Thank you so much for joining us once again. It is the Nightly Pleasures podcast back from a long hiatus. As always, I am your host and author of the piece that you're about to hear today. My name is the Grey Knight. You can call me Jack, if that's just a little bit too much for you. I don't blame you at all. First off, allow me to say,

it is very good to be back. Sometimes it can be hard to get back to something if you've taken a little

bit of a break, but I have to say, this was not. I was very excited to do this. It feels very good,

it feels very natural, and I wanted to talk to you just a little bit today about where I was in 2021, because it was nowhere exciting. And there is going to be a concerted effort on my part to not overwhelm you all with what I'm thinking or feeling frustrated about. I'm actually, I think, doing much, much better with that, much, much better

emotional regulation these days, largely stemming from, I think, just isolation, continuing

to figure out what my body wants and needs, even though I'm past the...

I'm past the needing bed rest period by quite a bit.

There's still stuff to figure out and tinker with there, and I am.

Learning how to cook over this last year was simply one of the best time things I've ever done in my

life because things are crazy with supply chain issues as of this recording inflation with

food prices. And of course, going out is a little bit of a toss of the dice.

So with everything happening in the world right now, I am just really appreciative that I like

cooking, that my body enjoys my cooking, and that it keeps me going.

So as for good things that happened while I was gone, that's one of them.

I really do feel like I have progressed quite a bit in my cooking. Right now, I've got a bird

dry brining in the fridge, and I'm going to make a dish for the first time. I'm not even going to

look up any of the instructions or the recipe or ratio or anything. I'm'm going to make a dish for the first time. I'm not even going to look up any of the

instructions or the recipe or ratio or anything. I'm just going to go and make it. It's not a

complex dish at all, but still, that's very different for me. As recently as three, four years

ago, if I wanted to order groceries, it would take me practically all day.

It would take me hours, literally, but I'd have to psych myself up for, and I get worried, and I would check my pantry a couple of times.

And this is when I had extra, you know, money that I didn't have to worry about, like if there was a substitution or something.

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