“There is no fulfillment that is not made sweeter for the prolonging of desire.” — Jacqueline Carey

Damnit. Three posts at the end of the month to meet my self-imposed three post per month quota. Again.

I wanted to post. I wanted to post earlier. I want to post a post with more substance.

And then I started my month out with COVID.

Fortunately, I’m fully vaccinated, so it wasn’t as bad as it might have been, but it wiped me out for two weeks. And my energy levels have still been impacted.

It started out feeling kind of like allergies. Then one day I start to feel slightly worse a scratchy throat. At which point I’m thinking, “Ahh crap. I feel a cold coming on.”

By the end of the following business day my throat was scratching a bit more… but a bit less than an advanced DJ. Then fatigue hits me hard. Me, a pattern picker upper, realized that taking a COVID test wouldn’t hurt.

I take the test, it’s positive, my body proceeds to feel more and more fatigued, and my interest in using my brain for anything more than audiobooks increases as my energy levels decrease.

I’ve walked at least 10,000 steps a day for 939 in days in a row now, and there was no way I was going to break that. So, even though I felt like a bag of flaming crap, I forced myself to get in those steps. Which was very, very, challenging.

I was tapped out for 13 days. The first 5 were the worst, but I felt fatigued enough for the following 12 that I was going to bed much earlier… and my desire to think was severely degraded.

It seems I’ve managed to catch a case of “brain fog” this time around.

For the past month, not only do I continue to feel slightly more fatigued than usually, but my desire to do any extracurricular activities outside of my daily duties has been severely diminished.

Which is terrible.

I was making a lot of progress on provide.io… and then I haven’t been. Between the brain fog, and the varying degrees emotional turbulence I’ve been experiencing, I’ve been having time regaining the momentum I had last month. Which is antithetical to achieving my goal of bootstrapping a distributed cooperative.

I’ve been having a more challenging time emotionally regulating this month as well. Likely attributable to the brain fog as well. Just writing this post has me feeling so many feelings that I’m on the verge of crying.

On public transit. On my way to a job that I think I’m damn close to done with. On my way to a day in which I get to mask my discontent and continue to make an effort to maintain a positive attitude and solution orientation.

At least the technical work that I’m doing is kinda interesting. Focusing on Ansible and Foreman again instead of Terrorform.

While baking a batch of sorrow and frownies.

Ugh.