Friday, April 20, 2012

Apparently, shaking my fist in anger was a good thing

Who knew?
Today has been one of those days where things that could have gone wrong, have gone very well instead.

 Installation guy came late.....which was ok because I had forgotten he was coming at all until he called which gave me a chance to get dressed.  He gave me a $25 gift card for being late.  Then he ended up taking twice as long as anticipated doing the work and gave me another $25 gift card. Which I am going to donate to our awards ceremony at my office....not out of altruistic reasons, but because it gives me a HUGE amount of breathing room.   Also, his lateness meant that I got to work some extra hours on job 3 while I was waiting, and now I have made up the 1.5 hours I was bitching about yesterday.

Had Yoga Teacher Training last night and found out that everyone has been dealing with strange emotional craziness.....so I can chalk some things up to mass hysteria.  Thank you universe.

Also had a meeting on some grant stuff at work which was very enlightening and new changes that we need to make at work are not as scary as they sounded earlier in the week.  Plus, a grant payment check arrived today and anyday where I can deposit money for the office means less stressing about the books later.

September doesn't feel so far away today, which means that the HBM withdrawal is subsiding.  And the feelings of general twitterpation have returned.

So yeah.....apparently shaking my fist, a grumpy face, and a foot stamp was enough to set the world straight....who knew?

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Time, I shake my fist in your general direction....

I also shake my fist in the general direction of any physicist or astrophysicist alive or dead who has worked on time in any academic capacity.....as well as whoever wrote the ridiculously long and horrifically vague definition of time in my Webster's New World Dictionary.

Cause, I gotta say....the fact that time can be abstract and concrete at the same "period or interval" is damned annoying. Last week felt like a month ago, this week has already left, and today definitely does not feel like a Thursday.....and of course, we all know that Thursdays are my arch-nemesis anyway, so this only deepened the problems and issues that I have relating to time or "a period characterized by a prevailing condition".

As, of course, time can be defined as "a period or occasion with reference to one's personal reaction to it", I am not having what can be termed as a good one. I can't say that it is one thing or a bunch of little things compounding, or just that I am really in need of some sort of lifestyle change....or that something has got to change. Because as I am writing this I am realizing that even my perception of all the craziness going on inside my head right now is just as abstract and concrete as time or "a period of history, characterized by a given social structure, set of customs, etc."

Libby told me the other day that I need to decide what I need to start giving up. I've managed to narrow down at least one option, but ultimately it won't make a big enough impact in the long term. I would love to work less, but then I would need to earn more....which oddly enough means that you have to work really really hard for a while to get that payoff. A couple of weeks ago I had the possibility of a raise and new job one hour and then the next had to be satisfied with applying and interviewing for the same job. I interview next Monday for it, but there has been several moments where I just wanted to pull out my resume and say to hell with it all. Then of course, there is the just general craziness of April at my office and I'm in the middle of planning two events which I will somehow pull off. I have volunteer stuff that I want to do, study groups that I want to attend, and stacks of books that I carry around the house with me because in some deluded way I am hoping that I can absorb their contents by osmosis. In any event, once I am done working on the average day, the last thing that my brain can process is one more written word.

Also to add to this list, because pretending that it isn't there would be an untruth, there is this thing that I have going on with a guy. I'm still trying to think of a good nickname for him here, and I've been playing around with some acronyms that have something to do with the epic-ness of his beard. For the moment, we will use HBM. Anyway, time (or a period of existence) with HBM has been odd. It took us forever to realize that one liked the other, then we had a bunch of awkward but refreshingly honest conversations.... in any case, he's now out of town on a job for a few months, so whatever we had going on has been put on hold until he gets back. He's been gone for 9 days now...and I am still listening to sappy songs that remind me of him and (alas!) tearing up over it. It's fricking crazy.....I'm total silly stupid girl for something that hasn't progressed past a quick peck on the lips. He won't be back until September, and there is no way in hell that I can survive being how I am now for that long....I would be a babbling nervous wreck and in no way desirable to anyone or anything.....or am I already at that point and in so acknowledging that, makes any of this that much more futile?

In order to get my head straight I did write down a list of things that will be happening in the next coming months that I should be focusing on. Which has helped some.....until I look at my to-do list and realize that I haven't sent that email, or that the billing hasn't been completed on that grant, and dear god, I slept in this morning instead of getting up to work and now I am down another 1.5 hours on Job 3. Ugh.

So yeah, time, I shake my fist in your general direction....plus I am going to add a grumpy face AND a foot stamp....cause that is just how mad I am at you right now.

What I really want to do is to go outside and sit in the sun and do nothing.....and think about nothing.....and worry about nothing..... and do that more a really long "period of duration set or thought of as set".