Weariness

I'm tired.

Part of that is simply the stress of work this week. I've had worse weeks, but this one felt pretty relentless with several projects looming, some of which I really should have found out about before now, and still things going wrong. I probably spent half my time time this week "putting out fires." Being in what I term "crisis mode," where I'm trying to fix something as quickly as possible because it's impacting current operations, is draining. This week, there was not one day without that. Things were moved over the weekend, causing some problems. We had a laptop suffer some sort of hard drive issues that, after a lot of time sunk into troubleshooting, necessitated formatting and reinstalling everything from scratch. I've seen files on one computer deleted for no conceivable reason. We had Windows Updates cause an odd interaction on our domain controller that screwed up our ability to even communicate across our network - that one was just so much fun trying to pin down where the root cause was. I'm sure it doesn't help that the current management atmosphere at work is psychotic. That seems cyclical, but it's still not fun.

Then there's the physical pain. Monday, while reconnecting things at work, I "popped" a rib. I don't think I'd done that on my left side before, so hey, that evens things out right? It's not a serious injury, but it's familiar enough. From feeling that pop, I know deep breaths and any number of movements or positions will be accompanied by a sharp pain in my side for the next few weeks. Thankfully, I can still get sleep, though it's uncomfortable enough to disrupt and lazy lounging in bed that I might have wanted to do this morning.

It's times like this that I do feel bad about the loneliness of the life I've chosen. I would love to be able to come home after one of these trying days and be able to let someone else take part of the burden... to give a (careful) sympathetic hug, tell me to just relax, and make dinner for me. When you live alone, though, something as simple as that may as well be netting the moon. Most of the time, I genuinely prefer to just take care of myself. That means, however, that I don't even really have the option to do otherwise. I can't turn anything over to anyone else, because there isn't anyone else. Even on my deepest, darkest "off" days, I cannot let everything go.

Certainly, online friends can express support, but that's really all they can do. And sometimes even that doesn't work too well. In many cases, it's too easy for negativity to blossom and spread. Sometimes even saying anything there feels like it only worsens situations. The alternative is to not say anything which... sometimes worsens situations. Kobayashi f-ing Maru.

I'm tired.

I am consciously thankful the work week is over, but the weekend doesn't feel like the relief it should. I also need to go to the grocery store, even though I don't particular want to go anywhere today. Blar. Back to life.