“Remoted” – Workday 136 / Day 198 (Wednesday)

It was a miracle waking up today without a headache. After watching the spectacle of Tuesday night’s Presidential Debate, it seemed a certainty that my head would explode. In my voting life that spans more years and more elections than I want to think about, I haven’t watched many debates, but I was interested to see this one. It certainly wasn’t boring. Or civil. When it was over, I needed to unwind and ease my blood pressure back down to its usual low rates. There was an attempt to find a “happy place.” There was conscious breathing. There was Candy Crush.

Beyond keeping me up even later, Candy Crush was a lot of empty promises to “Escape the stress of today” which delivered nothing more than “Level failed! You did not reach the goal!” and me muttering “I hate this frigging game.” 

Relax? Hardly.

When I finally (thankfully) ran out of pretend lives in the candy matching game and put away the phone to sleep, it was mere minutes before Moose was barking to go out. Our timing is not always ideal. The round trip from bed to front door is 82 steps (which I know thanks to the new pedometer) and depending upon Moose’s pace, can take around three minutes. After that, there was a 3:00 am wakeup, and then bam, it was 6:15 and I was being barked at again. My days and nights involve a lot of me being barked at by Moose.

By 8:00 this morning, after the usual pot of coffee, I was feeling less tired, more alert, and ready to tackle the day which fortunately included few meetings and time to deal with the to-do list. Maybe I need to stay up too late more often. Productivity didn’t seem to be adversely affected. Of course, it was just one super late night followed by one work day. Once work finished it felt a lot like running into a brick wall. Two nights and days of it could be the death of me.