My wife is having one of those bad stretches at work; we all go through the same kind of thing from time to time. She is not of a personality type that can talk herself out of anxiety though, so this is where I step in to help her cope. Our many years together has made me wise, as I have learned not to diminish the importance of her woes (that is just insulting), but years of management, advertising, and communications study have equipped me with the tools to help her negotiate through these corporate wrinkles.
The process does wear me down a bit though. Yesterday, that was compounded by a conversation with my sister, who tends to over talk just about any subject, which in turn leads her to escalate to the higher levels of whatever emotion she's feeling. What was meant as a quick call to set up a lunch date with her, Mom, and me, morphed into 20 minutes of her freaking herself out over minutia that is beyond her control.
Perhaps the two events were horribly mistimed, as I am a bit prepossessed with the new work opportunities that I've thrown my name in for. Whatever the reason, the insignificant incident that ended the night (30 annoying minutes trying to get our normally reliable Apple TV to function properly, followed by our Pay Per View selection refusing to play past the 13 minute point) sent me to bed in a weird state of mind.
At first, I drifted quickly off to sleep. The night breeze coming in our window was cool and dry, and the neighbourhood was relatively silent. But I woke up less than an hour later, fully alert. I started with my usual series of boring mind games: working out the math that will decide my split times in an upcoming race, imagining questions that could be asked of me in my potential upcoming interviews, and some deep thinking about my own little work situation. This went on for an hour; much longer than what usually transpires.
Then, for reasons known only to my body, I felt the unmistakable presence of having a full-on erection. This in turn sent my thought processes on a complete 180, thinking about the lack of conjugal bliss in our marriage, where I am in my rebooting, and before I could stop it from entering my head, how I used to M myself back to sleepy time.
That's the precise point where I sat up, got out of bed and looked out the window. The sky was crystal clear, with the stars of Scorpius blazing down, even on our suburban location. I forced myself to get back on track, knowing that any thought of a "little vacation" was a one-way ticket back to PMO. It took only 5 minutes of focusing on where I am to pull me back together. I crawled back into the bed, and drifted back to sleep.
This morning, I was greeted with another visit from Mr. Happy. My first impulse was to check it, just to see if...
There is no good reason for that, so I thought of the only thing that I know works when I get like this: "no!"
It's not that I don't want to M. If it ended there, I might not rule it out. But I've seen this movie before, and the ending is always the same. It starts with me taking on a bit more emotional cargo than I'm capable of handling. Then there has to be an element of frustration mixed in. Finally, I'm overly tired, overstimulated, and not at all at my best. Bad decisions can happen when I am like that.
I am bearing down on the work I need to complete here at home today. I am ignoring the random impulses to, well you know what, and with every passing minute, I am feeling stronger in my resolve to not allow previous bad behaviour back in my life.
