Work is a four letter word

A quick doodle before I head to work. Kids, I know this story gets old but I can't help but tell it, its seems to be the only one I know. Work. All the time. I get really grumpy about it, especially when it feels like there is this silent expectation that I should work all weekend every weekend. And I am SO TIRED. We have gone beyond burning the candle at both ends and plunged into naked flame being sustained by any flammable material I can get my hands on. Preferably coffee. (Okay, I know coffee isn't flammable). I think the worst part is, the work-all-the-time expectation is at least 75% self-imposed. I hate feeling like I am not doing as much as everyone else. It's the worst representation of over-competitiveness in my life right now. I am plagued with guilt if I am not the last on to leave work and the first to arrive. Which is impossible since to keep up since apparently I am trying to start a fire with coffee. When will that ever work.

Also discouraging, I keep going in for acupuncture to keep this ship from crashing in the sandy shores of hysteria and they keep telling me the same thing. Sigh, I know I am tired, but how can I stop working when there is no one else to do the work. I keep calling meetings to make sure I am getting all my stuff done and now Marcy and Andrea just laugh at me. Sigh. Nothing new.

Rachel sent me this lovely bit of writing, which has been stewing in my brain all week.

"We who have lost our sense and our sense - our touch, our smell, our vision of who we are, we who frantically force and press all things, without rest for body or spirit, hurting our earth and injuring ourselves: we call a halt.

We want to rest. We need to rest and allow the earth to rest. We need to reflect and to rediscover the mystery that lives in us, that is the ground of every unique expression of life, the source of the fascination that calls all things to communion.

We declare a Sabbath, a space of quiet: for simply being and letting be; for recovering the great, forgotten truths' for learning how to live again."



Other things:
- Last trip to NC was delightful.
- Contra dancing, also so much fun. I wore a twirly skirt specifically for the occasion but it turned out to be too twirly and I am pretty sure everyone there got a glimpse of my unmentionables. Especially when that guy twirled me right in front of the giant fan which caught my exuberant skirt and flung its hem skyward. Hehe- awkward.
- Finally bought new running shoes,which were way, way over due and they are fantastic and Carolina blue. My feet are much happier.
- Did a long run of 7 miles last weekend (the last 1/2 mile felt like 4) to great success. Ran on a lonely mountain road where, as I ran, I concocted a complete screenplay called "The Runner" in which a girl and her mother get kidnapped by back-country crazies while on a run on a lonely mountain road. The mother saves the day and there is a great scene where a mother-daughter can of whoop-ass gets busted wide open. Thankfully none of this really occurred (though there could be no fiercer team than me and my mother) but my mom did drive behind me the whole run after some kayakers told her a story of women recently being attacked on a lonely mountain road (a different one than ours). Isn't she great?
-First snow on September 21st. That is kind of sad.
-Move clinic next weekend and move into my apartment the one after that. Next Saturday with Nothing To Do: Somewhere half-way through November.