nothingness

p class="main">I feel like freakin' She-Ra right now.

Reminds me of the old days of a full-courseload, two part-time jobs, being editor of the college newspaper, and nurturing an obsession with the new crush who turned into my husband.

After five or so years of only the daily grind and reality tv to focus on, I didn't think that energy would ever be possible again. And here it is: full-time job, five to seven nights a week interning at a community theater, one day a week devoted to quality time with my Godchild-who-needs-me, living for the first time on my own, and the other wonderful, but complicated and time-intensive thing-that-I'm-not-ready-to-mention-yet.

On five hours a night of sleep, and I'm still managing to put on makeup and smile pretty for the cameras. Which just that alone I couldn't manage at all the last few years.

Did I say also that in my spare time I'm reading Prozac Nation, Smack, Brave on the Rocks and The GRE Cram Course, (all at the same time, which I've never done before. I've always finished one before starting the next, what's wrong with me now? I guess nothing, except that I absolutely love the New Orleans Public Library! I've never actually "resided" inside of the big city limits, so therefore couldn't get a library card before without paying $50/year), researching grad schools, and trying to come up with a plan for my life.

Makes me wonder if what I need to cope is a too-full schedule. Purposeful stress and complication. No time to be left to my own devices. No time to wallow in myself, feeling unproductive. Because right now I feel really productive. I'm still tired all the time, but now I feel like I have a legitimate cause for always being tired, a reason, it's not just that something's inherently wrong with my body.

I can't describe what I felt before, why I was unable to focus on anything except the latest Allure magazine or I love the 90's on VH1, but I can tell you that this is better-- doing something, even though it's not earth-shattering by any means, especially relative to these over-accomplished geniuses I'm privileged to work around (MD, MPH, and PhD at 26? Come on!), is so much better than the nothing-ness of before.

high

We finished the last box of sugar today and work and realized there was no more in the storage room. Fine, except that I can't drink coffee wihout it and I can barely exist on five hours of sleep with coffee, much less without.

Solution: Borrow a take-out container full of blue, pink, and white packets from the coffee shop across the hall. So, I filled my 8 oz. Tinkerbell coffee cup with 1/3 creamer, topped it off with coffee and sprinkled two white packets on top. And when I tasted it, it was so bitter I had to add two more packets just to make it drinkable. So, after a quick calcultaion, the regrettable truth is that I consume between 8 and 12 packets of pure sugar in a regular day (and much more on those other days).

And this is just with my coffee people--I've just finished a bag of gummi bears and have moved on to the m&m's as I write this! Tell me, is this normal? I've noticed before that while other people drink coffee for the caffine, I do it for the sugar, that's nothing new. Whoever created hand-sized pour-top sugar boxes should be shot!

And why won't they move the snack machine to the third floor instead of right outside my office like I've been asking? I need a way to make them realize the severity of my situation.

down swing

Nothing is right anymore. At first everyone was saying, you look so good, wow you've lost weight, and how did you do it. Now they look at me and say: you're getting too thin, are you eating? The same from my mother, I'm too skinny, I need to eat. The girl in my office has taken to bringing me candy everyday from the gift shop, a muffin from across the hall. Offering to pick up breakfast and lunch. I would have understood the weight loss, before, when I had sworn off junk food and coffee. Or when I went through the vegan diet kick. Or when I started doing that Aerobic for Dummies video tape. But the funny thing is, now, I'm back to eating everything and I'm still losing weight. Clothes I bought at Christmas are hanging off me and I've had to start wearing a belt again. I'm not complaining, but it's weird. I've always been like this I guess. Not this weight, I mean always either gaining weight or losing it. Never steady. I look at pictures from month to month over the last seven or eight years, and am always surprised by how different I look from easter, to the fouth of july, to halloween. It makes no sense. And now I'm on the down swing.