Journal Entry

I found myself in a pretty bad mood yesterday, driving home from the gym.

Here's what I was thinking about. Most weekdays, I have to wake up at 5:45 to be at work on time. If I sleep fewer than seven hours, I really can't get out of bed at all, so that means I'm going to bed by 10:30 at the latest, and desperately hoping to fall asleep quickly. It's much safer to go to bed by 9:30, but I never really manage that.

5:00 is the earliest I get home, in spite of my early start to the day, and then going to the gym (which I'm now trying to do six days a week), means the earlier I really get home is 7:00. 7:30 is a lot more common.

That leaves me two hours to have dinner and relax (or, under more normal circumstances, try to get something important accomplished at home), and I usually take at least three hours to do that, so I'm tired all the time.

I get weekends, when I'm not in Tulsa or Wichita or Little Rock (or hosting family from Little Rock or Wichita). I do get a regular day off, every other Friday, but it's usually spent taking in large part taking care of all the responsibilities of life outside work that I don't have time for on any of those incredibly short evenings.

I complained about all of this to K-- recently, and he shrugged and said, "That's life." And I get that. It just sucks. What a miserable life that is. I get two hours a day of it, plus occasional weekends. In a week where I get all my evenings free (after the gym), and have no responsibilities incumbent on me for the weekend, I get to look forward to about 49 hours of time at liberty, doing as I will, in a week. That comes to about 30% of my life that I get to lead.

I've got a good job. I get that. I understand that going to the gym and getting in shape will add years onto my life (and increase my quality of life in the meantime). But it chafes, having so little free will. Driving home from the gym last night, I got myself into a pretty bad mood over it.

Then the storm certainly didn't help any. Most of our sitcoms for the week come on Thursday nights, and every single one of them was preempted for storm coverage that didn't impact us. We watched an old Lost instead, and then a new one (that, at least, they chose to show), and then two more old ones before I was ready to go to bed, and by that time it was already 11:00 and I had no chance of being anything but exhausted today.

The wind and the thunder kept me awake until after midnight, anyway, and I was late getting in to work this morning. Fridays are pretty laid back around here, so I'll get away with it, but I hate being late at all.

Then on the drive to lunch today (D-- had to cancel on plans for Bennigan's, so I went to Mazzio's on my own), I passed a little dentist's office with a duck pond out front the more frequently sports geese, and out right by the edge of the road was a big mama goose resting in the sun and half a dozen little baby geese running around, their fur-like down all fluffed out, just adorably cute. That made me smile.

Then, at the light, I waited patiently for the long passage of a funeral procession. That was sad. Then I finished Watership Down while I was there, and, let me tell you, it's just about the best book I've ever read. It's an amazingly-crafted story, and I think pretty much everybody should read it.

So, that's good. I definitely like the book. I don't think we've got a lot scheduled for the weekend, so I'm going to take a valiant stab at getting my game finished before I pick up another novel sometime Sunday afternoon. I'm not making any promises, but it would be fun to put finished to it.

Other than that, it's just things and stuff.