In the middle of the night

I am allotting myself .2 of an hour to post - so I need to be quick. I just haven't had much time to post lately, but I've wanted to. And I can't edit this, so sorry for typos.

Last night, I had the worst night of sleep that I've had in a long time. Almost since I can remember. My sleeping has been pretty good for a long while now, and even when my mind is racing, I am able to put it aside at night. Not last night. I am under intense pressure at work. It isn't just that I'm busy and working a lot of hours - cause that's fine, there is a big difference between being really really busy and being under intense pressure.

I woke up at 1:00 a.m. last night after two hours of sleep. And proceeded to ponder the meaning of life and just exactly where mine seemed to go so horribly wrong, and I was thinking about that and the messy situation I got myself into with someone, and how I couldn't seem to get out of it, among other things, like why I am so unhappy (you know, no major questions) and then it occurred to me, at 1:30 that this deadline that we have at work, is going to be impossible to meet. The only way is going to be if I work this weekend, and maybe next. Great for the hours yes, but the pressure is, well, like I said, intense. And, I had plans this weekend, that probably aren't going to happen.

So I decided to get up and eat cereal, because, you know, maybe I was just hungry since I ate very little for dinner, and maybe the hunger was just masquerading as upset over how my life has turned out and why work seems to come crashing down on me all at once all the time. And so I ate cereal and emailed a friend. And then I thought, after sending the email, perhaps I should check my work email, you know, just to see what is going on in the rest of the world in the middle of last night. Because of the work I do, I get a lot of email in the middle of the night from other lawyers in our offices around the world. And then, as I was holding my blackberry, and thinking about all the times that disaster struck in the middle of the night when I did this very thing - checking work email at 2 a.m., I said to myself - step away from the crackberry.

And so I did, and when I checked my email at 7 a.m. after getting out of the shower, I was glad that I had stepped away from it cause I might have freaked out.

I proceeded to go back to bed and ponder the meaning of life and not sleep. And now here we are on this fine and sunny morning, blogging instead of working, because you know, I miss you.

The thing about this weekend is that I was supposed to go on a women's AA retreat (granted I had mixed feelings about it - but I don't have time to go into it now). And so it's not like I was going to a movie, and darn it, I have to cancel it - this was a bigger deal that I paid kind of a lot of money for. But what can I do? Nothing really. I definitely draw lines around what I am willing to do in terms of my job. I will never cancel a vacation because of my job. Absolutely not - however, I have worked at least a little on every vacation I've ever taken, except perhaps over this past Christmas. I try never to let my job interfere with my personal life, I try to never cancel weekend plans or long weekends - but I am willing to work, say from out of town on a Friday, if I take a long weekend.

But sometimes it happens. I do miss meetings because of my job, occasionally I have had to cancel dinner plans, and yes, sometimes, my weekends don't work out the way I want them to. I'm not complaining. It just is what it is. That's just the kind of job I have and I knew that of course. And frankly, I work a lot less than other people with a job similar to mine (even though I work more than anyone I know, next to my brother at the moment). I am responsible for myself, I do my own thing, keep my own schedule and get my work done. We come and go as we please basically, and can take off pretty much whatever time we want or need, just as long as we get our work done. There is no micro managing, you have to be really good at managing yourself and your own time. And I have to know when it's okay to draw lines and when it's okay to push back and when it's okay to choose my personal plans over my job.

Sometimes it isn't. And now is one of those times. I have to pick and choose and not take advantage of the flexibility I have and the trust for example. Because come the weekend of my birthday, when I want to work from Michigan for the week, well, I want to be in a position to say hey, I'm going to work from Michigan for the week. It just is what it is, and shit, that was more like .4.

Have a lovely day.