For almost… Probably two decades as of this year, actually, I’ve been getting up at six in the morning for work. Or, you know, whatever counts as work. That’s when I needed to get up in high school in order to get there on time, regardless of how I was getting there. In college, I almost always had a class at eight in the morning and, for a couple years, had an opening shift at the tech support desk in the library. Even on the days my class schedule was different, I still got up at more or less the same time unless it was specifically a day off or that was at the end of the week and didn’t have an 8am class. After I graduated, it was just easier to keep that same schedule going. I kept it going without issue until the pandemic rolled around. 2020 killed my ability to easily get up at the same time every morning and turned me from an easy early-riser who was always in bed and asleep by midnight into the current cluster-fuck of a sleep schedule I’m unfortunately maintaining to this day. For a while there in 2020 and 2021, I was waking up at whatever time every other week since I was only working every-other-week at my job and struggled to maintain a consistent time on the weeks I had work. I eventually got that under control again, around the time I started having insomnia issues and needed to structure my sleep better, and maintained that until last year. Then, last year, thanks to all the pain I was and how it ruined my ability to sleep last fall, I started letting myself sleep in a bit more so I could make sure to always get at least four hours of sleep. While I would let myself move my alarm time as much as I felt I needed, the default time that I always returned to was six. Always. Now, though, after some more developments at work along the same frustrating lines as the last ones, I’m throwing decades of history aside and setting my alarm an hour earlier. I’ve already had one miserable morning up an hour earlier as of writing this and I’ll have another five at minimum by the time you read this, so hopefully I’ll know if it’s working by then.
Continue readingMorning
One Star Morning
This poem is from a month after last week’s. I had noticed a pattern evolving in my life–though it would take until September to notice it in my writing and poetry–that seems so obvious in retrospect. The general pain and stiffness caused by the medications I was taking had turned even the ordinary and simple activities of my life into tasks that now cost me more than they ever had. A cost that would continue going up. I wrote this poem shortly after the first time I realized that my old way of doing things wouldn’t work any more. I had to find a new way to manage myself, my emotions, and where I chose to spend my slowly dwindling energy.
Continue readingSaturday Morning Musing
I don’t have an Infrared Isolation chapter ready for today (Holidays, y’all), so I figured we might as well return to an old classic instead of just putting up a short post about skipping a week. Plus, I felt the need to stretch, metaphorically speaking, after some rest, and figured this would be as good a way as any.
Continue readingDark Mornings and Depression Coping Mechanisms
I’ve been struggling to stick to a schedule lately. Well, specifically to the timing part of it. I’ve still done all of my stuff every day, I just haven’t really been doing it on what I would call my preferred timetable. Which has had the unfortunate side-effect of really disrupting my sleep schedule, bedtime patterns, and mental well-being. It’s a complex issue since there are a few reasons for it, most of which are valid and difficult to argue with, and all of the problems I’ve encountered exist only in the practical application of this altered daily schedule rather than the on-paper version I’ve been trying to argue with this entire time. It has been going on for a month or more at this point and the roots of it can be traced back even further, but now I’ve taken the time I need to work through the actual problems and have arrived at a proposed solution that might just work for me.
Continue readingRecorded and Reposted: A Moment of Imperfection
The early dawn light,
Too strong and eager to ignore
Even under the cover of sleep
That calls to me like a languid lover
Not ready to release me
From my place by their side,
Breaks apart the restless peace
Of a night I hardly marked
As I tumble from my bed
In an admission of defeat
And slowly begin a sour morning
I had hoped would instead be sweet.
The Most Holy Rituals of a Morning
Gather your sacred chalice, full to the brim with the holy water of your particular faith, and prepare yourself for a review of the sacrosanct traditions that power modern life. We might all worship at different altars, we might all give praise in different ways, we might all observe our rituals at different times, and we might even argue over the proper preparation of the self, but we all participate in the glorious act known as the Morning Routine and I am here to share with you the most holy rituals of my day-to-day.
Continue readingA Moment of Imperfection
The early dawn light,
Too strong and eager to ignore
Even under the cover of sleep
That calls to me like a languid lover
Not ready to release me
From my place by their side,
Breaks apart the restless peace
Of a night I hardly marked
As I tumble from my bed
In an admission of defeat
And slowly begin a sour morning
I had hoped would instead be sweet.
An Essay About A Poem About Sun and Coffee
I’ve had this idea for a poem I want to write for months now. I want to capture the simple peace and joy of sipping coffee on my porch as early morning sunlight beams down on me. Since I have no deadlines and I want to savor the moment before I capture it, I’ve been waiting for my next chance to do that. Unfortunately, due to various complications, I haven’t actually had such a morning in a long while.
Continue readingSaturday Morning Musing
My absolute least-favorite part of the winter is driving anywhere further than around my town. Normally, driving places and making plans that give me extra time to meander from my starting point to my destination is my favorite thing to do that involves moving. In the winter, though, my favorite activity turns into a morass of idiotic drivers who forget how to drive every year couple with terrible weather conditions that make you curse every moron who thinks they can just drive over ice like it’s pavement. No matter how cautious you are, you always find that one incredibly slick spot of ice and wind up sliding toward the absolute worst part of the road, since it’s the only spot with a ditch while literally every other spot for miles is perfect level ground you could just drive away from. You’ve got a chance to make the right call and avoid it, but sometimes there’s an asshole right behind you who zips past the icy patch, no problem, and is passing you while you slide so you don’t really have a chance to avoid the ditch since you’ve got no space on the road anymore. As you sit in the ditch, watching for a tow, you try to appreciate the fact that at least he didn’t slide into the back of your car since he was way to close to you to stop in time.
Don’t even get me started on trying to drive somewhere for the holidays. Unless you’re actually driving on Christmas day, and only specifically between cities during non-peak driving hours, you’re not getting anywhere quickly. Forget trying to even do any local driving as the holidays approach because all the routes take you past shopping centers (because that’s just how traffic management works: it allows you to go near every important, high-traffic areas in what should be a rapid pace outside of rush-hour) since they’re going to be backed up despite the fact that online shopping is way better than trying to find what you want in a mall. While there are things you can’t always do online, such as supporting your local businesses, those are never the places that get crowded. It is always the shopping centers and malls because apparently everyone, their mother, their grandmother, and every single one of their cousins all have to go to the mall every day to see if the mall kiosks have finally turned into something interesting instead of another cell phone or knickknack/plastic jewelry stand.
Even if you do manage to avoid all the traffic and the peak-driving hours, there’s a good chance your carefully made plans will be completely ruined by the weather since it frequently decides to, out of nowhere, dump a metric ton of snow on your area when you took your eyes off the forecast for one day. Then you’re forced to try to escape before it falls or to wait until it’s over and be forced to drive at the same time as everyone else who decided it was a good idea to wait. No matter which choice you make, it winds up being the wrong one. It’s as true as the fact that buttered toast always falls butter-side down and that cats always land on their feet. An incontrovertible fact of nature. If you leave early, then it sneaks its way in front of you and falls right as you’re hitting the difficult part of your drive. If you leave late, then so does everyone else as your local population decided to be sensible for once and not all try to drive through the snow. Even if you try to outsmart the dichotomy by choosing to stay home instead of drive at all, you choice is still wrong because it suddenly decides that this one storm is the only time it won’t wind up snowing double the predicted amount. It’ll snow a light dusting of stuff that’s quickly swept away by wind or that melts under he suddenly clear sky as the temperatures never quite make it as long as they were predicted to.
One day, when quick, efficient, long-distance public transport is available, most of these problems will be solved. I can guarantee that I’d ride a bullet train if one existed between here and Chicago. I’d hop on that, ship all my gifts to my parent’s house instead of my place, ride down a day early, do my wrapping, and then head home whenever I wanted because there’d be trains every day but Christmas Day. It’d make things so much easier on me and everyone else who was moving between states or who didn’t want to deal with the hassle of driving through bad weather/roads full of morons being morons. Which are always worse than bad weather since they’re also available in “it’s snowing so I’m going to drive so close to you that you won’t be able to see my headlines” and “I’m going to continue to drive at ninety miles per hours despite the fact that I can’t see further than thirty feet ahead of myself at any given time” editions. Truly, they are the worst roadway companions. Especially because they seem to always have those horrible, bright LED or Halogen headlights that are focused up at the cars in front of them instead of down at the road for whatever dumb reason. Pretty much every awful thing other drives can do while traveling the same direction you are will be one of the moronic drivers who forgets how to drive in the winter. It’s so incredibly awful that I forgot how bad it is every year until I experience it again and am reminded of just how much I hate driving long distances during the winter.
There is no world in which the amount of stress you get from driving during winter is worth putting up with if you have literally any other options available to you aside from taking a bus. Which, let me tell you, is another can of worms entirely. A worse can of worms. Thought crowded roads were bad? Try riding a crowded bus down a crowded road while rubbing shoulders with someone who decided deodorant or basic hygiene was something other people did while dealing with people who feel like they have a right to comment on what book you’re reading or how you’re trying to survive the twelves hours of hell it takes to ride two hundred miles. You didn’t think you’d be able to get a direct bus, did you? All of those filled up last Christmas. Of course there’s still a seat available for you somewhere, but it always happens to be on the bus that their breaks down on the highway or that has to stop at two dozen cities or gas stations along the way to your destination, turning a three-hour drive into eleven and a half hours of sitting on seats that were worn out the day they were put in the bus. I used to ride buses from where I went to college back to Chicago for every holiday and, while I like riding the bus and appreciate the need for affordable travel from one place to another that doesn’t involve owning a car, I still hated every single bus ride while I was on it. Maybe if there were trains like any sensible society would have, the buses wouldn’t be so friggin’ awful all the time.
This year, instead of going to visit relatives for the holidays, spend your time and money on buying a new video game or seeing how many single dollar bills you need to burn in order to keep your apartment at a comfortable temperature. You’ll probably enjoy the latter more since at least you’ll be able to sleep in your own bed.
Actually, better yet, buy a house and then make your entire family come visit you for the holidays. Then you can enjoy being around your family but not have to deal with driving during the holidays. Or invent teleportation devices. Really, the only problem is driving. If you can find another good method for spending the holidays with your family, I’d recommend going with that option.
Saturday Morning Musing
When this eventually posts, I’ll have been awake for five hours and working for at least three. Not because I have to, but because I’m a team player and mostly looking for something to for a bit of overtime that doesn’t require staying late during the week. Actually, it’s mostly the latter, though I’ll admit I do feel a little compelled to help out because the work needs doing.
The team I work for, “The Misfits” as we aptly call ourselves, given that we create stage machinery for use in theaters while working for what is ostensibly a theater lighting company, are in the middle of moving to a new location at our facility. It’s an entirely new section of the building meant to house all of Research and Development. Plus Marketing, it seems, which was a weird last-minute addition I think happened because they wanted to work in the cool new building. That’s an understandable sentiment, really, and it should be fine since this new building is a part of my company’s plans for growth. You can’t hire more people if you’ve got nowhere for them to work!
I’ve been with this company, and a part of this team, for almost two years now. I love the people I work with, I love the job I’m doing, and this company feels like home in a way my previous one never could have. I still struggle with impostor syndrome sometimes, mostly when I’m doing something like pushing a new process I’ve developed or trying to solve a problem that isn’t my responsibility, but that’s growing less over time as my coworkers and my manager support me. Which is probably the biggest change from my last job to this one. If I see a problem that needs fixing and actually do the work to figure out how best to fix it, people here see that and do their best to support my efforts rather than try to tear me down or get me to believe that everything is fine the way it is despite constantly complaining about things (which is literally what happened at my previous job). Even if doing all the work and trying to be the extrovert needed to push whatever changes are needed leaves me exhausted and unable to move from my couch to my kitchen at the end of the day, I know it’s worth it. Knowing I’ll be able to go in the next day and see everyone pulling with me rather than pushing against me (okay, maybe not EVERYONE, but most people) makes it worth it.
I don’t exactly wake up in the morning and feel excited to go to work, but I don’t dread it. Personally, I prefer it this way. Being that excited about something sounds exhausting and draining. I’ve got enough going on these days without spending all my energy on being excited about going in to work. I like what I do, the company I work for, and the people I work with, but genuine excitement is a rare thing for me. I spend a lot of energy trying to stay calm and relaxed as part of dealing with my anxiety and OCD, so I then to be enthusiastic without being excited. More of an enduring constant application of personal resources than a quick expenditure of emotional energy.
It’s a nice change, from two years ago. My life isn’t perfect and neither is this job, but it’s a good deal better than it used to be and I often find myself in need of a reminder. Not because I think it’s worse or because I’m miserable about something, but because it’s important to keep in mind how much things have changed over the years and how that change has tended toward being a positive change rather than a negative one. As I struggle to deal with all the curveballs life is throwing me lately, I need to keep myself focused on the arc of my life because it’s difficult to remember during times like these that the general trajectory is upward. It hasn’t always been, but it is right now.
It’s not something that snaps me out of my depressive episodes, but it’s something that makes it a little easier to rest at night or to release the tension I’m holding in my shoulders. I don’t think there’s any way to snap myself out of this one I’m in right now since it’s probably the first legitimate externally-sourced period of sadness I’ve experienced in a long time and it’s a time-oriented thing. It’s not going to go away for a while. It’s something I’ll need to learn to live with and part of that is contextualizing it. Finding where it fits in the landscape of my life. It’s going to take a while, but enough reflection and contemplation will get me there eventually. All that remains at this point is to make the time for them and that’s going to be difficult since I’m shorter on time than ever before.
Sorry if today’s post is a bit of a downer, but yesterday’s poem should make it clear that I got some back news just recently and I’m still trying to deal with it. I hope your month is going well and I hope you’re having a good day.