of what I thought was solid cracked under something unpredictable.

In an attempt to quiet my mind, I reached for something simple: old photos. They’d been sitting there, untouched, unprocessed… frozen moments from before everything shifted. Among them were pictures of my daughter in Bozeman, tearing through the wilderness, pushing herself in a way that made me both proud and wistful.

I wanted to sink into the warmth of those memories, but my mind wouldn’t cooperate. Instead of feeling anchored in that happiness, I felt distant, untethered. Like the past and present were speaking different languages, refusing to connect.

So I did what I could. I saved a few. Just a handful of images… small, tangible proof of something good. Maybe that was enough.

Now, I sit in my living room, watching the artificial glow of a fireplace crackle on the TV. I let myself imagine I’m somewhere else… a cabin deep in the woods, where the air smells like pine and silence feels like a comfort rather than an emptiness. But reality is a small apartment in Missoula, a break from work rather than true rest. The illusion helps, even if it doesn’t erase the to-do list waiting for me on the other side of this moment.

And yet… there’s something here. A brief stillness. A chance to breathe. A pause before stepping back into the chaos. Maybe that’s the lesson.

Looking at the pictures, choosing a few, feeling… however fleetingly… grateful for the fact that those moments happened at all. That’s the thing, right? That’s what they tell us to do. Find something, even just one thing, to appreciate each day. To hold onto. Maybe it worked. Maybe it didn’t. But the act of trying… of pausing long enough to recognize the good… that’s its own kind of victory.

And for today, that’s enough.

*This post benefited from the use of ChatGPT for proofreading and structural input, and Gemini for fact-checking prompt development. The author remains solely responsible for the final content and its accuracy.