Scrambled

I tend to throw myself completely at whatever I'm doing, no matter how mundane or trivial it is. Sometimes this is an effective approach. Other times it is to my great detriment.

The work I do is tedious and exhausting. Someone I used to work with - someone who I think did not survive the last layoffs - told me that she found the work not at all challenging. But I do. Maybe it's just my low mechanical aptitude, which is somewhere around the level of a Bronze Age barbarian. Maybe it's because I get frustrated more easily than most people realize, despite my godlike patience. Maybe I'm just not very good at the job. Still, whatever else, it's good exercise - very much like dancing for twelve hours straight, with breaks for lunch and the bathroom.

But when I'm on-shift I tell people I effectively do not exist. I spend twelve hours at work, plus another two or more commuting. In the time remaining I must sleep, eat, make my lunch, and do all my other daily functions, including my daily self-imposed obligatory blog post. But for those four days - and for much of my first "day off", which is the day following my last night of work - I am like a scrambled cable channel, flickering in and out of existence, sometimes dim, sometimes distorted, sometimes not at all. And sometimes there are brief moments of sharpness, brief snatches of coherent sound. But the flickering soon continues.

Until now. Now, I'm back. Until it's time to go to work again.