Journal

Thank heavens for spoon theory. I've had a crappy week work-wise, mental-health-wise, and every-other-wise. The temptation at my age is to think "Is this it? Have I finally used up my nine lives? Have I just gone splat instead of bouncing back?"

I lugged my laptop down to the library this morning and, with sinking eyelids, briefly considered going straight back home to bed, or finding a quiet corner by one of the less-popular ranges of the Dewey Decimal index to curl up in.

Working seemed easier in the short term than walking the three uphill blocks back home, or arguing for my right as a library member to snooze.

So I started poking at the keyboard, and scribbling in my notepad, and by chucking out time I'd done okay. Not brilliant, but okay.

I'm not nearly dead. I've just been a bit spoon-depleted. More spoons will cycle back to my stock. I can't hurry them, but neither should I surrender.

I should be catching up on all the stuff I couldn't do while studying, but so far this week I've been having a multi-day one-woman party. Have let my ADHD brain off the leash to chase imaginary squirrels, and I'm listening to music, daydreaming, composing witty replies to wittier people on the Fediverse and not sending them, etc.

Currently sipping wine, eating olives, and collecting reference images of hairstyles. Ruben recently suggested I might benefit from less conservative eyewear - a very sound observation, diplomatically made. Come to mention it, I don't have any nice jewellery either. Also, for the last year I've been wearing "my" hair pretty much as I'd done in my early teens, which is not too jarring for me when I look in the mirror and pretty consistent with standard Carlton old lady hairdos. I love it, because it's me, but it is a bit boring.

From Wikipedia:

Well, this has been an awful day.

I've been ill for a month. Initially I thought it was a chest infection. I live like a hermit, so the chances I caught something contagious must be very small. Non-zero, but very small. It'll pass off soon.

It didn't pass off. Every time I think it's on the wane, it comes back with a vengeance.

Today I was so confident that I went to the Queen Victoria Market to stock up on minimum dietary requirements. I was still coughing and a bit sniffly, but otherwise feeling much better. Wearing a mask, of course. The residual coughing I could put down to wear and tear over the last month. And I'm always somewhat sniffly, due to being pale, shy, and bookish; not at all hardy and replete with stout British character.

Three years ago I was living in the middle of nowhere, on an income which, after rent, usually left me with between a hundred and two hundred dollars a week for utility bills and groceries.

Financially, the situation has not much changed. I can be fairly certain that, until December, my income will be rent plus a hundred and forty-seven dollars a week. Bills are up, because it's so much colder in Melbourne, but rent is (for the time being) still a wee bit less than I was paying in my sunny seaside purgatory.

Of course qualitatively my life is incalculably better now. It is so much easier to be broke in inner Melbourne. Almost anything I might want to do is at or near zero-cost and within walking distance (or a $2.50 concession fare tram ride away).