High Holy Mass of Contradictions

I'm tackling my big paper pile o' doom. This paper pile actually started accumulating while my dad was sick, and has slowly grown its own gravity field ever since. I've paid bills and taken care of enough odds and ends that it hasn't actually made itself into an emergency, but enough little things went hidden and unnoticed that it has evolved into a problem. I could actually write kind of a serious post about how horrible and helpless it has made me feel for this past year and a half, but instead I'll just say that I've been making an effort to tackle it every weekend morning for many, many weeks, but it rarely looks like I made much progress.

This morning I had a new strategy: to go through every single piece of paper and separate it into smaller piles according to as many categories as necessary, but I had to name the categories, put a post-it note on a file folder with the name of the category, and put each piece of paper into its respective file folder. Once that was done, I took the financial file and immediately went through everything, entering bills in Quicken, writing checks, and what-have-you. That's done so now I'm taking a little break to check feeds and write this here post.

Next I'll tackle the stuff to file, which will probably take me until breakfast and then I'll end up going outside to garden. But at least I have a really scalable system to begin again on it next weekend. Whew.

Have you seen the news stories about Netflix having a flexible vacation policy? I've been seeing them everywhere for the last week or two, and have been avoiding reading them. Yesterday I finally read one, and I'm sorry I did because of quotes like this:

"I've never terminated a salaried employee for being tardy or being absent," [Chief Talent Officer Patty McCord] said. "There have been issues when people didn't come to work -- but the issue is the work, it's not the time off." [...]
"You're not measuring my daily hours, so why are you measuring the number of days I work?" [an employee] asked. [...]
And the culture allows the company to hire independent, creative types like Director of Product Management Todd Yellin, who spent much of his first several months on the job traveling to Los Angeles to complete work on an independent film.

Why does this bug me? This is exactly the way I've always managed. And I work hard and have always felt like I should be managed that way, too, when it can be arranged.

See, my tenure at Netflix was perfect posh and wonderful except for ( one thing )

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In other news, I stayed home sick from work today. My body is horribly achy, I have miserable cold-like symptoms (a fever, a cough, head congestion), and I feel run-down and totally worn out. Both Karsten and my boss have stated their suspicions that it's a mind-body connection thing, which is probably true, but that doesn't help me feel any less physically miserable.

I had a bit of a ( breakdown last week )

It's funny how I sometimes think I'm so good, but I'm really just learning such basic things. Life has a funny way of smacking us down sometimes, doesn't it?

I was just reading a blurb in the Borders newsletter about Tim Russert's new book "Wisdom of our Fathers" and getting choked up when I noticed a CNN email alert that Ian Copeland died Tuesday and he was only 57, so I went to check that article out, and of course he died of melanoma.

Looks like it's going to be a rough Father's Day this year.

Edited to add: Billboard's obit.

( ginormous 2005 year-end meme behind cut )

It isn't easy being back at work, that's for sure. It doesn't help that things around here are kind of nutty what with problems that have arisen since the latest software release in mid-October, so there's a whole damage-control element to the work I got back just in time to do.

Still, it's distracting, and sometimes that helps. But other times, I just want to curl up into a ball in a corner and cry and miss my daddy.

My mom has made her plans to come visit Nashville at Christmastime. She's traveling on my dad's birthday (December 21st) and will arrive that evening, so she'll be here for my birthday (the 23rd), as well as the 22nd, when we always used to celebrate both my dad's and my birthdays together. I imagine that's going to be tough for both my mom and me, so I'm glad we'll be together. And then she's staying through the 27th or 28th, I can't remember which. Still not sure if my sister and her kids are coming down -- they've been invited, but I don't know if they'll be able to swing it. And I think my brother and his wife are stuck working around Christmas, so they can't get away.

Anyway, that's that. I'm glad we have plans. Christmastime is going to be hard. I don't even care that much about Christmas, but because of the timing of our birthdays, I associate the whole season so much with my dad; it's just going to hurt like hell.

I can't decide if I should have a birthday party (or rather, get Karsten to throw me a birthday party) to help distract me or if I'll just be miserable. Guess I'll wait and see how I feel in the next few weeks before I make up my mind.

I'm not prone to depressed moods. Over the past few years, when things got really rough financially, I had some serious emotional lows, but I could feel that it was just situational stress weighing me down.

This is different. These past few days, I've been in a funk, and I don't really have a good explanation for it. I just can't remember the last time I felt down without knowing why, so this is really weird.

I've been trying to be good to myself, allowing myself to unwind and be a pajama-clad homebody when I get home from work. But I'm also trying not to let myself give in to it too much: for example, I forced myself to work out this morning even though I didn't feel like it (which is weird all by itself).

I do have to work some this weekend, and I don't have discretionary income to speak of so I'll be relaxing in all the old familiar ways: hanging out with Karsten, petting kitties, writing songs, playing around on the computer, reading, and so on.

But I'll gratefully accept hugs and wishes for a moodlift any time now!