Okay, yes, wow

You know, I don't think it would have been unreasonable to hope that I could change jobs and just focus on settling in to my new role. I mean, yeah, I have a lot of baggage to shake off from the old job -- obviously -- but a couple of dips in the sleep schedule and some weird dreams and I think I could have gotten over that. 

But based on Tuesday night's Weird Fucking Dreams (which woke me up about half an hour early on Wednesday) and this inexplicable sense of overall stress that I'm carrying, apparently that's not enough. I mentioned in earlier posts that of the two couple-friends who have enriched our social life for the last half-decade, one couple is in the process of trying to sell their house so they can move to Colorado, and the other is moving all their stuff up to Boston next fucking week. Plus school starts for Secondborn next week -- we aren't ready -- and we're dropping Firstborn off at college the week after that -- we really aren't ready. Finally, Beautiful Wife's job is being an absolute shit-show right now -- they seem to be trying to sideline her department, if not remove it entirely -- so she's freaking out because she needs to prepare for a double-load of classes¹ in the fall semester, which also starts Really Soon Now.

I'd like to have a nervous breakdown, please. At least, I'd like to drop everything else and get this stuff sorted out. Instead, I have to keep showing up for work, continue actually working so I can keep this job, and figure out some way to squeeze in the other stuff -- like helping Secondborn figure out ways to get himself back and forth from school, and Firstborn get registered for classes -- around the edges. 

Plus I'm watching a lot of the things that I've spent the last several years relying on to keep me sane -- Monday night D&D, Wednesday night horror webcast, Friday Night Writes -- come apart in real time, and apparently my brain has decided to just seize up and start screaming "NOTHING WILL EVER BE THE SAME AGAIN!!!" at me. Which, yes, thank you, I knew that, Brain. 

I'm so tired. 

I would like one year -- just one -- out of the 2020s to just... be a normal year. Just... have a routine, be manageable, don't be buried under an avalanche of external stressors like Covid (Hi, yes, we've hit the summer flare-up and nobody's acting like it because we've been betrayed and abandoned by our public health organizations), the election (which I'm actually finally hopeful about but if anything goes wrong we're now a fully fascist state), and multiple Major Life Changes all happening at once.

Breathe. Move forward. Don't panic. That's my mantra right now. 

I have a meeting this morning and several projects to follow up on. I know what I need to do next. 

But dear gods I would like to crawl into a hole and hide for a while.

1. The idea is that she does her entire year's worth of classes right now, leaving her free in the spring to look for another job, a suitable side-hustle, or a better way to navigate the current bullshit.