Corner of Bourbon & Division

So because the last two night shifts are 12-hour weekend shifts, the halfway mark of my week of night shifts is actually on Friday. Exactly 32 hours of work left before I'm off for two weeks, since I traded my weekend day shifts with a coworker.

I am excited to get through my night shifts and into next week, even though I'm going to be super tired. Between the night shifts and the terrible quality of sleep I've been getting, I'm going to be a bit of a basket case during the week. However, I am excited to have the professional organizer over to help me get the kitchen whipped into shape. I have some ideas about how to move some things around to make things more effective, and I'm hoping she will be able to help me streamline the rest of it to be as functional as possible. I would really like to bring my herb garden into the kitchen, too, although I don't know if that will even be possible. I guess we'll find out.

The international news is currently awash with headlines about the 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Myanmar. I just saw that the United States Geological Service's (USGS) predictive modelling estimated the death toll could exceed 10,000 people, and that losses could be greater than the value of the country's gross domestic product, which is WILD. How does a country recover from that kind of disaster? I'm actually surprised the USGS is still functional enough to provide services internationally. I assume that Doge will be decimating them shortly. *sigh*

I am struggling a little to find good news in the world these days. Right now everything feels like it's on fire all around me. So even though my own life is going comparatively well, I am struggling with survivor's guilt about that. I'm also worried that the fact that my life isn't going nearly as well as I think it is, and that it could all fall apart at any time. Apart from the fact that I have exactly one year and two days left in my work contract, which means I could very well be unemployed right after that, there's a non-zero chance that my contract could be ended early if the Conservatives get into power and decide to force more cuts in the government. Hell, the Liberals could do the same as well. It's also increasingly likely that we're going to face some sort of violence from the USA, ranging simply from economic violence all the way up to and including invasion/annexation.

It actually reminds me of a post I saw earlier today, by someone named nitewriter:

So, yeah, it all feels sort of like that. I actually tried bullet journaling a while back, and it didn't work as well as I wanted it to, which is kind of weird because the person who invented bullet journaling did it in order to manage his ADHD. I'm actually curious to see if any of the ADHD management techniques that have failed for me over the past few years might not work better after I get a CPAP, supposing the CPAP actually makes a difference in my energy levels and ability to focus and retain information.

I really liked the concept of bullet journals, and I got very excited when I saw all the pretty ways in which people on the internet were customizing theirs, but I got bogged down in perfectionism and preparing my pages in advance started taking up so much time that I would put it off until I was "too far behind" the arbitrary deadlines I'd set for myself. That's mostly because even when I picked the easiest pretty layouts I could find, my artistic grasp exceeded my reach. I am really, really shit at visual arts, and so even very basic stuff takes me forever to accomplish. So if I do decide to go back to a bullet journal (or BuJo, as the kids were calling it a few years ago) I will likely avoid trying to make it look aesthetic and stick to just plain writing. Anyway, I don't plan on trying yet another journaling method at least until I've had my very own functional CPAP for a few months.

I probably shouldn't hang so many hopes on the CPAP. If I turn out to be among those for whom it's not effective, the disappointment will be excruciating. I'm just excited at the prospect of no longer constantly feeling like absolute garbage. I have no idea for how long I've had sleep apnea, but I've felt like the aforementioned garbage for years now, although it got noticeably worse at the beginning of the pandemic, so five years at least now. I assumed at first that the brain fog was just due to aging and ADHD combined, and then it kept getting worse. At multiple times I thought maybe I'd had an asymptomatic case of Covid (in spite of the fact that I mask everywhere in public) which had resulted in long Covid that had fried my brain. Of course, there's no way to test that theory as far as I know. I've been vaccinated multiple times, so the antibodies will already be present in my system. Right now the sleep apnea seems to be the more likely culprit.

Okay, time to get back to work. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

As I mentioned before, I got inspired by toughlovemuse to try out bullet journaling. I had tried it back in April or May, if memory serves, but I didn't stick with it for more than a few days at best. Having seen her beautiful notebook and nifty pens and washi tape, I decided to give it another go. It's only been a few days, but I'm having a lot more fun with it this time, now that I know that I can experiment with different layouts and fun things like that.

I'm going to try to use it to track new (good) habits and old (bad) habits, and see if I can't become more organised and productive in the future. I mean, I've been doing this dance for as long as I've lived on my own, so honestly it probably won't work. At least it'll be fun while I'm doing it. It's allowing me to indulge in some more artistic pursuits, even though I have basically no artistic talent. I've looked up a bunch of different ideas online, and am using the plethora of users and communities that have sprung up around this phenomenon for inspiration. I've got several pages done already, and managed to mess up my first weekly layout (my weeks start on Sunday, but I was copying a layount and accidentally started the first week on Monday), but at least it should be relatively easy to alter it later on. Here's hoping it sticks, but if it doesn't, it's not the end of the world.

( Bullet Journal pictures behind the cut )