Lisa Marie Blair

Tag: Excerpts from my journal

  • 159 // Roles Reversed

    I’m used to being the one who is up early on the weekends. I get up, make my coffee, make us breakfast, and make sure that my fiance gets up to eat and start her day. I get the cleaning done, and I get some writing done—if I can—but lately the roles have been reversed.

    Now she gets up and goes for walks with the dog and wakes me when she returns. She makes sure I eat and this morning she cleaned most of the house. It feels good to be the one being waited on but it feels bad too. It feels good to have someone who understands that I haven’t been feeling great and who understands the work still has to get done even if I can’t do it, but it feels bad too.

    I’ve been drinking cups of coffee and tweaking the blog. I’ve been posting the journal drafts I had half-written and starting posts for the coming week. Soon I’ll eat lunch and reverse the roles again. I’ll get up and get the laundry started and the kitchen cleaned. She, I imagine will rest for the rest of the afternoon and I will get a chance to take care of her. I imagine that will feel rather good.

    These entries are inspired by TDH.se

  • 158 // The Best All Week

    I thought this week would never end! I’m feeling much happier today and hoping to get back to work on my personal and writing goals today. The atmosphere at work is always a little laxer on Fridays. Not much gets done, not much is expected, and many of us spend the day socializing, going out to lunch, and leaving early. I plan to take advantage of the relaxed oversight and my improved mood to get back on track before the weekend.

    So, that didn’t work out. I ended up socializing and going out to lunch right along with everyone else and just I got home the thunderstorms started rolling in and put me right to sleep. After a dinner of beer and leftover pizza, I spent the rest of the night cuddling up on the couch with my wife-to-be and finishing up the first season of Pose, the available episodes of Handmaid’s Tale, and the third season of Black Mirror.

    It was a good day. The best all week.

    P.S. After sending them back nearly a month ago for resizing our engagement rings finally made it back to us this afternoon. I’m ecstatic to say that my ring fits perfectly now and I love it even more than I did when I first received it. I finally feel like a bride again.

    These entries are inspired by TDH.se

  • 157 // I Need to Sleep

    Productivity will be impossible today.

    In addition to the aforementioned fatigue that has been plaguing me and two nights in a row of staying up much, much later than I should, I took an allergy pill a coworker gave me this morning and find myself ready to fall asleep where I stand.

    I’m growing increasingly irritated at the inconvenience of a day job and angry at having to force myself awake. I’ve had three espressos and seen zero signs of improvement and have resorted to walking around the building outside hoping to keep the blood flowing to my brain. I’m doing everything I can to outpace the drowsiness creeping into my limbs but I just need to sleep.

    I’ll head home in just a few hours and do my best to squeeze in a catnap and a late lunch before I’m off to help my mom with a few things. I’m already looking forward to the evening when I’m back home. The plan is to crack a beer, eat something bad for me, and head right to bed.

    These entries are inspired by TDH.se

     

  • 156 // Midweek, Mostly

    It’s my second day at work after taking another three-day weekend and I’m already ready for the week to end.

    I’m determined to work the rest of the week but my fatigue is terrible and only getting worse. Caffeine has stopped helping and I worry that increasing my intake will only make matters worse. I need more than rest or sleep. What I need is a break. I need time outside of time.

    I need to get away from all the things that are making me anxious. I need to get away from work, from people, god, from myself most of all. I need to spend some time in deep focus I think. I have time to spend there but not enough time to get anything of substance or value done. Things interrupt me. I interrupt me.

    These entries are inspired by TDH.se

  • 155 // A Dent in the Mess

    I was back at work today, bright eyed and bushy tailed. I got in earlier than I have since school ended and I hope the trend continues. I want to start acting more like me even if I’m not exactly feeling like me. I want to start getting things done in all areas of my life again.

    Tonight I cooked dinner, the first time in a month or more, I think. I made salmon sliders and hated it but my wife to be was impressed so somewhere I’m happy I suppose.

    I’ve decided to go ahead with the “Essay a Week” challenge, starting the first week of July, I hope. I spent the evening getting a head start by cleaning up my old ideas, and prompts lists in Simplenote. I barely made a dent in the mess but what I did get through was inspiring. I love dusting off my old notes, expanding them, tearing them apart, tearing them up.

    The hard part will be separating the pieces for the challenge and other fun things I want to posts and write. The even harder part will be not falling behind so I can write all those other fun things instead.

    These entries are inspired by TDH.se

  • 154 // A New Project?

    I stayed home again from work. I was hoping to intercept our engagement rings as they arrived from the postal service but I found out too late that they had been delayed and would not come today after all. Now I have to try to leave early tomorrow (or whatever new date and time the package tracking app demands I be available) to sign for it.

    I spent the day doing what I always do when I get some free time; I cleaned the house. I should have been writing, but I didn’t know what to write so I finished up a few drafts here, backdated them, and pledged not to fall behind again.

    I did come across a new 52-week writing challenge idea. Inspired by Andrea Askowitz, I’m thinking about writing an essay a week, every week, for the next year.

    I think it would be good practice not just for writing but for focus and idea generation. I’ve always written best and most consistently when I have a direction and a deadline and this might just be what I need to start posting real content here and to start submitting pieces to other blogs and publications too. Plus, I think it would just be fun.

    So, 50+ essays in the next year, whew! Should I do it?

    These entries are inspired by TDH.se

  • 153 // The Older I Get

    Tonight we had dinner with my dad. I love seeing him, but it’s hard seeing him too. There are things bubbling below the surface: pain, misunderstanding, trauma, abandonment, and all sorts of questions too complicated to ask and answers too deep to dig from the past. At the same time though, there is so much love, and pride, and a connection that runs DNA deep.

    It’s strange how all the same pain and confusion can exist between mothers and daughters too and yet with time the relationship develops quite differently and both end up nearly opposite from where they began. I was always a daddy’s girl but the older I get the closer I grow to my mom and the further away from my father I feel.

    I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault. I think it’s simply about gender and experience. I think it’s part of the process of growing from your parent’s child to their friend.  I know my mother and she knows me now in a way I can never know or be known by my father. I feel a comradeship with her connected to the pain of being a woman that I know now my father will never understand.

    In my father is my past and in my mother, my future.

    These entries are inspired by TDH.se

  • 152 // Feel Guilty Days

    Do nothing days are great when they are planned but when they aren’t they are more like feel guilty days. I’ve been having a lot of those lately.

    I’m avoiding the to-do list and conveniently forgetting again and again what needs to get done. This is what I do when I am overwhelmed. I get tired. I shut down. I feel the need to rest when the reality is I desperately need the opposite. I need to get up and do something! But knowing doesn’t make it easier. Knowing only makes it more shameful.

    By now the day is gone already so there is nothing to be done but to take care of myself. The rain is falling, and it’s lovely. The thunder is clapping, and it’s thrilling. I’ll lean into that and try again tomorrow.

    These entries are inspired by TDH.se

  • 151 // I Wanted Time

    The weeks keep getting away from me. It’s only just hit me that come tomorrow we will be in a whole new month! May was kind of awful but I’m not excited to have it over with so soon. I wanted time to make it better but I’m forced to leave it as it lays.

    I am ready for the weekend though. We’ve got no plans yet which sounds wrong. I just know I should be doing more and by Monday I know I’ll wish I had.

    But for now, the weather is gorgeous and I’m off from work early. It’s a good Friday.

    These entries are inspired by TDH.se

  • 150 // You are Aging

    My work in the house and yard yesterday has worn me out into today, and for the rest of the week, I fear. It’s depressing to no longer be able to recover with a simple good night’s sleep anymore. It’s depressing to realize that while you are not old yet, you are aging. It’s kind of scary too.

    I’m thinking again about those health and fitness goals I set and never started and about how warm it’s getting outside and how I could start walking again and maybe I could get back to a point where I wasn’t so easily exhausted.

    Is this age, chronic illness and fatigue, or is it just me being lazy and out of shape? Is any of this reversible or is it all downhill no matter what I do?

    These entries are inspired by TDH.se

  • 149 // Making Myself Useful

    My anxiety is bad today.

    I woke up a full hour earlier than my alarm and laid there staring at the walls in the dark and worrying about the wedding. We realized yesterday that, depending on when the reception venue owner will allow us to set up we may have to push our ceremony back 1 hour.

    We realized this after the invitations went out with the times already set in stone and after we’ve given a timeline to the planner, the caterer, and now the photographer. I’ve reached out to the planner who will reach out to the venue owner but until I know for sure I cannot get it out of my head, or my body.

    I’m tense and nauseous as I always am when I overreact. I’m worrying about adjacent things that I also have no control over including the weather and whether it will rain, or, somehow, worse, it will be miserably hot.

    Luckily work is easy. In fact, I went home even earlier than what would be considered early and spent the rest of the day deep cleaning the house for my fiance who is stuck at work under very stressful conditions. This is also what I do when my anxiety is bad and my mind gets stuck. I make myself useful.

    If I can’t ease my anxiety, it helps to ease someone else’s.

    P.S. She says she loves the clean house, and it made all the difference for me, and her too, I hope.

     

    These entries are inspired by TDH.se

  • 148 // Coffee and Ibuprofen

    After an awful night’s sleep, I, understandably, woke up feeling awful.

    My back hurt, my head hurt, and though I probably could have gotten up and slammed coffee and ibuprofen until I felt well enough to go into work I just wasn’t in the mood to rush my body into it. So, I didn’t. I text the interested parties, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

    After my morning nap, I slammed coffee and ibuprofen and tried to write. Of course, I ended up tackling piles of mail and laundry instead, oh well.

    Tomorrow I’ll have to return to work, for real this time, but for now, I’m pretending that they always meant my weekend to be four days long. No guilt, no stress, nothing but guilt and relaxation.

    P.S. We received some very good news today! Our engagement rings made it all the way back to Australia safe and sound for resizing and are already on their way back to us. I can’t wait to wear mine again!

    These entries are inspired by TDH.se

     

  • 147 // A Reflective Day

    Doing nothing yesterday meant that I had to play catch up today. I had to clean the kitchen and do all the laundry. Thankfully, my mind and mood we’re in cooperation and though I woke up later than planned I got right to work.

    Now it’s nearly dinner time, the house is clean(er), I’ve caught up with the wedding planner, and even got a head start on upcoming posts, and yet, I feel almost more anxious than if I had done nothing. I wound myself up and got myself worrying there is so much more left to do when there isn’t.

    There was no backyard celebrating for us today. We aren’t very big on the customary Memorial Day festivities both of us coming from families with military members. We consider it a reflective day.

    I hope everyone no matter how they mark this day enjoys a safe one.

    These entries are inspired by TDH.se

  • 146 // A Doing Nothing Day

    I know I shouldn’t. I know it’s a bad idea and I know I’ll regret it later but I don’t care. I’m doing nothing today. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not cleaning anything. I’m not reading anything. I might not even write anything.

    I’m going to sit on the couch and look at nothing but Twitter and Facebook. I’m going to eat all the snacks we have and take a nap when I run out. Later tonight I’ll still be on the couch but by then I’ll, hopefully, be sipping a tall glass of red wine while binge-watching whatever looks good on Netflix.

    Recommendations welcome.