After work on Monday, my friend met me at the train station where I proceeded to spend a solid hour in my car crying to her because I’ve been feeling utterly hopeless and sick of myself lately. In the olden days, they’d have called it a “nervous breakdown.” An hour of crying and being able to get it out of my head was necessary, and to hear someone who cares about me and who I care about say “here are some things we’re going to plan to do together in the coming months” was great and gave me some things to look forward to and smile about. Otherwise, there’d really be nothing.

I’m sleeping far too little and have far too many waking hours to occupy, and those hours go by so slowly. I look at the clock wanting it to be 10 or 11 so I can head to bed, but find that it’s only 8 or 9. I go to bed and can’t fall asleep until midnight or 1 a.m. then wake up before the alarm as if someone’s shaken me awake… and it’s only 5 a.m. I’m exhausted, but I can’t go back to sleep. And I lay there for another hour or two because I’d rather lay in bed and listen to the radio or a CD or read; the alternative is being totally awake and aware and miserable… two hours earlier than usual.

So my days are four or five hours longer than they need to be. And I hate it.

And I had the “You need to take some vacation time” conversation with my boss. I have 13 vacation days just sitting there, and I need to use them up before the end of the year. But I have no desire to take them. They’ll just depress me. I can’t afford (financially or conscientiously) to go anywhere or do anything, so if I take those days off to sit at home, I’ll just get bummed out because I’ll be doing exactly what I do on the weekends… sitting around, reading books, watching movies, running errands, doing chores, and trying to distract myself from my thoughts. If I had anything better to do with my time, maybe I’d look forward to vacation days or days off… but I don’t. I’m happier being at work and doing something productive because at least then I’m not focused on what’s going on inside my head.

I might just take Fridays off in September and October or something like that. It won’t be any better than my boring weekend, but since it’s a weekday, I can schedule medical appointments and my upcoming 7500 mile maintenance visit on the car. You know… fun vacation activities.

Addendum: One thing I can do with a vacation day or two is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while: tear down the site and rebuild in a much simpler fashion. Three or four pages, blog-style, that’s it.