More than exhausted than usual after work today, so I brewed a small cup of coffee as an afterburner. Fifteen minutes later, feelin’ good, I decided to brew another.
For those not keeping up in the ‘Fuck Today’ thread, I’m currently going through a transient period of insomnia. Okay, I hope it’s transient. Also, I almost never consume caffeine after 2pm.
A half-liter of Aeropressed coffee. At 4pm. I am an idiot. Not usually–pretty sure, anyway–but definitely today. If I lose much more sleep tonight, I’ll probably be at least half an idiot tomorrow, too.
When I had to start going into an office I actually started taking sick days cause of some nights I was just up for too long starting at 3am and was in no condition to drive into work even after coffee.
It wasn’t so bad when my commute was be awake and online by 8am and I could still be in my jammies till break time.
I miswrote one digit, despite copying from the Visa card, on my mailed payment for a medical bill. It came back as invalid.
Also the same day, I was momentarily wowed by a rapid response from cartoonist Arnold Roth to a fan letter I wrote, until I learned it was the wrong Arnold Roth writing to tell me I had the wrong Arnold Roth. At least it was cordial. I had included with the ill-fated letter a colour printout of what I thought was Arnold Roth’s early work for a 1957 short-lived humour magazine, but it turned out I would have asked him to sign a Harvey Kurtzman cartoon.
@jsroberts, I find vigorous sweaty exercise radically changes my mental outlook - have you tried that? I know a couple people who are managing ADHD that way.
Unfortunately I myself can’t seem to do exercise for its own sake, I have to do martial arts or sports or chop firewood. If I’m not actively learning, competing or producing something of value I somehow can’t manage to exert myself, no matter how many times I promise to do so…
So many times I’ve read a psychiatrist quoted saying something to the effect of “If I could prescribe exercise in a pill, I’d use it as my first-line treatment with every client.”
I feel ya on the personal insistence that exercise be…instrumental? Functional? Can’t seem to find a word that bundles up that sentiment. For me, it’s bicycle grocery runs. I have a friend who loves resistance exercise so long as it comes in the form of rock climbing because he finds climbing rocks much more fun than lifting dumbbells.
I cycle rather than drive, and I used to run a lot more than I do now. It helps to some extent, but the mood swings I’ve been having over the last couple of years have made it very difficult to keep up any routine. It’s like establishing a routine takes up a lot of mental energy, but once I have it it gets a lot easier to maintain. I can’t take on too much at one time though, otherwise I’ll get overloaded. With the mood swings I have to keep building it back up again, since I can’t stay stable and keep the momentum going. That just makes it more taxing and I end up dropping it more than I used to.
Sometimes it would take me all morning to get going, have a run, shower and settle down to work. Technically I’m more alert, but I’ll have to pick the kids up before too long and I haven’t actually done any work. Alternatively I could get more done by working unproductively all morning.
I still live in hope though, and now the weather is getting better I’ll try to start running again.
Same here. I can’t do regular gym work at all (because it’s so pointless and boring), but I’ll happily spend unlimited amounts of time rockclimbing, bushwalking, flying kites, etc.
Exercise needs to be something interesting enough that I’d do it even if it was bad for me.
I got a parking ticket yesterday for forgetting that I had parked not in my usual spot, but along the street where parking is prohibited for four hours in the middle of the day. The especially annoying thing is that I suddenly remembered it, about an hour into the no-parking period, and rushed out to move my car to another spot… and discovered I was ten minutes late. >_<
It’s the combination of “My own damn fault” and “If I had remembered it just a little bit earlier!” that makes it especially annoying.
I was listening to Outkast on my way to work today and just hit hard with the feeling that I was never going to be that cool.
(This is not fishing for compliments, if you respond to tell me I’m even some minor fraction of as cool as Outkast I will tell you you are a fucking idiot)
Another pair of earbuds just bit the dust. The left earbud now only intermittently plays sound, and I have to either hold the cable in place at the earpiece end, or tilt my head just the right way in order to get it to work.
This is the reason I got Bluetooth earbuds this time (and last time, but I stepped on and broke those), but it appears that not having a wire between the earpiece and the device still doesn’t make it immune to the wear-and-tear I inflict on my electronics.
Can no one design a truly durable pair of earbuds, for those of us who are rough on their things?
Few days later, bought a new dumbphone as replacement. Never opened it though because later that day I found out that since it’s prepaid, it can’t be used for regular plan for another six months per Verizon policy.
Originally I was going to end this with ‘I miss landlines’ (bullshit) but I do miss T-Mobile because they never gave a mole’s bare ass about that kind of thing.
Short version: still no working phone thanks to my urgency-challenged mind and now I have friends and family emailing me about when they’re going to hear my voice again. (My glib answer: why settle for just my voice?)
Well, yeah. I mean, it’s not like you just been through a pile of life-shit about ten miles high that would have drowned lesser mortals and laid low even the strongest of people.
I seem to have lost the knack of something I did instinctively, naturally, immediately as a baby: sleep until I am fully rested.
I drink valerian-added Sleepytime tea, I take calcium and magnesium and zinc picolinate before bed. Most times I stop electronic screen media two hours before lights out. I take melatonin with B6 (pyridoxine). I do not have alcohol or sugar. I stop caffeine intake by 11 am daily.
Yet I am awake between 3:30 and 5:15 am, and not from any cortisol spikes or night sweats or external noise.
Thanks. It’s the kids. I’ll take the ding with the adults and work it out with them later. The little ones don’t deserve Shouty Dad just for doing the stupid shit little kids do.
To a sleep therapist, you are the ideal patient. You abstain from all of the things that either delay sleep onset or reduce sleep quality. That alone puts you in the top tier.
Any new life stressors? Sometimes they’re subtle; I’ve had transient sleep disturbances just from relocating my bed.
