Day 18: the Perils of too much Alone Time

Overall, today has been a pretty good day. Yesterday was not so good. (I just gave the blog the once-over and realized that I'd added the tag "fears" to an early post. Yeesh, like EVERY post isn't about my fears).

Yesterday was my appointment with Glamour Shots. Probably, in the end, an enormous waste of money (what a racket that is! I had a coupon but still dropped some serious cash to order three 8X10's. Normally each photo you order is $60). The women there were very sympathetic and did seem to "hear" me when I stressed that the photos should "look like me, only better." I did engage in some serious eye-rolling when they whipped out the rose petals and sunglasses. But in the end, the hair and makeup person did a great job, and I found three nice pictures out of the several dozen that they took. The photo service will "glamourize" the photos with some serious airbrushing, but I couldn't get over the fact that even all made-up and gorgeous, I looked tired and old.

And if I hadn't been in a funk up til that point (and I was already calf-deep in the funk), that certainly sent me on a spiral downward.

I didn't really recover until this morning, and even then I don't know what put me back in a saner frame of mind. I guess being productive helps (I tend to make things a zillion times worse when I am blue by becoming a lazy lard-ass and then feeling even worse about myself for being such a slug). I graded around 30 papers this morning, probably more generously than normal. Then I headed out to the Kentucky Flea Market, which was, in the end, a fun goofy time. Swung by Borders and picked up a gift for a departing colleague and Lowes for some paint. Then passed by the house, picked up some cds that I'd loaded onto the iPod and brought them to Half-Priced Books, where I traded them for $20 and five bargain hardcover mysteries.

Then back to Quills. And here I am.

In retrospect, I didn't really get much of substance done today, but at least it kept me out of my own brain for most of the day.

There's a lesson to be learned here. Something about "it doesn't matter how much you think about shit... yadda yadda." Or something about "idle hands... yadda yadda." Mostly, "don't give into the dark side." Or something like that. Because let me tell you, I've been leasing to own in the dark side for the past eighteen days. And that ain't good.

It's also been very not good for me to be alone all this time. I swore up and down to Jason and to Ma that I would be A-OK for six days on my own. Not entirely true. Not entirely untrue either. I just should have been more proactive about finding someone to have fun with this weekend, rather than wallow 24/7 da solo.