Posts tagged with "busy"

Still Being Tested

It’s been rough going the last few weeks. Every day is a con­flict between doing some­thing relax­ing, doing the chores that will make me feel com­fort­able, or going to bed. Even now I can’t relax. I clean my mir­rors of fin­ger­prints in between sen­tences, or brush Dolly of excess fur as she force­ful­ly nudges my wrists in mirth, and only con­tin­ue writ­ing when I come up with the next idea.

A sore throat and weary body had me call­ing in sick today (I sus­pect that I caught some­thing from pet­ting the same cat as Karen yes­ter­day, who’s seems sick as a dog), although I end­ed up going in and work­ing six hours any­way. All the extra cur­ric­u­lar things are slow­ly wear­ing me down. There’s the two side-busi­ness­es, the new effort of learn­ing as much as I can about my new Canon Rebel XT by pho­tograph­ing every­thing, and the blog­ging. I also start­ed table ten­nis again, although I’m not sure how often I can attend, tak­ing four hours out of a week­day. The one reprieve is a LAN par­ty I’ve had planned since September that starts tomor­row, and even though it’ll be a good week­end of gam­ing, it’ll still mean lit­tle rest. Normally I’m planned, pre­pared, and prac­ticed for a LAN, but this time it’ll all be impro­vised.

I’m being test­ed, and even though I know that I’ll get through this, it’s still dif­fi­cult. I’m forced to deal with peo­ple I’ve avoid­ed my entire life. I’m push­ing myself past the lim­its of any­thing I’ve ever gone through. To be hon­est, it’s a lit­tle eas­i­er than I would have imag­ined. The strength and con­fi­dence that I’ve gained over the last two years has helped tremen­dous­ly. Knowing that things get done in their own time keeps me from being over­whelmed. If I can make it through this, I’ll be stronger than ever.

Keeping Myself Occupied Has Been Easy

Some things fall in my lap, oth­ers I active­ly seek out. It’s keep­ing track of every­thing that’s get­ting dif­fi­cult.

Too busy to think. Too busy to write.

I have to remind myself that that’s what I want­ed.

And here I am, turn­ing over in my head the idea of moon­light­ing at a home­ly used book store that’s a five minute walk from my house. Stuck to the glass door is a notice for part-time help dur­ing the week­end, that I pass by every time I go gro­cery shop­ping. I walked in there once and bought a Penguin Classics copy of The Odyssey for $1.45, because I lost my old copy from high school long ago. I’ve always want­ed to work at a cof­fee shop, but gave up on that idea after apply­ing to one a few years ago and find­ing out that my résumé end­ed up in the garbage, was picked out because of a good word put in by a friend, and prompt­ly placed back in the garbage again. In hind­sight, I’m glad I was­n’t hired because I would have quit before the train­ing was over. It was only some­thing to hold me over until I could find some­thing with a bet­ter career that’s more in line with my edu­ca­tion, which is exact­ly what I found two weeks lat­er. A book­store seems like a good alter­na­tive.

Aaron and Shirley are both encour­ag­ing me to go for it. The for­mer thinks that it’ll be a good change from the reg­u­lar 9–5 that I do, and a job that I can use to relax. The lat­ter is telling me it’ll be fun, and that she’ll pur­sue her own dream job as a wait­ress (moon­light­ing as well) if I apply to this one.

I’m still con­sid­er­ing.

The Most I Can Say For Now

Between the over­time and the ven­ture meet­ings with Aaron, the rest­less nights and the ear­ly morn­ings, I try to catch my breath. It’s good to be busy, but not when it means I don’t have the time or ener­gy to write. This is the prob­a­bly the most infre­quent pub­lish­ing peri­od I’ve ever been through since the start of this blog. Thoughts devel­op in my head, but I’m not ready to get them down and hit pub­lish yet. Maybe it’s a com­fort thing, maybe it’s a front, maybe I’ve sim­ply lost the desire to doc­u­ment every sin­gle detail of my life.

Through all of this I feel myself regain­ing some sta­bil­i­ty, although I tread light­ly, remain­ing both con­scious and cau­tious. This is the most I can say for now.

Running Down

I left work about halfway through the day. A sharp pain was start­ing to devel­op on the sides of my head, and I was gen­er­al­ly sore all over. Even while chew­ing or swal­low­ing, there was a tremen­dous pres­sure from the head of my mandibu­lar condyle to the inner ear. Most like­ly, I was start­ing to run myself down; the last time I felt like this was after an all-night shift at the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy, and I end­ed up run­ning a fever and miss­ing two days of work there. Shirley con­vinced me to take an extra strength Tylenol (with codeine), which is some­thing I rarely do. I’ve always believed in pay­ing atten­tion to the pain sig­nals that the body gives off.

Trolley and I, with the assis­tance of Aaron, moved a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of chat­tel through the week, trans­lat­ing into late nights and mis­er­able days. Every pre­vi­ous night, I’d ver­bal­ly con­sid­er sleep­ing in the next day know­ing how hard it would be, and as Trolley not­ed, I’d nev­er end up doing so. Even this morn­ing I could­n’t sleep, so I got to work at ten past sev­en, more than half an hour ear­ly. It’s good to know that I was able to be stronger men­tal­ly than phys­i­cal­ly, some­thing that has always been dif­fi­cult for me to bal­ance. Usually it feels like my body is giv­ing out first, but after­wards, I real­ize that I could have han­dled more. This time, my body is actu­al­ly telling me that I’m over­worked. I think the key is con­vinc­ing myself that phys­i­cal dis­com­fort is just a tem­po­rary feel­ing that can be ignored.

It’ll all be worth it once I’m set­tled down, which will most like­ly not be until I get my clos­et doors installed. I’m replac­ing my white ones with mir­rors, and since the clos­et runs the entire width of the wall, they all need to be cus­tom sized. It’s the last thing that’ll be done before I real­ly feel like I’m in my own home. The mir­rors should make the room look twice as big and appro­pri­ate­ly dark­er. I got the quote today, and it’s just under two grand, tax in, includ­ing instal­la­tion. I decid­ed to go ahead with it, since it’s actu­al­ly cheap­er than I expect­ed, so they should be arriv­ing in 6 to 14 days.

Next week is hair­cut, get­ting cus­tom-fit­ted venet­ian blinds, Christine’s birth­day din­ner, and a lot of unpack­ing.