I'm a frayed knot.
In addition to being the punchline of a joke, that about sums up how I feel at the moment. There's a lot of moving parts, and I am trying very hard to align all of them and frankly I keep failing at that. Which worries me, because my screwups have the potential to have huge and lasting impacts on my little family. Worry makes me fray at the edges, and be unaccountably sensitive to little things like noise, and cranky. I'm working at reducing the stress - which also has knock-on effects that increase my inability to get my crap together - but there are days I fail.
I'm also having trouble sleeping, which does nothing to ravel back up the fraying. I am at least making sure regular exercise is happening. The diet is shot, I had to buy bigger pants, but at least I'm walking a mile on my lunch break. It will be interesting to figure out if I can do that on my lunches at the new job. Hopefully I can as it is a really nice break from the daily grind and I can dive back in refreshed and ready.
It's a weird week. I'm wrapping up my lab work, writing reports, and generally trying to make sure the lab is ready to be done when I am. I've committed to running part-time (mostly weekends) until the thing is Done, so that will be interesting, but I can't face the idea of leaving clients high and dry, and I like my boss. So.
I will miss playing in the lab. I've really enjoyed that the last few months. Solving problems and puzzles for clients aside, creating effective formulas from scratch is a blast. I was pretty happy today with a lip balm formula that turned out beautifully. A good send-off from the lab for me, I think. I have grieved the loss of what might-have-been. A career in research and development has slipped through my fingers, but it was perhaps always out of my grasp.
For now, I'm going to put headphones on, shut out the world, and write some more Chloe. Then I'll make something for art. Don't know what, yet.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEGOihjqO9w[/embed]