I Am Large, I Contain Multitudes

I came home one night (a Thursday) a few weeks ago and promptly had a meltdown over the fact that I constantly feel like I'm too tired to do anything useful. That is, I only have one or two half-hour scraps of baby-free time in a day (at least on weekdays), and even though there are surely small pending tasks I could fruitfully accomplish in that half-hour, all I want to do is sit down and stare at the ceiling. Same on weekends during baby naptime: I think all morning about the things I want to work on when she goes down, and then once it happens, all I do is sit and veg.

( thinky )

Oh, and, technically I am taking a vacation next week, except that the occasion is a weeklong visit from my mom, so it's not exactly downtime even though it will be fun times! Hopefully some extra downtime for Etrace though, if he can chill at home while we take Aria and go run around/pay social calls.

It struck me last night that one of my problems these days with doing any writing (including posting to LJ), or art, or even the freelance (book production) job I've committed to doing, is that I work fairly intensely on the computer all day... so that when I get home, the LAST thing I want to do is sit back down at the computer. Or at least, I can sit there, but all I end up doing is dicking around on the Internets, because I am tired. And all my creative modalities rely heavily on the computer as a tool. (Just like my day job, with its fairly heavy creative component, does.)

The other half of that dynamic is that, although I get up in time to allow for about an hour of computer time in the morning (i.e., right now), that is historically the time I have allotted to dicking around on the Internets. By which term I mean "catch up on everyone's lives on LJ and Facebook and follow a bunch of the fascinating links you people have posted," "answer some emails", and occasionally "get through any banking/financial stuff that needs doing".

Moving that taskspace to the evening slot, when I am more in consumption mode, might free up my creative energy in the morning (and, unlike some, I am enough of a morning person that "getting my brain to wake up" is not the problem; once I'm up, I'm up). The problem is that if I don't clear those particular decks in the morning, it becomes too easy/tempting to dabble in it DURING the workday, which is Not OK. (I've already turned on Chrome Nanny to keep me from accessing Facebook and LJ during most hours of the workday. Unrelatedly, I also have a separate Facebook account that I now use -- in a separate browser -- for work purposes, which, as the in-house Professional Facebook User, I really, truly do have.)

It does occur to me though that walking home from work and cooking dinner (the actual process, not just the nuking of leftovers) are likely to be a more refreshing/relaxing combination than going out to dinner (a frequent post-work social outlet) and taking the train home. Maybe I can work on planning in more of that for this summer. -- That is, when I'm not away on trips or busy running around at auditions/rehearsals, which haven't been much of an issue lately, but are about to ramp up, possibly covering over half of June at this point. Huh.

P.S., speaking of creative work: gilana, you know about this, right? Deadline of Thursday, June 7!
http://www.jewishboston.com/17793-area-events/blogs/3603-project-bread-the-walk-for-hunger-2012-holiday-cards-contest

Some friends of Tiger Boy's have a regular games night. I went with him one night several weeks ago, and what we played when I got there was Frank's Zoo.

I'd never heard of it. "It's fun," they said. "It's a trick-taking game." Crap, I thought. Well, I ought to at least be a good sport and try it.

What I knew from before was that I cannot play trick-taking games. Not just "suck at," although I do, but literally "cannot play" -- because they stress me out enough that it simply is no longer playing.

What was interesting to notice on this particular occasion was that it stressed me out in essentially the same ways that my job had been stressing me out. Strategizing. Prioritizing. Being supposed to keep track of a dozen factors, their relative weights, and -- oh yeah -- when not to play the thing that looks obvious because it might be better used down the road, if I could think far enough ahead (and understand enough of the relevant factors) to predict what that would be. Or then again, not. Duh.

Add this to the cold I was acutely fighting off, and the general run-down exhausted feeling I'd had for a couple of weeks, and... it really pushed my buttons. It was totally fascinating to observe (in a third-party kind of way) myself approaching the verge of a nervous breakdown. I had to get up from the table for a few minutes to escape to the bathroom and try to collect myself.

I just now took the "Are You Burned Out?" quiz du jour, putting in the answers from the past several weeks, and I got 68%. "You are very burned out. You need a huge break from your responsibilities, starting as soon as possible. And you need this time to reevaluate what you really want out of your life. Because you're working hard and going no where... and that would burn anyone out!"

Luckily, I figured that out in the interim -- and have taken the appropriate steps.

Yesterday was my first official day of full-time self-employment. Today, I had a massage in the morning (yay!) and a really energizing screening interview with PSG in the afternoon.

Tonight, there's another games night.
I think I'm ready. :-D