Published: JULY 27, 2026

The Gods Being Blunt With Me

Patterns I can no longer pretend don’t exist

I had better plans to celebrate the Athenian New Year (for me that would have been ~July 15, 2026), but then I dislocated my knee that Monday and spent the new year moping and feeling sorry for myself.

Before that I was stressing about getting a new job lined up before my mastectomy (gender affirming) in August. The week before I dislocated my knee, I had 5 job interviews, 2 days of 9am–5pm inductions, travelling to and from cities, and my regular part time job. I was just cleaning up my dog’s “puddle” by the front door before leaving to go to my volunteer job, then I slipped. -10/10 experience, I do not recommend.

It’s a very minor injury, all in all. I’m healing well.

And right on the Athenian New Year itself, Wednesday the 15th, I got a really good job offer. One of my top 3, something I was genuinely excited about. I’d found out about the role through networking, then went through the interview process for it like any other. So even while I was spiralling about “getting something lined up in time,” the offer landed on the exact day that should have been my New Year, the same day I never got to actually celebrate.

What I learnt

→ I’m as “productive” injured as I am able-bodied, if anything more so. It gave me a clearer read on my actual baseline, and what’s really stopping me from getting things done day to day (procrastination, tiredness, overwhelm) versus what I’d been blaming it on. The second work and study dropped out of the picture, the second the expectation to perform disappeared, my want to actually do things came back.

→ I do have friends. My contributions have mattered enough that people have checked up on me… I took that for granted.

→ Guilt is a useful emotion, but not because of the guilt itself. It’s useful for what it points at. Mine pointed at the people I’d quietly discounted because they didn’t seem “useful” to me, right before they were the ones who showed up.

Where I need to be isn’t where I thought it was

I keep getting told the same thing lately, in readings, in the timing of things, that I’m worrying about the wrong stuff. Am I doing enough, what should I focus on, am I productive enough, and the answer keeps coming back: stop asking. It’s the same guilt I carry about not worshiping the gods right, not doing enough there, and I’m starting to see it’s not really separate from the guilt about work, or family, or friends, or myself. It’s one pattern wearing different clothes: the constant, low hum of not enough. The job offer landing on that exact day, a role I’d found through the people I know rather than a cold application, feels like proof that the worry was misplaced. And a dislocated knee, landing the same week as the Athenian New Year, feels less like bad luck and more like the gods being blunt with me. A literal for fuck’s sake, have a break.

Conclusion

I need to relearn how to breathe. Not stop (giving up). Not freeze (overwhelm, guilt) — I can’t just choose not to be overwhelmed, but I don’t need to feel guilt or shame for it. I just need to breathe.

So, a dislocated knee, a missed New Year, a mastectomy still ahead, but a job finally sorted, and sorted through the people I actually know rather than the grind. Not the clean ending I wanted, but a truer one. Forced to stop, I found out a few things: that I’m still worth something injured, that the people who matter aren’t the ones I assumed, and that where I’ve been straining to get to isn’t actually where I need to be. Maybe I needed to be told with my body since I wasn’t listening any other way.

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