keep me motivated to work less.

I very suddenly just realized that I've lost myself and it's time for me to get me back.

 

It was a very busy fall, which came after a busy summer.  My work days and work weeks have been longer because I've just been trying so hard to keep up.  I seem to regularly be working 8 am to 7 pm, plus at least one day on the weekends.  I'm chasing the idea that I'll actually achieve a point of being "caught up."  With doctor appointments, family commitments, and just generally needing time to do laundry and eat on top of my work schedule, I haven't had much time to be social, or read a book, or make a phone call just to say hello.  I miss cooking. I miss baking.  I miss watching football.  I miss dancing like crazy to a jukebox that my friends and I have dominated. 

 

My solution to the problems are:

1.  Leave work by 5:30 p.m. at least 3 days a week.

2.  I will not work on the weekend unless I am on trial.

3.  When my friends ask me to go out, "I really just need a night in" will be the occasional answer, not the usual one.

 

These rules won't last forever, but I think I need them at least until mid-January, when shit hits the fan all over again.

 

I baked a double batch of snickerdoodles last weekend.  This weekend, I think it's going to be rugelach and peanut butter chocolate bars.  This week I hope to push out some florentines and some sugar cookies.  If nothing else, baked goods will motivate my friends to come find me, which is the beginnings of a renewed social life.

the best compliment ever

Last night I was introduced to someone who, after telling me her name, looked at me with wide eyes and said, "You look JUST like P.J. from My Boys!"  I stared back at her, my introduction smile frozen, wondering if someone had told her to say that to me.  She said it again, this time with an apology: "I'm sorry, do you know the show?  It's on TBS?  You look exactly like her to me."  I finally shook out of my stupor and beamed.  "I love that show!  She's my favorite!  That is the best thing that anyone ever said to me!"

 

Internet audience, I look NOTHING like her.  But I texted all of my friends who watch the show and told them I had just received the best compliment of my life.  One friend's theory was this:  I act and sound so much like PJ that it is easy to be mistaken for her.  I like that theory.  I accept it because it makes me happy. 

 

I know the past two months have been lacking any substance here on the internet.  In real life, there's been enough to keep me busy but nothing noteworthy in the sense that the story can't be told in a witty paragraph or so.  I had a series of bizarre medical ailments.  Work has been bonecrushingly overwhelming so I've been working many nights and all weekends  I haven't been socializing much at all and since I'm just dating one person now there are no new funny-then-sad dating anecdotes. 

 

I have started a few posts, about deep personal thoughts and struggles, about specific examples of raging injustices I see every day, and my thoughts on the legal profession and criminal defense in general.  Some of them I scrapped until the cases are really and truly over - some of them I just can't seem to write the way I want to communicate it.  I think about scrapping blogging completely, but I can't walk away from a forum where I can write something and know that a few someone's are listening. 

 

Between now and my next post, which could be a while, you should definitely catch up on the past two seasons of My Boys.  Your life will be better for having watched it.