A good week – busy, and good

Last week was a good one, I have to say. I took a break from social media for a while and read some books, for once. I also spent a fair amount of time taking care of business around the house. Cleaning up leftover mess from months gone by. Fixing up outside, taking care of my lawn, getting myself ready to tackle the garage and clean that out. I have a lot to do, and since it’s spring, it’s time to jump into action.

Or just get moving.

I also reconnected with some old childhood friends of mine, and it’s great to drift back into the sense I had when I was with them. When I was younger. When I didn’t fully understand my situation, what made me “tick”, etc. Relating to those people again with the perspectives I have about what I was dealing with, back then — a bunch of concussions that never got recognized or addressed, as well as the confusion and frustration and mixed-up state that came along with them — it’s much easier for me to relate to those people now, than it ever was, when I was a kid.

And that’s kind of cool. Because now I can cut myself a break, even forgive myself for being how I was. And I can cut those people a whole lot of slack for being “how they were”. Because in all honesty, I was so turned around, back then, I truly didn’t know how they were. I took a wild guess, and I guessed wrong.

But that’s all behind me. Because I understand. And I can forgive myself for a whole lot of things, now that I understand what was behind it. I can actually have compassion for myself and the person I was, back then, as well as others. And that’s the best thing of all.

Compassion makes a difference.

It’s important — and not only for the past, but for the present and future, as well. With my changed perceptions, my updated perspective, I can be free to move forward in life with a different way of thinking about things. I’m no longer “the loser who couldn’t figure anything out”. I’m “the resourceful, persistent person who never quit trying”. I’m not the former “waste of space”. I had as much right to exist as the next person, and I learned to contribute as best I could.

And I’ve been thinking a lot about contribution, lately. How important it is to really help make the world a better place by our choices, our words, our actions. I’m not talking about being some pie-in-the-sky lightweight who’s always spouting some sort of inspirational stuff. I’m talking about making the hard choices to keep positive, even in the face of adversity — to appreciate just how much everybody is dealing with, each and every day, and help them get through it all by staying positive and constructive.

We all have our struggles. That much is clear. And for me, staying stuck in my own difficulties is a sure recipe for misery. For myself, and for others. But when I get out of my own head and focus on others and look for ways to help, everything changes. For them, and for me.

That’s another thing that’s made this past week particularly good. I’ve been focusing on others, putting myself in others’ shoes, thinking about them and their situation, and doing my best to be supportive, even if I have no idea what’s causing someone to do the things they’re doing. That makes work so much easier — not because the job we’re doing is any less complicated, but because it gets the people stuff in order, and when you build from there, everything else finds a way to work itself out.

Oh, one other thing I found that’s helping — laughing, instead of cursing. Even if I don’t feel like laughing, I’ve been training myself to let out a little laugh, when I get frustrated or everything is completely messed up. Make no mistake… there’s a lot of stuff I’m dealing with that’s messed up. And it’s definitely curse-worthy. But if I make myself laugh just a little bit, that changes how things feel. And it lifts my mood considerably.

So, that’s good.

I plan to keep doing it — just embrace the absurdity of it all.

And now to get into this week. It’s spring vacation for a lot of my colleagues, this week, so it will be quiet. I’ve heard rumblings of political maneuverings that might swoop in and move me from one group to the next. Whatever happens, I’ll make the best of it. Whatever… I need a quiet week to just chill and get some work done. This should do the job.

Or it won’t.

Either way, I can always laugh about it.

There’s that.

Onward…

Thinking beyond Christmas – so I can relax and enjoy it now

I’ve got my hands full, for the next 24 hours. I’m coming down to the wire with shopping and cooking and preparation for Christmas Day tomorrow. My spouse and I typically take it easy on Christmas, when we’re at home.

And this year, like last year — and several other years before that — we’re at home. Just the two of us.

No two days of driving, in both directions.

No packed houses with lots of people vying for our attention.

No navigating family dynamics and going the extra mile to let everybody just be who and what they are.

None of that. Just peace. Heavenly peace.

And to make sure it stays that way, I’m thinking ahead to the coming week, getting my schedule clear in my head so I don’t have to deal with a bunch of surprises, on down the line. I’m not very fond of surprises. I’ve got enough on my plate that I already know about, and I haven’t been sleeping well, lately, so that makes me more irritable and hard to deal with. I need to take better care of myself wherever I can, for the sake of everyone around me.

And that means streamlining and planning ahead wherever possible.

What do I need to do, this coming week? We’ve got some appointments we have to attend. I also have some car repair work I need to schedule. And I’ve got a handful of things I’d like to sort out around the house, too. Like do much-needed organizing of the files on my computer and the various “thumb” drives I have. I’ve got a lot of USB drives with a lot of stuff on them, and it’s time I consolidated them. Also, cleaning up, organizing the various rooms in the house. Moving furniture we don’t use to the basement, making room for the things we do use. Making space to move and breathe and live. And unwind.

Unwinding is good. I’ve been pretty tightly wound for quite some time. Unwinding will be a welcome change.

Before we know it, it’ll be 2018. Christmas almost seems like a blip on the screen, but of course it’s not. It’s a pretty big deal for my spouse, and I need to do my part. I’ve never been much for holidays, birthdays, special events — they all seem like just another day to me. But being part of something bigger than me — which also really matters to my spouse — is more important than indulging my Bah-Humbug spirit of the season. Just gotta put my own sentiments aside and get into it.

It’s not forever. And it won’t kill me to just go with it.

So, go with it, I shall.

And then… into the New Year with a positive frame of mind.

It’s the only way.

Lighting a candle of my own, while the world seems to burn around me

We can’t do everything, but we can do some thing

I’m focusing on just being really kind to other people.

… Carving out my own little space of heaven on earth, where others can be treated with dignity and respect and offered what they need most – connection with a living, breathing person who sees their worth and humanity.

I don’t have all the answers, but I do know that a lot of people just want to connect, just want to talk, just want to be treated like a real human being.

And that’s what I’m going for these days.

In the supermarket… sharing a moment with someone trying to figure out which package of chicken to buy… in the elevator, just chatting with someone who wants to be acknowledged… at work, where everyone is worried and uncertain… at home, where my spouse wants to just hang out and spend some time together.

It takes time to connect with other people. It takes energy. And at the end of a long day, I don’t always have the strength to do as much as I would like, or to do it as well as I’d like.

I could have stopped a little longer to talk to the woman in the supermarket. I could have said something more intelligent to the veteran who was sharing the elevator ride to the 2nd floor. At work, I could go out of my way to be a little more friendly to people. At home, I could spend more time just hanging out with my spouse, talking about things we both care about.

I can think of many things I would like to do better. And each time I make the effort, I learn a little bit more.

I’m not perfect. But I can do something.

And so I shall.

Onward. Together.

Merry Christmas – may it be so

Merry Christmas, everyone. Happy Christmas. Frohe Weinachten. Feliz Navidad. And many more wishes in languages I do not know.

I hope it is a good day for you, and that you find peace and a measure of happiness before the day is through.

Christmas is a tricky time for a lot of people, including those who have some sort of limitation or particular need. One of the most poignant things about it, is actually the spirit of it, which so often gets lost in the shuffle. The original story (whether you’re a believer or not) is about people under duress making the best of a bad situation.

A whole country is uprooted by a tyrant (of sorts) and hauled away from their homes, so they can be taxed in the town of their family’s origin. One couple in the midst is a man and his very pregnant wife, who have to make the trek, regardless of her condition. Nazareth, where Joseph and Mary were from, was a kind of crappy area — economically depressed and not the sort of place “nice” people lived. So, Joseph probably wasn’t all that well-off to begin with, and dragging him away from his work as a tradesman to tax him, was just heaping one injury on another. It wasn’t like he made that much money, to begin with — but he gets taxed and he loses however many days or weeks of work. That’s rough.

And when Mary and Joseph get where they’re going, there’s literally no room for them in habitable lodging. So, they end up in a stable. In a strange city. Anyone who’s spent time around farm animals, knows this is about the last place you want to deliver a baby, but apparently that’s where it happened, and the child ended up laid in a feeding trough for his first night on earth.

Some entrance.

Now, I’m not a hugely religious person, these days. Once upon a time, I was, though. I was raised in an evangelical, fundamentalist Christian household and I was “raised in the church.” It was my primary social network. My parents are still very involved in their church community, as are some of my siblings. I’ve always been pretty spiritual (even after I stopped believing the way my family did), and that endured through the years with a strong tendency to feelings of mysticism and spiritual connection with something higher.

My TBI in 2004, however, pretty much erased my religious feeling. Suddenly, it just wasn’t there, anymore, and I could not for the life of me figure out why anyone would have any interest in religion or spirituality. My spouse has always been very spiritual, and I can assure you, the times when I did not pray along with them were not the best moments in our marriage. I rolled my eyes and tapped my foot impatiently, waiting for them to finish, which really hurt their feelings.

My lack of spiritual feeling has persisted somewhat, but in the past few years, that’s started to change. Just goes to show you how the brain continues to alter and develop along different lines, over time. And I’ve gotten some of my spiritual feeling back — though I have probably gotten back more willingness to play along so I don’t hurt others’ feelings, than I’ve gotten back my old religious fervor.

But religious belief aside, the story behind Christmas is one that really resonates with a lot of people. It’s all about being forced into a less-than-ideal situation, and making do. It’s about modest, humble circumstances setting the stage for later greatness. And to me it’s about dealing up-front with the indignities of life and recognizing that beneath the limitations of your circumstances, there lies a potential for rising above it all. The indignities of not having enough, of being pushed aside, being just another face in the crowd, aren’t the whole truth about who we are and what we’re capable of. We may not all be divine (though some believe we are), but we can surely rise above our circumstances, like that little baby who spent his first night in a feed trough.

Making do… that’s pretty much what this season has been about for me. I have been working overtime for months, keeping my emotions from getting the best of me, and that’s taken a toll on my system. It takes a lot of energy to keep yourself on an even keel, when everything around you feels like it’s going nuts, and I have really felt it, this holiday season. Not having a doctor I trust and can rely on… that’s a subtle source of pressure. Being told my neuropsych is retiring in the spring… that’s more pressure. Being threatened with a layoff in the immediate term… that’s a direct and intense source of pressure. Having everyone around me at work be in rotten spirits because of the impending job changes… that’s an indirect but distracting source of pressure. Expensive car repairs and drama while traveling over Thanksgiving wasn’t easy. Being sick has been a disruptive challenge. And having my spouse being sick, too — and increasingly disabled — has been hard to get my head around.

Most of this I’ve had to deal with on my own, but I don’t mind. It’s actually easier for me to handle things alone, so I don’t have to verbalize with people. Talking out loud is yet another source of pressure, and I’ve been doing it pretty poorly, this holiday season. Seriously — I haven’t been able to describe things I’m looking for, and people in stores don’t take kindly to it. It’s been kind of funny, actually, when I’ve tried to describe caulk… or a little bracelet with colorful beads… and failed to do so.

I’ve kept it together, more or less, but it’s taken a toll.

The energy that I’ve been using to keep myself on an even keel had to come from somewhere, and my thought processing has not been the sharpest. I’ve been forgetful, scattered, emotional, foggy, and that all makes it even worse. It’s really been a challenge to do the kinds of things that used to come easy to me, and that’s hard to take. I can’t believe I have to deal with all of this — and take things so much more slowly, plan so much more carefully, and resort to what feel like remedial measures.

And through it all… I                      am                   so                  tired.

But then I come back to the Christmas story. And I can relate. I have a pretty good idea how it must feel to be uprooted from your home and dragged somewhere else to pay someone money that you probably don’t have. I don’t know how it feels to have a baby on the way, but I know about long journeys and having more asked of you than you feel you can spare. And I know the feeling of despair and overwhelm, when everything around you seems to conspire against you, and you can’t catch a break.

I also know what it’s like to make do with what little I have. This year, we don’t have a tree indoors, because the artificial tree we’ve had for years has gotten old and smells terrible. It’s musty and dusty and the materials are starting to degrade and off-gas, so after a couple of tries, we ended up just putting the tree out on the back porch and arranging our presents on a beautiful golden cloth we have, surrounded by colored lights.

It’s modest, but it’s beautiful, and later I’ll roast the turkey for our Christmas dinner. We’ll have a quiet day, today, and just enjoy the quiet in our own merry way.

We’re better off now than we’ve been in quite some time, and for that I am grateful. We have our issues, but we also have our ways of dealing with them. It’s Christmas. Time to focus less on what we don’t have, and more on what we do.

May your Christmas be merry, as well.

I have seen you walking in the rain…

And I wanna know why you are crying…

Baby, lemme fix what’s wrong…

This song always gets me.

Especially when I am shopping after a long day at work.

The thought that someone is asking why I was crying… and wants to fix what’s wrong.

Those days when I am so worn out and confused and just going on auto-pilot, hoping I don’t get hurt or hurt somebody else… blundering and stumbling and feeling foolish… and not knowing if the cashier’s sudden laugh was at my expense…

Just having someone sing those lines, as I’m putting boxes of instant rice into my shopping basket…

It was raining outside. And this song brought tears to my eyes.

This is not a drill – maybe

My last remaining grandparent may be dying. They’re over 100 years old, and I am making the daylong trip to my family several states away, to hopefully see them before they pass. They’ve been close to the edge several times over the past few months, but this time seems different. I hope we get there in time.

It’s always a struggle, figuring out what the right thing to do is – we can’t just pick up and go whenever something seems amiss. Because things seem amiss pretty frequently, and then they level out. It’s not a short trip to my family. And I have limited energy and time. Also, if I don’t work, I don’t get paid, so taking time off is very, very expensive.

But this trip looks like it’s going to be necessary. This might be “it” for my grandparent, and I would like to get there in time to say good-bye and “thank you” for everything.

I really owe a tremendous debt to them – they set such a strong example about how to live a good life, and they overcame so many huge odds to really have a life worth living. If anyone has showed me how to stand up straight in a crisis and hold your own, how to be compassionate towards others who are different from you, and how to just love and accept people and the world for who they are (while never giving up hope that things could be better), it’s them. They also taught me the importance of staying curious, staying interested, and always learning-learning-learning about the world and the way life works.

In fact, I think it’s safe to say that I have them to thank for my being here. Obviously, if they had not had kids, then I would not have come into the world. But beyond just making my birth possible, they showed me what it means to persevere and prevail and correct your poor choices whenever you can. I never wanted to disappoint them — even though I often did. So, that pushed me to really step up and challenge myself in so many different ways.

I’ll be leaving in about 4 hours – I have a lot to get together before I leave. I have to check in with work to let them know what’s happening and to get coverage for my projects, I have to pack clothing, get the car inspected (in addition to forgetting to pay my mortgage, I forgot to get both cars inspected, this past summer, so I’ve been driving around with not one but two overdue inspection stickers), run to the bank, get some food for the road, and take care of some odds and ends that are due in the next couple of days. I don’t know how long I’m going to be away – it could be a few days, or it could be a week, but I’ve got clearance from work to stay as long as I need to.

I’m putting my list together now, to see what all I need to do. I’ve been tired lately, and I’m really distracted, so my sequencing is off this morning. I’m doing things backwards, forgetting to do important things (like make my coffee in the proper order), and I have to triple-check everything. Like packing clothes. If I stay longer than a few days, I was thinking I will need all my work clothes with me, and I was going to load them into a garment bag to take with me. Untrue. If I stay, I will be at my parents’ house, and I will not need work clothing at all. I just need one set of dress clothes, in case the funeral happens. I will need casual clothes for the everyday — just to get around and look halfway respectable.

The main thing is taking the right computers with me — my personal laptop as well as my work laptop. Also, I need to remember my camera. I don’t have a smartphone, and my spouse loves to take pictures. And my sunglasses. I can’t forget them. I’ll never make it without.  And taking all the crap out of the traveling car, rearranging everything in it for the ride. And packing an extra set of sheets, in case the people we’re staying with use scented laundry detergent we are allergic to. And putting the mail on hold. Just getting everything together.

I have my main list of things to do. Not getting too granular with it is a big change for me. I used to make long lists of everything that could possibly be covered, and I would get so caught up in making the lists, that I would lose track of where I was and have to abandon my plans half-way through. I would also forget important things and wear myself out, trying to juggle everything that didn’t even need juggling.

Now things are very different, and I’m feeling pretty calm and systematic about my planning. I am tired, I know, and my memory and attention are a little sub-par, these days. But I’m taking steps to offset that, using the tools I have to keep steady and stay on track.

I really hate these kinds of situations. I have been through a lot of them in the past with my spouse. There’s been a lot of illness and struggle in both sides of our family over the 24 years we’ve been together, and we’ve spent more time than I care to think about in hospitals, waiting to hear news.

A part of me is selfishly feeling like it’s not fair that I have to leave my cushy new job situation, while it has that “new car smell” to go participate in unavoidable grief and sadness. I am finally getting into a groove at work, and now this happens. I have had a really challenging last few weeks, and no sooner do I feel like I’m settling in and getting things sorted, than I have to pick up and dash off to the kind of drama that I just hate. I stay away from my family because of all the drama. It’s just too much, and I’m feeling too tired to really deal well with this. Times like these are when I can get hurt.

Again.

But like I said, that’s me being selfish and not seeing the bigger picture. We need to extend ourselves for others and step up. That’s what makes our lives worthwhile and more than just an exercise in self-serving pettiness. That’s what my grandparent would have done.

My head is in a whirl, right now. I don’t like death, and I don’t like racing the clock. But here we are…

So, onward.

Got my nap today

And got a bit of work done. Not as much as I had planned, but at least I got my head around some things. And I can spend some time this weekend catching up on things that are ahead of me.

The nice thing is that now that I have the perspective that I can (and will) treat my present work as training for my next job — and I am clear about what parts of my current job appeal to me the most — it’s not such a hardship and a burden to work on these things.

They’re actually pleasant and enjoyable — a part of my everyday life, just like my work used to be, before I got hurt in 2004 and everything went to hell.

The thing about this week is, I’ve spent a lot of extra hours at work. I have been staying late and getting home late, but I’ve also been arriving early. So, I put in about 40 hours even before Friday rolled around. That lets me justify taking more time for myself today than I had planned to… and it also justifies me spending time napping instead of soldiering through a bunch of tasks I had on my docket today.

I figure, if I’m going to work over the weekend, it makes sense for me to rest up and pace myself.

All in all, it was a pretty good day, and I’m coming out of it feeling stronger and more together than I did at the start. I’ve got a handful of things I plan to handle, and I’ve got more work with one of my special projects that I’m focusing on. I’ve really got to settle in and laser my focus, because I have a lot to learn.

I’m a little nervous about not being able to focus, and not being able to learn. It all feels so overwhelming to me, and I can hardly believe that I used to code this way on a regular basis. I have been out of practice, so that makes things more difficult, of course, but even so, I feel like my brain has definitely changed and shifted… and not in ways that I particularly like.

So, I need to be easy with myself, have a bit of compassion, and cut myself a break. I need to make sure I’m drinking enough water and that I show good judgment with the foods I eat — not cram a lot of junk into my system, and make sure I get plenty of protein and steer clear of all the carbs. I’ve been eating a lot of nuts and homemade guacamole, lately, which has a lot of the good fats that my brain and body needs. I need to remember that I’m really testing my brain, and I need to rest it periodically, instead of pushing and pushing and pushing.

I need to not wear myself out.

I also need to remember that this is the fun stuff I’ve been missing… and that I’ve been looking forward to doing again. It’s been a long time, since I was last able to sit down for an extended period of time and really dig into an activity. Things at work are so chaotic and scattered… it’s not my thing.

This is better.

So, yeah. I do need to pace myself. Not drive myself like a crazy person, and have good balance between what I want to be doing, and what I have to be doing. Ideally, they will be one and the same. It doesn’t always happen that way, but it’s a goal.

It’s all good.

Onward.

Letting things just be

You gotta know what’s what – for real

I had a long weekend, with a lot of work of all kinds. I did some work for my day-job, and I also worked with my spouse to help them with a business trip on Saturday. Then I spent most of Sunday with a house guest, who stayed until 5 p.m.

I typically prefer to have time to myself on the weekends – to be alone and undisturbed by others. I had a lot to do, and interacting with other people takes time. It takes a lot of time. And energy. And attention I’d rather put somewhere else.

One of the things that makes interacting with other people difficult for me, is that I really expend a lot of energy when I’m interacting with them. I really make an effort to see their points of view and to just let them be who and what they are. It’s a fair amount of work for me, because most of the things I see and hear and watch people doing, saying, choosing, really conflicts with what I would do, say, or choose.

But it’s their choice and it’s their life. Even if I can see that their deeds, words, and choices are going to lead them down an unfortunate path, I have to stand back and let them do it. It’s not up to me, to save them. Or even to give them a clue about what’s ahead. That’s for them to find out. If I didn’t care so much about the sufferings of others, my life might be considerably easier.

But I do care. And it is extremely hard to watch people do the things they do.

Who am I to take them to task, though? Who am I to step in and draw their attention to things? We all have to walk our own paths, and we all have to make our own mistakes.

I just don’t much care for being pulled into the foolishness that they propagate. When the people doing the ill-advised things are in charge, and they are affecting the lives of countless others on a very large scale, well, that’s a problem. Especially if one of those people is me.

So, in that case, standing by and doing nothing, saying nothing, never speaking out and never raising any questions, is negligent on my part. We all have responsibility for certain things that happen around us. The real puzzle is knowing which of those things we are complicit with, and choosing the right path to take.

For me, the right path is (ultimately) off into the sunset — toward the horizon — and away from the situation where I now am. There is so much more that I can be doing with my skills and abilities, and nobody I work with is actually mature and experienced enough to recognize that. So, I’m limited by their lack of vision and experience.

It really does boil down to experience. And there’s not a damn’ thing I can do about that.

So, in the spirit of picking my battles, I’m working on stepping back and letting things be. I need to observe them and figure out which things I want to dive into, and which things I want to leave alone. A whole lot of drama can be alleviated by just being still and letting it settle down. Then the drama dissipates. The swirling mud sinks to the bottom of the pool, and we can get clear again.

The main thing is to just remain calm and allow it to be. Just be.

And in those times when I let things get the better of me, and all the dust and muck gets kicked up and swirled into a muddy mess, I need to just step back, step away, and let myself settle down… so I can stop stirring the pot, myself.

Half the time, the pot doesn’t need to be stirred, anyway, and all the drama and kerfluffle has nothing to do with what’s actually going on at the moment. It has to do with everything else in the world that people are experiencing — the imaginary past, the elusive present, the anticipated future. And it has nothing to do with reality. At all. Things would be so much simpler, if we could just let them be, but no… people seem to be hard-wired to dive head-first into drama.

Of course, I know exactly how that works. For sure. It’s a mix of biochemistry, neurology, and the combination of fear, anxiety, fatigue, pressure, stress… that whole big mess o’ things that — for some reason — we seem to think life has to be.

It doesn’t. We’re just trained that way. Everything from our media to our interpersonal relationships, are marinated in drama. It wakes us up. It makes us feel alive. It makes us feel important, or right, or righteous, or powerful. It makes us feel as though we alone know “what’s what” in the world, and it’s comforting that way.

But ultimately, all that amounts to is drama. Biochemistry. Neurology. Habit.

It’s not real.

And that’s the thing I need to keep in mind and remember. I did an okay job of remembering it this weekend, when I started to get all OCD over my work situation and started to get all worked up over scenarios I was imagining. The imaginary scenarios were both historical (they had happened, and I’d decided what they were about and what they meant) as well as anticipated (they hadn’t yet happened, and I was pretty sure they would). And I was getting really worked up over them, while I was trying to fall asleep last night.

But I got a hold of it and remembered that I was frittering away precious time on what was basically an illusion — something I made up in my mind about what was happening/going to happen, and what it all meant — and there was not much reality to it, other than the sensations that were coursing through my veins and making my heart rate go nuts. It wasn’t serving any purpose and it wasn’t helping me at all.

So, I stopped. I just let it be. I reminded myself that the only thing that was giving any of it any reality, was me and my conviction that I knew what was what.

Silly.

Once I stopped, and I got myself calmed down, I went right to sleep. Which is what I was needing to begin with.

And that’s progress.

It’s also progress, that I’m seeing more and more clearly each day, just now made-up our world really is. We invent all these interpretations of how things are and what’s happening and what it means, and then we leap into action without checking it out first. We “jump on it” and make a mess of things, and then we run around like chickens with our heads cut off, trying to fix what we screwed up in the first place. It’s all very exciting, and it makes us feel like we’re making progress, but we’re doing the opposite — creating a lot of drama and suffering for ourselves and everyone around us.

So, in that spirit, I’m going to start my day. I’m working at home today, because I’m finally able to get a plumber in to fix a leak that has gotten progressively worse over the past two months. At last, I have the money to pay them, and I have the time for them to come to the house. Those two things have been sorely lacking in the past months.

Speaking of sorely lacking time, I think I’m going to take a day off, pretty soon. All this working, all this pushing, all the interactions with house guests and visitors and new co-workers has kicked the crap out of me, and I need a day to myself. I need some silence. Just silence.

So, I’ll look at my schedule and pick a day that works for me to just check out. Every now and then, I need a break. From everything.

But for now, it’s into the day for me.

Onward.