Whew

Yesterday was pretty rough.

I’d been on a writing binge for the preceding four days, working on and then posting two long chapters of my fan fiction work “Opening a Door.” I felt driven; I needed to get the next pieces of the story out. I stayed up two hours late to finish the second one. I felt all right when I got up yesterday morning, but the lack of sleep did not bode well for the rest of the day.

(In an interesting parallel, my main character was also rather frenzied, and, like me, he had also forgotten to shower for a couple days.)

I’d waited to post the second chapter until morning, which was good—I ended up revising the ending paragraph, smoothing out the prose, and catching several errors. Then it was time for work. Due to the winter weather—there was a warning about black ice on the roads—I worked from home for a couple hours, then went to the office at 10.

Work was stressful, with various deadlines looming and lots of problems cropping up. I had to turn my music up as loud as I could in my earbuds to block out noise so I could concentrate.

I generally have a protein shake at 6:30 before leaving for work, then graze on some sort of breakfast food from 8:30 to 10. Because I’d left for the office two hours later than usual, I had second breakfast two hours later than usual, meaning I was actually still eating it at 1 o’clock when a coworker asked if I wanted to go with her to the cafeteria.

I really didn’t feel like I could eat, but I went anyway, thinking maybe taking a break would be nice. Unfortunately, I was wrong. As we walked, we got into a conversation I did not have the mental capacity for. She kept asking questions I didn’t feel like I could answer. I became increasingly frustrated. I couldn’t think. I ended up not buying any lunch, and, unfortunately, grousing a little at her. She was understanding, though, and I apologized for not being better company. Ultimately we just went back upstairs to our desks after she’d purchased her salad.

Finally at around 3 I got hungry again. The cafeteria had closed at 2, and I didn’t feel like I had time to leave the building to pick something up. So my oh-so-healthy lunch wound up being a package of peanut butter Nekot cookies and a Snickers bar from the vending machine.

Another coworker came by and started asking me a bunch of questions about myself. I can’t even remember what she was asking now; all I know is I felt like I was being put on the spot, and I got really frustrated again. I was able to express this without being completely rude (though I was a little rude). She backed off, explaining that she is just really interested in finding out how people tick. I apologized and said, “I am more open to that sort of thing at other times.”

Since I’d spent the morning revising and I didn’t write anything at lunch, I only had the evening to get something down. At first, I just tried to unwind, let my mind relax a little. I had a little fun with the dress meme and the llama meme that both happened to crop up yesterday, and I read a recently-posted chapter of an excellent fanfic I’ve been following. Finally, I wrote 77 words on a story that will be a companion piece to “Opening a Door.” Not much, but it was definitely enough for my exhausting yesterday.

I’m definitely going to try to eat properly today. There’s no winter advisory this morning; it’s cold and the cars are frosted over, but there should be no problem getting to work. I’ll grab second breakfast as usual and eat a real lunch. That should help today be a better day.