There have been New Year's such as this in the past. I have trouble dealing with stress. I have been feeling a bit under the weather. There are a lot of reasons for this. I took a test and I don't have the curse of Dr. F unless the test is wrong. I just feel like crap.
I thought I was well New Years so my wife and I called a lady I used to work with and we went out to dinner. We didn't stay out super late. We were home by 10 p.m. I was hoping my daughter would come over when she got off work at 9:30 but she didn't. So I set off my own fireworks. Tradition is important.
Next day I felt like crap again.
The problem is that if I ever drop my self discipline I revert to my normal lazy self. Having a job was awesome for the first two years. Insurance and 11.25 % of my wages into retirement was nice. Things have gone downhill since then. When I get sick and have to lay down and can't read a book then I start thinking of the things I seem to be unable to change. I don't have a bad life, I just took some wrong turns and I can't seem to recover and I feel like I am running out of time. No matter what I try to do I never make a cent at it and I miss my daughter.
I am not really sick today. I am just depressed. It is pouring down rain. My head hurts. I have given myself until 3 p.m. to be depressed. Then I am giving myself the only pep talk that actually works. "one foot in front of the other buddy. Get up and get on it..."
Actually, 2 p.m.
I am working on my books. This is depressing of itself. I got a lot of potential, just got to get it done. I have a great mix for pigs. Peas, Triticale, oats, and alfalfa. I should sell like crazy since the local farm store is at .40 cents a pound for 16 percent hog grower.
In other news. I have been sort of obsessed with old audio. I sold a turntable. The guy I sold it to keeps sending me photos of it with various albums he loves. I think I sold it too cheap.
I dug out one of my reel-to-reels. I have a couple boxes of reel-to-reels I have acquired over the years. Most of them are total crap. I always had this image of reel-to-reel guys as HiFi aficionados who crafted Dave Brubeck tapes so save their records. Actually reel-to-reel guys were cheap arsed old dudes who crammed as many hours of the worst easy listening music as possible onto one reel because they were too lazy to turn over the record.
I found the tapes I made years ago. I bought the reel to reel from the radio station at my college. I didn't have a cassette recorder. I listened to some pretty random stuff. Los Lobos, Ziggy Marley, The Tailgators, The Cars. It is kind of interesting.
I got a text from the President of the University I work at. He spent New Years in Dubai. He has a boundless supply of energy. Not sure if it is inspiring or annoying.
Have a great year!
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Having a few years on you gives me the opportunity to say something like "when you reach the point where the shot clock is running" it can be overwhelming. I'm part of a group of six guys from the same small town who keep in touch. Four of them were in the right place at the right time to be amazingly successful (and rich). Two of us had decent accomplishment but failed at relationships and ended up retired and, at best, OK. We commiserate and tell each other "We did OK for a couple of guys from xxx." We came from broken and dysfunctional families. While the other guys went to good schools and spent the summers traveling in Europe and elsewhere, we worked in the local meat packing plant and struggled to get through schools and life. Now we can look back and realized that not only did we fail to always take the right fork in the road but we took a few switchbacks. But...then and now you have do what you are doing, get up, go to work and accomplish something every day. Kids are rewarding to a point but then go off on their own life journeys. Each night as I go to bed I think "this sucks" and in the morning think "this sucks." You just have to drawn on the resilience that's laying around. Your posts about farming, equipment repair, hog feed, etc. are interesting. There are four blogs that I read regularly; yours, a guy who lives in his car in the southwestern deserts, a mentally ill guy who lives in a shack in Alaska and an arrogant mentally ill guy in the Yukon. Wait...I like people with mental issues. Having a job is really good. You seem to have a good relationship with the students and the others from the groundskeeping crew. Both can learn from you. Your discourse on reel to reel recorders was depressing; in high school I had nothing. A good friend was the son of a dentist and he bought a Wollensak (sp?) recorder for a couple hundred bucks. You reminded me of opportunities. My wife and I talk often about coming from little and making one's own path through life (all uphill) versus those that come from families where the parents are doctors, investment bankers, airline pilots, etc. It's depressing. Most days I can't think about it. I just get up, get dressed and face the work of the day. You'll be fine. You have a wife, a Gator, a daughter who sounds creative and successful and a dog. I don't have a Gator or a dog and my wife hates me most of the time and my daughter never calls and texts me every month or so. My mother always said "You don't have to look very far to find someone worse off." She also used to say "If it happens it's in God's plan." The "person worse off..." expression helps me once in a while. This is along comment. I might be the person worse off than you. Take care. Feel better. Avoid Omicron.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with some of us is you can't ever stop. So as the winter closes in and the sun goes away you have to force yourself out of bed in the dark and start a fire, hope your wife made coffee, and then you go to work. I am always trying NOT to be depressed or to hate happy people. When I have an excuse to let down my guard and be ill and feel like crap... Well.... Sometimes I just run with it! Thanks for your comments Also, your appreciation of my sketchy mental health!
DeleteThis winter I am struggling with happy people and entitled people...and I cannot get done each day what I plan to do. Yesterday my wife asked me what I wanted to do with the rest of my life to which I responded "deal with nothing." I might have to drive to warm weather and sun.
DeleteI have a hard time getting up in these dark winter mornings knowing its bone chilling cold out there and spring is months away. If I was smart I'd just get rid of the cattle, live on my pension, collect rent on the land and do sfa but somehow this farming habit is addictive. I've never had less optimism for farming though. High grain prices have led to even higher crop input prices. Going over bills and accounts is a job I avoid like the plague until it becomes a massive task. I should know better by now. Stay healthy. Without that, nothing else matters much.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I got this post started reading our friend Jerry's post about Vitamin D on Facebook. Then we started pricing fertilizer and diesel and the idiot regulations coming and I am dealing with idiots trying to sell feed and then I can't get any feed made or the MMG1355 in the shop or the Model Z that I need to run the hammer mill and I work at a college and the college just makes depression worse. I am from the previous century. Not the 20th or the 21st. Hope you don't freeze up there in the North!
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