-
Thursday, Jan. 27, 2022 - 09:34

• My world has shrunk down so small that all it contains is my job and my dog, and maybe that's why I can't sleep at night. There used to be an entire world out there.


• My old best friends are moving away and I can't say I blame them. This town is not what it was. We used to go to First Fridays and drink free wine and explore the upstairs hallways of the old buildings downtown, back when this place was free and real.


• I've taken to tying two corners of a blanket together and wearing it around my neck, an improvised poncho.


• I haven't been to the gym in a week - it's a tough call, balancing taking care of yourself with pushing yourself. My left wrist has been hurting pretty good, and I also had a fever. I took a covid test and it was negative - I don't think it was covid, but it was something.


• I am helping out with stay interviews at work. We had a training the other day and I had to laugh at the questions we'll be asking people. "When was the last time you thought about leaving this job?" and if they say they've thought about it in the last month, they're high-risk. I think about leaving every week, every Sunday night when I can't bear the thought of having to work through another week. (The reality is never as terrible as what I imagine it will be, but I'm miserable, regardless.)


• I have rearranged 1:1s so that now, every other week, I am able to stop working around 4:00 or 4:30, which leaves some daylight for a walk, or will let me get to the gym for the 4:15 class (if not definitely the 5:15 class). So last Thursday I was going to go to the gym and decided at the last minute not to, and instead went for a walk with my dog - a sunny late afternoon in winter, the golden light at a low angle, the white hills, the frozen river. The gold changed to peach and pink, and then the sun set and the hills were left a soft white with the baby blue sky, before night officially came. I didn't have my phone and couldn't take any pictures so the only record of this is in my mind. Ducks out on the river QUACK quack quack quacking - I tell myself that they're whispering jokes to each other and cracking up.


• I'm working on a new sonatina. It doesn't impress me but I'm bored with the things I know. Maybe I should just buy a book of Beethoven piano sonatas and stick with that.


• I'm a decade or so behind the times but for the past day and a half I have been completely obsessed with Arnel Pineda and Journey.