While you were sleeping...

I saw that title in Chronogram and it resonated with me pretty well.

I guess I feel pretty disconnected from my friends and all their happenings.  I haven't seen Irene in ages, Juliana and I are always varying degrees of sick, tired, and busy.  One of my oldest friends seems to be headed for certain trouble in sketchy situations.

I don't know, I'm just reminded of that part from Cabaret:

Can we ever tell where the heart truly leads us?
All we are asking is eine bisschen Verständnis -
A little understanding -
Why can't the world 'leben und leben lassen'?
'Live and let live...'

So, in case you missed something while you were sleeping, here's what's going on in my life:

I am trying to really come into my own as a marketer at work.  I am really into UXD (User Experience Design) as a sort of life choice, since it encompasses a lot more than just gamification, but also embraces gamifying things.

Which now makes me think of La Vita Dolce, the movie where the father convinces his son that the concentration camp is one big game to win a tank.  All I remember is that kids big goofy grin at the end, full of joy.  A whole horrorshow joke built up to that end.

Maybe my head is in a dark place.

It's stressful, trying to live a life on my terms, in this area.  I often wonder if my coworkers can understand even half of what I say.  It's very discouraging, but I guess I must keep trying to learn their language, even when I gently lead them to a simple conclusion and they blissfully assume the exact opposite despite my best labors.

And I feel like I never have the time I need to communicate with Juliana.  I am living an entire life of on-the-fly last-minute interactions.

Continuing, while you were sleeping...

My digestion, for weeks, has been terrible.  My insides feel ripped up from the burrito I had last night.  I keep trying to eliminate grains and starches, because that seems to help, but then my energy cycle gets weird, which upsets Juliana, and I inevitably find the rigor too difficult and go back to eating something full of wheat.

I've also been thinking about autism, depression, cognitive distortions, the relation of diet to autism and whether or not people thing so differently that they might never understand each other.

 My apartment is lovely, and a joy to live and cook in.

Juliana is caring, and beautiful.

I live near where I work, and I have ever-greater specificity of purpose, even if my faculties often take a couple steps backward.

My biggest concern is a lack of will and time for reflection.  I need to stop rushing from thing to thing without thinking.  I don't do it with work, when I am in the office, I force myself to think out things to avoid mistakes, but this is harder to do with my personal life.

My bigger biggest concern is my health.  I simply can't keep burning the wick at both ends.  It's not nearly as much fun.  I have to figure out how to dial it back.  My current lifestyle doesn't meet a number of my passions and desires and yet I still rarely have a couple hours of rest.  I have no idea how Juliana finds the strength to do it, seeing how she works a good hour extra on either side of her day, or more.  I feel weak and unsupportive sometimes, but she assures me I am doing great- I guess she is an excellent manager.

Vinny's birthday is coming up, the Juliana's and then mine.  A quarter century.  

And we are going to NOFA this weekend, the Northeastern Organic Farmer's Association's bi-annual conference, now in Amherst MA, full of workshops on how to run manage and grow a farm.

Gotta run!