It's the Saturday night of Memorial Day Weekend. I did this on purpose, I knew it was coming up and I on purpose didn't make any plans with anybody, so I can't complain, but I'm feeling blah and low regardless.
My plan was, today, to sleep all day and restore my body. Tomorrow, house stuff. Monday, go in to work and file, organize, and catch up. I guess I've been sticking to the plan. I slept late today, took a big nap in the afternoon, just knitted and watched partial movies on HBO, but never got dressed or went outside. I saw the sunshiny beautiful day outside, the green grass, the blossoming trees, but didn't worry about it. There's no obligation to go outside just because the weather is "nice". Outside is not really my thing, anyway.
I don't have much food in the house so I was cobbling together strange meals, and that might be adding to my blah feeling. I feel achy all over, definitely something up with the sinuses, and I think my face is breaking out. Blah.
It's been six months here, and so I'm sure I'm hitting another wall. Long enough that I'm feeling my old self slip away from me - can't remember names of things in Sydney, accent probably sharpening into Yank Midwestern again, spelling changing back. Not long enough to have all the #2!%###@! boxes unpacked, or a table. I've met a few people to have lunches and things with, but no best friend yet. I have been out for beers once (I wish I could go every night). I have been to the movies twice with somebody (one more tentatively scheduled Monday night so can't really complain bitterly there either). I have not been to any live music at all, or theatre or comedy or anything. I have not been to see any art with anyone in town. I have gone to nice restuarants for dinner only with people visiting from out of town - lovely, but it would be nice to go more often. When I see people on tv drinking red wine lately, my heart just aches. I grieve for dinners with nice red wine. I can't have them any more because I've got no one to go with and because I have to drive myself home.
I know I've felt this bad many times before, in many other towns. My back is stiff in that way you get when you're sick and you've been in bed all day. So, if I get up and move around tomorrow I should be fine. And if I get some groceries in so I can eat properly.
Work has done this to me - way way way too many things on, I can't keep hardly a fraction of them in my head, and one big project has been super-un-fun since the very beginning and is now at the pointy end and needing lots of hours before and after regular working hours. Plus I have to maintain the other site as well, and keep the appearance of enthusiasm about it. I catch myself all the time thinking, "I'm not coping." I thought of calling in sick every day this past week. I felt brain-damaged, couldn't think of words, couldn't remember why I'd opened that browser window, started emails but then never sent them and wondered why people didn't get back to me. Stressy. So, in a way, I was kind of sick today, and was lying around recovering.
In Sydney I was lonely too. I had found a group of people to hang around with, they'd always be at a particular place at a particular time, and they filled out the guest list of my birthday party. Many of them turned out to be ticking time bombs, given how crazy they all went when I was getting ready to move. Still, the essential loneliness was why I moved back here. It was the feeling I bookmarked when I thought, "If I still feel this way in a year, I'll look at moving home," and in a year when I checked again I did still feel that way, so here I am. But this isn't getting all that much better.
Did I make a mistake to move? I do miss the job, I know my current job isn't as good as that one was, although this new one is up a level and has its excitement and big responsibilities. I am closer to family, and get to talk to them all the time, and to see them next week and then next month. I get to be reacquainted with the landscape and culture (roughly) of my youth. But I don't feel connected to the place yet.
I was thinking of moments of perfect happiness in Sydney. Dialectics. Bringing a project off at work via IM'ing the developer and the designer - the "woo hoo" moment when things went live. Riding a train in from the Inner West by myself. My little trip to the Central Coast is an oasis of happy memory, but I know that when I was there I actually felt quite a bit like this - I remember thinking on the walk how stiff and sore I was, but now I remember the niceness of the walk and not the pain. Change of scenery, is probably what I need.
I have had a few moments of perfect happiness here too. Driving to my cousin's house and getting to that particular stretch of highway with those particular barns and that particular rise of hill, when it was still all covered with snow and the trees were that particular brown and the sky that particular pale blue. Just made my heart swell with the beauty of it. The dinner with my sister with the falling snowflakes and the rushing river. The evening when my parents were sitting on my furniture in my living room, just hanging out, Mom crocheting a potholder and Dad watching something on TV. Just pure delight, to have them here and so ordinary. And, actually, the inspirational speeches by our senior leadership at the work conference a few weeks ago. Many heart-swelling perfect moments there too.
So I mustn't let the turkeys get me down. I have difficult colleagues and vendors making a project un-fun, but my boss still loves me (as far as I know), and there are other good colleagues around who I can collaborate with to do things about which we can all have passion. I will find friends to do outside-of-work things with, and some will be boring and painful but some may lead to moments of perfect happiness themselves. My neck will un-kink if I do some exercise tomorrow and then I'll find another trainer in June. I can start to eat better - I was already starting to and having to pin my trousers because they are some of them too big now. I will find someone to take a flattering picture of me for my Facebook profile so I don't feel so old and dowdy and undesirable and unworthy. I will practice my mantra of thinking about my project instead of thinking about boys.
I need to do something creative. Maybe in amongst the house things tomorrow I can go to a cafe and have a chai latte and write something clever and beautiful. That should make me feel better.
And one day, if I wait long enough, it will snow again....
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