Nowadays it's starting to seem as if the only time I write in this is when I'm under the influence of caffeine or alcohol, and this post shall be no different. The two substances are an apt metaphor for the far ends of that precarious parabola called manic depression, on which I currently happen to be skewing far to the manic side.
After spending the bulk of July traveling to various corners of the northern hemisphere--I'll spare you the boring details because no one wants to hear stories about your vacation, Karen, not even your mother, there's a reason she's been ignoring your FaceTime calls--I'm back in Atlanta for a whole three weeks! I spent all day today getting my affairs in order, doing the busywork of settling back into normal life, unpacking-laundry-emails-errands and got through all of it so painlessly, dare I say even pleasantly, that on my walk home from the bank/post office I decided to treat myself to a nitro cold brew and here we are.
My performance schedule is starting to fill up. After two years of relative purgatory in this new city I'm finally more or less (work-wise) where I left off in Baltimore, and I'm at a point where I am comfortable saying no to some things again.
Work doesn't officially start up for another couple weeks, but in the meantime I would really like to keep this momentum going, which means making daily to-do lists (is there anything better than checking off a task from a to-do list? I submit that there is not), weekly meal plans, morning runs before the temperature turns infernal, routine practice schedules, and nightly yoga and meditation. I think I've mentioned on here before that the older I get, the more I require every single detail of my life to be running smoothly lest the macrocosm be disturbed. One domino gets moved out of place, and the whole chain breaks. I'm not sure if this fastidiousness is healthy, per se, but as long as I can manage my control freak tendencies in a way that doesn't directly harm me or anyone else, I'll chalk it up as a win.