Posts tagged with "busy"

A Favour House Mine

We were at the house late last night, build­ing desks and fill­ing dry­wall holes. I decid­ed not to sleep in this morn­ing, because I need­ed the time to get work done, although I also need­ed sleep to get it done prop­er­ly. There are mailouts to com­plete, state­ment stuffers to design, bitmaps to vec­tor­ize, and count­less oth­er things for which I’m respon­si­ble. I con­vinced myself that I’ve (begrudg­ing­ly) gone through enough tor­tur­ing days of lit­tle sleep for some­one else, so it would be more appro­pri­ate if I did it for myself now.

Stepping out­side, the chill of win­ter morn­ing still in the air against the ear­ly light of spring, I skipped nine tracks until Claudio start­ed singing, in his shift­ing, melod­ic voice:

Bye bye beau­ti­ful
Don’t both­er to write

My lethar­gy turned into ener­gy, as I thought of how things have worked out based on the deci­sions I made. How I could die hap­py right now, although I’d pre­fer to wait at least two weeks if giv­en the choice.

The way I seem to have every­thing I deserve, and noth­ing that I don’t.

With A Lot On The Mind

I haven’t been sleep­ing well late­ly. At night I wear an anti-brux­ism splint (made of ther­mal active mate­r­i­al to elim­i­nate met­al clasp­ing), and this pre­vents the occlusal sur­faces of my teeth from wear­ing down. Unfortunately, this does­n’t pre­vent the actu­al act of grind­ing, and some­times I still wake up with lock-jaw.

Ever since the begin­ning of the year, things have been along mov­ing quick­ly, both good and bad. On top of that, most of it has been hap­pen­ing all at once, leav­ing my emo­tions in a rather unset­tled state.

Everything feels like it’s some duo­tone greyscale.

It’s not that any­thing is wrong, but there’s been a lot on my mind, espe­cial­ly with the upcom­ing move. I have to get the walls trimmed and washed before paint­ing them. I have to get the locks changed and dim­mer switch­es installed. I have to find the per­fect desk and reclin­er for my room. I have to make sure that the phone and cable is installed. I have to adjust to a new set of month­ly (some­times bi-week­ly) pay­ments for insur­ance, hydro, heat, con­do man­age­ment, mort­gage, and prop­er­ty tax. I have to relax and take one thing at a time.

Hopefully, things will be set­tled by mid-April.

It Doesn't Feel Like Christmas

This does­n’t feel like Christmas to me. I’m not sure why, but the fact that it’s so close to the 25th still has­n’t clicked in yet. Maybe it’s because I decid­ed not to buy presents for any­one this year. Maybe it’s because this is my first year work­ing full-time and I’m used to hav­ing a longer run­ning break before the big two-five. Maybe it’s because I’ve been too busy to relax, run­ning around, mak­ing plans at the last sec­ond. This is usu­al­ly my favourite time of the year, but I haven’t had any time to enjoy it.

I had the hard­est time decid­ing on what to do for new years. At first, I was just going to spend it by myself at my apart­ment. I don’t real­ly have a rea­son to cel­e­brate, and if I was, it would be with my five clos­est friends ONLY so that I would­n’t have to deal with ANY moron­ic peo­ple. The only prob­lem is that three of them won’t even be in the city, and the oth­er two are too social to be spend­ing it with me and my select com­pa­ny. Perhaps one year, my friends will indulge me (after tir­ing of large par­ties) and we will have an inti­mate gath­er­ing. I think I’ll start plan­ning for next year before every­one moves off to start their careers and their fam­i­lies.

Aaron expressed his desire for my atten­dance at his new years cel­e­bra­tion and I even­tu­al­ly agreed. I was hes­i­tant at first, because, to be hon­est, I haven’t enjoyed the com­pa­ny Aaron has had over for his din­ners late­ly. I’m one who’s always believed that it’s the com­pa­ny that makes things enjoy­able, not the activ­i­ties. Stick me in a room with my friends and we can have fun doing any­thing. Stick me in a room with a sin­gle per­son I dis­like, and I’ll be mis­er­able no mat­ter what. The agi­tat­ing guests aren’t Aaron’s fault, of course, or the fault of the guests them­selves. I’m an intol­er­ant per­son.

And I’m work­ing on it.

Appreciating Both Sides

The days can go on with reg­u­lar­i­ty over and over, one day indis­tin­guish­able from the next.

—Travis Bickle, Taxi Driver

Every day I think that I’ll catch up on sleep at night, but I nev­er seem to get the chance. I have time here and there to write, but things don’t come out prop­er­ly when I’m tired. Even on the week­ends, when I expect to be able to sleep in, I’m always off some­where, doing some­thing. It’s such a change from how I was liv­ing last year; no school, no job, no girl­friend, with all my friends still attend­ing uni­ver­si­ty. I lost all sense of time.

I’m busier than ever at work, and it’s a great feel­ing to know that I’m respon­si­ble for so much…for meet­ing dead­lines, for com­plet­ing projects, for com­ing up with solu­tions to peo­ples’ prob­lems. It’s a lot of stress, but it’s a great chal­lenge. Being forced to work with a lack of sleep has made me more accus­tomed to think­ing while fatigued, some­thing that I nev­er thought was pos­si­ble. I used to need a prop­er eight hours a day to think, oth­er­wise I could only oper­ate at a basic lev­el. Only one day in the last month have I felt rest­ed. The fact that I’m still going and get­ting things done is a big deal to me. And now it feels like I’m final­ly work­ing towards some­thing, in my rela­tion­ships, in my career, even in my equi­ty and assets.

I remem­ber Pat telling me to enjoy my unem­ploy­ment, and I did exact­ly that. I appre­ci­at­ed every minute of it, and now I appre­ci­ate every moment that I have some­thing to do. I appre­ci­at­ed the free­dom of being sin­gle, and now I appre­ci­ate the com­fort of being with some­one.

Doesn't This Always Happen?

Here I am, think­ing that I have at least a sin­gle month to get into a reg­u­lar writ­ing sched­ule, and sud­den­ly tons of things pile up, leav­ing me with no time to write. I sup­pose that being too busy is bet­ter than not being busy enough, espe­cial­ly with my his­to­ry of idle­ness.