Worn To A Frazzle

YAAAAAGGGGHHHH!!

I just have too much stress right now. Stress at work, stress at home, stress all around, and it's not going to let up much until at least Tuesday.

I've still got to do my taxes.

I was so frazzled at work today that I closed my door (I almost never close my door at work) and I still was having trouble concentrating and making forward progress.

I'm spending tonight cramming for my fantasy baseball draft tomorrow. One of our two new owners dropped out suddenly at the last minute, and there's no way we're going to find a replacement in time. My progress on the stats software is going slowly (still) and is becoming a drag. I'll need to put in some real time on it this weekend. And I'm feeling a little unmotivated about the draft in general.

And to top it all off, I'm having the weirdest problem with my Macintosh: Anarchie - the program I use for ftp - isn't working. It's simply refusing to even try to open a connection. I was also having trouble saving things from Netscape earlier tonight, but that seems to have fixed itself. Mainly it seems like drag-and-drop between applications (including the Finder) isn't working properly. I'm stumped on this one. Fortunately, I can still use Mirror to move files between my Mac and my ISP account, but that seems like a ham-handed solution (although, fortunately, most of what I move are HTML pages, which use Mirror anyway).

Anyone got any ideas on that one? Or is it Netscape trying to toast my system again?

This is one of those times when I'm just totally frazzled and careening along trying to get things done as best I can, but not having the time, energy or mental focus to consider them as properly as I'd like. It's not a good feeling, and I'd rather be doing something other than baseball stuff tonight, strange as that may sound. I'd rather be reading, especially since I bought Children of God, Mary Doria Russell's sequel to her excellent novel The Sparrow and I'd like to read it soon.

I hate this. I hate it when things don't work right. I hate it when I have no clue why they don't work right. I hate it when I can't find things. I hate it when I don't have enough time even to do the things that are high priorities to me. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.

Gah.

Actually, this weekend won't be quite as busy as it seems. Well, maybe. I hope. Once the draft ends tomorrow I'll have the rest of the day free (will probably put an hour or two in on the stats software). Sunday is a WisCon meeting which I might attend, and that evening I might be doing some gaming, although I haven't been told that the plans are confirmed, and I've been too frazzled to follow up myself.

I need a vacation. Or at least a long, quiet weekend with nice, sunny weather.

My Mac is giving me more problems. Whenever I try to print something - from any application - the computer locks up. I don't know if it's a damaged print queue, a damaged something else, or what. But it's clear that whatever I have printed out for my fantasy baseball draft right now is all I'm getting out (I do not have the patience to hook up my laptop and try to print from it). The rest is gonna be done by hand.

But here's the worst part, and it's a bad one: At one point while I was sitting paralyzed trying to figure out what was wrong, my cat Newton jumped on my lap. I petted him for a minute and then let him down and went back to work. A few second later he jumped up, and I said "GET DOWN!!" and tossed him off.

He flew off me and went THUMP into my bureau, and spent the next minute or so walking with a slight limp in his rear leg.

I felt terrible. I still feel terrible. I was able to coax him out from under the chair he ran to and picked him up and held him and petted him for a while. After a bit, he got up and sat on the floor for a while and I just lay on my bed and cried. I don't want to hurt my cats; they are annoying sometimes, but they don't deserve that. All they really want is for me to give them attention and to be around me and check out what I'm doing. They trust me implicitly, and, well, they obviously rely on me for petty much everything they have. Heck, I'm nearly the only person they ever see, except for the occasional people over for gaming.

Newton doesn't seem permanently hurt. He's not limping anymore, and in fact has done a little running tonight. I checked out his leg and it's not swollen or cut that I can see, and he hasn't been nursing it or licking at it, so I think he's okay. I'll keep an eye on him for the next couple of days to make sure.

I don't know what to do about it. But I think that at least part of it involves spending less time on the computer. Maybe something as radical as taking down my Web page.

I've always prided myself on being thorough and diligent. But I think I need to start cutting myself a break. It's getting too hard to keep going.

And... I've always tried hard to avoid ever going to see a psychologist/counselor. Frankly, the notion of going to see one really scares me. I don't know if it's something I could do - if I'd just be flippant about it and make it all nonproductive. But maybe it's time I reevaluated all that.

Michael Rawdon (Contact)