Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down

High anxiety today. I was grinding my teeth last night and was not feeling well this morning. I got work going because that was at the top of my list but it was difficult to concentrate against the noise of my brain. I did get Dog fed and out before 11 but didn’t accomplish my noon meeting. I’ve had a lunch plan since last night but could not make it happen before I left for work at 2.

Spent a long time on the bus, my first time going to the new office. In many ways it’s nice to be downtown but the extra bus time isn’t one of them – I liked the version where I could sort of neglect the actually travel time of the bus once I was on it. The hill between 3rd and 5th also felt oppressive today when I was running late, but probably will be fine on days when I’m less stressed.

Got a message from Alex. She likes the glasses quite a bit. Which I expected – I can often do good gifts even with limited information. That acknowledgment from her is a significant portion of the communication we’ve had in the past 20 years. It will continue to be for some time because she continues to not be safe. To not protect me from my abusers. To not be willing to talk about how we were part of each other’s abuse. And so the barrier is still very high, and I still want it to be very high until and unless safety improves. But maybe we could throw name day gifts over the wall.

Worked until 4, when I had planned to get supper and get to the gym. Instead I got pulled into a new meeting until 5. Between the office and home I did get a bunch done – all 3 deadline release processes, which should keep me clear of similar work until next week, and 3 of my SRs. Still lots of SRs but less, and less old ones too.

Headed to the gym when I finally could, though I didn’t have time to grab supper. Caught E on your way out, and you were good enough to stay a few more minutes and let me rant at you. I’m never quite sure what you get out of that but I’m glad you let me do it.

When I left I tried to grab a sandwich at the Queen Anne Subway (which was already a let down from my plans for downtown takeout) only to find it’s closed. Though about groceries from the nearby Safeway but decided to grab the last 19 and hit the Subway in MV because the next 24 was almost 40 minutes out and I didn’t want to make any more decisions about food or anything else. So I rode over there, got a meatball sub (but didn’t eat it), and took a car the rest of the way home.

Got one line from M. I could always do with more but it doe stamp down my worry for a while, and I know there are many things today that are higher priority than me. Shouted back about my fears for a minute, and tried to imagine a week where stress keep pointed down even as new challenges arrive.

I arrived just a few minutes before C showed up. I had to leave him alone for a while to take Dog out for some exercise. Not enough – only 15 minutes – but sort of all I could take by that point and with C waiting in my living room. Dog was pretty good though; he fights coming home sometimes if he’s not done yet but mostly he came along. And only whined a medium amount once we got back inside.

Spent the next several hours helping C with programming and robot homework. I can’t seem to communicate to them how grouping symbols work, either in specific instances or in general. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s a lack of symbolic math experience? I’m not sure what their background is. In any case that went on until after 10. Until after Shanda was home and took Dog out again.

Took an hour or so with Shanda. Watched an epsidoe of Veep where Amy had a great great dress. There was some solid birth certificate work in this one, and a payoff to some lazy speech patterns they’ve been using all season. I like how that show lets me engage with narcissism in a way that feels totally safe. Things like House of Cards can move me more, but this one never leaves me in a punishing mood.

And then back to work. I set out to ask a question about another SR but ended up resolving it myself. It took longer than I wanted but I’m also relieved to have it be done. Now I’m down to 4 SRs, 2 if which I know how to resolve without much more research – just paperwork.

Aftet that I advanced the plot with my Cleveland landlord, and paid bills and tried to fix my kitchen light. The first one of those went better than the last two, but I did make progress on all three. I might make the light conversion tomorrow’s project. I’m less sure what to do about bills, particularly since I still need some money for taxes, but in a couple of weeks I should be able to sell some RSUs and in the mean time I’ll try not to worry about it.

So I was busy today, as I feared. And it was hard for both mood and practical reasons to not be fairly seperate for most of it. That’s a thing that’s been happening a good deal for days now and I need it to stop. We’ll see if I can make progress on that tomorrow.

I felt bad about not being able to get going this morning. I thought about how I definitely can make myself do things even when I am anxious or tired or whatever. About how I would have in the past and am choosing to “give in” to it now. About how some of you would make that choice, to soldier on in spite of yourself. There was some avoidance this morning, and I’d like to not do that again. But I’m trying to feel like using my brain space for myself this morning helped me do all the things I got done. Helped me feel well enough to accomplish things later. Helped me avoid pushing myself until I burned out halfway through, or until I lost even more focus and had to work twice as long, or until my body gave out and made work even harder.

I don’t actually feel that way yet. I mostly still feel like somehow the day would have been better if my 9 hours without food or a break were 12 hours instead. Like that somehow would have resulted in more productivity instead of less. Like maybe I could have done 5 SRs instead of 4. Maybe 6 if I started right at 9. Then I’d really be set for my one day off. Then I’d be properly engaged both in avoidance of the things I am still most worried about and productive distraction doing the 2nd or 3rd most important thing in my life.

Perhaps what I need is just to spend less time in the high anxiety state that puts me here. Some of it feels hard to prevent since schedule and day job both have external requirements. But I’ve been shouting about it here for days, I just never got any useful help with it. Not from myself or anyone else. Rather than feeling bad about a couple of days avoidance hitting a schedule restriction I could imagine that I want help not having that avoidance for days. Rather than feeling bad for taking a couple hours this morning I could imagine that made my day tolerable instead of overwhelming.

I’m still not back on track for feels in here ¹I did get to make a reference to an episode title from a series that aired when some of your were under 5 as a joke about day-in-the-life narrative in the context of storytelling that usually follows a border plot. It’s a pun too, and itself a reference to the US release of a 1989 Spanish film. I’m sure the joke will earn me many … Continue reading yet. It doesn’t help that reactions have been muted for the past few days.

Perhaps tomorrow.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.