Caterwauling

No, I’m not looking to get knocked up. (Although I could stand to use some of the activity that results in that.) But it’s time to expand my family … the kind I pay anyway.

Because, OMG THIS WEEK.

I had 14 meetings just yesterday.

The thing is, I am really happy when I’m in full-on project mode. I’m just having a hard time with all the daily stuff weighing me down.

But I love the daily stuff too. I just want to do a wonderful job with it but I can’t when there’s so much to be done.

I want to do great, and I want to do it all … and I have to be happy dancing on the line between them both.

The good news is, I just got the green light to hire help. Hurrah! I do have a high-dollar helper who spends 60% of his time on a daily project for the boss, so I have to deal with either having him do A) one project really well or B) three or four projects done in a rush in the other 40% of his time.

And you can understand, when you have a high-dollar helper, you shouldn’t be so behind all the time … even if a lot of that “behindness” is you picking up the slack.

In any case, I was hoping to wait to hire till we moved the office further away from the dead pigs and chickens and possums along the side of the country road.

But now there’s Another New Project looming, so we’re speeding up the process.

So, if any of you would like to work for me, well, you know where to find me. Job description: Brilliant writer, researcher and general superhero-in-training.

Or as I told my boss, hire me a pool boy and I won’t need any helpers at work because I’ll finally be in a damn good mood and I’ll be able to do it all!

As though yesterday weren’t an emotional adventure enough, and I cried all the way home, all the way to sleep and then till I left for work this morning, I had to hear the name of someone I loathe.

As a Gemini and reasonable human being, I don’t hold grudges. I don’t wish anybody ill or anything like that. (Because, Karma.)

But at the point I’ve held the funeral for our relationship, don’t go all “Pet Sematary” on me and rise from the damn dead, OK?

My boss drags a name out of the dirt and asks me about the person. And I was restrained, as much as I could be.

She apparently reached out to him for help. And given that we were ex-BFFs, he wondered why she didn’t call me.

“Because I would have hung up on her,” was my reply.

Better than, “Tell the bitch she still owes me three grand. And give me back my black T-Shirt.”

Thank you, Ben Folds.

Anyway, I’m buried in a work-a-lanche and he’s got time to help her? If I didn’t shut my trap right then and there, there would have been a colorful assortment of comments. I assure you.

The crying jag seems to have passed. Now I’m just good and mad.

That, and what I was worried about losing, may not be totally lost. But that’s a story for another day, I hope. God, I hope.

(And insert relevant song lyric.)

Bad day. Shouldn’t be blogging. But I don’t have the luxury of taking time off to deal with life. That I got an hour this morning, I should be satisfied.

I just … didn’t expect the emotional fallout from the medical adventure.

We are up to four potential diagnoses. Four. And a lab that apparently likes to take its time. This could take six weeks to diagnose. SIX!

I have to get an internal medicine doc stat, too, from the sounds of it.

I’ve been in tears most of the day.

I mean, I know I’ll do what I have to do to get better. Just as soon as I know what it is to treat.

In the meantime, forgive me if I just don’t care about much of anything right now.

(Insert sad trombone.)

Let’s just COUNT the ways this day sucks so far (and it’s not even 11 a.m.)…

1. Insomnia. I mean, ZERO sleep. NONE.

2. Doctor’s appointment. Stitches out, stitches in. Four follow-up appointments scheduled.

2.a. Stitches hurt like a motherfucker this time around.

3. Work phone died yesterday after I beat it (er, it beat itself. Yeah, that’s it) to death. And I got a new one. So I will never miss a conference call. Ever.

4. Keyboard died while I was pounding on it.

5. Why was I pounding on it? Can’t say yet. Not my news to deliver. But my heart broke so loud that it surprised even me.

Re: No. 5. I’m so glad I hugged him the last two times I saw him. I don’t think I’ll see him again. And judging from my reaction, clearly I’m not sure how to wrap my mind around that just yet.

I hate when a weekend day is a perfect waste. Because then the week is even more of a prison sentence — what with hideous commutes, isolation from the rest of society, and a sudden dearth of Taco Tuesdays and work-from-closer-to-home Wednesdays.

And don’t get me started on how I am thinking of giving up the work-from-home Fridays because it’s too hard to pound out all the work I need to pound out on my “Windows craptop.” Much as I love inhabiting my little IKEA desk that overlooks the sea while I’m doing it.

I enjoyed the last few “at least I managed to squeeze in a date night” weeks. But without the “perks” of time NOT spent driving to/being shackled in the frozen tundra, it’s all so … monotonous.

It was a crap weekend day. One I should have spent working. I did give it a couple hours and I’m having that self-argument of whether I:

1. Keep working till I go to bed
2. Give up now and go in early tomorrow
3. Enjoy what’s left of my “me” time like a normal person
4. Realize I’m going to lose half the day tomorrow to meetings and just work through the night.

A colleague and I were talking about these sorts of things the other day. Their thought is to give up when they’re good and mad, and attack things anew in the a.m. My thought is generally to take out my aggression till there is no feeling left, then not feel too much stress in the morning.

Either way, it’s going to be hell week, and I get the feeling that I could park my ass at my IKEA desk till it breaks (it’s IKEA. That should be in about four days anyway), and I still wouldn’t be done.

Oh yeah, and biopsy No. 2 this week. On a day I need to be at the office earlier than usual. Oh well. My doctor called yesterday (on a Saturday) to remind me not to miss this appointment. This after her office already called Friday to remind me of my appointment.

Apparently she called in a few experts and they are all baffled by me. So, now I think they’re making sure I show up because I could make them famous or something.

OK not really. But, even though I think I’m 100% focused on my work, between projects I can’t help but wonder just how much life is left in these years, and what would become of me if that answer turns out to be “not much.”

“Whatever my lot,
Thou hast taught me to know,
It is well,
It is well, with my soul.”

Inspiration comes from the strangest places.

Had a nightmare last night where I was being tortured and dismembered. My heart stopped beating when the pain became too much.

But I didn’t leave the earth. I couldn’t. I had too much work to do.

What I remember most was the feeling of peace, of forgiveness, of love. Not necessarily toward my killer, who merely became a footnote in the final chapter of my life. But the epilogue was way more important — finding a way to help those I left behind to heal.

I had the chance to talk with my mother and with friends I don’t spend nearly enough time with during this existence. I promised I’d always be with them. I couldn’t talk back to them after this day, but they could know I’d be listening. And I’d try to send them signs if I could figure out how.

I spoke with a boy and said what hell it was to act like I didn’t love him when I did. I didn’t regret the love — just the denying of something so natural and so important to ME for whatever the reasons were for not being able to act on it.

I spoke with another who kept a lot from me. From my new plane of existence, I could see everything I had wondered about, being true. I was so happy the guesswork was done. But I wanted him to learn the lesson to just not waste as much time as he did.

As I did.

I guess what I took away from the whole journey was, you may only die once, but you only live once too.

And that: “All is well, even when it isn’t.”

I guess lately I’ve been trying to curb my cussing and my emotions and my unique contributions to this lifetime. But I was never meant to be in anyone’s jigsaw if they have to file down a few ends or shove me in.

All is well now. At least I have another day to try again. Thank you, God, for that.

I might have won last week, but this week definitely erased any feelings of “life is good and I’m going to be OK.”

Work avalanche this week. Or, as measured by this miserable time last year, still a light few days.

Today I’m pretty much going to have to kill myself. And then on top of everything — when everyone knows not to tease the animals on a Friday because it’s the hardest, busiest day of the week — I get another fucking standing meeting slapped on my calendar.

And when these people put a half-hour meeting on your calendar, you can count on it to run about 75 minutes long.

I proposed a half-hour timeslot midweek, before one of our other 15 standing meetings, so we could do it on a day when I have time to prepare/participate and also before it runs into another meeting so I’m not stopping-and-starting. (Also, the hard time limit.)

I lose this one. Like everything else.

But I keep telling myself, if meetings are higher priority than meeting deadlines, welp. Maybe I should take the cue.

Earlier this week I short-circuited because I had to rush to launch two projects. And that means certain things weren’t ready for launch, so I could meet these deadlines.

After all, I’m always told, “You can reduce the quality if that means you can produce more.”

I wouldn’t say the quality was reduced. But certain concessions were certainly made.

The response?

“Well, why didn’t you do all those other things you’re saving for Phase II?”

Implied: “Get them done, Failure.”

I don’t mind working. I don’t mind working late. I DO mind that my health is unraveling and I’m weepy and tired and Can’t Take One More Thing right now.

And then I heard all the new work I’m taking on in the next fiscal quarter. And I’m seeing that this new launch is going to inconvenience no one … BUT ME. Like to the tune of having to be at work an hour earlier each day.

It’s all pretty close to resistible, if you ask me. And no one is.

The good news just keeps on coming.

Biopsy last week. Stitches to come out next week.

Only for us to do another biopsy next week and EVEN MORE stitches.

This adventure is kind of expensive. And annoying.

The doc called with an initial diagnosis today. Which … is kind of scary. But she said it doesn’t look right.

So she has another diagnosis she wants to make. Which … is less scary. But she said it would take a year until I’m (hopefully) healed.

!!!

The follow-up biopsy will likely conclude her alternate diagnosis.

But I’ve worked in the markets long enough to know that you can stare at a chart all you want to in order to find whatever pattern you think should be there. If you want a cup-and-handle, I don’t care if it’s a double-bottom; you’re going to see a cup-and-handle.

Someone pass me a bottomless cup of cabernet, eh?

This is fun. Really.

Know how to make it even more fun? Google whatever diagnoses you’re given. The photos that come up are gorgeous. Not.

The saving grace in all this is I don’t think I’m as bad off as the online scary photo people are.

So, win?

In response to, “Where is the stuff I asked you to deliver two weeks ago?”

“Going skiing for the rest of this afternoon. Maybe tomorrow?”

Most-irritating thing I’ve heard this week?

I haven’t heard it yet but I feel like it’s coming based on this exchange …

The phrase that made me the second-most-nuts last week (the first being, “What are you doing Friday?”):

In the context of, “I’m not going to hit your deadline and here’s why,” I heard …

“I’m so busy! I might not even get to take a WHOLE LUNCH HOUR TODAY!”

As I was munching on my salad and editing a 27K-word document at my desk for about the 360th day in a row.

What also made me nuts, this week, another source:

“And why is it not done?” Implied: “Yes we know you are slammed with other things. But this was a No. 1 priority too.”

I’ve enjoyed the past couple of weeks of having a life. I’m thinking it’s time to get back on top of things and start riding people and burning my own midnight oil again.

Because, it ain’t going to burn itself. That’s for sure.