2003-11-18 - 2:38 a.m.

Unwise Things I Ought Not to Have Done

Someday I will make an entry called "Unwise Things I Ought Not to Have Done Today", in which I will perform one of my usual stunning reversals of the interpretation of the title of the entry and describe why in the long run it was actually a good idea for me to have done everything I did today, but for now I will simply state that I did a lot of unwise things today in the interests of watering and nurturing my continued interest in Things and Being, and that those unwise things are only unwise in the most immediate and temporally limited sense of the word.

Another girl I love has left for California, and part of the reason I am doing these unwise things so enthusiastically is that it feels so very much like the Director's Cut of last time -- more material, and done right.

In a Diaryland 2:45AM Work Tomorrow Morning nutshell, she came here from Cali and she was great and I was great but we were not good. For once in my experience with relationships, we were both adult enough to talk it over, examine the situation, come to a conclusion, and act based on the conclusion with a minimum of melodrama, thus preserving the core respect and friendship.

Not that it didn't hurt, because the preceding paragraph sounds very in-control and adult. She called me to let me know that she'd arrived safely at the halfway point on her road trip and after the thirty second phone call that ended because our voices were both choking up, I sat on the kitchen floor and tried to press my eyebrows into my forehead with my fingertips.

There's a balance to be found in grieving, and mine is somewhere off and away from the actual grieving -- I continue, and that's about it. The continuation of sitting on the kitchen floor was that I got hold of myself, planed everything down to a controlled state, threw away the shavings, did laundry, swept the floor, and took out the trash. There were resurgences, but I've decided that they are for the moment more an enemy than any sort of help -- and hell, it's a challenge like no other I have at this point to keep myself in check where this is concerned.

Last time someone I genuinely loved left, I had plenty of time to myself and worked thirty-five hours a week as a grunt backroom employee. This time I worked seventeen hours on the day after Zero Hour.

While I would never have jumped at the opportunity to have that shift following that day, it helped immeasureably. Staying indoors and in a couple of rooms all day on my days off makes it difficult to keep perspective on things like that there is life out there somewhere -- and external things of that nature tend to quickly become internalized and problematic and gangrenous.

It's been a couple of days now, and whether it's the sleep deprivation, the mental exhaustion, the emotional overexertion, or the total lack of anything resembling interesting events in my life .. I feel better.

I have a better handle on life now than I did last time the person I wanted to make into Everything left. A better handle on life, and better friends, even if they are only present at the moment on AIM. I will not go to pieces this time, and I will not let the people around me down. Not that anyone's exactly depending on me at the moment, but it's nice to be prepared, seh?

Tomorrow I will go to work and most likely go home early. I will see if my assistant managers feel like covering some of my shifts in the coming week because now that I have something to do online that has actually sparked my interest to some extent I do not feel that all my time at home is nothing but sitting still -- it's sitting still and LEVELING, folks. Leveling.

Tomorrow I will also probably be walking into walls and feeling like my lungs have been run through an egg-beater by a particularly disgruntled postal employee, if the symptoms of the employees of mine who've been going through this particular bug are any indication.

Praise God and pass the ephedrine -- where there are painkilling stimulants and the presence of mind to drink plenty of water and keep well supplied with all vital nutrients .. there's a way to complete one's shift. I've never called in sick and I hope to keep that record as long as possible.

At any rate, I am now down to five hours of sleep before my shift and my brain is still humming like a live wire so if I'm going to get it to shut up in time to avoid seriously screwed-up dreams it's time to make my escape and try like hell to remember that it's what I do, not what I want, that counts when it's all been done.

Toodles,

Mid

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