This week didn’t go exactly as planned and I partially blame the weather.  It got cold about halfway through and the sun is going down earlier.  Makes it hard to take walks for exercise, relaxation, solitude, and Pokemon Go.  This hasn’t helped my stress, which was high enough to reactivate my 3 AM panic attacks.  So, I hit Friday with some energy, but was barely staying awake by about 1 PM.  Muscled my way through work, an appointment, and time with my son before writing this post before bed.

I’d like to say I’m getting to sleep in, but I’m already away now because my son has an early morning appointment.  Tomorrow is similar, but we’re going with my parents to a breast cancer walk at the beach.  Need to get out of the house today and tomorrow by 8:30, which is going to wear us down for a full week of school/work.  Guess it’s going to be early bedtimes for me and my son just to make sure we can make it through whatever is thrown our way.

My energy isn’t helped by last weekend and ensuing week being rather busy, which I’ll blow right through in one paragraph:

Fasting for Yom Kippur was a success even though I was running around for most of the day.  Got a really bad headache with an hour to go, so I rested until food arrived.  This event led into Sunday when I heard from an old friend and we hung out for lunch and then dinner.  Forgot he said he would be around, but it was nice to chill and chat.  Of course, this carried over into Monday when I decided to get my flu shot and then hunker down for editing.  My body didn’t like the flu shot this year and wiped me out, so I had to take Tuesday off to recover.  Went to work the rest of the week where the usual challenges happened then I would rush off to an appointment.  Took time to sneak in a little Pokemon Go each day to do the event challenges and would get home to eat a late dinner, collapse, and wake up freaked around 3 AM with no idea why . . . No idea how I’m still standing, but I am.

This didn’t help with editing and I’m getting worried about my writing ability.  I got through 3 chapters of Darwin & the Demon Game before I had to go back to work.  I got one chapter done per day off, which doesn’t sit well with me.  Can’t tell if I was being meticulous or unfocused.  Even the Pokemon Go outings weren’t that bad since I made sure to edit first and only went out for 30-60 minutes before getting lunch.  Can’t figure out why it’s becoming harder and harder to edit and write.  My mind is definitely not as sharp as it used to be and the spark of creativity isn’t as potent.  Just feels like something hit my mind so hard that I can’t muster any of my old ability and desire.  It’s been slowing down ever since the divorce and then the court stuff at the start of the year, but now it’s downright pathetic.

Since I have my son this weekend, I won’t be doing any editing.  I’ll be focused more on squeezing in a few December blog posts to get that off my plate.  Really need to find a way to edit during the week too, but there are so many GODDAMN appointments after work that I can barely breathe.  Been trying to do a little editing when I get in, but there are other early arrivals that result in talking.  Same thing with lunch and breaks.  Since I’m a TA, I don’t have an office or desk to retreat to, so I’m stuck walking around with a chapter of my book that I’ll never touch.  Maybe I’ll get lucky this Wednesday, but I’ll definitely get to editing next weekend.  Only one appointment then and it’s early morning.  Still looking like I’m only going to be able to do 1 chapter per day with editing, which I assume will be the same if I ever get back to writing.  As I said, pathetic compared to what I used to be able to do.

Only other interesting thing I did was watch a documentary on Vince McMahon of the WWE.  It’s called ‘Mr. McMahon’ and it’s on Netflix.  I used to watch WWE starting in September of 1998 through probably March of 2010.  I watched a bit in the 80’s too, but then switched to cartoons.  So, I was mostly into the Attitude and Ruthless Aggression Eras, which was a big focus of the documentary.  Have to say that I found it really fascinating, especially from a psychological perspective.  Just seeing how different people described different events.  The mentality behind certain decisions and the unapologetic personality of a few people kept my interest.  Might be another reason I didn’t get a lot of editing down, but I was done by Sunday evening.  I would really recommend the documentary for anyone into WWE, wrestling, or even looking for character inspiration.

Goals for the week?

1. Make it to next weekend.
2. Time with son when he’s here.
3. Introduce son to ‘Courage the Cowardly Dog’.
4. Rest up when possible.
5. Stay warm.
6. Try to reduce anxiety . . . Looking into herbal stuff since prescription meds always hit me with terrible side-effects.
7. Continue doing daily walks for exercise.  The bike can’t be used until after Halloween due to my son’s costume being on it.
8. Laundry.
9. Hydrate!