Tag: Stress

Down

Why am I feeling down this week? Hey Robbie, why so blue?

I don’t know. If I knew, I’d fix it but I really don’t know.

I can’t seem to motivate myself to do anything. Is this what being stuck in a rut means when people say they are stuck in a rut?

I want to play guitar and write crappy songs and record crappy home demos but I stare at my guitars in their cases and I stare at the GarageBand icon on my laptop and I just can’t bring myself to do anything.

I wanted 2026 to be the year of live music. I’ve been to one show an have tickets to two more but there is a Jenny Owen Youngs show in Portsmouth next month that I’d love to see and I can’t bring myself to do anything about it and The Pineapple Theif is playing in Somerville in November and the tickets go onsale today and I just can’t bring myself to do anything about it.

I want to start taking advantage of the Spring-ish weather and go outside and shoot pictures. I was thinking of the sunrise at the ocean visit for this weekend but the forecast calls for heavy clouds both mornings and any thoughts of anything else just vanished into thin air.

I want to read books, and I’m in the middle of one, but I just look at the cover and sigh and don’t even pick it up. I’m following a bunch of TV shows (The Boys, The Testaments, For All Mankind, Daredevil, Star Wars: Maul) but I only pay attention in the mornings when I’m exercising or at night just before bed (which I stopped doing last year because I was waking up with headaches every day and don’t think for a second I’m not scared shitless that that particular bullshit is going to start up again) and even when the episodes are excellent I find my mind wandering away.

Work is… work. I have a thousand things going on and I am having a hard time covering all of the things that I have to do.

Shit.

I don’t know. We’re one work day away from the weekend. We’re going to a live comedy show tomorrow and on Sunday we’re going to see Project Hail Mary again, this time on an IMAX screen. Maybe I’ll cheer up. I hope so. This sucks.

Stuff

I looked at my work schedule for the next two days and… Holy shit, I don’t have a single moment without a meeting booked over the next two days. It is going to suck tomorrow and then I’m going to go back on Thursday and it is going to suck then as well. Damn it.

In other news, my step daughter just did something awesome and it is awesome. Things are crazy exciting. Crazy!

Struggle

Today has been a tough day. Nothing bad happening, just lots of stuff at work happening simultaneously that is stressing me out. The stress increase is unnecessary and pretty irrational, but it’s real none the less.

We have been asked to setup a new development environment that has an extension with our new ai software. I’ll save my ai rant for another post (and you bet your sweet skynet fearing ass that many such posts are coming) but suffice to say I have been having a ton of trouble getting the new environment up and running. Most of my team got things running without issue but a few people have been hitting major trouble. I don’t know if my troubles count as “major” but I had to uninstall everything today and start from scratch and it finally worked. Finally. I feel a huge relief.

Today is Monday and I haven’t posted anything since Thursday. That’s crazy. I never go that long without boring the internet to tears with at least one pointless post. What’s wrong with me?

I’ll tell you what’s wrong with me… I’m currently not in a band. I’m starting to get to the point where its not a matter of wanting to be in a band, it’s a matter of needing to be in a band. Maybe even multiple bands. A cover band, an original rock band, a bluesy jam band… all of the above?

I’m also starting to reach the point where my desire to start going outside and taking pictures of everything is getting out of control. By extension, my desire to try new 35mm film cameras is also getting out of control. I’m having to force myself not to open up ebay when I am sitting in front of a computer. A Nikon F5 (or F6, or F4, or F2) would really hit the spot right now. Also 100 new lenses would really make life better during these dark days of fascist dictatorship.

Speaking of our fascist dictatorship, I consider myself a pretty militant atheist but I grew up catholic. Can I just say that on this day in history I would really like to give the pope a high five?

What else, what else… the Red Sox are no longer the worst team in the big leagues. When I looked at the standings yesterday there were a whole two teams with lower winning percentages. Nice. On top of that, the Bruins clinched a play off spot. Bring me that post season, where they will likely get bounced in the first round.

Okay…. that’s it for this post. Back to work, you.

Easter Weekend?

Easter is meaningless for me now. There was that one year when I was a kid when the Easter Bunny included two Star Wars action figures in my Easter Basket. Damn if that wasn’t like getting a second xmas that year. What does it mean though? It means that when I was a kid my family was catholic but today I am nothing. When it comes to religion, I don’t. None. That’s all. I didn’t even realize this weekend was Easter until about a week ago when my step daughter mentioned she was going to her Aunt’s house for Easter dinner. My response was more or less, “what?”

My in-laws are coming over tomorrow for Easter dinner one day early. We have tickets to see Throwing Muses at the Paradise in Boston tomorrow night as well, but my wife may not be able to go. We’ll see.

Was there a point to this post? I don’t think so. I had a super stressful moment this morning at work. No spoilers, but I had to request a staff member’s emergency contact. I didn’t end up needing it as the issue resolved itself before I got a response to the request, but it was close. I hope to never have to do that again.

In other news, it’s opening day at Fenway Park today. I had meetings scheduled all afternoon and thought I wouldn’t be able to listen to the game, but most of them have been postponed so I’ll be able to tune in to some of the game. That’s a nice little bonus. Granted the Red Sox are 1–5 on the young season. They won their opening game and have lost every game since. Here’s hoping some home cookin’ will straighten this mess out before it gets too awful.

I really thought I had a point to this post but I’ve lost it and forgotten it and now I’ll just leave you with a cat.

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Longest Week Ever

Man… I sure do bitch about work a lot, don’t I?

This has been the longest work week ever and it’s only 1:00pm on Wednesday. Why is that? Why am I so stressed? There’s nothing going on that requires my stress level to elevate out of control. It’s just been a reasonably normal week. Sure, my dining room did flood yesterday…

Did I mention that? We have an office water cooler in our dining room. It is exactly the thing you picture in your head when you hear people talking about being at work and talking around the water cooler. A great big five gallon jug of water sitting upside down and draining into a tall cooler. Yup, exactly what you think. Yesterday it seemed to spring a leak and we had a small lake forming on our dining room floor.

I unplugged the unit and pulled the full bottle off of the top. I had put a new bottle on that morning. There had never been any leaks before. Was it the cooler or was it the new bottle? I betcha you can guess. Once the bottle was out of the equation the leaking stopped. Yup, there was something wrong with the bottle. I put a new bottle on to see what happened and it’s been leak free for about 24 hours now. Problem solved, I think.

Anyway, outside of that and the ugly fact that it snowed twice this week, it’s been a normal few days. Why am I stressin’? Why am I bitchin’? Who knows.

I do know that we’re planning to go to a No Kings rally this weekend, so maybe it’s not so much work stress but it is actually excitement over the coming event. Maybe.

Until then… 2.5 days left in this already long, long, long work week. Crud.

Nutz

Today has been insane. I took the morning off so that I could take Miss Robin Sparkles the cat to her vet appointment. I dropped her off, ran some errands, went home, re-watched most of last night’s three episodes of Andor, went back to the vet’s office to pick her up, came home, ran another errand, ate lunch, and punched into work at 1:00pm.

That’s when it hit. I had meetings scheduled from 1:00-5:00. Bam. All of them. One after the other. At the same time I was getting hit with all sorts of customer issues and questions and hectic stress and wow… It’s 5:31pm now. I can punch out. I need a nap!

Here’s a picture of the clock downtown. It’s not a good picture, and don’t let anyone try to tell you that I thought it was a good picture… because it’s not a good picture. Whatevs, I’m going to go cook dinner for the love of my life and then go to sleep.

I Don’t Care

I was just looking at the match ups for the first round of the NHL playoffs and I really don’t care about any of them. I actually hate seven of the eight teams in the East. Really. Ottawa is the only Eastern Conference team that I don’t loathe, and I really don’t like them very much either. It will be nice to see them beat Toronto (and the will because losing in the playoffs in humiliating fashion is what Toronto is best at) but beyond that? I could not care less.

Last night my wife asked me if I wanted to watch all of the Harry Potter movies in order with her. I said yes. Secretly I am hoping that I can learn how to cast the patronus charm to keep the maga cult the hell away from me. That would be cool.

I have a headache. Again. Every day for over a week has seen at least one headache. It is usually the worst right after lunch and that is the case right now. I think it’s a combination of my glasses doing something wrong while reading on my computer and the general level of stress I’m going through as a result of the maga cult putting an end to my country. Those two things are messing up my head. I’m tired of it.

Time jump. I wrote the three paragraphs above about an hour and a half ago. I took some Tylenol and feel about 10% better. Oh well. I’m super tired. Not sure what’s going on here in the office today, but it seems super loud. Lots of people working on issues together and lots of other people on conference calls at their desks. That is not contributing to the headache though. I can guarantee that.

I thought maybe I’d have more to say but I don’t so let’s click publish on this one.