written on Saturday, Jul. 19, 2003 at 7:32 a.m.
Over the last couple of days, something has occurred to me. I'm constantly living my life as if everything were temporary.
I tend to piddle away days off and just get through days I have to work. It's as though it's just something I have to push through, and on the other side there will be plenty of time to relax and no work.
I know I've bitched and moaned before about not having a schedule, but seriously, it's really beating me down. I can't get any sense of a particular time I have to work and a particular time I get to relax. So I just bounce around, living in limbo, just surviving or wasting time. Constantly. For example, yesterday I slept until 4 pm. Got up, laid around, watched movies, went out to eat, watched more movies and went to bed at 4 am. I ended up getting an hour and a half of sleep, and I didn't get anything done yesterday. Now I am strapped in for 3 days of long, hard shifts and no time to do anything.
The problem is, this isn't temporary. I have basically been living this way for the last 10 1/2 months. I KNOW in my mind that things aren't going to change, and it's me that has to. I try. I set curfews for myself. I vow to wake up earlier on days off. I make lists of things I want to accomplish. But I always break my vows and ignore myself.
We do this with money, too. On paper, we have a good amount of extra money not marked for anything specific. {That is not to say all our bills are paid, just that we have extra money that could go to some of them.} But money gets spent, things don't come out the way they did when I wrote it down. It's as if we're expecting a great windfall or a huge raise -- something that will suddenly change the situation.
Seeing the problem does not a solution make, though. I know one thing that would help is setting an absolute limit on how late everyone should be here and how late I should stay up. But that's easier said than done.
This is something I need to think about. And something I should probably talk to everyone about. I can't keep living this way. I'm real close to hitting a wall. A line from a Stereofuse song keeps going through my head. "So you think I've lost control and I've hit the wall..." Yep. Yep I do.
Gah.
Time for work.
Love,
