#i'm pushing myself to get this done before i go to sleep bleh

[illusoryquixot]

Shuada kitties for todays sketch, colored to make up for lack of sketch yesterday :3c

[whentherewerebicycles]

phew today was kind of tough. fortunately work dynamics were blissfully undramatic apart from my general bleh feelings about having to leave my beautiful well-lit office with my work bestie for the cold dark storage closet office. but whatever, it is what it is and i found some promising colorful rugs on facebook marketplace that i think might work in that space. also people often work downstairs on the sofas so i can always set up camp there if/when i need to escape my depressing new accommodations lol. and i did get a lot done, largely because i invented various projects for myself and set about industriously completing them. i guess the hard part was just that man i do not see my kid at all mon-wed. he wakes up around 7 and we have to leave around 7:40, and i have to spend a good chunk of that time rushing around getting ready. then i pick him up around 4:45/5ish and rush home so we can walk the dogs before it's pitch black out, so i'm "with" him but not really able to interact with him beyond talking to him until we get home around 5:30. we got some good playtime in from 5:30-6 tonight because i decided to do dinner afterwards, but then he's so tired from daycare he starts getting crabby and begging to go to sleep by 6:15, and when i've pushed him to try to stay awake a bit longer he ends up having a huge meltdown. idk it just sucks to really only get ~30 min of quality face-to-face time with him where i have no other pressing demands on my time/attention.

bleh. i am trying to remind myself that like ok i knew mon-wed was going to totally suck, and i was right, but now it's over for the week. thurs/fri i still have meetings and stuff, but i can drop him off closer to 8:30 on thurs and 9 on fri, and then i can pick him up a bit earlier and have all that time from the commute back. and then sat/sun he's mine all day apart from a few small tutoring obligations. it's fine. i think i also might need to just get comfortable with setting much firmer boundaries around my remote days... our office culture is very much like, your WFH days are WFH unless we need you to come in for an event! so like next week someone signed me up to run a workshop on thurs so i'll have to go into campus that day. but i put my foot down about this friday event and was just like nope, sorry, can't do it. i think i can also talk with my direct report and just be open with her about like... i want to protect my time as best i can for family reasons, so let's just keep that in mind when we say yes to stuff, and i will do my best to advocate for your WFH days to be fully WFH too. and i think she will be totally on board with that. i also am already committing myself to saying Absolutely Not to events that go later than 4:30, and have blocked off my calendar so people can't put meetings on there after 4. nope! nope. and i have email on my phone (so i can access my calendar) but not teams, and i've made a promise to myself to never reply to a work email on my phone (because if i'm reading email on my phone instead of my laptop i'm working at a time i shouldn't be working). blahhhh okay. i can do this! it's just that i thought it would be A Lot and it turns out i was right... it is indeed A Lot.

[wanderingandfound]

I'm feeling hopeless.

And I know, I know, don't trust how you feel about your life after 10 PM, blah blah blah blah blah. But the thing is I feel hopeless all the time, as in I can imagine things getting better all I want but I've run out of the parts of me that thinks any of it is plausible. Normally throughout the day I push it to the side because I need to z, but before that I need to do y, but before that I really should do x, but to do x I gotta do w, etc. And then before I know it it's past my bedtime but there's some non-optional things I still need to do (in tonight's case, bathing) but I can give up on everything else for now.

And sure, sure, baby steps, one thing at a time. Except I can only name one thing I've advanced on all fucking year! I'm not making progress anywhere! I don't know how I'll ever find a job that will let me move out. I haven't done any writing. It's been nearly two years (....three years?) since I lost my embroidery box with my Night Vale embroidery and my copy of A Mending, among other projects. It's been six months since I committed myself to going to grad school in 2025, and also six months since I worked on the spreadsheet to just figure out what my options are! I meant to have narrowed down my choices by the beginning of September so I could ask my professors (if they still remember me!) for letters of recommendation and write my application essays, but I haven't done anything at all!

Besides spending a few days with my Midwest friend when I went to see the eclipse, I haven't spent any significant time with my in-person friends. I haven't made new friends. And I'm too fucking tired to actually hang out with anyone!

Despite having both my plans for the day cancelled at the last minute (babysitting and virtual D&D) I was immobile with exhaustion by 8 PM. I didn't go on a walk, I didn't do the third of my PT exercises I'm supposed to do daily, and I'm clearly not going to bed on time. I did get to play DAO for the first time in a month and a half but I only made a little progress.

In the last twelve months every single part of my health has gotten worse, except for the fact that Medicaid finally approved my sleep medicine like six months ago. Everything hurts]]]!

And that is where I fell asleep close to midnight. Bleh.