 Bad planning on my part leads to mental health day
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Jul. 30th, 2008 @ 04:05 am 
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So I've been working under two deadlines:
1. To finish a rough draft of a complete Ellis document by the end of the month. Considering that tomorrow I work all day, today is that deadline day.
2. To be ready for a week long vacation, cruising Alaska and playing poker. Considering that the cruise starts on Sunday and I work Thursday and Friday, today and Saturday are my remaining days.
Now I've had these deadlines for months. I've known about them for months and set up the Ellis deadline so that I would be able to use it as a break from Ellis. I am really looking forward tot he cruise and can't wait for Sunday to arrive. But I realized yesterday that I was stressed to the gills.
Saturday I spent the entire day working. It started with yardwork. All three of us went out at about 9 in the morning and weeded the gravel parking area we have in the back of the house just off the alley. It was choked with vegetation to the point that it was getting awkward to get to and from the cars. We spent about an hour and a half, cleaned it out so that it looks beautiful and the girls settled into a day of playing CoH. I worked on Ellis for the rest of the day.
And I did good work. I only wrote about 2500 words, but I had expected it to go slowly. I finished up the bestiary, which was I thought was pretty impressive because I had only started it while I was in Ashland and had been think that I wouldn't have it done by the end of the month.
But by about mid-day, when I took a break from writing to take a shower, I realized by my back was starting to hurt. Nothing major, but one of those signs of aging that my 25 year old friends don't like to acknowledge.
I cooked some fabulous steak that Safeway had on sale for dirt cheap for dinner and we sat around watching British comedy (The Graham Norton show followed up by 2 episode of Coupling on DVD) and went to bed early.
On Sunday I slept late even though we'd gone to bed early. I seem to remember this trend from previous back incidents. Either I don't sleep well, the muscle relaxants really do a number on me or the act of healing knocks me out. Whichever (or more likely some combination of all three) it was, I went with the flow and even took a 2 hour nap after lunch. In the morning I went over the bestiary and edited it, realized I had only one sea creature and added two more. The creature list, for those of you who think there are no cool beasts in Ellis are:
Beasts
Pandarus
Lion
Panther
Bear
Wolves
Horses
Boars
Hyena
Dog
Moonpard
Troll
Unicorn
Giants
Birds
Caladrius
Strix
Griffin
Fish
Hippocamp
Whale
Swordfish
Serpents
Crocodile
Man-lizards
Pain Lizard
Thero
Salamanders
Snakes
Emorrosis
Asp
Adder
Viper
Dipsa
Boa
Basilicock
Jaculus
Sciritae
Dragon
Unnatural Creatures
Ghosts
Revenants
Vampires
Homunculus
Wolflord
Dunter
Descari
Orimar
After my nap I was definitely feeling that groggy/too much sleep/not right in the head feeling so I puttered around a bit and eventually decided to play some poker. I did remarkably well, and won $240. Normally after a successful session like that, I get very excited but this time not so much. I wrote it off as feeling groggy.
That night I had slept fine (much to my surprise) and got up on time. I did my normal morning work and listened to a fascinating lecture about the conversion of Roman-style slave-run plantation farming to the medieval manorial system during the Carolingian age. I went over all of my notes for Ellis and decided to call the rough draft finished, even though technically it isn't.
It isn't done because there are still things on my to do list that aren't done, but I'm calling it finished because this is supposed to be a rough draft, and my project for the next few months is to completely re-write the whole thing to make it readable and understandable by someone who isn't me. In the process of doing that, the things left on list are going to need to entirely re-written, rather than just edited, so I felt I could leave them for later, to get the tone behind them done.
Actually, there were two thing still left to do: Playtest the jousting and mounted combat rules and fix the mechanics behind the use of some social skills. I did the cavalry stuff that night and have been thinking about the social, but haven't come up with anything I like yet.
After that I took my nap* and woke up from it poorly. It was short, only 45 minutes, but I woke up starving and couldn't get back to sleep. So I got food, sat in front of the computer desperately trying to work but unable to concentrate. Finally I gave up on Ellis, and after my successes of the previous day decided to play poker. It went poorly (lost $40) and after an hour or so I wound up on the couch asleep. This was a good three hour nap where I dreamed about those social rules, but on waking couldn't get them to actually work like they had in the dream.
I cleaned the kitchen, pulled out the battlemat and playtested the mounted combat rules. It went well, made a few small fixes, realized that there was a major problem with the timing. I paced around for a hour and tried a few different things until I finally got one to work. I also played so CoH with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) sabledrake. Sitting on the couch, hunched over the laptop, energetically blasting villains was not a good thing for my back, but more on that in a bit.
I had napped until 4:30 pm, which is a bit late, so I knew I was going to have trouble getting to sleep that night. So at 10:00 when Christine went off to work, I started working on my website stuff for Gary's Games. This is what I usually do in the morning, but the wonderful thing about flex time from home is that I can do it whenever I want.
I went to bed around midnight, with a muscle relaxant, because by now my back was hurting significantly more than it had been. But even with the drugs, I couldn't get to sleep. I'd like to blame it on the back, but in reality it was because my head was in a bad place. I was having one of those sessions where I was trying to think about game rules, but all I could think about was how I was wasting my life thinking about imaginary things when at any moment one of us could get fired, be unable to find a job or die and then what would I do with my game rules and imaginary worlds.
After 45 minutes of that I got up just to so that I could distract myself with anything to keep my head on another topic, any other topic. I web surfed for an hour or so and then tried bed again, getting to sleep this time.
I didn't get up until 8:30, but still felt awful. My back was worse and I was tired and grumpy. I canceled my plans with raffensihv and went back to bed. I woke up at 12:30 and took a long shower, just letting the water hit the small of back. Then Becca and I went out and went to the post office, a pressing errand which should have been done Monday, but got left undone because of the long afternoon nap. We came back with lunch (Jack in the Box) and I was still feeling down and out of sorts and determined that no matter what I did that day I was going to go super easy on my back.
While I ate (sitting in my computer chair, which seems to keep me in a good back posture) I did some deep thinking about what I wanted to do that day and what was going on with the odd fit of self-loathing.
I came to realize that I was really stressed out about the cruise. I kept thinking that there were all sorts of things I had to do before we went, but when I went to make a list there was hardly anything. I wanted to play poker, even though I was going to spend a week playing poker on the cruise and even though I wasn't feeling all that great mentally.
Then it struck me that what I was anxious about was that I didn't feel that my poker skills were up to challenge of the cruise. That even though I don't expect to pay for the cruise playing poker, I do expect to come out ahead while there. But I have barely played in months, so what right did I have to expect to win?
And poker is a major life goal for me. I want to get to the point where I can support myself playing poker. I want to turn it into a career. But I have also decided that my first dream, the one that I have had since high school, has to come first. So I have been putting most of my energy into Ellis, not poker.
So after realizing that, I decided that I would take the rest of the day as a mental health day. I played City of Villains and read poker books for the rest of the day. Then when Christine got up, I laid down on the floor with my feet up (my Dad's recommendation for back problems) and watched TV and read poker books.
That night, I halfway expected to have trouble sleeping, but no dice. I went to sleep right away and then woke up 15 minutes before my alarm clock went off, having dreams about posting in people's LiveJournals while sleepwalking. Figuring that was a sign, I have posted here, feeling chipper and awake, though my back does not feel any better.
On the agenda for today:
Pay bills
Take out the trash
Do grocery shopping
Read though a 100+ page report from work, looking for products that we gave up on getting through ACD, but that we may want to reconsider now that we're dealing with Alliance again.
Take it easy on the back!
Think about social
Write up those changes to Mounted Combat
Work on my list of Saints (which is something else that isn't done yet)
* If it sounds like I take a lot of naps, remember that I usually try to sleep 5-6 hours at night and then get a 2 hour nap during the day.
Current Mood:  relieved |
I'm glad you are feeling better mood-wise. As for the back ... (insert usual should-I-make-you-go-see-the-doc / no-they'll-just-tell-me-to-do-what-I'm-doing debate here)
Remember, like I told you last night, this trip is a cruise that happens to have poker, not a poker tourney that happens to be on a boat. We're going to have a wonderful time, all three of us JUST the three of us.
As for Ellis, you'll finish, it will be good, and when all's said and done I know you will have something to be proud of. You already do. You've worked your ass off on this and stuck with it through a lot of ups and downs.
And as for all those kids you work with, if they give you any shit about getting old (or any shit about your wardrobe; I'm looking at YOU Charlie!), let me know. I've got my spork right here!
-- C.
Remember, like I told you last night, this trip is a cruise that happens to have poker, not a poker tourney that happens to be on a boat. We're going to have a wonderful time, all three of us JUST the three of us.
I know. And I already feel so much better for having done something about it. Between talking to you, posting and doing a little bit of studying, I feel like I am taking charge of things rather then just letting them wash over me.
And the aging crack was actually meant the other way around. I am old and I do feel old. Charley was saying that 35 or 40 wasn't old and that in Ellis I made too big a deal about the effects of aging.
At 38, I certainly feel less physically able than I did at 20 and that to a people forced to do hard labor with little medical care and poor diets, it would only be worse.
Edited at 2008-07-30 02:48 pm (UTC)
I'm really not trying to give you a hard time about your age. I really don't think that that 38 is old. Or rather, I'd like to think that when I'm 38 I won't be too old to do things that I want to do. I feel like it's more a matter of practice. I don't normally do heavy lifting. When I do, my back hurts. But I don't think it's because I am in poor health or at 24 I am just too old. I think it's because I am not in continual practice. I'm betting that at 25 you didn't do the same amount of yardwork and lifting that you do now.
Wardrobe, on the other hand, and I'm guilty as charged.
My back gives me problems quite a bit. I think taking the evening off an hour early and popping a vicodin is the best solution. Just lay down with a good CD on or a light book and let yourself drift into sleep while your laying down flat. chromiuml's right, you need to relax and give yourself the ability to start healing.
Are you taking any anti-inflammatory (tylanol/advil) for your back? I have found that muscle relaxer alone doesn't do it for me.
Its weird how vacations (or preparing for them) can sometimes be more stressful than work and everyday life. I am glad that you are taking it easy on yourself. Sometimes if your body is hurting you just have to chill and relax to get it to feel better. Being stressed and tense certainly doesn't help pain.
That's probably a really good idea.
I always think of Advil and Tylenol as Painkillers, so I don't like to take them for thinks like this under the theory that if the pain isn't there, I won't go easy on it. I forget that they do more than just manage the pain.
Thanks!
--Tim
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