Jon

I have been fighting inertia for most of the summer, if not longer. I wish I could say that I've been winning. I’m sure that there was a reason for the initial slowdown, but I have no idea now what it was, and now it’s just feeding on itself: inertia leads to anxiety, which leads to avoidance, which leads to inertia. Lather, rinse, repeat.

For all that, I’m also happier than I’ve been in decades. I don’t know whether I can describe what K means to me in any kind of way that makes sense. It feels as though I’ve spent my whole life to this point trying to find a part of the world that feels as though I belong there, and now I have: it’s a bubble that has K at the center.

K and I were married in March, and she’s been pregnant for most of the time since then. The baby is due on New Year’s Day, but we both think she’ll deliver before then.

K has stepped up her efforts to break me out of my do-nothingism. At her urging, I’m getting up early tomorrow to go rock climbing—one of the few times I will have done it without her. At this moment, I think I’d rather sleep in and piss the day away playing computer games. But I know that if I do that, then I’ll be annoyed with myself tomorrow night for having pissed away the day with computer games.

I've been in a long stretch in which I haven't posted much. The usual suspects bear most of the blame: I lack privacy to organize my thoughts; I lack time to write; and I still don't feel comfortable talking publicly about the things that occupy most of my attention these days. It's hard to motivate myself to express anything when I won't let myself express what feels most important.

There is a good deal of stress, but I'm also feeling generally hopeful. The details will come in time.

Things are going well at work. The clients like the work I'm doing, the firm likes the work I'm doing, and for once they're happy will my billable hours. I'm told that I'm being looked at for partnership this spring, but that many of the more influential partners still don't feel as though they know me. Resolving that has been an ongoing puzzle, and, though I have some ideas, I really don't know what I ought to do.

I'm getting back into some kind of shape, after having to lay off for various reasons in the fall. I've taken up climbing and often go to local climbing gyms with other LJ folks.

The boy is doing well, in school and otherwise. He's smart, funny, and charming, and everyone loves him. He just passed yet another test in his tae kwon do class and is now almost a yellow belt. He's getting more independent, which means he's asserting his own will against us more often, and that's at one time both gratifying and exasperating. Sometimes I look into his face and wonder who this big kid staring back at me is.

The wife is swamped at work. As I may or may not have mentioned, she's essentially creating a new division at her employer. She's hiring and managing people and fighting for and getting resources for the new project. Her end-of-year evaluation was so good that it scared her, in that she now has set high expectations that she has to continue to live up to.

We're planning a vacation in Florida for a week in February. That will include a few days with her parents near West Palm Beach and a few days involving Disney somehow.

That's most of the small stuff. The bigger stuff will come in time.

A good night's sleep last night was helpful. Making it two nights in a row tonight would probably be even more so.

At the gym tonight, I lifted weights for the first time in years. Tomorrow is going to suck.

I will, somehow, make it through this day and to my vacation.

In other news, I am sick again, coughing up all sorts of multicolored surprises. Leo has a promising career ahead of him as a disease vector.

I spent most of yesterday sick in bed, except for a few hours at the computer playing Battlefield 2, and about an hour spent puttering over a breadboard. I'm not sure what's wrong: I'm tired and I ache all over—and I had a pounding headache all day yesterday. But I don't think that it's the flu because I had a flu shot, and I don't have a fever. Unfortunately, I have no time to be sick today, because my entire department has this incredibly tedious project that we have to work on today and tomorrow, in lieu of real work. I have fortified myself with tea, Pop-Tarts^®, cough drops, tissues, Purell^®, and a handgun, and I will do the best I can under the circumstances.

Meanwhile, Lauren is leaving me alone with Rufus McGoofus this weekend as she goes off to D.C. I would like to be meaningfully better by then, or else life's really going to suck hard.

I am returned from the vacation. Thank $DEITY that I get to go to work tomorrow and that someone else will be chasing Leo for the bulk of the day. A full "what I did on my summer vacation" post is forthcoming.

I had a bizarre dream last night. In the dream, I was one of the X-Men, and a woman who is on on my LJ friends list but who will not be named was in the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Notwithstanding our factional differences, we had the hots for each other, so she got Magneto to invite me over for Shabbos dinner.

The conscious mind reels.