Laughter Through Tears

Yesterday was a low point for me and I didn't get enough sleep...

...but I also jumped a milestone in my quest for lucid dreaming.

So, win some, lose some, huh?

Today was a long day. Good, but long, and very tiring.

I went out to pick up a coffee in the morning and that (and my bad memory) ended up making me late for my ERG appointment. The ERG is an annoying and slightly gross eye exam that I get for side effect reasons, about once a year. And it requires eye drops, so when I got out of the test I could barely see and sunlight bothered me even more than normal. Yeah, it wasn't quite cloudy enough for my taste.

I made my way back home and managed to get some rest and some lunch -- and to wait out my pupil dilation. Once I was sufficiently rested, I headed out to one of the university libraries. They're operating on a program where you book seats in advance so that they can make sure they don't go over the legal limit for how many people can "congregate" in a closed space. And they assign desks to make sure social distancing is in effect.

Being outside all day is still super weird and a little anxiety-inducing. But I had the option to work somewhere outside of home, and I snatched it up. I might be able to book another afternoon this week, I hope, because I was *so* productive.

This morning I had to reset the password on my migraine app, which tracks my sleep patterns. When I ran a search on Gmail (so that I could tag all the notifications and not lose them), I discovered that back in 2015, I emailed myself a bunch of "migraine logs". This was back at my old, bad job -- when the headaches first started getting really bad.

I'm both more and less smart than I thought. I started tracking them back then, but then stopped and didn't start again until 2019. And what's more, I only recently started doing it in one, consistent place -- as opposed to spreading it around wherever I write about my day, which is at least three or four different places, now.

I don't know why Grammarly insists that this entry sounds "friendly, optimistic and confident".

WorldCon is in three days and I'm running out of time. Our flight is Tuesday night (to give me especially time to recover before the event itself) and I feel like all the time between now and then is going to be dedicated to travel arrangements. We already managed to screw up the flights (twice, don't ask) so that we'll miss most of Monday's events. Which is a shame, but I keep reminding myself that it's outweighed by all the cool things and people we'll get to do and see.

Given my mortal terror of being late to thinks, I've already had two separate nightmares where I managed to sleep through or otherwise miss all the events I wanted to see. They have about the same tenor as the dream where you suddenly discover at the end of the semester that you have an exam due for a class that you don't remember signing up for. I get those, too, pretty regularly. In the daytime I manage my stress more or less okay, mostly by keeping busy or distracting myself, but the unconscious mind is a terrible thing.

We have two flights with a layover so I'm gonna land in Dublin bright and early and completely exhausted. Somebody please cut me open so I can get some fucking sleep.

Last night on my way home from my mother's house my phone crapped out on me abruptly. I headed out first thing this morning to see if it could be fixed. Feeling like a chunk of my brain was missing, naturally. Fast forward about three or four hours, now I have a new phone and I have to charge it, update its system, reinstall all my apps (which means it's time for spring cleaning), and of course check the status of all of my backups.

A good opportunity to figure out/remember which apps I linked to the cloud and which I didn't. At least I know for sure that I didn't lose anything critical.

I had even very nearly forgotten my Gmail password, and had to rush home by foot to check my backups. It was extremely irritating. At least the new device has an upgraded memory and I can shove all my apps and games and things on it.

January and February were both pretty messed up for different reasons. I was hoping to close February on a positive note but that did not turn out well. I have higher hopes for March, albeit tentative. I want to try and put shit back together, and hold onto things, if only by my fingernails. I have a long-term plan, although executing it is difficult, especially when I find myself constantly mired in keeping up with the details of day to day life.

I'm working from home today due to complicated circumstances. It has its upsides, for sure.

Nothing is on fire and I have made a little progress on both writing and work. I really can't ask for much more, at this point.

I've got a couple more days of antibiotics for my busted thumb, and it's supposed to maybe snow tomorrow in Jerusalem.

Other than that, I'm working too much and not writing enough, and everything's more or less the same.

Bonkers day at work. Scheduled the washing machine to finish its cycle at 7PM but got home too tired to do anything but (badly) reheat some leftovers and watch TV on the computer.

So many things I'm behind on, I can't.

For the last three weeks, I've told my Pilates instructors about my new job, and how crunched up I am from sitting in front of the computer all day, at every single lesson. Never used to say things like that.

I mean, it's clearly good for me, and all.

I'm entering an adjustment period of unknown length with the new job. I am too tired to write, all the time. I had some hopes for the weekend but other priorities intruded. All I got around to is rereading some WIP stuff and posting a draft on the AO3.

Keeping up with chores and self-care is also work. And of course at the end of the day I only have about two hours of leisure time to myself in the evening, and by then I'm usually too exhausted for anything more challenging than TV.

I need to wash my hair, though.