Face the music

I have the day off today.  It is my first in ten days.   I'm not complaining, I have pushed for more hours every day since I started this job.  And I've succeeded.  I worked 60 plus hours in that ten day stretch.

I think the managers think I'm a little nuts.  They are used to employees who are more than ready to leave early.  I volunteer to stay.

Part of it, obviously, is money.  The more I work, the more I get paid.  But it is more than that.  When it is busy and everyone is hopping to get things done, I want to be a part of it.  It makes me feel good to contribute to that success.  I haven't experienced much success recently, and these little doses of success feel good.  There is another reason, and in some ways it may be the most significant to me. My coworkers are the only people I know around here, excepting family.  It feels good to be around people and these happen to be the people I know.

Don't get me wrong, it is not as though work is social hour.  And those that know me well, know that I'm barely socializing at all.  But I am interacting.  I know their names and I'm learning their quirks.  Some of them I think I like a lot.  A few I could live without.   But the fact of the matter is, they don't need to be my friends.  They just need to be people that I can engage with on some level.  I've spent most of a year, more often than not, isolated.  And that has taken a real toll on me.  Good, bad or indifferent, I crave human interaction.

And I believe that the increased interaction is having a positive effect.   It certainly can't be hurting anything. 

...

I've been listening to music on my drive to and from work.  I'm guessing that most people listen to music on their drive.  I haven't for a while.  When things don't feel right for me (too much stress, anxiety, depression, whatever); I find that the music bothers me.  The sound of it grates on me.  I get too much inside my head.  So instead, I listen to the news, talk radio or sports radio.  The chatter is distracting in a good way.  I get engaged with what they are saying instead of my own internal narrative.  For the better part of three years that is what I've listened to in the car.

But last week, that wasn't working for me.  So I changed the channel, turned up the volume and enjoyed the music.  And have every day since.

Music is important to me.  I can go on for hours about this band or that.  About the evolution of music over time.  About why this is great and that is not.  It is emotional for me.  Songs take me back to a place and time that I originally experienced them.  New music speaks to where I am when I hear it.  It is for this reason that I sometimes can't enjoy it.

So the fact that I am enjoying it now, for the first time in a while, is a very good thing.  It's like my own emotional barometer.  And it is telling my that the internal pressure system I've been living through has started to break up.

I guess all that says a bit about the state of affairs in my head.  Which is something I intend to write about, but I haven't quite found the words yet.

So I have the day off today, and tomorrow I'll be back back it.  Beyond that I don't really have a plan or know where I'm going or even where I should be.  But at least I can enjoy the music in the meantime.