Category: Day by Day

Personal details; life, time management, work, cats, and sleep.

Observations.

Yesterday, the cat had beef and beef-liver stew, in bouillon, with “a medley” of vegetables, parsley, and oregano.  Seriously, looking at the ingredient list on that can, I would have sworn it was human food.

Yesterday I had hot dogs.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think I had the better deal (if nothing else, dinner was made, which was a really nice feeling right about last night).  I’m just amused by the fact that I think my pets eat more healthily than I do.  It comes from not having thumbs or wallets, I think.

In possibly thematically related news, I have figured out why I hate going to the gym when the gym employees are around.  It’s like clothes shopping.  Except the clerks really are looking at you and thinking about what needs to get fixed about your body, and you knew that going in, and you (quite likely) paid money to go there and… agh.  Body image issues, how unsurprising to see you.

(Going when staff is not around is much easier.  I do not think it is ultimately as productive, though.)

Not much more to say, really.  I’m making a concerted effort to work through my reading list.  (That goodreads widget down there?  That is not a complete list of what I have on the go.)

Lost weekend.

Well, not entirely lost.  But definitely feeling that a lot of it went to things that I’m not sure were worth the time.

I find I’ve been doing that a lot, lately, and I’m not actually sure what to do about it.  It makes me unhappy, but the problem isn’t just “I’m not focussing on anything”, it’s “I don’t want to focus on anything”.  Almost the antithesis of time management; usually I think of that as making sure you have time to do things, and this is wanting to make sure I had things to do during time.

I don’t like this feeling, in case it wasn’t clear.  It’s been on my mind rather since Thursday, when the light of my life and I went by the gym, and their printer/fax wasn’t working, and him being him I proceeded to sit there and talk to one of the trainers while he poked the wireless network and the phone jacks and similar.  And I remember her asking either “what inspires you?” or “what motivates you?” and I didn’t have an answer.  She was asking specifically in the context of working out, mind, but I can’t find an answer at all.

At work, sometimes, I remind myself that I am being a responsible person who is helping to support her household.  That’s about it.  I can’t think of anything else.

I’m going to sleep on this (again; as I said, been on my mind since Thursday), and hopefully I will realize there is a reason to be feeling a little less disquiet than I am.

Getting there, day at a time.

I was saying to myself “tomorrow is Wednesday – nearly halfway through the week” and realized that no, in fact, there are five days left and I am not even a third of the way through.

It’s interesting, how much I divorce the weekend from the week.

It’s been a rather stressful couple of days at work; I’m replacing two people instead of one. Hopefully things will slow down tomorrow, when one of them comes back. Meanwhile, I am trying very hard to leave the stress at the office.

Life lessons

Yesterday, I fell asleep in the late afternoon, and woke up around ten p.m.  I was feeling a bit muzzy, and it seemed too late to cook, so dinner happened by virtue of the fact that a 24-hour restaurant (at least over the weekend) has recently opened up.  So after getting out of the house (which can take a while, when there is no great hurrying deadline) and having dinner, I got home around one a.m., meandered slowly in the general direction of bed, and fell asleep two hours later.

I woke up around ten this morning, and I was feeling fine.  Got up and helped make chowder for the crockpot, made coffee, and sat down in the living room.  There was a little TV, a lot of poking at the computer that didn’t really accomplish much, and a sort of quietly increasing anxiety.  I managed to make dinner anyway, and was just sitting down to it when I looked at my plate and a sudden realization struck me.

This was breakfast.

Food and a lot of water helped the stress and tension, some.  I’m currently tidying up the kitchen (alright, I am taking a break from tidying up the kitchen because everything is handled except waiting for the dishwasher to finish at which point I can cycle the next load through), and being mildly annoyed at myself.  A whole day, drat it.

Things I have learnt: Don’t do this.

Matter of time.

I can’t find my copy of The Feminine Mystique.  This has been on my mind–not overwhelmingly so, but definitely noticeable–every day this week.

See, there’s this one part that mentions a study on the time spent housekeeping; what I remember, loosely, is that when the work was given to another household member, it got finished in half the time.  Sometimes less.  And combined with how quickly I was getting through physical filing when I had to concentrate on it (due to the lack of a computer), and how quickly work seemed to go when I started the job…

I want to reread it.  Right now I have the impression that (1) the household chores are feeling alot more overwhelming than they actually are, and (2) maybe I can get over this if I can change it up somehow.  Maybe the time it’s taking isn’t really the time it takes.

(Maybe I just want to read about someone cleaning an entire house and making lunch and doing groceries and still being done by mid-afternoon.)

Long weekend coming up.  I’ve gotten a lot of work done, and some of it’s stuff that isn’t even necessary, it’s in the “I said I would” category.  But it sems there’s been very little time for what I want to do, or that when I’ve done it I haven’t gotten any lasting enjoyment out of it.

Know this kind of thing comes and goes.  Just really don’t care to sit back and wait for it to go if there’s something I can change to make it go, preferably sooner rather than later.

Helps a little to articulate this, at least.

What a month

I had plans for last weekend.  Unfortunately, I also had stomach flu, and that sort of trumped the plans.  And work was as busy as short work weeks tend to be, so I didn’t actually get here until now.

In any case!  I got nominated by What’s it all about and other stories for the Tell Me About Yourself Award. It was kind of startling, but in the good way–like having the cat appear from nowhere to jump onto your lap and start purring, actually, which is totally not an example drawn from recent personal experience.

So… wow, okay. Five Things About Me:

  1. I knit. Most of the time this is very satisfying, kind of a cross between assembling a puzzle and getting a room cleaned.  But occaisionally I get anxious over the fact that what I do with it isn’t creative, and it ties up my hands so that time spent knitting is time taken away from typing.  (I also knit stuff with no idea of who it should go to, and probably need to start clearing out a few things.)
  2. I find it easy to get involved in stories, to think about what they mean in an idealized way.  I read a horror novel and I see how it reflects King’s ideas of Appolonian and Dionysian struggle; I get into a gaming setting and start gushing when I try to describe it, the idea that among the crooked or the corrupt or the afraid, you may look into the darkness and pick up your weapon and stand your ground.  I can get sappy over TV Tropes; I know that so much of what’s there is pulp, but (as they say) tropes reflect life, and they are about celebrating fiction, not mocking it.
  3. I spent the first four years of my life that I remember in London, England–age three to age seven.  I got the chance to go back three years ago and it was lovely; I can’t remember the last time I’ve felt so comfortable in a place.
  4. I have depression.  It’s currently being managed, but I’m still dealing with a chronic condition, I’m not better.  I try not to hide it, because I don’t want to feel shamed into pretending I’m well in order to live my life.  I’m near-sighted, I’m physically weak, and I have a neurochemical imbalance–describing it as diabetes of the brain seems to help some people get it, and to not sneer at my meds.
    It’s hell.  There is no-one in the world I can imagine ever, ever wishing it on.
  5. I love the TV show The Wire; I honestly think it’s the best one I’ve ever seen.  It’s an exception to point 2: the world is so low-key and plausible and compelling and honest that it comes in feeling almost more like a documentary than a story, a roman a clef, and the story’s so vital that there’s no inclination to wander into the abstract.  It’s brilliant and harsh and honest and sad and funny, and the kind of thing I buy on DVD specifically so I can loan it to people.

EDIT: This post was originally titled “What a week”.  I’m still not finished.  Posting as it stands, for the moment, and will update with a list of people.  Apologies for the delay.

Matters of sense

I shall not argue on the Internet when sick and annoyed. First, I might get mean. Second, I might misunderstand. Third, I will probably not be thinking clearly and may make logical arguments which I am later embarrassed to have attributed to me.

…it helps, sometimes, to remind myself of this.

Haven’t been posting lately. Need to fix this.