Thank you so much for this piece Shannon. In the last few years, my writing speed has gone down considerably. Where once essays could be written in a single, hour-or-two-long spurt, I now find myself fiddling with and plodding through the words for an entire day. Every single decision and word choice seems to take immense effort now, and I never trust my instincts anymore, and have to re-read everything what feels like dozens of times in order to have any sense of whether it's coming together or not, and still after all of that, I'll find typos. It's been tough to accept. And it leaves me doubting my own abilities because the mental fog makes it so difficult to see my own work clearly. So let me just say, you're a fabulous writer. You make personal experience easy to grasp, specific but relatable and without excess padding or unnecessary tangents. You know how to tell a good story that functions in its self-contained form, while still building on a years long history of work. You're good at what you do. You're thorough and meticulous but the result comes out as an effortless read.