The Grind

Hi everyone. Hope you all had a nice week. I'm going to keep this brief, as I need to work tomorrow (Sunday).

I'm trying to meet a very tight deadline at work, one that is tight because of circumstances beyond my control; accordingly, I've been writing frantically, particularly the past three weeks, to try to make it. I think I'll get everything done in time, but I'm worn to a nub.

I can tell I'm worn out by the kind of mistakes I'm making - silly spelling errors, typos, and forgetting to do routine tasks that I normally do automatically. But the combination of fatigue and racing to get everything done means those tasks aren't routine at the moment.

My personal life is hectic as well, for reasons I don't wish to go into right now. They're necessary, but they require a great deal of driving (4-6 hours on those days), which, as regular readers know, I find to be incredibly stressful and exhausting. But I have no choice in this case, so I simply have to grit my teeth, get through it, and hope it proves to be worth it.

I've been having trouble sleeping since the weekend before Christmas, and it's become a vicious cycle. I typically get this way at the end of a project cycle, but in this case it's exacerbated by the other matters to which I alluded. Even on the nights when I do sleep, I wake up feeling worn out. I get everything done, but it takes everything I have to do so.

I want to stress, once again, that as challenging as this is, and has been, it is still *infinitely* better than my life pre-transition. I am dealing with all of this as myself, and that makes all the difference. I can look in the mirror and like the person I see. That was not the case for most of my life. I earned that peace of mind by working incredibly hard, and I do not take it for granted.

Hopefully things on the work front will slow down somewhat after this week (or possibly the week after), and I will be able to catch my breath, metaphorically speaking, and focus on the big picture. For the moment I'm just focused on getting through each day as best I can. It's all I can do.

Next post I hope to write something a bit more upbeat. It merits its own post, so I will hold off until I get through this stretch and hopefully get some energy back.

Oh, and I realize I've neglected to write about my exercise routine, as I'd promised to do in my first post this year. I've been doing pretty well, given my schedule, my lingering illness at the beginning of the year, and simple fatigue. Once I get through this stretch, and once it's safe for me to run after work again (because the sun is setting later), I'll kick into overdrive again. For now, I'm doing as much as I possibly can. I've learned the hard way - several times - to respect my limits, so I will be careful to think long-term.

Have a good week everyone...

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I don't think the photo at the top is particular flattering (I know I'm tired when my face is puffy like this, plus I can see the bags under my eyes, in spite of the filters I applied), but the expression seems to capture my mood at the moment. I included it so it will help me sometime in the future when I look back on this time. Hopefully it does the same for others reading this post.

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I've been listening quite a bit the past few weeks to Nap Eyes, a terrific new band from Nova Scotia. I have some family in the Canadian Maritimes, so I suppose I'm inclined to like them already, but their music stands on its own merits.

This song, "Mixer," is the opening track on Thought Rock Fish Scale, their second album, which was just released a few weeks ago. Nigel Chapman, the band's singer/songwriter, has clearly listened to his Velvet Underground albums, but "Mixer," a quiet, thoughtful song about being alone at a party, shows he has a songwriting voice that is all his own.