Up at Night
What keeps one up at 2:46AM in the middle of an April evening? Is it:
-That I'm being haunted by a stream of both acutely recent and accumulated lifetime failures?
-That my house is too warm. Because I invested in an expensive house where I don't have control over the heating or understand how to turn off my radiators after 8 months living in the space.
-That I fundamentally believe that our world is now unfit to live in
Who knows?! But here I am, having decided that it's time for awakeness. Here I am acknowledging that I have taken few steps to improve my situation and with the fear that a hidden switch was recently flipped where I now no longer address problems in my life.
What is important to me? What should I be doing and where should be time be spent? Surely not the month straight of video games that I've indulged in (Elden Ring was incredible and consuming, now completed, but I still have been enjoying Pokemon Unite with our troupe).
What do I contribute to the world? Is it entirely in self-service, or do I support the people that I care about most?
I fired my student co-op on Friday: that experience was filled with a lot of negative emotions, including guilt, frustration, fear, anger, and disappointment. Guilt because there wasn't clarity about expectations of the student being full-time onsite vs remote. Frustration because of the time I invested toward providing a nurturing environment and good experience. Guilt because I always wondered if I could be giving more, and was enforcing unrealistic expectations or unfair working conditions. Frustration because the student wasn't performing, and because he proceeded to manipulate and lie to other people outside of our department. Fear that he jeopardized our relationships and others' perception of my future capability as a manager. Anger when I received a message from my manager that he sent her that completely threw me under the bus after the fact. Disappointment that this turned out negatively. Fear that I've ruined his life and that he'll take more actions against me, and that the same thing will happen again if I try, so why bother. But I'm grateful that my manager and colleagues and husband were so supportive.
I won a tough local volleyball tournament last weekend with a great team that I put together. I felt like I did not contribute well to our performance, but was grateful. We also saw Everything, Everywhere All the Time, which was very enjoyable!
Daph is visiting. I picked her up from the airport, brought her to check out our place, and then we went for a walk to a nearby spice and tea store. We then took her out to one of our favorite restaurants in town. We spent a lot of time talking about kids and houses. Add both to the list of things I should be working on but am ostensibly neglecting.
I'm flying out in a few hours to see my family for Easter. The flight was unnecessarily expensive. Mark will stay in town, he's got a lot on his plate. I've planted 36 things of seedlings in preparation to populate our deck, and they've almost all grown wonderfully.
I'm struggling with feelings of incompetency, irrelevancy, inadequacy. I successfully presented to our CEO and CSO last month. I discovered our company is in the top 40 in our sector, a far ways down from my previous one, which is now undergoing a re-org. My workplace has signed me up for a leadership training, so hopefully that will be good.
We are gone the next 2 weekends - first to Disneyworld in a whirlwind tour, then to Chicago to see my hs friends.
EDIT: It's now Tuesday, May 3rd, and I'm home after trips to NJ, Florida, and Chicago. The visit with the family was good and appreciated - we had Easter lunch/dinner, and I made both honey carrots and sweet potato pie. We played Cover Your Assets, and the family really enjoyed it.
Florida exceeded expectations as well. Disney was enjoyable, not because it was exciting per se (although best fireworks I've ever seen ever), but because of the joy I saw in others around me. Mark's relatives took great care of us, and we were grateful to spend some time together with them. It also really made his cousin's birthday special that we went with her.
Finally, Chicago was fun too. It was fantastic seeing my high school friends, and we did the best we could with the pall of COVID hanging over us. We visited the Bean and Millenium Park, got some Giordano's, went on a river architectural tour, and saw the Museum of Science and Industry. We stayed in an awesome airbnb, and played lots of games, though Jay tested positive on Sunday morning, right before we all flew out :/ Have tested neg 3x, but feeling super tired after not sleeping well for 3 days, so going to go to bed early tonight!