the trick is to keep breathing

who doesn't like lists. if you don't like lists you are at the wrong journal.

I've made a "Words and Workouts" pact with justira. Our goals are low, but meaningful: 1500 words per week; 3 workouts per week. We will have lovely charts to share. I mean to stick to this - both of them. Here are some thoughts...

• So, I am in fact wordsing again. The shameful part is that it's Harry Potter fic. HP is like my shame comfort fandom - when I am ill, I browse AO3 and look for fics with high kudos and pairings that I like, no fucking regrets. I was ill for like 93% of last week which meant I read a lot of trash. I am now writing HP trash. I don't even give a fuck. It's words and I will have fun, even if HP fandom is beyond the grave.
• If I can get moving again with the writing, I want to work on original stuff this year, but I also want to get back to dabbling in fandom - prompt memes and the like. I miss the sense of connection that comes with fannish writing. Hang me.
• Right now my workout goals are more about consistency than actual workouts. I want to focus on swimming first - that's my best and favorite sport, and why not do a workout that I actually enjoy? After that, I'd like to go back to yoga, then running and biking. Of course there's weightlifting and punching the bag in there too - I'll make a plan once I've shown that I can stick to 3x/wk for more than, say, one wk.

My other lofty goals for 2016 include:

• Start fucking going to bed on time. I want to get up earlier in the mornings but (a) I am so lazy and (b) I tend to sulk about my life late at night and stay up until, say, 01:00 in a snit of because I can which doesn't work so well when you want to get up at 06:00. If I could get my arse in bed between 22:00-23:00 I could get up earlier and either get to work earlier (to leave earlier) or have some time in the morning just for me. Either one sounds better than the usual snooze-button-festival party-of-one I have going on in my bed for an hour and a half every goddamn morning. That's such a waste of time.
• Half hour of chores every night. This is hard to keep up with because of fibro - some days I come home and crawl into bed and get up 4 hours later to eat a pop tart before returning to blankets. However, this leads to having to spend all of a weekend day catching up on chores that have slipped (dishes, laundry, mail/bills) which is equally exhausting. 30mins is reasonable on all but the worst evenings and should allow me to have more relaxing time on weekends, which is good for fibro.
• Learn to chill about work. I will never not be platonically married to this place or this job, but getting stressed leads to high interaction costs leads to overstimulation leads to me being too exhausted to fucking blink. I'm already working to set this year up as an improvement - more support, more help, less projects overall - so I need to keep to that course.
• Empty my life. I have too much going on, and too many things taking up space (physical and mental). It's time to clean it out.

More specific goals will have to wait until I have brains to deal with them.

• I am still in love with my sleeping pills. I've discovered through some trial and error that trazodone has a very narrow window of sleeping -- so my usual "get in bed and read/play games/whatever for 45 minutes" method does not work. Once I take that pill I've got 5-10 mins tops and if I get caught up and read through that drowsy couple minutes, I'm back to my usual looonnnnn-n-ngg-g-ggg ass falling-asleep time. Trazodone is apparently a picky mistress. I forgive it its quirks because it is so good to me.


• I have solved my shorts dilemma - a shorts dilemma I may not have mentioned here; I hate shorts. Absolutely despise them. All ladies shorts I've tried - and I have tried quite a few - just don't fit right, don't look right on my body, make me feel many levels of uncomfortable: it isn't just an issue of how I look and feel while wearing them, uncomfortable in the sense ofoh god I look ridiculous, most are actually legitimately uncomfortable -- like help I cannot bend over, also when I sit down my thighs bulge at angles I didn't think skin could do and my ass sticks to what I am sitting on and also did I mention I cannot really move at all and I feel sweaty and sticky?. The problem is mainly that shorts are tight, and my thighs are ungracefully still built as if I'm running half marathons - even if that muscle has been replaced with pudding - and no matter what length the shorts feel like they are as tight as saran wrap and my legs look like sausages. I swear to god I have tried every style out there in the stores and I just went to wearing maxi skirts made out of the kind of fabric that feels like you're just wearing pajama bottoms even though you look ~fancy~.
  
  --- BUT THEN I FOUND THE ANSWER, and it is: DUDE SHORTS. They are comfortable as legitimate fuck, exactly the feel and convenience I was wanting, and since my "sense of style" is already kind of like "hobo bum that can't match things" anyway, they go with everything I have. I am legit so happy about these shorts I am blogging about them. Don't make fun. THEY ARE SO COMFORTABLE. I AM SO HAPPY. Today I was actually a normal temperature in the summer because I wasn't wearing jeans. HOW DID I NOT FIND THIS SOONER.


• I have a lot to say about the new job but it would take up so much time. I have been there late 2/4 nights this week. I had to take Friday off because I was just so fucking behind on everything that I needed a day to lie in bed and then do four loads of laundry. (This is not a joke.) On Wednesday we had a massive storm front move through that flooded out a giant portion of the tank farm - complete with tornado warnings! We evacuated! - this is seriously the kind of thing that makes old hands at the job stress and die, and I had been there all of ten fucking days.
  
  I am exhausted. But I freaking love the job so far. It is -- it is a breath of fresh air to be actually doing things that will help people, even if they are so far the small things - "low hanging fruit" - and I'm probably going to feel underwater for the next three months before I get the hang of it all. I love the job; and I hate that I love it, because it is very tiring and all-encompassing. I get emails at 1am -- and sometimes I answer them when I get up to pee. But so far this was the right decision. I will not say a GOOD decision because I am so tired and burnt out on people I had to take a vacation day to wash my unmentionables -- but it was the right decision.


• I'm now out of energy on this entry. Whoops. More later, then.

1. Had an alright weekend. Rested up. My lingering bronchitis cough and related flu are finally starting to admit defeat. Having said that I expect to violently cough up something disgusting the second I post this entry.


2. Vicodin is sweet.


3. My MRI is scheduled for this Friday morning.


4. I've been knitting a lot. I should probably take some photos, to update on Ravelry if nothing else.


5. I purchased a new blanket this weekend (to be honest, I purchased like four new blankets this weekend because I'm incapable of making decisions - two are blankets for my bed and two are throws for over the bed, and I'm likely to keep at least three of them) and it makes getting out of the bed even more difficult. Fuck.


6. Met with my advisor on Friday. More on that in a future post. The plan is to have the literature search completed by the end of 2012, and graduating in May isn't necessarily too much of a reach. Also, she offered me an undergrad who I could take as a co-op to LIGIT do all of my thesis work, although he wouldn't be available until May. Talking to my boss about this, some time this week.


7. Work is work.


8. I'm doubting I'll be able to come up with anything for Chocobo Racing, although I'm still trying. There's a really great Lightning and Sazh buddy prompt that I really want to write, but. Words. Sigh.


9. Thinking of doing a mini-NaNo in November with safety_caesars: 25,000 words (each). We were talking about it the other day and I've really been thinking about some of my original fiction again. Prediction: I hit it hard for the first week and then get sick again. Lolsob.