Life

Out of the woods

January and February weren’t so hot for me. It rained nonstop, and I fell into a bit of a funk. I was tired all the time, overworking myself, and feeling disconnected from others. No bueno.  Here’s a blog post from February that I found sitting in my drafts:


In January there was a mini film fest at my local theater celebrating the work of the Spanish director Pedro Almodovar. About a week later there was also the annual David Bowie dance party at a club in my neighborhood. Bowie and Almodovar are both incredibly glamorous and dramatic artists, and most of their work revolves around sex, drugs and rock and roll. At the time I found myself longing for a bit of glamour and art in my life. Instead, all I got was druggie drama.

I think that my tweaker burnout upstairs neighbors must have made the same New Year’s resolution as I did – be more social.  Multiple times a week they stay up high all night playing dominos, golf (?????), drinking, and who knows, probably doing woodwork. Their hangouts mirror my desired sleep schedule, starting at 10pm and raging til 7 am. Sometimes they go on even longer into the day, making it who knows how long, 18+ hrs of partying. As I’m writing right now, it’s been about 14 hours of this bullshit.

Where am I going with this? I guess I haven’t felt rested in a long time.  Every  day I say some variation of  “I’m tired.” I feel stuck. I don’t want to do anything or go anywhere. I just want to sleep all the time. It’s been raining all day, every day  for months. Life seems dirty and grimy. Yesterday I was commuting to work… lately it’s been incredibly crowded because of the rain, so we were marching together like grumpy wet cattle, and as I looked down at the steps as I climbed the stairwell, I saw a GIANT naaaaasty pile of human shit. I found myself thinking “Oh no! I should warn this guy in front of me!”, but nothing came out of my mouth, not even “Holy crap!”, which would have been a great pun… Thankfully he didn’t step in it, but then for the rest of the day I just felt incredibly guilty that I couldn’t even warn somebody about shit. And I know that is absurd.

How does one break out of this jaded  and useless “I’m tired” cycle? I don’t know. Waiting for this one to pass.


Ooooooof. It’s April now, and I’m feeling better. I tried to figure out what exactly I did to break out of it, and I’m not sure. To be honest, it stopped raining everyday, and that made a huge difference. I’m biking to work most days now, and I’m back to running regularly. The exercise really helps my emotions, which makes me feel like such an animal.  I got a little bit better at my job and as a result I don’t feel like I have to take my work home all the time to “catch up.” I’ve been trying to reach out to friends more, but that’s a mixed bag. There was a point in Feb when I was getting rescheduled/cancelled on multiple times in a row. That’s life, but it was still hard not to take it personally.

You know, it’s kind of terrifying that something as simple as the weather could fuck with my head so much. I can’t control the rain, but I can plan things to look forward to. I’ve got dogsitting gigs booked out until June, and I have a few trips that I need to plan, including a trip to NYC in a few weeks.

Ummm… what else is going on…

  • I’m still obsessed with the Fat Guy (not) cycling across America, and have started watching pirated episodes of My 600 lb Life on YouTube. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know why.
  • In March my mom’s laptop screen died. After a week of back and forth texts and calls, trying to diagnose the issue of 3 different and very much broken computers over the phone, I decided to just buy her a  new Chromebook. Looked at Amazon, watched a few videos, and ten minutes later, click, new computer on the way, done. At $80 to diagnose/fix the old Chromebook, a new computer at $200 seemed like a no-brainer. It felt really good being able to throw some money at a problem without worrying at all about the cash.
  • I helped my unemployed roommate get some part time work at my company, and I feel good about that too. The whole process has been completely different than working at a larger company. It’s much more casual and nebulous. For example, there was never, and probably will never be an official job description for the contract work she’ll be doing. At my previous company there would have been so much red tape. It’s really interesting. +1 for small companies.
  • Ryan and I are going through the steps to enter San Francisco’s BMR housing lottery (mandatory workshops, counseling, looking into loans, etc.), but I don’t feel too attached to the idea. Actually, if you know me, I loathe the idea of home ownership. But hey, it’s something to do with my time. As Ryan says, at the very least I’ll have something to talk to my mom about.