Week of the KAOS 48 personal debrief

[marsden_online]

The week leading up to the 48 was also unusual but for mostly unrelated reasons. I had taken the Friday off planning to use a leave day; but there was a project I expected to have completed by that time.
Monday: evening gaming was cancelled. I was not out of bed until midday so I stayed at work late ... until 10pm. ~9 hours logged
Tuesday: Still late out of bed. Flagged SAGA and worked until 8pm; ~6 hours logged
Wednesday: Generally my 'free' evening. Even latter (1pm) out of bed. Worked through until after 10pm again ~ 8 hours logged
Thursday: Actually out of be about 9am; cleaned shower and then picked up and delivered someone to A&E on the way to work. Point I was determined to reach in project tantalisingly in sight but code not co-operating. Except for a brief outing to return person from A&E worked through until "finished"... 2:15am Friday morning. ~14 hours logged (and then a different delivery to A&E on the way home since I was still active & in the vicinity)

Week total: 36 hours. Much of that was not particularly good work even during daylight hours; it was just plugging away and I was certainly tired and not at my best. But if left to this week where I got to would probably have taken me another two days - and as I have also taken today off (although not entirely managed to avoid unwanted external commitments) it would have been Wednesday before I got that far. As it is I hope to have polished where needed by the end of Tuesday.

One might have expected me to be well wiped out on Friday, but actually I was no worse than usual. This tells me some very important things. One is that if I want to make my life more productive at this point in time I am probably best to forget about being active during the day and become a night owl, heading to work /after/ gaming or at 3 in the morning and overlapping with the others in the office in the morning instead of the afternoon. Because I don't actually want to sacrifice SAGA on an ongoing basis (even less pull out of my other gaming commitments).

Friday consisted of a series of party-preparation errands. I hastily exited bed at 11am as the portaloo truck backed up the driveway moments after I received a message telling me to expect it at midday then slowly worked through a series of clean/tidy away tasks before doing a supply run and collecting a Kate who had volunteered to come over and help - and help she did despite her strong personal (and demonstrably false) convictions about not being very useful ( :p ). TBH I would have been happy just with the company.

The party itself went without any major hitches or dramas (that came to my attention). Neither night was hugely attended by 48 standards but both reached substantial critical mass. A couple of overlapping social groups also had big weekend events out-of-town which saw several people unable to attend whom I would have looked forward to seeing, but I also got to meet and get-to-know-a-bit a new Person of Quality or two :)

Two loads of people delivered home at the end of Friday night and one load at the end of Saturday and Sunday; 3 people stayed the whole event.

I managed about 4 hours sleep Saturday morning and a little bit of a nap Saturday afternoon; 6 hours Sunday morning and then a 12+ hour catch up which isn't so different from the 10-14 hours which has become my usual; although there were a few more anxiety dreams than I would have liked.

As I lay awake this morning between 8am and 10am battling the /exact same/ not-wanting-to-deal-with-the-world as usual despite not actually having to deal with the world I had a moment of clarity to become more convinced that I need to adjust my routine to accommodate that; although I do wonder if changing the time I take my anti-depressant might also do the trick.

~~~
My mood fluctuated over the weekend along with things like tiredness, sunshine and the fact that both nights my digestive tract decided the combination of party stress and something I had eaten or drunk meant it was going to empty out /now/. Still better than stumbling around in a flu mask fighting a head cold like last year. With the exception of that issue I think I enjoyed the event as much as I could have reasonably expected to, Saturday night particularly (especially welcome given I had a mood plummet Saturday evening and for a while it seemed that things were just not-going-to-go-right).

My hopes of maybe not sleeping alone of course did not come to fruition. I did get a usual number of hugs over the weekend but noting more than friendly :(