Tag: Megalomania

Am I Numb or Zen?

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

peaceIf there’s anything funny about my dealings with depression (and there’s little really ha-ha funny about it), then it’s how paranoid it makes me when I’m feeling okay.

I wrote about how my holiday blues in 2015 started too early and ended up deepening into a nice depression that hung around until April like an in-law in a not-funny sitcom. Because of that experience, I was paranoid about that happening again this past holiday season.

We’re talking extremely vigilant.

How am I feeling? Am I sad? Do I hate everything? Am I operating on the frequency of do-not-want more often than not? Do I want to run away? Do I want to give up? Do I want throat punch people for a legitimate reason or just because?

This sort of interrogation happened on a nearly daily basis starting at the end of October. I thought that not dressing up and passing out candy to trick-or-treaters might be a sign that the holiday blues were settling in early once again. But upon reflection, I realized that I was just burned out and not feeling the spirit and therefore, I didn’t feel like forcing myself to do something my heart wasn’t in.

Okay. That’s cool. Very reasonable.

As the holiday season progressed, I kept waiting for the blues to hit, to come rumbling through, maybe dragging a semi-trailer of depression behind it.

Only I kept asking the questions and I kept responding that I was okay. No, really. I’m okay.

This okayness, in turn, jacked up the paranoia regarding my mental state.

Was I really okay? Or was everything in the world at the moment such shit that it fit my mood and it only felt okay? The latter might have been true to an extent. I didn’t even get a real dose of the holiday blues this past season.

So, here I am, a couple of months into the new year and I’m still feeling okay. Things that should be throwing me into a rage, the little things that I’ve become so used to pissing me off, aren’t having that effect on me. I feel okay. I am maintaining my okayness.

Maybe it’s the shift in thinking that occurred at some point late last year. Maybe it’s my 2017 motto, “Let it be”. Maybe it’s the nightly meditation I’ve been doing since late December, which includes chanting certain mantras designed to calm me and keep me optimistic.

Maybe I’m fucking zen.

Or maybe, as my paranoia has repeatedly suggested, I’m numb.

Maybe I’m existing in some sort of dulled stated that has rendered me non-reactionary to certain stimuli in my daily life. Maybe my depression, which I’m so used to operating in a certain way, has now taken on a new dimension, a dimension of numbness that resembles okayness and therefore tricks me into thinking I’m okay when I’m really depressed.

Boy, that mental health paranoia is a real dick sometimes.

But those mantras I’ve been chanting at night before I go to bed have influenced me to think positively about this. Instead of caving to the ravings of my paranoia (which has a long track record of being wrong), I’ve chosen to view this period of mental calm as something to be embraced. It’s almost like I’ve achieved a kind of clarity here. I’m not numb; I’m just not at the mercy of my emotions and my hellscape brain. For now.

I am okay.

I am zen.

Because Nothing Says I Love You Like I Have To

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

**I’m specifically focusing on het couples in this post because it is in the dynamic of those couples that I’ve really noticed this particular socialization of Valentine’s Day**

heart raysAs a career single person, it’s easy to dismiss anything bad I might have to say about Valentine’s Day. I mean I obviously must be bitter that I’m spending this day of love alooooone, no one to buy me roses or candy or take me to a restaurant that required a reservation six months in advance.

Well, allow me to assure you that I am pleased with my own Valentine’s Day celebration, so this post is not in anyway reactionary to having coupledom shoved down my throat in a pretty pink heart-shaped box.

Rather, it’s the culmination of years of observation of this rose petal bedecked holiday.

After working in the jewelry department at Wal-Mart for three years, I’d come to consider Valentine’s Day as a jewelry extortion holiday. Watching boyfriends and husbands come in and look at the contents of the cases, hopelessly lost, praying for a divine sign that would point out the right gift that would prevent their girlfriend or wife (or girlfriend and wife) from being mad at them. Truly, the romance gymnastics these guys would put themselves through for the women in their lives, knowing they were being judged and scored and compared was really gross to witness.

It was enough to make me swear off the holiday in the event of ever becoming coupled (I also really like watching Vincent Price movies, so I can’t imagine that suddenly going out the window just because I acquire a partner; more likely I’d be like, “Here, sit next to me, hold my hand, and we’ll watch Vincent murder his wife together.”).

In the last week or so, though, the flip side of that extortion coin showed itself.

It’s a trope we see everywhere, in movies and on sitcoms and even in the mundane day-to-day. Guys forget Valentine’s Day, have to scramble for something last minute, have to be FORCED to do anything romantic, get shit from their buddies for attempting any sort of sentimentality, have to be nagged by the women they supposedly love to show them a token of that supposed love.

Let’s face it.

The bulk of Valentine’s Day profits are made off the idea that men are only allowed to show their love one day out of the year. Two, if you want to count anniversaries, but Valentine’s Day, thanks to a constant bombardment of social peer pressure, is the big one.

Think about the constant reinforcement men get from society. It’s sissy bullshit to show your wife or girlfriend that you care about them outside the acceptable boundaries of a specific day. If you’re a REAL MAN, then you only show your love when you’re FORCED to, either by nagging or by Hallmark. And even then, you do it in the most uncreative, cliched, FORCED way possible so nobody suspects that you actually want to do this, even if you maybe, kinda, really do.

And women accept that as normal. They don’t even question the absurdity of it because they’ve been told their whole lives that this is how a REAL MAN is supposed to act.

As someone who’s been consciously uncoupled for the past ten plus years, for whom Valentine’s Day is largely a spectator sport, I find it really fucking weird.

Like, in what way is any of this enjoyable? It looks like the most painful dance since the Achy Breaky.

But it’s a popular dance, one people are ridiculed and pitied for not doing, a dance that people long to have a partner for just so they can do it.

Thankfully, at my advanced age and expert-level singleness, I’m pretty fine with being a wallflower here.

I’d rather dance with someone more in sync with an offbeat rhythm all year long.

For the Sake of My Sanity

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

mirroredYesterday was Bell Let’s Talk Day on social media. It happens once a year to raise money for mental health and end the stigma around mental illness. Naturally, I participate on Twitter by using the hashtag. As someone who deals with depression and anxiety, mental health is something I think about probably more than people who don’t suffer from any sort of mental affliction.

I say that I deal rather than struggle because honestly, I deal more than I struggle. Last winter was a struggle with my depression. This winter I’ve been dealing with my depression. I deal with my anxiety far more than I struggle with it. I deal without any sort of meds because that’s my choice. I’m sort of lucky that I have the option to deal without meds because I know that some people don’t have that choice. Meds are necessary for them.

I was first officially diagnosed with depression when I was 20, but there’s no doubt that I’d been suffering from it for several years by then. And here I say suffering because I was truly suffering. I had no concept of how to deal with what I was going through because I had no real grasp that there was anything wrong with me. I thought I was just a shitty, defective human.

Since then, I’ve learned how to deal. It’s been a slow process because I do everything the hard way and I’m a stubborn person. I’ve also had to overcome the fact that I’m prone to self-destruction and a lot of the way I internalize the outer world has led to forming ideals that are harmful. It’s only recently that I began to accept the concept of self-care as something that I deserve.

It seems that in the last year or so I’ve taken a giant step in owning the shit that hinders my mental health. I’ve come into so many situations lately, situations that I would normally subject myself to because reasons and be totally miserable, and instead of doing the normal, I asked myself, “Why the hell am I doing this? It does nothing for me.” And then I’ve excused myself from the situation.

For example, I avoided Facebook for like a month. It was doing nothing for me. My friend’s page looked like a Klan meeting happening at a tent revival while a cryptic Days of Our Lives episode played and the English language was repeatedly mauled. Of course, it wasn’t all bad. There were some good things, some funny things, some accurately spelled things. But I had to wade through such shit to get to them. I was checking Facebook multiple times a day because I didn’t want to miss anything, didn’t want anyone to feel slighted if I didn’t like the sixth profile picture in a week or that album of baby pictures or that status about how their life was so great or whatever. It was a chore to scroll my feed. No, it was a stone drag to scroll my feed.

And one morning I asked myself, “Why are you doing this? What are you getting out of this?”

The answer was that I wasn’t getting much more than aggravation out of it.

So, I didn’t check Facebook that day. Or the next. Or the next. Nor did I play the games on Facebook that I felt a duty to play every day because reasons.

As a result, I had more time. When I wasn’t playing the games or refreshing my feed every thirty minutes, I suddenly had this abundance of time that I never felt like I had before. It was much easier for me to focus on my work when I wasn’t suffering from eye strain from rolling my eyes so much and I wasn’t half-pissed from repeated exposure to the ignorance and hatefulness and inability to work a fucking homonym. My overall mood and peace of mind improved.

I felt better.

Now, I check Facebook once, maybe twice a day. I scroll for a bit, like a few things, play one of my games, maybe wish somebody happy birthday, and then I’m done. Sorry if I miss your stuff, but I’m better off if I don’t hang around too long. I’m sure you understand.

Except I know there are people who don’t, friends and family members who’d gladly tell me what a fucking wuss I am and I need to suck it up and deal with it.

Good news! I am dealing with it. Been dealing with it for years. I’ll be dealing with it for the rest of my life, thanks. I’d apologize for not dealing with it to your satisfaction, but I’m not sorry. You can fuck off.

My mind is a fucking hellscape most of the time. It’s loud and messy and some days it doesn’t work worth a shit and other days it works overtime. This is my normal. For me, being comfortable in my own head is my sanity.

My mental health has, rightly, become one of my top priorities.

If that makes you uncomfortable, perhaps you should check in on your own.

Turning 37: I Can See 40 from Here

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

birthday hatThirty-seven years ago today I was ripped from my mother’s womb in a most undignified fashion and I’ve been disgruntled ever since. But, I do so love my birthday. I will milk this day for all its worth and I will do it with no shame. I rarely do anything remarkable on my birthday, but believe me, I believe my birthday to be a special day and I will use it as my excuse to do anything.

37 is an interesting age, I think.  From here I can see 40, a dreaded number for some reason. I guess because 40 signals middle age to so many people and middle age is the next step to being old and if there’s anything this society fears, it’s the concept of being old or seen as old. I can relate to that to a certain extent. I certainly don’t want to be seen as old because the connotations of that involves being fixed in mindset, less likely to engage in fun.

But I don’t mind getting older.

I don’t know. I just don’t think I have anything to fear from getting older. In many respects, I’ve always been an old soul, always seemed more mature and responsible and knowledgeable for my years. But then, at my advanced age I still watch cartoons and dance in public and sometimes dress like a toddler who got to pick out her own clothes and dress herself like a big girl. I feel like I’ve got a good balance going here.

I suppose I should be in panic mode. At 35, you’re just on the hill. At 36, you’re just over, but 40 is still at a considerable distance. But there’s nothing between 37 and 40 to block the view. Now here I am, in full view of 40 and I’m still struggling right along, not having checked off one item on society’s to do list. I should be mired in a pit of self-loathing right now, but I’m not.

I suppose if I hadn’t spent much of 36 in a major dialogue with myself about my life I would be panicking right about now. Instead, I’m feeling pretty zen, like maybe, just maybe, I can swing this life pretty okay and be happy doing it.

I have no fear of 37.

I think we’re going to get along just fine.

2017 Half-Assed Resolutions

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

resolutionsMy 2016 half-assed resolutions really were executed half-assed. Though I managed to not get dead (which seemed to be a real challenge for way too many people in 2016) and had a good time on occasion (again, an unanticipated challenge), my other three resolutions were only sort of achieved.

I did clean out my sewing drawer, but I didn’t get rid of nearly as much stuff as I thought I would. I got closer to mastering mermaid pose, but didn’t make it. The only resolution I managed with any real success was watching more Netflix. I watched nearly 50 new-to-me movies and documentaries on Netflix this past year. This is actually a real achievement for me. Especially when Netflix got Bob Ross and that became my go to.

But 2016 is behind us (thankfully) and 2017 is just getting started, so once again, I make my half-assed resolutions for the new year.

  1. Don’t get dead.
  2. Have a good time.
  3. Go through my books. My house looks like a disorganized second-hand book store. Every bookshelf is crammed full. There are books stacked in closets and on the floor. I feel like some of these books could probably do with a new home, particularly the ones I bought while in the throes of an obsession of a particular topic that I now have no interest in revisiting.
  4. Belly dance more. I do drills six days a week and I even shimmy while I do my mouthwash, but I rarely just bust loose and dance. I really need to do that more often. Just for the joy of it.
  5. Do something good. I feel like I’m too broke/selfish/lazy/shy/incapable of contributing something good or doing something good. So I really need to put the effort into doing at least one good thing this year.

Let’s do this, 2017.

An Unexpected Push

~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

ThinkingMy floorset days have come to an end.

The store I work for is closing for good on January 7th.

I’ve been there over four years. Sometimes the gig was a real hassle. I questioned whether or not it was worth the commute, the minimum wage, the sleep deprivation, the bullshit that accompanies every retail job. I seriously considered quitting multiple times, but never went through with it. In the end, the actual work and most of the people I worked with won me over. The money wasn’t great (child learnin’ has been my main source of income), but it really helped fill in the gaps between the ends I needed to meet, particularly during the Christmas/New Year holidays when it’s the only day job I worked.

Now I need something else to fill the gaps.

I’m feeling strangely optimistic about this. A few years ago, I would have been depressed and panicky, woe-is-me-ly about this whole thing. I would have felt like it was the Universe taking another shot at me, kicking me when I was already close to down. Not so much now.

Now, I feel like this is the Universe giving me a push.

This is a push to do something new. This is a push to get out of my comfort zone. This is a push for a new adventure.

This is a push to really work my writing and make my writing work for me.

I don’t make a lot of money from my writing, but now what money I do make will be very important. It will help fill the gaps. Self-promotion is going to be key. I’m going to have to talk about my writing A LOT MORE than I already do and not in the “here’s what I’m working on, here’s how I write, here’s my writerly thoughts” fashion. I’m talking in the “HEY, BUY MY WORDS” fashion.

Right now I’ve got three writing revenue streams going at the moment: my self-published titles, the Storytime Jukebox, and the upcoming Patreon project Murderville. I realize that I’m going to have to start submitting in earnest once again, but I’m also going to have to push these three things a lot harder than I have in the past. In the past, I didn’t want to be annoying or insistent. Now I’m going to be.

When I first found out about this turn of events yesterday and posted about it on Twitter, the people I know there were very supportive. I think that contributes to my optimism. I am blessed with knowing some really awesome folks who are really supportive of my endeavors and also really supportive of me in general. I really do appreciate them.

So, the new year will be starting off with an interesting challenge.

For once in my life, I feel up to it.

I Do Not Christmas Well

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

cookiesYesterday, I made some sweet treats for the Christmas Eve get together that will happen later today at my mom’s. I normally do not contribute because between my mom and my nieces, plenty of sweet treats happen. But this year I told my mom that I’d made puppy chow for my sister and brother-in-law and she requested some.

And I also said that I’d make sugar cookies.

Here’s the deal.

At Thanksgiving, my great-aunt gave me two batches of sugar cookie dough that she’d made from my great-grandma’s recipe and colored red and green with food coloring. Now, I do not bake. I have no baking skill. I can fuck up cookies from a tube. But my great-aunt thinks that because I can cook, I can bake cookies from pre-made dough without incident. She also thinks that I will eat red and green cookies. I will not. My issues with that is worthy of another post.

However, red and green pre-made sugar cookie dough was right up my nieces’ alley. I was going to take the dough to my mom’s house for my middle niece’s birthday Sunday and let the girls bake them.

Then winter happened. Between the ice and cold, I wasn’t able to see my niece for her birthday (we have a plan B for after the new year; such is the life for us with winter birthdays).

When my mom requested the puppy chow, she also mentioned that my youngest niece wanted sugar cookies.

“Oh, I’ll bake the sugar cookies that auntie gave me and bring them up,” I said.

And so my fate was sealed.

In addition to my lack of baking skills, the stove in our house is questionable. My mom bought it for $100 at a yard sale in 1986. Really. It no longer heats quite evenly, you can’t tell when it’s pre-heated, can barely read the numbers on the knobs, and sometimes it will electrocute you. Really.

The potential for disaster was high. Just the kind of thrill seeking I like.

I baked the first batch of cookies, the red ones, which were more pink than red, and looked like I was trying to bake Laffy Taffy.

They…survived.

It was impossible to tell if they were done because red cookies don’t brown like plain sugar cookies. But the bottoms of them were browned to just before burnt, so they had to be done, even though the tops looked not done.

For the second batch, the green batch, which also looked like Laffy Taffy, I figured out that I had to put a second pan on the bottom rack to help diffuse the heat, rotate the pan of cookies half-way through baking, and pray constantly to a crotchety baking goddess.

The green cookies came out a little better, but any sort of browning on colored cookies just looks wrong.

I’m told from my taste tester that the cookies are fine. Which is good. I hope the nieces enjoy them.

But they look better in the container.

We Can No Longer Deny What We Are

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

We can no longer deny what we are as a country.

We can no longer claim that hate and ignorance, bigotry and misogyny and racism, the homophobia and Islamophobia and xenophobia, belong to loud minority when the quiet majority has spoken in agreement with it.

This is who we are. We are a bigoted, hateful, lazy congregation of humans contained within an imaginary boarder. And we have elected a leader that represents that very core, that truly embodies the nation we are, the nation we deny. Because we like to think we’re great. We like to think that we’re inclusive and tolerant and underneath it all, not bad folks.

But that’s not the truth, is it?

Not everyone who voted for Trump is racist, you say. They’re not all homophobic and misogynist. They’re not all bad people.

Sure.

But they decided they could live with it.

He wasn’t Hillary, so they decided they could live with it.

He had an R next to his name, so they decided they could live with it.

They’re not black or Mexican or Muslim or Jewish, so they decided they could live with it.

They’re not gay or lesbian or trans or bi or in any way queer, so they decided they could live it.

They’re not women, so they decided they could live with it.

They’re not feminist women, so they decided they could live with it.

They’re not disabled, so they decided they could live with it.

They’re not mentally ill or otherwise sick, so they decided they could live with it.

They thought that it wouldn’t effect them, so they decided they could live with it.

Now we all get to live with it.

Even if the best case scenario were to come to pass (which in my simple mind would be an avoidance of total financial ruin, not being obliterated by a war started in the course of a hissyfit, and somehow some of our rights being left intact), we are still left with ourselves.

We are left with those of us thrilled by this victory because they’ve been made to feel uncomfortable about their hateful thoughts for the past few years, being called out as bigots, being shouted down for their inappropriate “jokes”, and now they feel vindicated. They’re “oppression” is now over because they have a leader that supports their views. Those that have been dying at the hands of political correctness have been given a second life.

We are left with those of us who will now exist in fear because of the realities that “living with it” will entail. The threat of deportation, restriction of rights, loss of rights, sexual violence, physical violence, incarceration, torture, loss of health care, the destruction of our planet are some of those realities.

We are left with the knowledge that we sacrificed the well-being of many for the interests of a few hoping that we would be one of the few.

We are left with the knowledge that we did this to ourselves. Because this is who we are.

So now that we’ve gone past the Rubicon here, now that we’ve looked into the mirror, now that we’ve seen the monster that is our soul, now that it is, in effect, too late, NOW we finally ask ourselves a question we’ve been avoiding for centuries because we’ve been very skilled at avoiding our own reflection…

Is this who we want to be?

…And Then I Went to Chicago to See a Cubs World Series Parade

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

World Champs“Hey, do you wanna go to the Cubs World Series parade?” I asked my roommate Carrie upon waking her up Thursday afternoon.

“What?” she asked, groggy.

“Do you wanna go?” I repeated.

“When?”

“Now. We have to leave, like, now.”

“…Okay.”

And so began the whirlwind.

I haven’t been to Wrigley Field since 2012 when I saw the Cubs lose their 100th game that season. Time and money constraints have prevented my return. I didn’t luck out in the postseason ticket lotto and couldn’t afford them on the secondary market (honestly, I couldn’t have afforded them if I’d won the lotto, but that wasn’t going to stop me this time). I felt like I’d missed out on everything during this magical season. The least I could do was find a way to get to the victory parade. This feeling was cemented when I found myself in tears on the drive home from work Thursday afternoon because they’d played the Harry Caray call/final World Series out mash-up on the radio. Of course, I’d been bursting into tears regularly since their win Wednesday night.

When I got home, I DM’d my Cubs bestie Harry and asked if he was ditching work to go to the parade and when he confirmed that he was, I told him that I was trying to work it so I could go to0.

“If you can get up here, I’ve got a hotel room for you by Wrigley.”

Harry had booked the room for his mom to attend the celebration, but she unfortunately couldn’t make it.

But I could.

Kiki and HarryCall it serendipity. Call it fate. Call it divine intervention. Whatever name you want to put on it, fortune smiled on me for once and I was more than beaming back.

Within ten minutes I was waking up Carrie and throwing things into my overnight bag (notebook and pen first, of course; writer life). By 3:30, we were on the road to Chicago. Three hours later, driving through rush hour traffic on Lake Shore Drive, I pointed out the buildings lit up in celebration of the Cubs winning the World Series. Carrie took pictures of them through our unfortunately dirty windshield.

After picking up Harry and getting settled at the hotel, the three of us went out for a celebratory dinner. The mood was giddy edged a bit by the surreal. Despite all of the tangibles, there was still a misty fantasy quality about the whole thing. The Cubs had won the World Series and we were going to the victory parade in the morning. That’s probably why I struggled to sleep Thursday night. A long held dream had finally become reality and it was just hard accept.

Friday morning, we walked around the block from our hotel to stand on Addison and watch the parade. Here, less than a mile from Wrigley, there was a crowd lined up against the barricades, but not nearly as suffocating and dense as what was around Wrigley or lined up along Lake Shore Drive or packed into Grant Park. The morning weather was pleasant, a little chilly, but really perfect for a parade. The crowd vibe fed into the surreal joy and the three of us stood there, soaking it all in.

BryzzoThe parade itself happened so fast. Part of it was that the buses were going by at a quicker clip since this wasn’t prime parade real estate and they’d left the gate late to begin with; the huge crowds on Lake Shore and at Grant Park were waiting. The other part, the more personal part, is that when you’ve been waiting for something for a long time, be it an hour for a parade to begin or since you became a fan in the late ’80s for a championship to be won, when the moment arrives for you to experience, it feels like it happens too fast. Like even at a snail’s crawl, it still wouldn’t happen slowly enough to be thoroughly enjoyed.

But I managed.

To see the guys that I’ve been cheering for all season, to see the guys I’d cheered for in past seasons that almost feel like past lives, to see the coaches and the front office and the families, the whole shebang that had to come together just perfectly to make this one incredible thing happen, to see them all go by in total victory put my heart into a state of bliss that it won’t forget. This is a memory that won’t be corrupted.

After the parade, the three of us went back to the hotel room to watch the rally for a few more cheers and tears of joy. We bid Harry farewell and then Carrie and I left the city. It took us over an hour to get out of city, almost like Chicago was begging us to stay. And I wish we would have. I would have loved to have spent the weekend there, walking around Wrigleyville and soaking up that vibe until my seams split and I burst with joy.

Instead, happy and exhausted, I drove back to the cornfield, content that I had the pleasure to experience just a little bit of history.

World Series Champions

Those Self-Destructive Weeks

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

mushroom cloudI have a bit of a self-destructive streak that I try not to indulge actively. It’s not a seriously overt thing, really. I don’t take risky gambles with my life like challenging biker gangs to duels or riding a unicycle along the edge of a cliff or attempting to bake. I just actively don’t care about myself.

I did it again last week.

Most of the time, these self-destructive days, or in this case a whole week, aren’t planned. One thing sets it all off, like lighting the fuse on a string of fire crackers, and I’m just like, “Fuck it.”

What set me off last week was a Cubs playoff game on Monday night that went into extras. The regular nine innings didn’t get over until midnight and four more innings were played after that. The game didn’t get over until quarter til two in the morning. Had this been the regular season, I would have bailed long before midnight as I was looking at working both day jobs the next day. But this is the playoffs, man. If the Cubs would have won that night, they would have clinched the NLDS. It was important that I stay up and watch this game, grown-up obligations  be damned!

But they didn’t win. They lost. And I didn’t go to sleep until 2:30 that morning.

Fuck it mode engaged.

Because I knew I wasn’t sleeping Tuesday night either because I work until midnight for floorsets, if I’m lucky. I got out of this one late. And then had to drive home. Another two in the morning bedtime.

These two sleep-deprived nights were used as an excuse to self-destruct for the rest of the week. It was the excuse to eat like garbage, to continue to not get adequate sleep (except for Wednesday night when I slept a solid 9 hours because exhaustion couldn’t be beat), to drink way too much coffee, to not exercise (outside of my hour-long walks; somehow I still managed that), to drink more beer than I should when I shouldn’t, to basically just wreck myself.

And I knew that’s what I was doing, too. I knew that I shouldn’t, but I did it anyway. I looked at it and went, “Well, I already started this shit show on Monday, so I may as well just finish it out.”

I don’t recommend this tactic. By Sunday night I was feeling like hot garbage and eating Tums like they were my favorite candy. I also didn’t like myself very much for not hitting the emergency stop on like Wednesday. I admit that I could stand to loosen my grip on my control issues once in a while and let things flow, but this is not one of those issues. I wasn’t particularly thrilled about not being able to get my shit together in a timely fashion and instead just gave in to the chaos.

So, this week comes what I like to think of as the hard reset.

This week I have to go to bed at a decent hour (this is an ongoing struggle of my life, though, so…). I have to mind what I eat closely so my gut can recover. Ditto minding the coffee intake. I have to make every workout. I have to put off finishing that six pack. I have to get back into the regular, boring-old groove.

Build myself up again in time for the next spontaneous combustion.