mousme

1- State of the Phnee

I am ridiculously sleep deprived this week. I keep trying my hardest not to schedule things during my night shifts, but the rest of the world insists on operating on a regular 9-5 schedule. I should probably learn to set harder boundaries, but if I did then I’m pretty sure a lot of stuff just wouldn’t get done.

mousme

I think I’m just going to have to accept that updates are going to be sporadic for a while. I’m finding my home setup not especially conducive to sitting at the computer to write updates, because it either means putting my entire bed up, which is inconvenient, or else sitting on the edge of the bed to type, which is not super comfortable and puts pressure on my lower back. So I mostly get the opportunity to update when things are quiet at work, and things have not been quiet for a couple of weeks now. It wasn’t even quiet enough the last two nights to give me a chance to update. Oh well.

Anyway, this is a very long update, so I will put it behind a cut.

mousme

Oof, it’s been a minute, hasn’t it? I’m not going to try to catch up on everything I’ve missed, because that would take way too long. To quote Inigo Montoya: “Let me explain. No, there is too much—let me sum up!”

1- State of the Phnee

Okay. There is not a ton going on with me that I haven’t already covered.

Clerking for Ministry & Counsel is proving pretty challenging. The one guy whose wife appears to be using him as a puppet/mouthpiece has been kind of AWOL for a while, and instead of that taking the pressure off, his wife has decided to insert herself back into M&C (she was the clerk a few years ago) and is trying to “force” me to do things her way. So I’ve been having delicate conversations in which I am trying to let her feel heard while simultaneously maintaining boundaries and not catering to her every whim. She’s already produced a two-page written document about how much she hates the hybrid Meetings (I’m paraphrasing), and insulting the people who attend online (she called them “auxiliary” to the Meeting, which made my blood boil), and is insisting that the proposed Claremont Dialogue be help on the date and time of her choosing, which may simply just not be practical at this point. Bah.

mousme

1- State of the Phnee

It’s been a rather sleep-deprived weekend, entirely of my own doing. I was up late on Friday night for the usual writer’s meeting for Project Nimrod/the Soopar Seekrit Prodjikt I’ve been collaborating on since last September (ish), and then I couldn’t get to sleep right away so I only got about three hours of sleep before I had to get up for work. Then yesterday was the first session of the new D&D Eberron campaign, and once again I was up until about 1am and had to get up at 4am to go to work. *cries in very tired*

It was worth it, though. D&D is amazing, and it’s nice to have a creative outlet for writing again, even if I’m only doing it sporadically.

I have been procrastinating on my Quakerly duties this week. I have to draft the State of Society Report and come up with a draft of the queries for the Claremont Dialogue on hybrid Meetings. I am feeling decidedly uninspired, and I need to learn to write even when I’m not feeling it, because responsibilities and deadlines don’t wait for inspiration.

mousme

I'm posting this here for my own records, because social media is ephemeral and this feels like something worth recording.

*Edit* Oh my God, the new editor is a nightmare and I CANNOT make the text cuts work properly. Sorry, friends!

mousme

1- State of the Phnee

I’m back in the saddle, more or less. I am having trouble getting myself going in the mornings still, and I have to figure out either how to manage my life without getting up early, or else how to get myself out of bed at a reasonable time. I have not figured out either of those things. It’s partly inertia and partly a feeling of being constantly worn out. I was hoping that solving the mystery tired/sleep apnea thing would also solve the can’t-get-out-of-bed problem, but nope, turns out that wasn’t it.

mousme

1- State of the Phnee

Okay, I missed a few days, there. I blame the sleep deprivation, because I just forgot about posting for three days and only remembered a few minutes ago. Oops? I’m going to give myself a bit of grace, there, because the last few days of night shifts were rough AF, as the kids are saying these days.

There’s actually not much to report since I last posted, at least. The State of Society worship sharing went well, even though I had some moments of frustration beforehand. The current set of Friends who are “in charge” of things are really bad at communicating with me. It could just be that my very neurodivergent brain is not picking up on all the neurotypical subtext that’s happening, but they act as if I should somehow read their mind and know when they are going to deviate from the standard operating procedure, which I cannot do. My ESP has never been as well developed as other people would like.

mousme

1- State of the Phnee

I am no longer a Phnee. I am an ex-parrot. I am pining for the fjords. Do people still make Monty Python jokes these days? I don’t know, but I am tired and so I am making Monty Python jokes. Something something Spanish Inquisition!

*lies on the floor*

Today was incredibly frustrating. I’ve had about 40 minutes of sleep in the past 36 hours, and I don’t get off work for another 7 hours, after which it will take me an hour to get home, meaning I’ll have been awake for roughly 43 hours and change.

The Quaker Member who called the online attenders “auxiliary” to the Meeting tried to postpone the worship sharing on the State of Society Report today because there was a clothing swap happening at the Meeting house, which had “been on the calendar a really long time!” As if the SoS Report doesn’t have extremely tight deadlines that we need to respect. It’s a good thing I wasn’t in the same room as her, because I might have done something distinctly un-Quakerly to her at this point. I am sleep-deprived and she pushes aaaalllll my buttons.

mousme

1- State of the Phnee

Holy Hannah, I am TIRED, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better. I woke up on time for the threshing session and managed to stay alert and pay attention for the whole two hours of discussion. It was the usual blend of informative and frustrating, the way all group discussions tend to be for me. I’ve found lately that I don’t have as much patience as I used to for listening to people who don’t listen to instructions or speak only to repeat the same thing four other people have already said or to only talk about themselves when the subject matter is about a much larger issue.

This is not a flex, as the youths say these days, it’s a character flaw that I am working to correct in myself. I need to find more compassion and understanding and make space for people who are interacting with the world in a way that I think is incorrect. I recognize that this is an example of rigidity in my thinking, but I’m having trouble with the praxis part of things these days. I don’t have the emotional reserves to hold that much space for people I don’t know well and who are getting under my skin for their perceived flaws. Work in progress, I guess.

mousme

1- State of the Phnee

I am at work, albeit very reluctantly tonight. The sleep deprivation is starting to take its toll, even though I went to bed reasonably “early” (shortly before 9:00am) and got up at 16:00, which means I got almost seven hours of sleep, which is way better than my average this week. Still, my eyes are sore in a way that tells me I can probably expect a headache later if I’m not careful. I do have Tylenol with me, so I will head it off at the pass if I can.

There’s not much to report on today, as I spent most of it sleeping. I didn’t get in a workout the way I’d hoped, so I will have to try that tomorrow at some point (ugh). I do have the treadmill out at work, and I plan on getting in a couple of miles tonight at least.

I will say that I miss the longer breaks we got at the RCMP during our night shifts. I’d gotten into the habit of taking a nap mid-shift, and that was a game changer in terms of being able to get through those rather grueling 12-hour shifts. We only have two 12-hour shifts at TC, but they come right after five 8-hour shifts, so the full effect is brutal. Sometimes I can get away with putting my head down on my desk for a few minutes with my eyes closed, but it isn’t at all the same as having a dedicated space for a full-on comfy nap.

2- State of the smallholding