In contrast to the last post...

...(which I honestly did mean every word of but was a little twee even for my usual drivel) I went back to the dentist late last week.

After the life-changing root canal that I haven't shut up about since March, you'd think my teeth would be in top-notch condition, but I had another tooth that was bothering me. Fearing the worst, I laid back and got the news that...

...I'm grinding my teeth so much at night that I've worn away the enamel on the tooth that's bothering me. I've worn a night guard for years, but it's losing the match against the destructive power of my clenched jaw.

So yes, I wrote a peaceful and warm list that read like a crush on October. But the important flip side is that I then went to bed and continued to subconsciously mutilate the hardest part of the human body. Positive and negative. Light and dark. Yin and yang.

Life is a balancing act, and one I'm not sure I always accurately reflect in expressing myself — not in my work life, which sometimes overwhelms me to the point of shutting down; not in my personal life, which sometimes brings enough pain I can physically feel it; not in my health, which I prioritize but in a way that falls short of the devoted rigor people attribute to me; and not in my creative pursuits, which too often leave me feeling as if I've failed.

And yet just as surely as these things are true, there are times when I would deny any of it was an issue, and would mean, to my depths, that everything was copacetic. Like, it's all peace and tranquility. Like, it's a list about October.

In many ways, I have never felt as grounded as I do right now. And I am grinding my teeth away at night. These are not antithetical statements. They are two equally genuine parts of the same reality.