Greetings from the island of missed opportunities

Happy Belated Memorial Day to All
Thank you for your service.

Last weekend, I had every intention of taking care of essentials. Getting my hair cut, mowing the lawn, going for long walks down the road, blogging on Memorial Day to thank veterans and their families for their service.

I got a fair amount done on Saturday. Then it rained for two days, and the rest of my plans were shot. The naps I was going to take didn’t materialize the way I’d hoped. I was still tired from last week, and I was irritable. I was off my regular schedule, which made me antsy. And I had too much time on my hands to think about how my life had taken so many wrong turns, and how I couldn’t seem to get it back on track.

When I’m tired and I can’t catch up on my sleep, problems happen. I cause them, of course… and then I need to fix them.

So, that’s how I spent the weekend — dealing with my self-made problems.

Fortunately, a lot of stuff got worked out, and I’m on better footing than I was, last week.

And life goes on.

The thing is… Sometimes things need to fall apart before they can get fixed. I’ve been kind of limping along on, for months (maybe years) at work and at home, trying to make the most of bad situations and challenging conditions, without knowing what to do about them. Either I was too tired, or I didn’t have all the the information. Or things (politics at work) were out of my control. And I just made the best of a problematic situation. Of course I did. That’s what I always do.

I tend to complain a lot on this blog, but to be honest, that’s mainly because I don’t whine about a lot of things in my everyday life. I keep that proverbial stiff upper lip. I make the best of things. I keep positive and can-do, as all Americans are taught to do. Being anything less is an affront to everyone around you and a sort of blasphemy in this country. Of course I can do it! Of course I’m capable of figuring things out! I’m an American. By God.

Every now and then, though, I just have to let that go and indulge myself in a little realism — how I really feel. How things really seem. It’s not giving up. It’s just being honest about how I feel about the situation… before I rally to get myself back on track.

I always rally. No doubt about that. I’m still here, after all.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about missed opportunities, lately. I’ve missed so many, due to slow processing speed, foggy thinking, and of course fatigue. The kind of tiredness that wipes everything messy, like all the class notes being smeared on the blackboard (or whiteboard, as they have now). And nothing makes sense, anymore.

I think about all the dreams I’ve had, and how logistically impossible they’ve all been. I have responsibilities. I have a household to maintain. Insurance to keep. A job (or two or three) to do, each day. The things I always wanted as a kid… most of them haven’t happened, in large part because I just didn’t have the capacity to keep up the pace required to do them all.

And there’s a sense of loss to that. A deep sense of … I dunno… deprivation? Failure? It’s hard to put my finger on it.

Then again, when I look at my life and all that’s happened, I can’t feel badly. Not for a moment. I’ve been able to experience some amazing things, and I’ve really had a great run. I continue to, as well. Even more now, than before, because I know so much more about my limitations and how to work with them. Ironically, my life started to come together after I learned about how limited I am. Only then, could I put systems in place that offset my difficulties. Especially with regard to memory, sleep, and prioritizing things in my life.

I learned how to listen to people, how to talk to people. Before I knew that my short-term working memory was horrible, I thought I could keep things in my  mind and interact with people by just being quiet. Now I know better, and I know that I have to keep engaging with people during our conversations, or I’ll forget what they said just a few moments ago. Not only does that help me remember, but it also makes me a better conversationalist. By far. And I’ve gotten over my self-consciousness, I’ve quit telling myself I was an idiot because I couldn’t remember sh*t.

I’m not an idiot. I have organic limitations to my memory, and I just have to work with them.

I also learned how to pace myself and take care of myself on weekends. I used to push myself constantly — keeping a steady level of stress in my life, to boost my “tonic arousal”, keep myself alert and aware of my surroundings. I realize now that while the stress is tasty and energizing like junk food, it’s also terrible for me. Like junk food. I’ve given it up, and I go to extra lengths to get as much sleep as humanly possible. My spouse helps, too, not pushing me so much to stay up late watching movies and late-night t.v.

I just can’t go without sleep for long, without there being serious repercussions. And the changes I’ve made have been hugely helpful to me, my spouse, our marriage, and my work life. It’s a win-win all around.

Most important, perhaps, is how I prioritize things in my life and say “yes” or “no” to things. I pushed myself really hard, up until about 10 years ago, just driving-driving-driving towards my goals. In a way, it worked wonders for my career. It built up my skills. It won me recognition and respect. But it also fried my nervous system. I was chronically over-committed in so many areas, working long hours, driving a long commute, doing extra jobs on the weekends, and pursuing my hobbies. I traveled a lot. I was always juggling a lot of balls in the air. And I could do it. For decades, I did it.

Until it undid me. My fall in 2004 was directly caused by being overcommitted, over-tired, under-rested, and not paying attention. It was nearly fatal to every aspect of my life, a kind of delayed reaction payback that forced a reset in my life that permanently altered so much.

I lost a lot in the process, including my ability to drive-drive-drive.

And along with that, so many opportunities disappeared. Just evaporated.

…

But when I think about it, I’m not so sure that’s a terrible thing.

I’ve gone from quantity to quality, now. I pace myself better. I pick and choose. I know I can’t do it all, nor do I want to (anymore). I realize just how much time and energy I wasted in all the rushing around, all those years. I was driven by a long history of TBIs / concussions that scrambled my thinking and set me careening through life without good systems in place to keep myself on track.

And that’s not a bad thing. It’s a very good thing, in fact. I don’t need to be doing all that stuff, at every turn. I don’t need to over-extend myself, every week and every weekend. Sleep is good. Rest is essential. And actually enjoying my life… well, that’s a concept I’ve gotten used to.

So, all in all, missing opportunities isn’t nearly as terrible as everybody makes it out to be. I’ve gotten over my FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), to the point where I actually look forward to missing out. I see that the rest of the world can easily lose its mind by racing around at top speed, without stopping to think about what’s going on.

I have my music. I have my books and my house. I have my marriage. I have my steady paycheck. And the work situation seems to be sorting itself out, at last. The most important opportunity is still available: to appreciate and enjoy it for what it is, each and every day.

Unless we understand #TBI / #Concussion, we can’t really treat it

I’ve been more absent from this blog, this month, than I’d intended. Life… you know? It’s been very busy at work, and things are shifting with my role. I’ve had some additional training and workshops, and I’m still trying to figure out where I fit in.

Fortunately, I have help. There are a lot of folks at work who are eager to step in and pull people up to the level they need to be at. I’m not the only one who’s having some challenges navigating the new organizational structure, but fortunately, the expectation is that each and every one of us is going to have challenges and struggle somewhat.

So, that’s helpful, overall.

Getting support at work frees me up to get back to my mission: To write about long-term recovery from concussion / mild traumatic brain injury, and show that it is possible to restore your life after you’ve sustained a brain injury. There is a real dearth of information about this out in the world, and I’m (still) on a mission to do something about that.

I realize that all my … “gyrations” at work have distracted me from this mission. It’s been siphoning off all my energy and distracting me, which is the opposite of what I want and need. So, I’m settling down in my job, chilling out, and looking to my long-term future… 10… 15… 20… 30 years in the future.

And that frees me up to concentrate on the here-and-now with greater focus. It lets me get back to my mission.

The other day, while researching a post, I came across this article:

New Advice to Move More After a Concussion

When young athletes sustain concussions, they are typically told to rest until all symptoms disappear. That means no physical activity, reading, screen time or friends, and little light exposure, for multiple days and, in severe cases, weeks.

Restricting all forms of activity after a concussion is known as “cocooning.” But now new guidelines, written by an international panel of concussion experts and published this month in The British Journal of Sports Medicine, question that practice. Instead of cocooning, the new guidelines suggest that most young athletes should be encouraged to start being physically active within a day or two after the injury.

“The brain benefits from movement and exercise, including after a concussion,” says Dr. John Leddy, a professor of orthopedics at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo, and one of the co-authors of the new guidelines.

And it makes sense to me. Because when you think about concussion / TBI in terms of what it is (an injury that disrupts connections and releases a bunch of “gunk” into the brain that shouldn’t be there), and you think about the brain in terms of what it does (processes information based on connections and makes new connections where none existed before), and you think about how the body works (moves all of that information through  – mentally and physically), then cocooning probably isn’t the thing to do for long periods of time.

TBI is a tricky thing. It’s different for everyone, of course, and something that works for one person might not work for another. But we’re all walking around in human bodies, and those human bodies function pretty much the same way.

So, if we use the principles of how the body and brain work, and we understand the nature of concussion, and we understand the dynamics of the whole scenario, new treatment approaches become clearer.

It surprises me a little bit that it took till May, 2017, to figure out how to better treat concussions. Then again, until the past 10-15 years or so, people didn’t really take “mild” traumatic brain injury that seriously. Everybody just laughed it off like it was no big deal.

Then we started to realize that onetime football players were ending up in a bad way — worse than the general public. And football players and their families started going public about their struggles. And people started talking — out loud — about stuff that used to be a source of terrible shame and embarrassment. The kinds of stuff that “you just didn’t talk about”, back in the day.

A lot has changed, thanks to research and increased awareness.

And we’re making progress in many areas.

But still, it surprises me, how much we don’t know… how much we still overlook… and how many people continue to struggle, months and years after a concussion or mTBI.

I have my own struggles, sure. A lot of the problems I had haven’t gone away completely. But after all these years of actively working on solutions, I’m doing a whole lot better at managing them, and that’s made all the difference. Maybe it’s true that brain injury can never be reversed, but then, life can never be reversed, and if we treat concussion issues as just another aspect of life that needs to be taken seriously and managed appropriately, it is very possible to have a “regular” life afterwards.

Sure, you’ll have to change some things. You’ll have to adjust. But life is full of those kinds of requirements. We don’t get a “pass” when we get injured, and the world jumps in to protect us. We just get a different set of challenges and difficulties and benefits to work with.

That being said, mental rigidity is probably one of the biggest hurdles to TBI recovery. The very black-and-white thinking that takes over when your brain gets injured can cause the injury to become even worse. Because you’re locked in a straitjacket of limited thinking. Getting your mindset out of the box and trying different things, living differently, getting on with your life, and being mindful about stuff… that can help hugely. I know it helped me more than I can say.

So, there are just a few more days left in Brain Injury Awareness Month. I’ve fallen far short of my stated plan to focus on brain injury recovery for the duration. I had such great plans… But of course… life. And my limits.

Turns out, what I’m taking away from Brain Injury Awareness Month is a reminder of how — yet again — I need to adjust my commitments and expectations and go a bit easier on myself. The thing to remember is that life goes on. And while I didn’t live up to my own expectations, the world keeps turning, the sun rises and sets, it snows and the snow melts, and the songbirds return to my bird feeder.

For today, that’s enough. It’s more than enough.

Back in my own space again

Today I move at my own pace – blank slate

I’m back in my home office again.

It’s been months, since I was in here regularly. I had been working downstairs in the dining room, where I have better wireless connectivity and I can move around the downstairs without disturbing my spouse.

But nowadays, I really need to get back into my office. My study. My refuge. Everything in this room is here because I want it to be. I need it. I value it. That’s not to say I don’t want and value what’s downstairs. I do. It’s just not all mine, and it’s shared space with not only my spouse but anybody else who comes over to the house.

Granted, there are not that many people who come by, anymore. I can’t deal with having a lot of people in my home. Not anymore. We used to have company over a lot. But in the past several years, that’s faded away. I’m too tired, by the end of each week, to deal with people. And when I do have extra social activities on the weekend, it really takes a lot out of me. I hate that it does, and I do plenty to offset it — like working on my stamina and pacing myself better during the week — but it’s still an issue.

A tired brain is a cranky brain. And when my brain is cranky, it’s not much fun to be around.

Truly.

And too many other people have found out. I’ve gone ballistic on some folks whose only crime was being in my house when I was too tired to interact with them. They were friends, and they considered me a friend. But now they don’t talk to me. Oh, well. So it goes. At times, my life is easier without having a lot of regular friends in it, to tell the truth. Does that sound sad? It’s not. I need my peace and quiet. I need my rest. There’s only so much of other people I can take, even on my best days.

That being said, I’d been able to work downstairs in the dining room, because we rarely use the room for eating, except when we have company.  We use it to store things — boxes we haven’t decided what to do with, yet, as well as other packing materials. Papers and mail that isn’t time-sensitive and just needs a place to “sit” till I figure out what to do with them all. Books. Books. More books. Things we’ve moved from other rooms, to make space for our everyday lives. And there’s room for me to set up a workspace at the dining room, which is exactly what I’d done over the winter. The dining room is warmer than my study in the fall and winter, in any case, so that’s part of why I moved my “operations” there.

But not having my own space has gotten to me. I need to close a door behind me and settle into my own frame of mind — the mentality that sets in when I’m in my own space. I have my books around me, my music, my artwork, my papers. It’s all here. All my fascinations from over the years. And all my neurology info. Especially my neuro info.

So, now I’ve moved back into my study, and I’m looking out the window at the bird feeder and the falling snow. We got more snow last night, and now the wind is up, so it’s cascading off the trees, so it looks like we’re having a blizzard. We’re not. That’s just the overnight snow being tossed by the breeze. But it looks pretty intense at times.

It’s Sunday. That’s good. I have a whole day to pretty much do as I please, and that’s a welcome change. It’s not that I’m going to indulge myself… it’s that I have a lot that I want to do, and not having other responsibilities driven by others’ needs is making it possible for me to make some headway.

Write some blog posts. Read some papers. Get the word out about brain injury recovery being both possible and probable. I’m on a mission. And having my own workspace makes it easier for me to focus on that.

So, yes. Onward.

Like football, like life

I just read about the WBUR Poll: For Head Injuries, Football Fans Support Regulation, But Haven’t Changed Viewing Habits, and it got me thinking. I’m a big football fan. Even though I don’t watch every single game, I still love the sport. I also love to watch boxing and MMA.

Even though I know what it’s doing to the contestants — potentially causing brain injuries that will screw them up, sooner or later — I still love to watch the sports.

There’s something about seeing people wade into a fight and then come out on the other side (victorious or not) that’s very cathartic for me.

I think that’s because it reminds me of my life. I feel, on any given day, like I’m wading into a fracas of some kind. Either it’s work, or it’s just the everyday occurrences, or it’s dealing with the slings and arrows of the world. But whatever the nature of it, I feel like I’m getting beaten up… like another “team” is gunning for me… and like the players and fighters I love to watch, I have to keep my act together and keep going, till the end of “regulation play”.

I think that I’m not alone in this. A lot of people I know feel constantly attacked by life. We know we’re gonna get roughed up. That’s a given. We know it’s gonna hurt. We know we’re going to get pushed and pulled and trampled in the process, but we have to keep going.

Like the players on the field.

And like those players, we take a calculated risk, every time we engage with life. We know the odds may be stacked against us, but we still keep at it. We stay in the game. And like so many of those players and fighters, even when we should probably sit out to let our brains recover, we head right back in there, as soon as we can. Because that’s the only way we know how to be, how to act, how to get along in life.

Personally, I cringe, when I think what’s being done to the “heroes” on the field and in the ring. I know what’s being done to their brains. But life is rough. It’s tough. It beats you down and knocks the stuffing out of you, time and time again. Football players and fighters are like our proxies. We fight to live, they live to fight.

And just about everybody can relate to that.

Christmas and Change

I hope everyone who celebrated yesterday had a really great Christmas. For many of us, it’s a lonely time, if we can’t be with the ones we love — or the ones we love don’t love us back, or we’re just so misunderstood by the people we need to understand us the best.

I had a rough morning, with some upset that seemed to come out of nowhere. I just felt so terrible. But after I got moving, taking care of Christmas day things, I felt better. It helps if I get moving. If I “sit” in my misery, it just amplifies it.

So, it’s best to not sit in it. Have faith that my life is worthwhile, and just keep going. Get the focus off me, pay attention to others. Get moving. In a positive direction.

And the day turned out fine.  Between cooking and getting the house in order, there was a lot of activity. The good thing was, it completely wore me out, and I fell asleep on the couch for an hour before going to bed. I woke up at 2 a.m. drenched in sweat (even though I had the heat turned down), and I had to change my sheets, they were so wet. But then I fell back into bed and actually slept till 7 a.m., which is a recent record for me.

So, it’s all good. And since I don’t need to be at work for another week, I’m seeing all kinds of opportunity for the next 7 days. Opportunity to get my home in order, organize, clean up, take care of the chores that I typically put off, because I’m so tired at the end of every day.

I’ve already done a lot of organizing of my home office, which feels great. It’s more than just a holding pen for my files and books, now. It’s an actual work space, which I need. I also need to straighten up the living room, after the Christmas gift-opening extravaganza. Every year, my spouse and I get each other “more gifts than we need”, but in truth, this time of year is just about the only time of the year we splurge on luxuries like soft “house socks” with anti-slip nubs on the soles, new winter caps, and high-tech miniature flashlights. All of these things we can use, but they’re not necessities, so we usually go without. Until Christmas rolls around and we can justify getting them. We don’t get a lot of jewelry and luxury items, like cars and bikes and whatnot. Or maybe our definition of “luxury” is different.

Anyway, yesterday was a busy day, and it included some visits from the neighbors, who came bearing cookies. One of my neighbors needed extra driveway space for their visiting family, so they “borrowed” my driveway. And my other neighbor is moving in the spring, which is a shame, because they’ve been a great neighbor who’s really been there for us over the years. I often help them shovel out after snowstorms, and I watch their cat while they’re traveling. They keep an eye on our house while we’re out of town, and they just keep us connected with the rest of the world. That’s a loss. And when I think about it, I get a little emotional.

But change is constant. There we have it. And the time off work is giving me a chance to think through some of the changes that will probably be coming in the next few decades. Basically, I live in a house that is extremely non-accessible. It’s up on a hill that you have to walk up steps to get to. There’s literally no way to get in and out of the house without walking up stairs. And while that’s fine now, in 10 years or so, my spouse might not be able to do that.

So, what to do? Well, there’s a point of access through the garage. I do need to get a garage door opener installed for one of the garage doors. And the door from the garage to the basement will need to be widened. Then there are the basement stairs, which aren’t sturdy enough for one of those chair lift things. But I think an elevator will actually work. The stairwells are over top each other, which makes me think an elevator shaft will fit well in that space.

Of course, there’s the question of power. If the power goes out, we’ll both be stuck, since there won’t be stairs going to the top floor. So, maybe I  need to get one of those big-ass Tesla batteries that will power a whole house. And get solar panels on the roof.

All of this sounds really expensive. Almost to the point where it could be cheaper to tear down the existing house (which has a bunch of structural issues, including cracks in the garage floor, sagging floors, and some rafters that aren’t 100% good. The more I think about it, the more I’d like to just tear down this house and build another version that makes more sense. Or move to another house… Except that we love this location, we love the view, we love the little piece of land we’ve got, and we really want to stay.

Then again, it might make more sense to just convert the downstairs half-bath into a full bath and set up my spouse with their own bedroom downstairs… Not bother with the elevator, which will seriously alter the nature of the house (and affect resale prospects), and keep things simple. If we expand the deck and add on to the back of the house just a little bit, it could work. It could work really nicely.

I just have to come up with money to do all this, which puts the horizon for doing this in the far distance. But that gives me time to think it all through and come up with different options. It could work. I just have to sort it all out.

But I’m sure I will. It’s just fun to have the time to think about all this stuff and not be rushed by Things I Have To Do For Someone Else.

There’s not a huge amount of pressure to get everything done, right now, which is good. Because with me, these things take time to sort out. But eventually they get where they need to be.

And then I move on.

Change… yeah… change and Christmas.

Pacing myself for Christmas

The final push is on…

It’s Friday. I have the day off work. I still have to do some daily “housekeeping” tasks for work, but it’s not that big of a deal, because it doesn’t require that I pay attention at all. Just start a program at 6:30 a.m. and wait for it to finish a few hours later. I should probably fix it so that it kicks off by itself.

I’ll do that later today.

Yesterday was get-it-all-done-before-the-snow-flies day. We’re supposed to get a bunch of snow and rain today, which could get messy. It’s not the kind of weather you want to be driving in, so I won’t. My spouse and I spent yesterday afternoon and evening doing our last-minute shopping, and we got just about everything done. So, that’s good.

It wiped me out, but it was good. Now I just have a bunch of stuff to wrap. And that’s fine. Because I have three days to get that done — a big improvement over past years, when we couldn’t get ourselves in gear before the very last minute.

All that last-minute shopping of years gone by just boggles my mind. How did we do it? Chaotically and crabbily, as a matter of fact. And it pushed me to my limits, year after year. But Ye Olde attentional problems and executive function issues kept me/us from getting ahead of the game and preparing in a timely manner. We always needed the stress of last-minute pressure to put us over the finish line, and it took a toll, year after year.

Of course, that’s just how things were, so we never thought to do things differently. And it took a toll. Good grief, when I think about all the drama and yelling and frustration… and how my spouse and I just took that for granted… I’m glad things are different now.

Part of it is that we’ve both gotten older and more tired, so we don’t have the energy for all that whoop-de-doop. Who has the energy for squabbling? What does it accomplish, other than sharpening our sense of being “ON”?

Come to think of it, that was a huge draw for us. Getting all worked up over things was a great way to perk up the old tonic arousal and get the brain to think it’s awake. That “pump” from the drama literally made me feel like I was alive again… a better state of mind than the steady level of dullness that came after my concussion(s). So, getting all “drama’ed out” was a way for me to wake myself up and get myself feeling normal again.

That’s not a small thing. It’s a critical thing. It was central to my Sense-Of-Self, and while it did make me pretty tedious to deal with during the holidays, it nevertheless played a role in making me feel like myself again.

But eventually that got old. And I learned new ways to perk myself up. Like getting regular exercise, first thing in the morning. Like getting the crap food out of my system. Like finding things that really made me feel great and focusing on them… not the things that made me feel terrible and perked me up as a result.

It’s an ongoing process, of course, and I’m not perfect. I still have my moments. Heaven knows. But things are a heck of a lot better this year, than they’ve been in past years.

And this year really I’ll be ready for Christmas.

There’s a first time for everything.

And it just gets better…

I’m having another great day, today.

I’m surprisingly productive on my days “off”, and I’m getting more done than I realize. Before I lay down for my nap, a couple of hours ago, I made a list of all the stuff I got done, and it was … a lot.

I’m not taxed, though, which is good. It just feels regular. Like I’m just living my life like I want to.

And I am.

One thing that happened earlier, was a phone interview for a job I’d applied for a couple of weeks back. I know I’d posted about how I really need to be realistic and not push myself intensely — especially with a long commute.  And it’s true. The thing is, the people I talked to and the job we discussed all sounded great. Of course they did. It was an interview, and everybody’s on their best behavior. But what came out of the conversation was actually a wider and more interesting kind of opportunity than they originally offered.

The scope of the job now encompasses things I’ve been doing for years, but they don’t apparently have anyone to do. Things like make their website go really, really fast. Things like put a new web metrics package in place. Things like train developers on best practices.

So, that was actually exciting. When I think about where I am now — boxed into a small corner of the world, without the opportunity to strengthen certain skills (which, by the way, are the ones that really pay well) — and I think about the future — more of the same that’s going to make me more and more specialized, more and more boxed-in — I have to seriously consider any and all alternatives.

Anyway, if my current employer really wanted to keep me, they’d pay me like they mean it. They haven’t done that. If anything, they’ve reneged on their promises and shorted me thousands of dollars.

That’s not cool. It’s not-cool enough to make me leave. They should know better. They do know better. But they won’t do better.

If I move, it will be an adjustment. A longer commute. A new bunch of people. Unpredictable politics. Having to start from scratch.

Then again, that’s what I’m dealing with right now. And that’s happening at an established job with a company that’s an “unknown quantity” at this point. Who knows what will happen with them? Nobody knows. All anybody has, anymore, is rumors.

Note how well I’m talking myself into changing jobs, when just a few days ago, I was in a much different frame of mind. I’m clever that way… But seriously, I have to weigh all the pros and cons of both situations. And I can’t say I’d mind being closer to home, especially during the winter months. I also won’t mind not being “threatened” with obligatory trips to India, which has never been something I wanted to do, but my boss has been hinting at. I can work effectively with people from India. I just can’t travel there comfortably. Just crossing the USA is disruptive enough for me, and exhausts me sufficiently to wreck my life for weeks at a time. But India?

No thank you.

Well, it’s all a trade-off. I’m fortunate that I’m in this situation, to begin with — in-demand in the midst of a very challenging job market. These are good problems to have. So, for that I’m grateful.

I think I’ll drink my afternoon coffee now.

And get back to enjoying my day. The obligations I thought I’d have this afternoon have magically dissipated into the ethers, so I have time to read and write and think — imagine that. And I’m OFF for the next four days, with just a few to-do items here and there.

Good heavens, it’s great to not have to do anything.

For once.

Regaining my Dignity at the end of “Most Excellent Day One”

I just woke up from my nap. I lay down for 2 hours, and I could have slept for three or more.

It felt amazing. I need to make supper, now. Get back on track. But I feel so amazing, after just a little bit of sleep.

And I know there will be more where that came from.

Because I have the next week off. Actually, a week and a day. It’s amazing. Fantastic. Just what I needed.

And now I can regain my dignity.

See, it suffered for many months, while I was working on this Mammoth Project. I’ve been over-worked, (of course) under-paid, I have been doing the job of 5-6 people, and I haven’t gotten a lot of support from my boss throughout. Just criticism from afar. Or meddling from afar. Or what seemed like outright sabotage. I’m not sure what’s in it for them, to make me look like I don’t know what I’m doing, or to override me, but bottom line, they did more harm than good.

Anyway, the first phase of the project is over, and now I can look towards the next phase — about two months off — and leverage the foundation I’ve built with people, thus far.

And start living and acting like myself again.

Catch up on my sleep — and stop making mistakes because my brain is mis-firing.

Chill out my stress levels — and stop getting overwrought and yelling at people.

Find the good in what I’ve accomplished — and stop feeling so self-conscious and insufficient, because some things didn’t go 100% according to plan.

I can actually hold my head up again, after nearly a year of feeling trampled by other people’s successes. I can actually get my bearings again and stand firmly on both feet. And I can get past the dismay at my brain failing me, time and time again, under conditions that seem custom-made to trip it up.

I can get my dignity back to where I’d like it to be.

And that started today, on this Most Excellent Day One (of 9), as I got to not worry about The Project for a whole 24 hours.

I’m looking forward to the next 8 days.

That’s the understatement of the year.

Now, I can sleep

The final push is on…

I’m giving myself an early Christmas present. I’m not going to make the Big Trip to see my extended family for Thanksgiving. I’ve been working long hours for weeks and weeks (months, really), and I feel like I’m on the verge of getting really sick.

My spouse isn’t all that keen on spending all that time in the car, either. And during the most heavily traveled time of the year.

It just doesn’t make sense for us.

Yes, it will be unfortunate that we can’t see our families.

But it’s a massive relief that we’re not making the trip. It’s exhausting in every sense of the word — to the point where it’s not really safe to be doing it. Traffic. Potential for accidents. Family frustrations. All of it is just too much to handle, right now.

What I really need is sleep. Like, an extra 100 hours, to make up for all the lost hours of the past weeks and months. I need to retrain my system to level out, to calm down… to get out of the sympathetic bias that’s just torn the living crap out of me. I’m shaky… nauseous… dizzy… unsteady on my feet… Yeah, I’m in no shape to do much of anything for a week.

And that’s what’s going to happen — not much of anything.

I have off work all next week and the following Monday. I don’t have to go back till Tuesday the 28th.

I won’t have to set an alarm. I won’t need to keep my phone by my bed. I can just lie down and sleep, without worrying about being late for things, or forgetting things, or saying stupid things, or messing things up. I can just be. And recover.

And that is a beautiful thing.

Onward… back to bed.

Who am I again…? Oh, yeah… that’s who

I haven’t been myself, for the past two days. I was on a business trip, this past week, and my flight got in late on Thursday night/Friday morning. Then I needed to start work early on Friday morning. I was hoping to sleep in on Saturday, but this morning I had another conference call at 8 a.m., so that was … fun.

Kind of.

Actually, it was a good experience to have. And I held up my end of the bargain on the conference call, validating some results of a software release that happened earlier that morning.

It turned out well, which is good. Because then I had to run out and do my errands. Take the trash to the dump. Gas up the car. Go out and buy some computer stuff to keep my equipment running smoothly. That went well, too. Then it was back home to do more errands and help my spouse get ready for an event they were organizing. Everything seemed to be going pretty well, and they got on the road at a decent hour.

I got a phone call about 90 minutes later, that I had forgotten to load one of their main pieces of equipment in the van. Both of us had spaced out and completely forgotten to load it. WTF?

I never do that. At least, I don’t do it much, lately. I used to space out a lot and lose track of stuff. Either that, or I’d be so keyed-up that I’d be on top of everything and wouldn’t forget anything. Hyper-organized ‘n’ all that. But lo and behold, tonight, I did the unthinkable — seriously, it was that out-of-character for me. Then again, I was going on 4.5 hours of sleep the night before, and I’d had a full day already, on a Saturday, no less.

So, I threw the equipment in the back of my car and drove like a bat out of hell to the event. Got there before it started, which was nothing short of miraculous. I hit almost all the lights exactly right — either they stayed green, or I snuck through while they were turning orange to red.

Mission accomplished. Embarrassing, but I got the equipment where it was supposed to be. And that’s really what matters. I spaced out, but I made it right.

Times like this, I just have to shake my head. I am not “myself”, lately. Not even remotely close. I’m over-tired, stressed from work, taxed and alternating between overwrought and indifferent. It’s very strange to be me, these days. I’m pretty swamped at work and at home, so I don’t always recognize myself and my reactions.

It’s worse when I’m tired.

A lot worse.

So, the best I can do, sometimes, is just hang in there, keep plugging away till I see a signpost along the way that makes sense to me… and follow that.

Just keep going.

Speaking of going, it’s time for me to go to bed. I’m behind about 5 hours of sleep, including the hour of sleep I lost last night. Always an adventure.

Onward.