Now, if I could just magically be retired…

I have turned into that domestic goddess I always thought I ought to be.

Remember that second wind I was blathering on about last week? It’s still going. I’m still moving art around my house and painting the frames to a uniform color and finally getting the stuff together to create the little collage frame ratty memorials I keep saying I’m going to make and gluing wood bits together to make a necklace display with some old cabinet knobs I had my parents salvage from The Great Santa Barbara House Do-Over and painting that stupid-but-useful Mrs. Fields tin to a less eye-shattering color and, and, and…

I cleaned, re-planted, and re-stocked the fish tank. (My new betta is a beaut, by the way. And he’s angry as fuck. And I love him.)

I just made enchiladas. And I wore an apron while I did it.

I made a vat of curtido to go with them, too, which has been pickling since yesterday. And I made a sort of cinnamon/chocolate pastry roll thing with the last half-sheet of puff pastry I had left in the freezer from Christmas.

My house has flowers in it, my dishes are done, my laundry is put away, my desk is, if not perfect, far, far tidier than it has been in eons, and I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IN THE BUGGERING FUCK TO DO WITH MYSELF. I haven’t felt this productive in ever. I’m starting to find it worrying, frankly. Is this some sort of manifestation of a deep-rooted anxiety resulting from the situation in which we currently find ourselves? Am I headed for some sort of life-shattering breakdown? Is the loneliness literally going to kill me?!

I’m writing this on a Sunday. I haven’t had the oomph behind me to be this far ahead of the game in months.

WHAT IS HAPPENING.

I don’t have that much of a mind knocking around to be losing, thanks very much. The little bit I have is barely enough to keep me marginally functional. I can’t be lending it to some sort of Betty Crocker mental episode! I need it!

Because it’s not some kind of intellectual energy, really. It’s not like this is prompting me to do anything about my ‘to-read’ pile or revamp my entire personal financial system or pen The Next Great American Novel--no, I’m just getting shit done that’s been sitting around here needing to be done for however-the-fuck-long and making casseroles.

I DON’T GET IT.

I mean, yeah, okay, I do get it in the sense of the fact that--independent of the current global nonsense--I’m in a better place emotionally than I have been since the Jurassic Period, and that can lead to things like increased energy and just an overall feeling of “yeah, okay, I actually feel like doing stuff,” but it’s still a very strange feeling. I don’t know what to do with myself, so I do things I ought to have done ages ago. It’s this strange and sudden flurry of ‘life catch-up’. The cynic in me (which, let’s be real, is more of me than anything else) is waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’m waiting to go completely loopy and start capturing and painting the squirrels in the courtyard or something and consequently getting chucked in the loony bin, or burning the house down trying to deep-fry something that really doesn’t need to be deep-fried.

What if I accidentally invent some kind of murder cocktail?

These enchiladas, though? They’re pretty bomb.

Is this how it’s supposed to be?

Now that I’ve settled into my new job—and subsequently my new schedule—I’m beginning to find that I’m considerably more productive outside of working hours. You know, on my own stuff. The stuff that has to be done or I’ll drown in laundry and dishes, but also the stuff that’s supposed to be fun. I’ve started to be less glued to my sofa. I move around. I take care of things in the moment, rather than letting the piles grow until I’m forced to deal with them. I can drum up the energy to start a long(ish)-term project—something that needs glue- or paint-drying time, or simply can’t be finished in one sitting. I’m reorganizing with a speed and determination I haven’t experienced in…possibly ever, actually.

Mind you, the pile o’ stuff that needs to go to places like Goodwill to be donated, or the half-price book store etc. to be sold back is slowly taking over my living room because where the heck else am I supposed to keep it until the world opens back up, but never mind…

I’ve been thinking about this second wind I’m experiencing, and I’ve come up with quite a few plausible explanations for it, the first (and likeliest) being the fact that I was finally able to break away from a job which for five years had held me in a state of perpetual anxiety and frustration—albeit at varying levels, but looking back it’s easy to see that even on the ‘good’ days it was always there, lurking just around the corner. Expending the majority of your energies in the service of an institution where you are acutely aware of your disposability can wear on a person, most especially for a prolonged period of time. When the norm, day in and day out, is being immersed in an environment where your worth is based solely on what you can do for someone in the moment, you start frantically trying to be overly useful, which leads to emotional exhasution. When your employers embody the textbook definition of the double standard, the “do as I say, not as I do” attitude, and favoritism is rampant, you get jaded. And when everything you do well goes unrewarded but your tiniest mistake is invariably put on blast, at some point, you give up.

Obviously my personal definition of ‘giving up’ is still to plough through and get things done on time and as perfectly as possible, but with the demon voice at the back of my head screaming at me the whole time. That little fucker is too mouthy for his own good...sadly, ‘that little fucker’ is me, but...one problem at a time, okay?

Any old way, I’m in a much better place now. My schedule has been adjusted to something resembling a normal human being’s. My commute has been drastically shortened, thus decreasing the amount of time I spend on the road every day and increasing the amount of time I have available to me to do, you know, whatever. In addition to these things, my work situation has improved in a staggering fashion. The people I work for appreciate my drive and my accuracy and my dedication and my intelligence and even my sense of humor, holy cow.

I think it’s doing good things for my brain.

No, really. I think the uptick in general positivity and supportiveness and, IDK, people actually saying “thank you” (I no, rite? Such a concept!) has contributed in a big way to the fact that I seem suddenly(ish) to be able to exist like a human being as opposed to a sleep-deprived shell. Of course, there’s still the general garbagefireness of the world as a whole, and a nasty virus, and murder hornets (WTactualF?!) and I’m still having a hard time with all of that, yes, but on the whole…

I just kind of feel like if I finally have enough oomph behind me to get around to glittering a pair of sneakers like I’ve been saying I’m going to do for umpteen years, it’s a good thing.

Right?

All of us, right now.

Every single one of us.

 

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Smiley smiley something or other

Let's do a little good stuff/bad stuff. Bad stuff first to get it out of the way, yaaayyy!!!

Things that have DEFINITELY NOT made me smile this week:

• The general clusterfuckery and garbage-fire-ness of the situation in which we find ourselves.
• PPP Loan forgiveness calculations.
• POLLEN.
• By the time you read this, it will have been 56 days since anyone has hugged me. I’m very particular about who is allowed to touch me in the first place, so the fact that this has been wearing on me for the last 16 days or so really says something about my stress levels…

Things that HAVE made me smile this week:

• I’ve been making my grocery shopping trips every other week, and I keep buying myself flowers because why not, and I can usually get them to stay alive for the full two weeks between trips.
• I finished a jigsaw puzzle.
  
• My baby rats turned one!
• I reorganized a big chunk of my closet.
• New regular Friday virtual happy hours with my Bestie-Since-We-Were-Three.
• Dork Tower 
• These Internet funnies:

And, for your viewing pleasure, my puzzle!