the greatest of teachers won't hesitate to leave you there by yourself chained to fate

I need to go to bed, but I decided that it was worth verifying for all of you that I'm still alive and kicking. Also, I'm sad that my blog has fallen by the wayside in my mad dash to corporate success--it used to be a rare occurrence when I would miss a day, but I've been missing with greater frequency lately, and I need to reprioritize my blogging habits. Luckily for me I can type fairly well face-down on my bed with my eyes closed, so I can still relax and type at the same time.

Work has been really stressful, as usual, but has been tinged with a bit of despair because i've been falling into some of my more self-critical moods, which isn't helping to keep me on an even keel. It's rather silly that I'm so self-critical, since in my more cocky moments I realize that I have very little (from an achievement or ability standpoint) to be ashamed or self-critical about. That being said, I don't like to feel like I'm not doing things perfectly, and I'm so busy at work that I can't possibly keep up with everything that's on my plate, which means I'm constantly shuffling projects and trying to find ways to accomplish as much as possible, as quickly as possible, without dropping anything vital. And, of course, I am always dropping vital things anyway, because I'm simply too busy to be able to do everything. It's a pity. This is probably good for me, though, because I'm going to be forced to either learn to let go and do things less than perfectly, or die in the attempt.

Tahoe was both a good and bad thing for me - on the whole, it was extremely good, particularly since I felt very relaxed during the weekend - I realized on the boat on Saturday that I went a full half-hour without thinking about work, which is like a new record for me. I also got to spend some quality time with Claudia and Oniel and John; I see Claudia a lot, but she's moving away, and I see Oniel and John less frequently than I like because they live in the dirty East Bay. But, it's hard to maintain a feeling of relaxation when things are always piling up, and so even though I'm not thrilled that I was in the office until eleven p.m. tonight, I must say that I feel better because I took the time to get a little more caught up on emails and other mundane activities.

I'd like to free up some time this weekend to see my friends and to spend some time by myself - I could really use some personal space. I also want to work on my apartment - it's in rather a shambles, and I want my place to be nice when I come home so that I have one less thing to stress about. We'll see if I can make the time, though - I'm not holding my breath. Now, it's time for bed!