This is a thread about nothing, a place for observations brought on by nothing at all, just random ideas and where they've led. Mine: Being home for the day, I had the TV on just for background noise. Having ADHD I've learned to focus by blocking out distractions on multiple levels. Keeping my brain occupied silences the chaos, weird, yes, but it works. Today, however, a program actually caught my attention. It followed the rise and fall of writer J.T. Leroy. A pen name that became an entity. It made me realize that I'm happy with my mundane world. It's small, quiet, and clean. There is no glitz nor glamour, or mad, bright happenings. There are no ghosts or dangers or great tragedies unfolding. I have no material for a memoir and that's just fine. I'll stick with my fiction and faery tales. I need to quit prattling and go start my laundry...
Tired. I keep bumping into thinks like a blind man, got a lovely gash on my middle finger. I think I have cabin fever. CABIN FEVER HAS RAVAGED ALL ABOARD! THIS ONCE PROUD VESSEL HAS BECOME A FLOATING PSYCHO WARD! WE WERE SAILING! SAILING! SAILING FAR AND WIDE, AND NOW THAT WE'RE ALL HEEEEERE... WE'RE NOT ALL THERE!! Wow, it's been a while since I've seen Muppet Treasure Island. Also, it's the Ides of March, which means I must honor Julius Caesar by watching a film adaptation of the Shakespeare play.
Haven't been to the gym in three days due to pure unmitigated laziness. Now I have lost BBC 2 and 4 (unavailable in NZ) I have very little interest in the TV and thought that I would be down the gym all the time, but I have just found other ways to procrastinate. I'll force myself down there tonight, then I'll happily go tomorrow, then the next day until all my muscle groups are too exhausted to work on, then a rest day will escalate into three more evenings of just sitting on my arse doing nothing. I don't even get much reading or writing done during this time, I just stare blankly at the screen. I seem to go from one extreme of hyperactivity to lethargy, and the evenings of lethargy are really quite unproductive.
I had a huge project a week and a half ago that, a few days after receiving it, I was called by the legal assistant to find out how it was coming along. I was a little taken aback because when they tell you "there's time, no rush" this generally means no more than 30 days, but not in just a few days. The case is just starting. That's the general swing of things. When I tell her that I have only just finished another project to turn in to one of her coworkers, she explains that the 210 page project needs to by in by Friday (It's Tuesday at this point) because the defense needs a chance to see it too. I already have the PO number and she hears the hesitation in my voice and the concern and she begs me to keep it because no one else will take it because some of the pages are hard to read and most of them are forms. "You're the forms king, Ray! If not you, who else?" I buckle down and enter slave mode and plow through it. I turn it in. I get it back with many corrections to be made. And the corrections are needed by COB and it's 4:30 pm. I fix everything I can find with my withered, dried, raisin eyes and haggard fingers and turn the corrected copy in. I get it back again today with more corrections. This time it's the ADA who contacts me directly. She asks me to "get my team on it". I sheepishly answer into the phone, "I'm a one man team." There's a pause. I can hear the eyes rolling on the other side of the phone line. I just turned it back in now. I'm angry at having let myself take a job I shouldn't have taken. I'm ashamed at there having been so many correction that needed doing. I'm tasting what it feels like to break my cardinal rule: Es mejor decir que no, que quedarse uno mal. (Better to say no than screw it up) I broke that rule. It's my own fault. I lay no blame anywhere but upon myself. But, that's the evening I just finished having.
I wonder if when a walrus accidentally plucks a whisker, if it hurts as much as a plucked nose hair in a human.
I'd had a bad day, missed the train in the morning, computer was offline half the day, evening train was late and crowded. Get home and moan about it. My daughter chimed in. "I consider I've had a good day if none of my patients has killed themselves or somebody else."
