Marsden is Here

Four weeks is up and well, it hasn't ended on a high note. But most of the time I have spent feeling relaxed and just doing things at an OK pace - although a look back at FB for a record of my activity over the past couple of weeks suggests that may in part be a retrospective illusion. I feel simultaneously much more and much less prepared/ready/willing to be back at work tomorrow, but I'm sure I will re-adjust quickly. This year pretty much everything is set for building the future rather than paying off the past.

I'm really writing this to set down the positives and achievements of the past four weeks. Of note I spent a lot less time feeling uninvited and unwanted than usual, although I did also find a "new" computer game to bury myself in for some of that time.

The one event I did host myself, a gaming day collecting goods to donate to BirthRight didn't fire as well as I had hoped, but there were still over a dozen people attended and we got a banana box full of donations which were gratefully received.

The major Xmas/New Year break tasks got completed (in no particular order)
- cleaning the kitchen (paid someone to do the bulk of it)
- weeding the gardens and massively pruning the hedges (again some of this I paid someone else to do, and my parents helped)
- reducing my backlog of technical and gaming articles to read (RSS and email subscriptions) to practically zero (with a determined push this last week)
- archiving last years emails (and changing(ish) email programs from the Opera browser/combo to the dedicated Opera mail)
- wrapping up the last 12 months accounting and moving away from my spreadsheet system of the past decade
- clearing one of my dead-tree to-read piles.

I am mostly caught up on my gaming logs, kind-of-helped by several sessions not reaching critical mass over the break. I have completed preparations for the next campaign I will be running and this is in fact the only thing in which I feel ahead of the ball rather than just up to date. Less helpfully (for the moment) ideas for another two future campaigns have also coalesced, but they can sit on the shelf for a while.

I did not spend anywhere near as much time at the Hall as I thought I might have; I have mixed feelings about this. On the whole though it doesn't bother me; we've had a pleasant lull in both enquiries and intrusions over the holiday period this year and there is no /more/ work that needs doing down there now than there was at the beginning of the period.

On the flip side one thing that bothers/disappoints me is the amount of time I spent sleeping (or napping) especially during the days; and the amount my dreams suggest I /really/ don't need this much sleep. I had planned to develop an exercise habit instead but only managed a couple of walks around the block. (Cleaning and gardening exhausts notwithstanding). I hope it is just a depression-equivalent of the way over tense muscles sometimes have to twist all the way back and out of shape in the other direction before relaxing into their normal healthy place. With few other commitments / pleasant distractions I have greatly allowed my brain (or whatever) it's way over this.

Coming full circle to the beginning of the post today is the one day I had made absolutely no plans for expecting it to be a low-impact and pleasant spacer before the return to work. It has indeed been impacted by lows - the lows of loneliness and boredom and frustration/irritation at having to cope with multiple weather-induced false alarms at the Hall and related insignificant trivia. The weather has been meltingly hot which hasn't helped - but wouldn't have been a factor had I managed to find something better to take my mind off "if only"s and "what if"s than sprawled in bed reading or trying to doze away the blues but repeatedly roused/interrupted by alarm notifications.

I hope the work year starts in a better fashion.

That life has eased up enough that my system is trying to let out and work through the bottled up stuff. But it still hurts and it feels like a) there will be no end and b) were I to give in to the urge to just open up and let it all flood out I would be literally torn open.

So this led to me spending the last 3-4 hours stuck in bed being dragged around the dark playground by the instant gratification monkey thinking about the things I want and need to get done over the next couple of days and weeks instead of actually getting up and getting started. I could have completed several in that time.

So that I can start crossing things off: my to do list for the next little while

Today (preferably) or tomorrow

Laundry
Dishes
Lawns
Clean bathroom (the room - ceiling, walls, bath)
Photo gallery from last nights party
Initiate contact with solar installers 2 & 3 about getting quotes (ended up being 4 or 5)
Start coding self-contained webpage (ie all calculation powered by javascript) for generating quick-start character sheets for a D&D 3.5 game
Complete writing up Dragon Country scenario
Finish reading EPH

Tomorrow (preferably) or Monday

Spend a few hours at the Hall spraying weeds and putting window covers back up
Photo gallery from tonights party
Write up the last two sessions of the (now) Wednesday game (On The Road)
Grocery shopping
Continue coding

Next weekend (so far)

Photos from next Fridays party (here)
Complete coding (leaving a week to generate materials before Minicon III: 48 hours of Charity)
Review and rewrite Kobold Keep mini-campaign
Spend a few hours at the Hall spraying weeds and putting window covers back up

Dreams (the night-time variety) .. one can leave you feeling relaxed and happy, the next can turn around and leave you shattered and broken. If they'd happened in the other order I'd feel better.

It is probably the after effects of a week of widely fluctuating emotions in response to a series of events - from nigh exhilarating highs to gutting comedowns. Also a week where I pushed myself somewhat at work and while I am happy with the time spent and with the quality of my code I still did not complete the results I was aiming for, at the cost of tiring myself out.

So today I feel broken and hurt and alone, and have a bad case of the "don't wanna's" which means I only* managed to drag myself out of bed because I have commitments to meet this afternoon - this will get done as will probably some other things which sort of /need/ doing but the things I had planned to do today are probably dead in the water.

* Also because lying in bed moping wasn't going to increase the chances of someone turning up on my doorstep to "distract and comfort"** me - but then neither is dumping and angsting in my journal.

** totally a euphemism

It was a good week really, I was out of bed early repeatedly hopefully laying some firm bricks, took a heap of electronics away to the recycling, had my busted DVD/VCR player looked at and confirmed not worth repairing :(, put in a high number of hours at work, and the gang got back together for roleplaying on Thursday. But it left me feeling somewhat drained, especially the work hours.

Things just sort of fell apart a bit over the weekend - Saturday was OK given I had stayed up really late Friday and not slept well. But today I got bad news - one from the Hall leaving me feeling helpless and "could have been prevented if only other people..." and one from work which I spent the late afternoon / early evening fixing (at no charge, because it was my cock up a month ago which caused it. not -entirely- my fault - someone else had done something foolish first meaning certain information wasn't available - but *I* could have been more careful about making backups ...).

An d now I'm feeling pretty damn flat again. Soon I will have an early night and hope for a good night's sleep and a fresh start in the morning.

My decreasingly frequent regular counsellors appointment is tomorrow and if I don't want to spend $$ on another session which wraps up early because there is nothing to talk about I better come up with something. I am certainly less perky than I was this time two months ago, and my sleep is definitely worse; lots of dreams more negative than positive. My getting-out-of-bed has gone from consistently 8ish to fluctuating between 6am (on a really good day) and 10am or later (again) despite my awake-and-alert time stabilising around 6. Two weeks ago was a definite high but it also felt like riding a bike where the wheels might come off at any moment.

Since then I have been feeling the low - not a real low low but dragging. My calendar has been *very* full (eased off a bit now but here comes BoD!) and I really just want a few days to "myself" to recharge. [Pause to txt mother having *just* remembered it is her birthday. This is an indication of how my concentration and memory and focus have been flakey again recently.] I would actually take time off work but I haven't felt the hours I've been putting in there are quite satisfactory and I know we're overloaded - I'm been pulled back onto external work. Once the queue shortens a bit (i'm on it, it will) I might seriously consider using up a weeks leave.

I know the low is because I took on more than I ought have - but it never looks like that much. And it all fits in the calendar - it just doesn't leave any space in between. I'm getting better, honest.

But this is all old, well turned over ground. Nothing here is going to lead to any sort of epiphany or issue resolution. And I'm really just (have the energy to) ignoring a lot of the issues which I originally hoped would be resolved with a counsellors help. All the pain is still there it's just easier to bear; easier to be distracted now I have the energy to keep busy; as long as I don't go digging into those places.

And I don't *want* to go digging; I don't think it will help any more. But I might just be afraid of the pain.

.. or this feeling wouldn't hurt.

The pit is pretty shallow at the moment, yet I still find myself wallowing. Not productive. Not helpful.

Today was supposed to be a day to just chill, enjoy a day off and do some chores. Instead I was woken before 6am (after < 3 hours sleep) with the news that the Hall had been attacked overnight, which completely torpedoed the good mood I still had after an unfulfilling but pretty good party. I spent the rest of the day in a cycle of nap (holding my pillow tight), feel sorry for myself, get some chores done (eating was included in chores today), nap, feel sorry for myself, get some chores done ... and there are outstanding Hall emails I have just not managed to summon the spoons to do.

My brain did not help by filling my nap-dreams with things I crave but are unattainable. I am hoping for an uninterrupted night of sleep to put me back on some sort of even keel for tomorrow. Anything better is just a dream.

A month or so ago I jotted in my tumblr

Questions of myself
What are you trying to do?
Prove Worthy
Worthy of what?
Not of what, of whom.

( once upon a time )

Ugh. Finally out of bed after a night filled with dreams about loss, anger and frustration. There were only a couple of bright spots - one where someone I liked from my old work showed up as a new employee at current work, and one near the beginning of the last dream which was about #AHChch being gradually overrun by people - at first just a few friends deciding on an impromptu working bee (although it was later on a Friday and the light was fast vanishing) which was great, then more friends and acquaintances either joining in or turning up to have a look around (which was fine except when some of them started ignoring the danger signs and going into the manager's residence), and then lots of random people all with no oversight whatsoever which would be fine under some conditions but definitely wasn't under these ones.

So there I was trying to track down and shoo people out of the managers' residence which
- was fairly dark inside and no less damaged
- someone (not us) had spent time booby trapping; in obvious ways and easily avoided by my superior knowledge of the place inside and a noticed-but-not-encountered ankle-biting spiked wooden palisade around the patio gardens (not actually a bad idea)
- had developed a lot more rooms including facilities for a bar/night club overlooking a large indoor swimming pool (wouldn't that be nice), a lot more open doors onto the main building (also larger)
- was quivering as if a shake was incoming.

And eventually woke up with the whole situation unresolved, then lay in bed feeling mopey for another couple of hours.

By this time of the year hope is something I have in very short supply.

I don't usually make these requests, but just this once.

If I've ever been an inspiration to you please comment and tell me how. I'm posting this in my journal/s so you can comment anonymously there if you prefer.

(Maybe also the right place to post if you *haven't* attempted something because you didn't feel you could match what you believed I could do - so I know if I need to work on that.)

(I was going to post this after the negativity dump / rant post I'm working on but that's turning out ... longer than expected.)


[There's no way this could go horribly wrong]