Pain, Stress and Soreness

I'm slightly sore after finally getting back onto something of an exercise plan. It's not the kind of pain you regret, like if you did something you shouldn't have. However, there is still a bit of pain and is there because of other decisions (like sitting on my fat behind). And, it seems a fitting metaphor for life in general right now.

Things are really busy with our new family member (Laurin), which has put us in dew-soaked fields early on Saturday mornings and sitting in the back yard around the fire, teaching him how to make s'mores.

That pleasant busy-ness would normally just lead to a nice "sore" feeling of needing a bit more sleep and things would be fine. However, now it's combined with my primary contract ramping up to some pretty high levels of stress and another project that originally came up in July went through enough delays that it landed on the exact same batch of weeks as everything else.

And, much like the real-life soreness and pain, if you're a bit stressed out, things can combine to take a pleasant soreness into some more genuine pain. If I'm not working my primary contract, I'm working on the 2nd one. I'm still making those in my family a priority (and would rather drop a project if that was going to be compromised), but things like this site are suffering a bit in the mean time.

Over the last few years, I've discovered that my working on this site is driven in large part by pondering and curiosity and reflection: all things that tend to end up in the stranglehold of stress first. I can be otherwise doing just fine, but I just don't have the energy to sit back and just "wonder" about stuff.

I've been through these cycles enough to know that it *is* just cyclical. Things will calm down, I'll dig back in to some books and online reading and will revisit some of the ideas and notes in my notebook. Eventually, the stuff that I enjoy doing will feel the blood returning and things will cycle back to the other side of the swing.

See you on the other side.