Day 4. One pot. One wok.

Binge watching. Binge watching is such a thing these days. I feel like so many people do it, especially people my age and younger. We retreat into our safety bubbles, safe from stress and anxiety, and we sit or lay and binge watch.

Finding a new show to just completely tear through, a show that is addicting and suspenseful or emotional and relatable – it’s a drug and we just can’t get enough. I have often stayed up way too late on some nights because I just needed one more episode, one more fix of my show.

Last night, I started to catch up on This Is Us. I sort of just guessed where I was when I stopped watching. I stopped watching because it was getting tedious to me. The storylines got harder and harder to believe or even root for. The emotions were forced, or maybe just too heavy for me last year when I stopped.

Anyway, last night I watched 2 episodes. I started on a Thanksgiving one and the next episode ending with Randall coming face to face with a burglar. They immediately cut to the credits and I’m sitting there like WHAT! WHAT HAPPENS!

But it was time for bed and I still had to write the blog. So, I decide I’m going to get into bed, write the blog and watch the next episode because I haaaad to know what was going to happen.

So I got ready for bed, climbed in, wrote my blog and… decided I didn’t need to find out last night what happened to Randall. I went to sleep.

During work today I decided I was going to watch some more of the show. I didn’t wake up at 6:15 for my alarm this morning. The first alarm I remember waking up to was at 7:05. I needed the sleep – I actually felt like I needed more sleep and so I drifted off for another 45 minutes or so. When I woke up around 8, I was tired and sore. I got out of bed and realized I had shin splints. Actually, I may have realized that at 5:00 when I woke up to piddle.

When I was finally up and at’em for the day I laughed to myself with a “so much for going to the gym in the morning” quickly followed by some stern words of “get over it, it’s literally week one.” Not of my 30 day challenge – but of the rest of my life.

I kind of burned out during work today. I’m still in training for my new job and that consists of being constantly on a zoom call with my manager and the other new hire. The 3 of us are okay together, there’s some chatter and stuff but mostly we stick to business. My manager had to jump on another call and left us with another co-worker, who is also new and only about a month or so into working there. Her and the new hire kept trying to jump ahead and do things and I was like “that’s not right, that’s not what our manager said.” I was trying not to be a wet blanket, but why couldn’t they just wait.

They would spend approximately 10 minutes asking each other “should we do this or do you think we should do that, what do you think is the right way to do it, I don’t know what the manager will say.” To me, it just seemed like a very easy decision to just not do anything until you get the answer, but no they went ahead. I mostly kept my mouth shut. Then when the manager got back we had to go over all that stuff and fix it since a lot of it was wrong.

Meanwhile we were all supposed to be on the phones helping and we have a group chat. So zoom call, phone calls, group chat. My battery flashed red and it was barely 4 o’clock. The chatter, the back and forth, the excess of it all wore me right out. Obviously it won’t be like this going forward and I can not wait to get all-day zoom sessions out of my life. It was just interesting that I completely burnt out and burnt down. My personal facade seemed so strong.

Then I remembered that a week and two days ago I was so tired and burnt out that I literally couldn’t get out of bed. Then I remembered This Is Us and decided that tonight was going to be one of those nights. It started raining this afternoon and I had my sliding glass door open until about 30 minutes ago. It was cool and breezy and the sound of the rain set rhythm to the night.

I had texted my friend, who is also doing a round of Whole 30, and told her I was so drained I didn’t want to cook. She suggested take out or running to the store quickly. I lack-heartedly responded by saying that I was just too drained to do any of it – the driving, the thinking, the planning. I couldn’t. I didn’t.

I did however, jump up right then and throw some chicken on the george forman and some potatoes and green beans in the wok. (I have one pot and one wok, that’s all the cooking equipment I have. I love the wok, I cook everything in it, I just would like you to visualize me making the dumbest dishes in my $10 ikea wok.) I splashed some ketchup on my taters and some mustard on my chicken and sat on the couch to watch the show.

I watched two episodes and really wanted to watch the third, but it’s 10:30 and I’m not finished with the blog. I’ve been doing a really good job of getting to bed earlier. Tomorrow I’m not going to the gym, in fact I’m changing my alarm to 7:30 and I’m just going to keep the 1.5 hours to myself to sleep. I may go to the gym after work tomorrow but honestly, I don’t care. I don’t have any groceries except the 2 pieces of extra chicken I grilled tonight and some celery and cashew butter, so I’m excited for the next week’s menu but I need to plan it.

I haven’t fully decided what I will be having but I want to decide ahead of time so that I can put in an order to do a grocery pick up. This has also been a lifesaver over the past few weeks as I have mostly kept out of the stores and have limited those sugar cravings and impulse buys. I never keep sweets in my house because I know that I’ll eat them, so it’s always very strict grocery shopping and then I just make the conscious drive to the store if i decide I want junk. I usually make that trip, lol.

It’s okay when things don’t go to plan. It’s okay to adjust the plan. I was tired today and I constantly adjusted to make it easier or more comfortable for myself. It’s funny when I put it like that, because “adjusting the plan” is a great way to describe my job. Logistics is the nature of the work and as I was getting ready for bed tonight, getting out of the hot shower I took as an offer of comfort I thought about how I am attracted to this job. This is the 4th company I’ve worked for in this field, I’ve had different roles but it’s always essentially the same job. Get as much done, as quickly as humanly possible because in 15 seconds everything is going to change again.

Once again, I found myself chuckling to myself when I looked at it from that perspective and wondered why I willingly keep going back to this industry. It’s chaos. It’s pure, unbridled chaos. And I think it just makes me feel more comfortable being in an office where everything around me is as crazy and chaotic as everything inside of me. It’s easier to hide my crazy within the crazy. That is what is comfortable.

I want to think on this a little more because this is not what I was planning on writing about but when my fingers hit the keys, this is what came out. I think I am at a phase where I need to step out of the crazy around me and calm the crazy within me. I hope you know “the crazy within” is endearing and normal, it’s just that race of never ending thought we all have. I’m not going to quit this job and look for one that isn’t chaotic. It really helps the day go by quickly.

I just think that the universe is always teaching. I’ve been caught in the same lesson for the past few years it seems. I think I’m understanding now that sometimes you have to step out of that security bubble, out of the safety of the pack, away from the area where you just blend in and stop settling for that. Life shouldn’t be about blending in and settling.

I love stories. Movies, TV, books and bedtime stories. What is it about them that are so calming, so life changing, so personal? I dive into them head first. I binge them. I can’t find the right words to describe what I get out of it though. Sometimes comfort or solace, a laugh or a cry. I’m not sure where I’m going with this but I think that I’m tired of other people’s stories. I just want to have my own stories. I want to break out from my comfort zone which is the familiar and the known.

I don’t know maybe it’s writing. I’ve always been too afraid to write. Too afraid to fail. Too afraid to walk out on my own, in a place of vulnerability, a place where I would be seen. A place where I couldn’t hide my crazy with the surrounding crazy and only I would be left to answer for it.

I think that every great story told begins at the point where a person steps over the threshold from blending into the darkness to existing in the light.

My mom sent me this wooden sign that says “write your own story” as a housewarming gift when I moved into this apartment. I feel like she bought me many housewarming gifts actually, but this was the first one because this was the first thing I had up on my walls. I put it in my dining room. I knew the dining room was going to be my “work” space – back then just thinking for art and creative writing.

I was looking through pictures to see if I had any from today – I didn’t. So I kept scrolling because I was going to find something pretty to post. Then I found this one, which I took probably last week, after spending two days building my beautiful new desk.

How appropriate for this blog I thought.

Piddle means pee.