I’m doing good this morning. I slept well and very little is being asked of me which means I can get a lot of small personal tasks out of the way and spend the afternoon on my larger goals. I’m feeling disciplined.
I’ve been practicing doing the “hard things” and it’s getting easier and easier. I’m getting better at focusing, writing, reading, and learning when all I want to do is nothing at all—in the mornings when I’m tired, when I’m hungry, when I wish things were different and that I was better.
As happy as I am with myself right now, my patience with other people is at an all-time low. Small talk is exhausting, irritating, wasteful. I have things to do and I resent others for diverting my attention or suggesting that there are other things I should be doing.
The day has been downhill since the morning. I’m home now and I’m so tired. I’m so I barely feel like myself. I’m empty, on the verge of tears, maybe. An unshakeable melancholy sits in my chest though I don’t know why. But I’m home now, thank god. Things are easier here with my wife, the dog, and the cat all willing to comfort and distract me from the day I have had.
Tomorrow I’ll be halfway there, thank god.
Nevertheless the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.”
Monday’s are hard, this one was no exception. I went to bed far too late, took a long time to fall asleep, and woke up many times during the night. I woke up exhausted and stayed that way all day. There was not enough coffee in the world so i didn’t try. I stuck to myself and took it as easy as I could.
I read a lot, and caught up on old journal posts here. I plugged away at a few drafts and made a little bit of progress on Coursera. The day felt long but there still weren’t enough hours.
I’m home now and feeling a lot more present and motivated. I’m more like myself again. I took care of a few things I have been avoiding lately and cleared some mental space in preparation for tomorrow. I’m looking forward and trying like hell not to dwell on my shortcomings.
Little by little. Anything is better than nothing. Making progress, any progress, that is all that matters. That is what I am choosing to focus on.
Prepare for National Blog Posting Month. I wasn’t sure NaBloPoMo was still a thing until I saw this post from Ra Avis inviting bloggers to join her team of “Cheer Peppers“. I signed up and fully intend to complete the challenge but I need a plan of action or I’ll never make it. This week I want to settle on a theme and fill in an editorial calendar with post titles. Next week I’ll start the drafts.
Update: I now have a beautiful Google sheet filled in with 30 topics and almost all of them have corresponding drafts set up in WordPress.
Make a couple of cut up and black out collages and poems. I’ve mentioned it before but creating these simple and shareable pieces feels akin to meditation—it’s calming, grounding, centering, it brings me into the present and allows me to let go of my emotions for a time. This is the only activity I do where it feels more about the process than the product and while I think they are dumb things to make I feel like they are more important than anything I create in any other realm of my life.
Update: This week was exhausting, and the weekend was filled up with social events, cooking, and house projects. There was simply nothing left for creativity.
Finish reading Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert M. Sapolsky. I have just over 100 pages left to go if I read just 20-30 pages a day I can finally move on to something a little more mindless and fun. This book is amazing but I’m desperate for something that is stimulates my emotions and not just my mind, you know?
Update: Normally I spend my lunches at work reading but this week I, quite strangely, felt up to socializing instead. I should have picked a day or two to seclude myself but I was easily distracted.
Finish week 4 of International Women’s Health and Human Rights and week 8 of Modern & Contemporary American Poetry. This one might be hard. I’ve had trouble concentrating on the reading (reading from a screen makes my comprehension levels plummet) and following the videos is exhausting (I’m too easily distracted), with such limited time and willpower I have doubts about my ability to finish either.
Update: Plain and simple, I needed a break. These courses have grown tedious for me and while I know that once I’m done I’ll feel better, and while I also know the only way to get done is to do the work, I couldn’t make myself do even a little bit.
Take care of myself. I had a bad cold a couple of weeks ago and even though I’m about 99% over it (and the resulting ear infection) some symptoms continue to linger. I have to remember that for someone with a chronic illness a simple cold can be very difficult to recover from. I have to drink lots of water, take all of my medication. go to bed on time, and relax as much as I can.
Update: I did okay but I have not been keeping on time of my diet changes or my medication schedule. Sometimes I get angry about all the work I have to put into myself and sometimes I just give up…
This week I’m keeping my expectations low. If I can’t get through all of my goals, that’s ok. The reality is I have a packed schedule at work and social events to prepare for over the weekend that will severely limit the time I have for myself and the things I love. The point is just to try, to be happy, and to appreciate any effort.
So, we started watching Mindhunter on Netflix again and somehow, this time I am completely taken in by the show. The last time I tried it I felt it was not only slow but pointless too. This time I can’t stop watching. It’s well past my bedtime now and even with the knowledge that even if I went to bed right now I’d be miserable I have opted for another 50 minute episode.
It’s strange how you hard it is to resist cravings and impulses, how alluring the pull of instant gratification, and how, even with the certainty that the choice you are making is the worst one for you, you can happily do the exact wrong thing.
Hello, happy Sunday and welcome! Thank you for stopping by for a bit of caffeine and catching up.
It’s another late night coffee chat. I’ve been out with family most of the day, and since being home I’ve had trouble getting my head together. I’m tired and dreading work tomorrow. I always do on Sundays, sure, but this Sunday is harder than most. I’ve been off of work a lot lately, for sickness and for fall break, and tomorrow means the return to routine, to expectations, to work. Bleck! But I’m trying not to let tomorrow have today and that means doing what I enjoy now, while I can—writing, chatting with you, drinking coffee.
So, please, pull up a chair and grab yourself a cup. I’ve got packets of instant iced coffee, or I can pour you a hot cup from the Moka pot, or, if it’s too late for the caffeine kick, I have an assortment of herbal teas. Let’s talk about last week!
“Practice magic. Write poetry. Spend all of your money on coffee and plants.”
If we were having coffee, I would tell you that last week was the easiest one I’ve had in a long time. Last week was fall break at the district I work for and that means I had the option to work or not, I chose a 40/60 split.
I worked Monday and Tuesday only and that felt both like not enough and way too much. The days were easy, especially Monday. I felt good when I went in and actually had the energy and good mood I needed to get through the day. Tuesday was a different story. I felt like I was dragging my exhausted and useless body through the day.
The day before I felt about 80% over the incapacitating cold from the week before when I developed a minor but quite painful infection in my left ear. At first I was fine as long as I didn’t touch the ear but within days I began getting sharp shooting pain deep in the canal. A chat with a doctor online left me with little comfort. I was told to wait at least 10-14 days before coming in unless I developed a severe fever or a rash on my face. So far none of that happened. In the mean time I have to just keep doing what I was doing for the respiratory infection: cold medication, fluids, and rest.
Since then things have improved. The feeling of fluid moving around in my ear is gone and I can touch it now without the searing pain but I still feel so tired.
Taking off on Wednesday wasn’t my original plan, but I had to help my little sister out and it was going to take up my whole afternoon. Working half a day never feels worth the effort, so I stayed in until she needed me. I can’t get into the details, it one of those stories that doesn’t belong to me, but I will say it was important and I am immensely proud, as always, to be there for her. Not only that, but she’s a complete joy to be around. It was a good afternoon.
If we were having coffee, I would tell you that Thursday and Friday were pretty much lazy days. I wanted to rest, and to make real time for things I enjoy. I worked on some blog post drafts, made progress on my courses, and got a lot of reading done. Of course it feels like there was more I could do, and of course I spent much too much time doing nothing at all. I’m trying not to dwell on what I could have done and instead to just be grateful for the time to do anything or nothing at all. Most people don’t have anytime at all to waste.
I have been spending more time in the “creativity room”. I’m making a lot of little things but only a few are worth sharing and even those seem stupid. I’ll keep at it though I’m not sure why. Collage and cut out poems just sooth me I guess. I like the precision, the quiet; I like that there can’t really be mistakes since I’m working with images and words that are already fully formed. All I have to do is turn off my mind, cut the pages, and then rearrange them however else I can make them fit.
The courses and the reading are what I am most proud of. International Women’s Health and Human Rights has been hard, the readings are long and the assignments aren’t easy, and Modern & Contemporary American Poetry, while it’s easy, is tedious. Perhaps I’m just ready to start something new. I have less than three weeks left of “ModPo” and just over three weeks left of Women’s Health. By the middle of next month I’ll be on to something else if I can keep my focus now.
If we were having coffee, I would tell you that this weekend was just as easy as the work week before and a lot less interesting. Yesterday I was still feeling fatigued and a little down so I stayed in while my wife did some shopping around town. I did my usual Sunday—laundry, cleaning, some small house projects—because I knew I would be busy today.
This morning we were up early for my sister-in-law’s birthday brunch. I got to see my brother and their kids, another one of my sisters, my mom, and her family too while we celebrated with good food and fall cocktails. I was, and always am, happy to be there for her and for anyone in my family.
If we were having coffee, I would tell you that I already know that this week is going to be chaotic, I already know it. Everybody will be returning from the break, or, some will, a lot of people will take an extra day. I don’t begrudge them an extra mental day and I totally understanding needing more time to get back into the swing of things, but that means more work and harder decisions for the ones who make it in.
I’ve already gotten an email from my boss with a packed schedule with actually overlaps with the busy schedule I already made for myself. I’ll put together some proper goal for the week tomorrow but I know I will have to keep them light and give myself plenty of outs. On the other hand I will have to keep my boundaries up, stay focused and disciplined, and use my time for me. That means not working through lunches, or letting social media suck me in.
It’ll be a long while before I get another break like I’ve had these last few days and the ones I do get will probably be filled with holiday chaos, planning, and pressure. With my stress levels expected to rise, and the weather expected to get colder, drearier, and my mood expected to become more and more fatigued, I have to find a way to keep going. I have to keep my eye on the little things that ground me, give me joy, and allow me to mentally get away.
If we were having coffee, I would tell you that it’s so late and I have got to get to bed if I want to have any hope of functioning in society tomorrow.
I hope you had a good week. I hope wherever you are fall is still in the beautiful and cozy stages and not yet the dreary and cold. I hope you got a little break too, and if you didn’t I hope that whatever you had to do was fulfilling, something you could be proud of, something good.
The weekend is already too short and I still have a whole day and a half left of it. Hell, I had three days of weekend leading up to it, and it’s still not enough. I’m convinced that rime away from work is no way to reset and return with renewed energy and motivation. No, the more time you have off the harder it is to return to work and the harder it is to find fulfillment in what you have no passion for.
Knowing this, I have decided to make time today for what I do have a passion for. I’m writing, some, I’m making progress on Coursera readings and videos, and reading, a lot. I’m doing it all from the couch, which probably isn’t the best idea, but I have directed my brain not to consider the TV a priority. Wish me luck.
Today is like an empty vessel that needs filling but nothing seems to fit or feel right. I don’t know what to spend my time on. Rest sounds nice but I don’t want to give it too many hours but doing anything else feels like asking too much.
It turned out to be a rather productive day. I cleaned out the car, cleaned up the kitchen, made a cut out poem, submitted my assignment for week 3 of International Women’s Health and Human Rights, and read nearly 100 pages of Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert M. Sapolsky.
I wish I could have done more. I could have, but I chose to lose hours watching T.V. with my wife. I don’t wish I had spent fewer hours doing that in exchange…I just wish I could have done more of both. I wish I could have more hours, more energy, more of all the things I love. I suppose I should just be grateful for what I have. It was a rather productive day after all, and it was a loving one too.
That is so much more than most people get in 24 hours.
I accidentally took a 3 hour nap and now it feels like the whole day is gone. I know it isn’t really but my disappointment and depression are working closely together to keep me from seizing what is left. I just want to keep on sleeping and to be honest I’m already dreading work next Monday. Why am I like this?
The evening turned out better. I’m always shocked by how romantic browsing the labyrinth of IKEA can feel. Their showrooms and carefully laid out furniture sections make it easy to plan your home together without feeling enclosed by aisles and the reality of other people. We didn’t walk away with the bookshelves we came for but only because I found something better and have to measure the rooms to make sure they will fit.
After shopping it was burgers and beers, fried pickles and banana pudding for dinner at my favorite casual dining place. I normally hate beer but I tried a Station 26 Tangerine Cream Pale Ale, and it was amazing! It actually tasted like tangerine, but it also tasted like beer. Perhaps is hope for me yet that I might join the world of beer lovers and learn to drink this golden brew without wanting to puke.
And now we’re home and staying up late to scare ourselves watching In The Tall Grass on Netflix, a horror film apparently based on a Stephen King and Joe Hill novella. I can’t wait for the nightmares.
Prepare for National Blog Posting Month. I wasn’t sure NaBloPoMo was still a thing until I saw 
Make a couple of cut up and black out 
Lisa Marie Blair 