I'm generally pretty cranky and grouchy most days, but it's going to be a lot worse for the next month or so. There are three primary reasons. First, they are reconfiguring our space at work, and my team is being shuffled over into a different area. While I am a "tethered" employee with a guaranteed space, my colleagues are not and are going to be tossed into the maelstrom of hot-desking. It's pretty much guaranteed that I won't be sitting near any of the people on my team, and generally I'll be a lot less happy at work (and my happiness quotient there is already pretty low...).
Second, I decided there was no way I could write all the broken sestinas I need (45-50) to make a unified project out of them, or at least by my self-imposed deadline. I decided that I might be able to get up to 15 by May 31 (though even that will be a stretch) and combine them with my last draft of my second chapbook and send that off to Brick Books. (This will be my first foray into submitting my creative writing work in some time, excepting the mini-scripts that go off to SFYS.) But maybe this is for the best. While some of the sestinas work better than others, perhaps a whole book of them would just be too much. Anyway, I started typing up some of the ones I wrote while at various gigs at The Rex. But I just realized that one of them is missing! This was written back in mid-April when I was wrapping up a book review, and I wrote out a sestina on a separate piece of paper. I'm such a packrat that it is almost impossible that I simply tossed the paper out (after I had typed up my book review), but it might still be another day or two before I can lay my hands on it. So this makes me pretty grouchy, and I'll either find it tonight (and have one less thing to be grouchy about) or I will give up the search and be quite livid indeed.
Finally, I have been trying to lose weight in a somewhat passive way for a while. I've pretty much stabilized my exercise routine to 2 evenings/week at the gym and swimming on Tuesday or Thursday (and I'll be swimming tonight). On top of biking to work or somewhere downtown 4-6 times/week. So my minutes of vigorous exercise are way above the recommended level, and I can't quite imagine how heavy I would be without this exercise. But the real issue is I don't sleep enough and I get hungry and snack at night. Throughout my late 30s I was probably eating essentially 4 times a day -- and the body gets used to that and packs on the pounds. My eating habits are a bit better now, but not quite where they should be. The only time I have been able to lose weight was when I started skipping a meal, typically breakfast. (This was pre-COVID days.) I'm going to try that again and see how it goes this time around (despite my stress levels being elevated). It will get easier around the 2 month mark, but I am going to be super cranky the first month. Not really looking forward to this change, but hopefully I'll get down off of the weight plateau I'm at right now.
To feel slightly better, I did just make a few donations to the Star's Fresh Air Fund and some other charities, but I'm still pretty glum overall. That's really all I have to say at the moment.
Update: It looks like I tracked down the missing sestina. It was in a notebook and not on a loose piece of paper, which is a surprise, as that isn't quite how I remember it. What was a bigger surprise is that I have two complete sestinas in the notebook, and that I don't remember at all but is good news (assuming I still like them on second reading...). So I guess I can only grouse and gripe about work and dieting.
Actually one other small positive thing just came up (and I probably should try to dwell a bit more on the positive than the negative). I never did get around to booking the other parts of my NYC trip (which I really have to do tonight!) and then I learned that Love and Rockets has apparently decided to tour again -- and they will be in Brooklyn on the Friday I am in NYC! Since I haven't booked anything for that evening, I can see if there are still tickets (and just possibly stay overnight in Brooklyn instead of Manhattan). I'll have to see if it all comes together (and doesn't cost an arm and a leg), but this might be a pretty cool update to my plans. It actually reminds me a bit of one of the first Camper Van Beethoven reunion shows I managed to see in New York on a business trip through a combination of serendipity and some grifting...
No comments:
Post a Comment