Yesterday I did not get to work out, or sleep, or eat and I barely had time to stop and pee. Seriously. I had to leave the house before Jim (at 7:30AM) for an in person work meeting and did not make it back home until about 8PM because of the workshop and reading down in the Old Market. It was a long day indeed and, on the one hand, it was good to be that busy and not have time to sit and stew on things that are bothering me, but on the other hand, a little time dedicated to “normal” would have been nice. “I’m all about that balance, bout that balance, no treble.”

It’s 6:14AM on Wednesday now and I just checked my FitBit that generously reports I slept for 5 hours and 21 minutes. The devil is in the details on that… Here are the stages of sleep:

Deep Sleep (49 minutes)
Light sleep (3 hours and 52 minutes)
Rem sleep (40 minutes)
Awake (1 hour and 41 minutes), which frankly isn’t counted as sleep at all, since I was awake.

I think I woke at 3 something and never really went back to sleep. That’s a telltale sign of something weighing too heavy on my mind. There are multiple things actually, but the lion’s share of that has to do with work which, it seems, has been transformed into something different entirely in the last couple of months – and not for the better.

Once I finally gave up the idea that I might fall back asleep (already exhausted from my brain turning circles around this work predicament), I did the thing I sometimes do, often do, to escape. I opened my laptop and traveled back in time. First, to one year ago – December 19, 2017. Ironically I had just started a new job, the one I have now, and read all about how excited and nervous I was. I wanted to take my mind off of work and there it was staring at me from the past. Something new and different with the future largely unknown and bright. It is fascinating to think that was just one year ago and I marvel again at how much life can change in just a year. If all the years were full of as much change as I have experienced in the last one, I don’t know if I would be overwhelmed or joyous for so much experience. I guess it depends on what type of change.

Two years ago was December 19, 2016 (which was a day no words were written so I looked at December 1st and 2nd and 31st). As expected, I found a girl still smack dab in the middle of a slow motion train wreck. In October and November of that year I wrote two or three times each day trying to navigate my way out from under the boat I had fallen out of, more like was thrown out of, when that rapid popped us up, oars and all, into the water. By December, I was dead, apparently, and therefore had no more words. When the month ended and the year ended I was a born again drunk getting ready to head to Mexico and toast to my sister and her husband in celebration of their vows and their new life together. Incidentally, the last two years has brought a lot of change her way too, and I’m fairly certain neither of us could have predicted how life would unfold.

Three years ago I had just moved into my house.

Four years ago I was rocking the status quo.

Five years ago I was living large.

Ten years ago I was on the cusp of asking for a divorce and altering the course of my future.

Fifteen years ago I was almost half way through pregnancy with my second child.

Twenty years ago I was married with no kids working a virtually stress free job at a hospital.

Twenty-five years ago I was newly married and living in Las Vegas without a way to afford coming home for Christmas.

I did not journal for most of that time and I suppose if I was a person who had regrets, that would be one of them. The years can come ad go as quick as any day does and I like having a record of what that looked like.

It’s now past 8 and Jim has gone off to work. Before he left, he encouraged me to get some more sleep and I am going to try and do that now. If my job is truly flexible, like they say, then they won’t mind if I don’t start working until noon.

Until Then,
~Miss SugarCookie