Evening at home

I think part of the problems I've had over the past weeks are due to the fact that I've been pushing myself hard for a while at work - doing a new prep is no joke (I had forgotten how starting absolutely from scratch differed from the sort of tinkering and updating that I normally do). And I'm fretting over the ultimate outcome of the summer research - I have everything kind of half-analyzed, but am finding it hard to find a sufficiently large chunk of time to re-organize everything (find where I put all the articles I'm using as background) and complete the job.

I did start putting together the presentation I will be giving over it in November, though, so that makes me feel some better.

(Actually, that may be part of my problem: the paranoia about deadlines getting too close. I'm probably 3 weeks ahead in PI at this point and could take a bit of time off from the heavy-duty prepping).

So I've felt kind of like this all week:


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I could tell I was in a grumpy mood because (a) things that normally made me chuckle made me cynically roll my eyes and feel vaguely annoyed and (b) stuff like all the e-mails I get from various charities ("You can help pets in crisis NOW!") and from the different groups wanting time, rather than money ("March against Domestic Violence!") started to get to me. While many of the things are worthy causes, it's just...Like I said several weeks ago, sometimes you have to put on your own (figurative) oxygen mask first.

I took (most of) yesterday evening off. (I still had to do laundry, and I still wound up spending about 1/2 hour making a custard-based dressing for a fruit salad for a lunch today (Why, fillyjonk, why? Why are you such an overachiever? People would have still eaten the fruit and been happy without a fussy cooked-custard dressing to go on it.)

But then I got to sit down and knit for a while.

I have an exam to grade this afternoon, and an exam to write for another class for next week - but I think I'm going to force myself to carve out some time this weekend (all day Saturday, if I can manage it) to relax. Because I feel like I need it. Badly.

Edited to add: I think another thing is, I've been really suffering from a deficit of frivolity recently. Either in the sense of doing some of the silly things I do or enjoying some of the silly things I enjoy. It's not good for me to be too serious all the time...if I start taking things too seriously, little things start annoying me and I lose the ability to laugh at how fundamentally absurd life is. And I begin feeling like my purpose on this earth is just to be a swot who does stuff for other (unappreciative) people....so I need to do something frivolous and fun this weekend, I think.)