When the Meh attacks

At this moment, I can think of several (dozen) things I really should go and do. And to each and every one of those things, I have the same response: Meh.

I think I’m even too tired to play Warcraft. I know, right?! I may just need medical intervention on this deal. Or at least maybe an afternoon early-evening cup of coffee.

The really sad thing is, I woke up this morning feeling ready to get out there and DO THIS THING! And for about the first third of the day, man, I was on fire. I was able to focus, and I was even able to multitask without completely losing focus on one or the other thing, and I was remembering things in a timely fashion, and I knocked out two relatively convoluted Solutions™ in short order and then I was actually contributing a little bit to our September development cycle planning meeting, and I was firing off emails and monitoring jobs (I’m primary on-call again this week…hip-hip-hoo-yeah-whatever) and communicating with partners and was just getting to where I was really entering into a major case of self-congratulations over my general awesomeness when it just…went away.

Next thing I know, I’m becoming aware that I’m basically just sitting there, staring at the same three lines of code like maybe they’re going to have changed themselves in the last ten minutes. I’m tired and droopy and clearly, I’m done for the day whether I’m ready to be or not.

And I haven’t even started thinking about any of the home-stuff I had hoped to get done today.

Damn.

My normal response to things like this is generally to just push on anyway. But as this has not been working out for me particularly well lately, I’m trying out this new thing called listening to what your body is trying to tell you.

I don’t think I like it.

My body seems to be a lazy good-for-nothing lay-about loser. I MEAN, YOU KNOW, REALLY... it’s very important to tend to your own needs (she said with an air of wisdom, as if she always does so instead of doing insane things like putting in two or three consecutive days on less than four hours of sleep a night while subsisting on Ritz crackers and tea while at work because she is “too busy” to stop and get real food, ahem), and I am heartily in favor of doing so. Not only is it only fair to take care of oneself (aside: the word ‘oneself’ looks so wrong to me right now…like it is either misspelled or misused, but at the same time darned if I can put my finger on WHY), it is in the long run far better for your overall productivity if you make sure to maintain the old machinery before it collapses into rubble around you.

But at the same time, I have an unreasonable distaste of laziness. I’m like a Puritan sniffing out the sins of others when it comes to laziness, and in my own private little world things like murder may actually be justified depending on the circumstances, but laziness? Federal. Offense.

So I’m always suspicious of my true motivations when I start with the “wah-wah-wah, I’m tiiiiired, I need a breaaaaak, I just caaaaaaan’t keep going…” thing.

{sniff-sniff} I SMELL LAZINESS!!! Do we think the world owes us a living? Well, DO WE?!?! I didn’t THINK so, now, get OFF that derriere and get crackin’, missy! Daylight is BURNING!

And then if I don’t immediately jump to it, I get very stern indeed with myself and start parenting: “You have to do at least such-and-so much more before you can plant your backside in that chair and play Warcraft or watch anime or whatever.”

…and then I do that thing where whenever I’m not looking, I cheat the finish line back a smidge. Oh, did you hear fifty FEET? No-no-no, I said fifty YARDS…

And then I’m stunned when my body goes all toddler-temper-tantrum on me. Oooooo, the shock of BETRAYAL!

But, all that aside…I’m trying to accept the fact that maybe I am coming into a time of life where I am not twenty-something anymore. And that possibly, the 18-hour day thing is no longer a sustainable lifestyle for me. It sits like a hair shirt on me, but at the same time I figure that I should be able to accept at least some signs of time marching on.

Particularly considering that my mental age hasn’t progressed much since my teen years. And push come to shove, if I had to pick one or the other, ‘growing old’ versus ‘growing up’…yeah. I’d take growing old.

But let’s be clear: I have absolutely no intention, ever, of acting my age. Not gonna happen. So don’t ask. Nyah!! {sticks out tongue like proper brat}

In other news, I’m making headway on the shawl. I’m about to round the second corner of the knitted on border (note how I gloss over how well I did the first corner, which would be ‘eh, not the WORST job ever but also not the BEST one’), and then there’s “just” the long charge down the second long-side…and the third corner…aaaaaand the slog through the second short side…AAAAAAAAAND the binding-together-of-the-cast-on-edge, which sure enough I did VERY poorly so it WILL show a ‘seam’ when I go to finish it, I’m about 99% sure (but I comfort myself with the thought that when worn on a living, moving person, the chances that it will particularly show are slim to nil) (quiet, you! Let me have my little fantasies!).

I figure I should actually finish this thing sometime in the next six years.

If I don’t get distracted by new projects.

(Uh-oh. I sense a flaw in my overall plan here…)