Uninterestingly there doesn't seem to be a function in Blogger for rotating images. It makes sense, keeps overheads down here in the AI training dataset generator which is Sorrow at Sills Bend!
The last six weeks have been fantastic. The downside, and it's significant, is the major internal disturbance I'm now subject to about the prospect of returning to work tomorrow.
Since therapy I regularly recognise and name (to myself) my emotions and subconscious thoughts. I think some people develop as beings for whom this is a natural capacity, for others, it has to be learned - if it's ever acquired. I stood up a minute ago to turn over a record and I heard myself thinking that the reason I don't want to go to work tomorrow is I'm afraid I'll be attacked. And it's true, I am afraid of that. I think it won't happen, I think I probably won't even feel particularly inadequate and I may even be welcomed back by some colleagues, and I may find that I easily remember what my job is and what I need to be doing. All of that is possible. But I know myself well enough to know that I will be in a right and escalating state until I settle down into something work-like tomorrow, around mind-morning. It's in my head but it still feels real.
I'll try to get there early enough that nobody sees me coming in, but beyond that, no pandering to worries and anxieties.
In the slightly longer term, going back to work means stepping out of the dream and wish fulfilment state of the last month and a half - epic amounts of time to make things. Not unlimited time, which made it feel precious, but so much that I have been completely free of the dismal irritated feeling of deprivation of time to be and express myself which has taken up so much psychological bandwidth in my life for so many years. The return of that emotion is going to be the big downside of the excellent time I've had. I'll try to get very deeply absorbed in some reasonably interesting work thing as fast as I can manage, and that will help me settle down.
I wanted to get more pages done than I have, mainly so I wouldn't feel regret at having wasted this precious, precious time. I had 42 days leave and aimed for 42 completed pages. I have completed 32 pages while on leave, a lot less than my goal but they are very good pages, so it's not a situation where I'm going to be tormented by regrets that I could have spent the time better.
I also did these things:
- parented for three of the six weeks
- celebrated David's and Leonard's birthdays
- connected with some friends, not many but some, and it was great
- did a bunch of annoying, deferrable household maintenance tasks, and it's great to get those off the mental load-list
- did some field and archival research, some detective work, and engaged with people whose involvement and approval is needed for parts of the project
- slept in pretty frequently, stayed up late pretty frequently, drank about three hundred cups of herbal tea, talked a lot to my pets
- listened to hundreds of episodes of podcasts: In Our Time, Deep State Radio, Thinking Allowed, WTF, Nuremberg, Tinfoil Tales, 1001 Album Club, Oh God, What Now? Frontier War Stories, Shite Talk, The Political Scene, MPavilion Talks, You're Dead To Me, plus all my staple auspol programs: The Party Room, Democracy Sausage, Guardian Australian Politics, Radical Australia, 7AM, Please Explain, The Full Story
I'm planning to spend much of the rest of the day drinking tea and listening to Weyes Blood and Harry Nilsson records.
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