Essays, Art and Plays by Dan

If my emotions were a weather report,
I’d tell you—don’t bother bringing a forecast.
The skies? They change.
No warning. No pattern.
Just gut-level guessing and a lot of cloud cover.

Some mornings,
it’s fog.
That soft kind—hugs the ground,
blurs the edges of thought.
I move slow.
Like the world’s still waking up, and I don’t want to be the one to jolt it.

Then—bam.
Outta nowhere,
anxiety rolls in.
Not a drizzle. Not a breeze.
It’s sideways rain.
Wind screaming in the wires.
Thoughts scatter like receipts in a parking lot.

Anger?
It doesn’t crash down.
It builds.
Thick heat—mid-July with no air conditioning.
It’s not a tantrum, it’s a pressure system.
You don’t see it,
but I feel it pressing behind my ribs.
People hear my silence and call it peace.
But it’s not peace.
It’s the hush before the sky breaks open.

Grief—
that’s a season.
A long long winter.
Gray-on-gray.
No dramatic storms.
Just cold that hangs on too long.
Snow falling so soft
you don’t notice how heavy it’s gotten.
Until you’re buried in it.

But joy?
Joy is weather that doesn’t ask permission.
It breaks through.
Like light after five straight days of rain.
Like that one perfect breeze that finds you
in traffic,
in chaos,
and just for a second—you remember how to breathe.
Don’t chase it.
Just let it land.

Truth is—
there’s no steady climate here.
No predictable highs.
No reliable lows.
One hour,
I’m all blue skies.
Next?
Clouds so thick you can’t see what’s two steps ahead.

I used to want control.
Clear skies on command.
Neatly labeled feelings with timestamps.
But now?
I’m learning to watch the sky without trying to change it.
Let the storm roll.
Let the drizzle come.
Let the sun catch me off guard.

If my emotions are a weather report—
then let the report be real.
Messy.
Moving.
Unpredictable.
Like me.