As much as I love writing things out here each morning, I think I need to switch to
some private paper journaling for my morning sessions, at least for a little while. I
need to drill down and get to the root of some things for my therapist and our
meeting next month, and while I sincerely doubt that anybody out there is really
reading this journal, I still don't feel comfortable being quite *that* open and
personal anywhere on the Internet, even as quiet and hidden as Gopherspace usually
is.

I guess I'm getting my routine back. I wish I didn't still feel as depressed as I do.
I didn't even realize I was depressed until several people started pointing it out to
me. I'm not even sure I was depressed until everybody kept asking me if I was okay
all the time. Either I was in serious denial for about a week or everybody telling me
I was depressed actually made me depressed. As silly as it is, either one of those
seems perfectly likely.

The 8 mile run yesterday was really, really hard. I don't know if it's because I'm
out of shape or if I just can't go beyond 6 miles now, but I couldn't even make it
two miles without taking a walking break. I'm seriously struggling with my fitness,
and I know that is a lot of my problem.

I think next year I might just take several days of vacation right after the GM
Conference at work. I think I might need that time just to normalize back into not
having to work all of the time. Even though if I did that I would be super
overwhelmed with all of the things when I finally returned to work. As it is, I'm not
looking forward to today, because I'm sure I'm going to have to take some work home.

Paper journaling and working on my book. That's what I need to do for the remainder
of this week. Poking my head into here on gopherspace maybe a night with a record of
the things that happened that day. When I get here first thing in the morning, it
seems like all I do is bitch and whine and complain, and that seems entirely too
ungrateful. Lots of good things are happening in my life, and I have a lot to be
thankful for. I need to get over myself in a big way.

----

This morning, I woke up, wrote on Gopher, made breakfast for A., packed her lunch,
took a shower, but I didn't wash my hair. I hung up some clothes in the closet. I got
dressed. I let the dog out. I let the cat out. I started the cars so they would have
time to warm up before we went out to them. I fretted over my husband who is sick. I
took my daughter to school, listening to her complain about the BlueTooth connection
and Spotify not working correctly. She decided upon leaving the car that it was
obviously going to be the Worst Day Ever. She decides it's going to be the Worst Day
Ever almost every other day, because she's a teenager, and that's what teenagers do.

At work, I did work type things. I changed the signs in all the meeting rooms, I made
coffee, I put some stuff away, I answered email. I was suckered into cleaning out our
stuff from the conference from the storage room we had it all stowed away in, so I
missed Zumba, but I got a free Chicago grinder out of the deal, so I couldn't
complain too much. Planning for classes, more email, a little data entry, but not
much. Left work feeling a little overwhlemed and hopelessly behind in everything, as
usual.

Got home, went on walk with my daughter where we went over the questions for her
mock-interview as Andy Warhol tomorrow. She's looking forward to wearing cool
sunglasses as part of the getup. Made a dinner of tilapia and a quinoa/brown rice
blend for Thomas & I while Aisling munched on chicken nuggets. I helped A. put her
questions & answers for tomorrow's interview down on note cards and figured that was
probably as much preparation as I was going to get out of her, especially considering
I didn't have an assignment sheet or a list to go by. Ran some more laundry. Found
old archived journal entries to post. Fretted over my sick husband who now has a
fever. Tucked Aisling into bed, ordered my grandmother's microwave for her, ordered a
t-shirt for the girl my husband and I are crushing on, made some hot chocolate,
watched a little West Wing. Now, I think I'm going to get ready for bed and fall
asleep listening to some more Ready Player One. The laundry is just going to have to
wait until tomorrow.