Fiction So Real

The hands are moving, but not marking the same thing. A time soon will come when the spark of revelation forces a re-evaluation of everything. It's never pleasant, but also pleasantly expected. I need these time tables to parse my life.

There is potential in the air to shake off some of the stagnation and fire up the learning curve again. Trying to weigh the pros and cons of such a switch has been taking up the majority of my head space lately.
I'm not one to be rash, but time is running out to commit to a decision. Hrmm.

It's not that I don't have the time to get everything I want/need to do done, but that I'm running out of energy to be productive with the hours that remain by the end of the day/night.

There is usually an energizing sort of urgency that comes with playing whack-a-mole with issues at work, but by the time I can come home I realize that I've skipped meals and adrenaline is fast fading.

Once I hit this crash-state it's so very hard to focus. Let alone rebuild the mental clarity I need to squint effectively at silk-screend pcbs or domesticity to trudge through the tedium of chores and the like.

---

There are some things going on at work that could be good for my career. Maybe. It has me thinking, alot, trying to weigh the parts and making sure I'm not missing something important hidden behind the gleam. All that glitters is not gold, I must remember.

Show me the love and give me some motivation.

Windfalls of cash and free time, finally, to pick up some freelance have finally put me within reach of being non-student loan debt free. I'm not sure if I should risk the lump payment this month, but by the next paycheck I should still have enough of a nest egg to manage it and certain amounts of unexpected expenses.

I've lived so long doing a "professional" job, but living on a students budget, that having disposable income relevant to status is something I have no experience with. It has me thinking how much of our job satisfaction is tied to compensation (both emotional and monetary.)

Have any of you had a job you loved, but the pay was so crap that the feedback frustration of survival corrupted whatever satisfaction you had from doing the work? How about the vice-versa?

We hear all the talk that find a job that you love and it shouldn't matter what you are making, but I've yet to meet someone happy to be eatting ramen and living paycheck to paycheck doing a job they "love".

I'm hoping this will help offset the burnout feelings that build up. It'd be nice to be able to take a regular vacation and not worry about account balances during what should be the recharge portion of my life.

Friday.
Time: High Noon
Status: Joyously Expectant

Disappear from the earth in an attempt to pack, plan and plot the weekends R&R. I end up getting easily side tracked by new music, a tasty drink and the need to make up a horrible nights sleep.

Saturday
Time: unknown
Status: groggy

Wake up cursing that I've taken the one working coffee pot to work during the overtme of doom. Finish packing and grab over priced coffee before hitting the road.

It's about an hour on the road when I realize that I have *not* left my my iPod adapter in the car. Resign myself to mental math for the next hour rather than listen to the neo-con religious talk radio that will fill the airwaves for the next hour. Wonder if there is a conspiracy between the loss of cell signal and the content on the airwaves.

After arriving in KC, unexpectedly quickly, I start calling/texting/generally harassing all of the friends who live up there in an attempt to scrounge up adventure for the evening.

Eventually adventure is secured and in between bison burgers, bottles and potential hangovers much laughter, music and catching up is done.

Sunday:
Time: Ass-o-clock in the morning
Status: Surprisingly free of hangover.

My friends are kind and hae already brewed coffee before the sun sneakily stabs between the shades and forces me from bed. A hot shower and a cup (pot) of coffee later and I'm ready to receive the guests from atlanta.

Mapquest does not want to play nice and what should be a 15 minute trip across town turns into an hour of back tracking and foolishly taking wrong turns. Anyone whose driven with me long distance knows that this is my usual M.O. when dealing with strange highways and intersections.

Caution saves me and while I lose the hour of scouting downtown I arrive shortly after everyones checked into the hotel. Greetings and the slow boil to merrymaking begins. More buffalo and copious amounts of ginger shandy are had.

Retiring to the hotel room we discover that 10 year old bourbon is actually engine degreaser when it comes to paper hotel cups. This amuses us greatly for some reason or it could have been the "nun fight" song that was on at the time.

Officially on vacation until next Wednesday.

I've slowly been puttering around the apartment trying to get things sorted for my brief foray to Kansas City. The potential of good times is staggering considering how many of my friends have moved up there. Add in the rarity charge of online friends visiting from Atlanta (flee the floods!) to catch DragonForce and my only regret is that there weren't more of the coming days.

Saving a friend from eviction +
Seeing old friends after far too long +
Dangerous amounts of rum +/-

I'm finally starting to feel like I've passed the point of relapse concerning whatever plague had set fire to my brain for the past week. I'm left now to recycle the empty soup cans and sort through the fever dreams that played at reality.

I rarely remember dreams so I'm perhaps a bit too gullible upon waking when one has played so close to reality that it *could* be true. These what-if dreams often depict unmade choices in great detail or in the worst of cases fill in the unknowns with plausible lies that leave me shaking.

A recurring one, from before the sickness, depicts the possibility that my father had staged his own suicide and had secretly been living out the rest of his elder years somewhere close. The dream always concludes with me running into him at some grocery store or movie theater. It's usually at this point that I wake up and the concrete, if horrible, reality bludgeons its way back into its rightful place in my mind.

Other dreams of a similar nature have had their way with me this week, but there have been gloriously happy lies being played out as well. I suppose the end result is that whatever the nature of the dream the clarity with which it was depicted softens ones emotions up for the shock of waking and finding that No it hadn't happened.

 

 

 

 

wake me.

It's perhaps the most imaginative I've felt in a long while, but the loss of sleep is unconcionable considering the need to work, work, work for the rest of the week.

 

I've spent the majority of mine unconscious. Whatever flu/cold/curse I stumbled into Thursday left me an hour or so of consciousness followed by hours of sleep.

On the plus side I desperately needed the sleep and it's definitely reset my desire to do something productive/entertaining. I'm hoping that this feeling will persist once the next workday starts so that I'll be able to kick more ass and not just zombie-around attempting to do too much without enough brain power left to fully figure things out.

I wish I could have seen people, but  friends and family will probably understand that one cannot control sickness.

And how about you all? How did the long weekend treat you ?


 

Of nights getting unexpectedly stolen by overtime.

Of being so tired that the multitude of tasks start to blur together. Multi-tasking is one thing, but one can only spin so many plates.

Of catching the flack for things contractors or other people are responsible for. I know well that people vent to the closest ear and yell at the most likely face, but it wears me down little by little.

While part of me is thankful for the extra income, the security for the job, the random praise or sympathy the disorder it's causing in my routine of *how* i manage my life is starting to take it's toll.

 

Sometimes i wonder why I've fallen out of contact. I wonder if it's worthwhile, or even possible, to rebuild connections.

Perhaps I need a pointer.

 

So, in an effort to *not* get ganked with the huge "key not found" fee that the university levies against someone when keys are exchanged my night was hijacked by ransacking my office and home looking for the lost office key.

Lost might be a slight overstatement, but having a master key + office key was redundant. The office key got "stored" somewhere in the old apartment and somewhere during the move it was packed with various other non-essentials. About two hours into checking every storage box and drawer in the apartment I was about to rush back to work to start going through the 30+ boxes of office crap that a minion had packed for the move.

But the key is found. Now I just have to deal with the very sudden and very early (1 a.m.) visit with my mom as she passes through town. Perhaps I can convince her to just crash for the night and deal with me at a human hour.

 

Mohela has done it again. They recently double-charged my bank account, but I let it slide since it put me up to paid till January. Now they've done it again, which means that I've either got to let the payments stand or deal with hours and hours on the phone and probably getting a signature from my bank.

I'm starting to think that they might be doing this on purpose to try to recoup as much as possible from borrows, but perhaps I'm a little cynical at the moment.

 

Feels like I've wasted a good portion of my weekend.

Yesterday was long, but great. "Moon" was enjoyable and powerfully moving and the combined hours of seeing family and friends was a needed reminder that I do have a life outside of home/work.

But now, considering I've overslept by about 5 hours, I'm furiously trying to finish all the chores that were pushed off during the week so that I can overcome the work-week-paranoia that usually overcomes me on sunday evenings.

 

A long lunch with the sisters and baby nephew to start the day and then scooting off to catch "Moon" with a friend for the evening is a pleasant change of pace, if a bit hectic

That I've not bee able to sleep properly for weeks, why is it that when I've finally got some piece of mind that I can't get to sleep?

 

My only consideration is that I've been working longer days and being able to enjoy the "off" hours leads me to build in excitement what normally would be spread across days of enjoyment. It's a gluttony of sorts, this mental agitation, that leads me pleasant distraction.

 

I almost miss the days of my lush-hood in which I'd  crawl into bed delirious on chemical and fight to stay Awake, rather than fall asleep. Almost.  In the bigger picture I'll take a few sleepless, sober, nights than a life time of induced slumber.

 

Is not a time I'm used to going to work anymore. I can actually remember the times when i *liked* being up that early, because it made me feel less like I was waking up *just* to go to work and more of an active choice of my day.

But this week with it's shifted schedule is starting to feel like a 70s, rubber suited, monster flick "Coffee v.s. the Super Stomach Lining". I think I'll skip out during the intermission.