I’m not going to sugar coat the fact that over the span of my last posts, things haven’t exactly been going swimmingly for me in my life. As much as people of the internet bemoaned and stated how much of a dumpster fire that the year 2016 was, I’d have to say that 2017 hasn’t exactly been a drastic improvement over the year removed. If anything at all, I would say that I’ve been more stressed, more emotionally drained and more taxed this year than I was last.
So to update from the last time I sat down and wrote for a site that’s still down and out of commission, Jen and I finished moving out of the house. The house is not only empty and completely vacated, it’s up on the market, and doing surprisingly well in terms of buyer interest and awareness that it’s on the market. Obviously, interest does not equal it actually selling, so only time will tell just what happens with all these people and realtors marching in and out of my house on parade because I can see it happening because I still have security cameras that let me see timestamps of when people come and go.
Getting the house prepared for listing was a tremendously taxing task both physically and emotionally. Every single day for just under two weeks, weekday and weekend, was spent painting walls, patching up gaps or holes in walls, painting walls, cleaning out belongings, painting walls, cleaning floors and painting walls.
Painting walls is pretty much the worst activity ever.
And as I said before, every day I left the house I wondered if it would be for the last time, and now that the house is listed and on the road to transferal to another, such curiosities become more and more prevalent, despite the fact that I know for a fact that at least one more trip will be necessary in order to return my leased modem among whatever little niggling details that might have lingered from departure. Regardless, there have been many melancholy moments where thoughts of 13 years of residency at the house, memories good and bad have flooded my mind, but knowing that all are on the cusp of being compartmentalized and archived as the past, and life in a way kind of begins anew, with the house no longer being a part of the equation.
Needless to say, this all lends to the notion that I have a hard time handling change, regardless of it is for the best, or whether or not the circumstances were good or not.
So moving has been a stressful and all-consuming affair in my personal life. And when my personal life becomes overwhelming, I’ve always found solace in the fact that when I go to work, I could always have about eight hours in which I could sit fairly still, gather my thoughts, bury my focus in work so that I didn’t focus on my personal life, and occasionally go to the gym, catch up on the news, or write down some words in my downtime.
Unfortunately, lately my work life hasn’t really been accommodating when it comes to being a little bit of a reprieve from real life. I’ve been so swamped and overloaded at work, that there were literally nothing I could do but laugh whenever a project coordinator came to me with assignment after assignment due in further intervals than the next, despite the fact that I was already buried underneath two other assignments due now and tomorrow and next week.
I’ve had little time to really breathe and collect myself at work, and on top of the draining nature of the moving process, I’m coming to work with feelings of dread, anxiety, and not wanting to be there or do my assignments.
As a whole, between a taxed personal life and an overwhelmingly busy work life, my head has gone into a very, very bad place, and I do not think it’s very good for myself and anyone around me.
I’m always in a state of being upset, agitated and irritable, and I’m apt to going 0-to-100 in anger at things that shouldn’t really bother me so much. Nothing cheers me up and I feel like I can see the dark cloud that is hovering over my head during this stressful period. At work, I’ve become shut off and removed, and I want nothing more than to listening to music on my phone, loudly, as not to listen to the typical office drivel and sounds of people around me, praying for a break in all the interruptions, so I can actually work on my biggest assignments instead of dealing with a bunch of ticky-tack little ones scattered about.
The lack of being able to turn off has bled into my life outside of work, where I’ve had difficulty in cooling off, getting mad at everything, and dealing with anxiety in thinking about the workload that awaits me the following day. The fact that I’ve had little time to relax for as long as it’s been has been completely draining and making me wonder if I’ve ever put myself through such a long gauntlet without reprieve for this long before.
Naturally, this many words wouldn’t be remotely possible without a little bit of time, but this is one of those things called a weekend, which I haven’t really had one in the prior three. With the house vacated and kind of out of my hands for the time being, as well as no requirement to go into the office on a weekend, I’ve finally got a moment to breathe and sip a cup of coffee without any too-loose strings attached.
It doesn’t absolve the weeks of hell I’d gone through, but it is a nice thing to know that after all the weeks of working non-stop and being on all the time, things will eventually catch back up to normalcy, and hopefully sooner rather than later, the dark cloud will dissipate over my head, and my mood will return to a somewhat more neutral state of rest.
Just having a morning where I can sit back, drink coffee and write, is a good start.
