Reality

Got back yesterday from an 8-day tour with Sam and the band. It was one of the best times I've ever had.

Poolesville, MD --> Lexington, KY --> Nashville, TN --> Austin, TX --> New Orleans, LA --> Home (with a couple of in-between places). One house party, two Austin showcases, and a coffeehouse. A cool music shop, Nashville's Broadway, driving through Memphis, Austin's 6th Street and South Congress, New Orleans' Garden District and awesome crepes. Several Sonics, remembering how awful Taco Bell is, a horchata milkshake, great tex-mex of course, and a couple of margaritas for good measure. 3,500 miles, ~50 hours in the crowded van.

Now we're back. It's hard not to feel down, and disappointed that now I have to go back to work. And I'm not even in the band, so it's so much silly! I can only wish that the guys consider me essential enough as stuff-watcher/photographer/videographer/roadie/hotel-booker/enthusiastic friend to keep taking me along. But I still can't help it. I have to be up by 6 tomorrow morning to be at work at 8:30 for a job that doesn't start (for me) until 9 and I have to stay until 6 even though I'm off at 5:30, won't be home until at least 7:30, and I don't get every other Monday off like Sam will now. Not to mention it's a sometimes insidiously hostile work environment. It feels pretty bleak all around.

I'm trying to be grateful for the time I had, grateful for the money I'm making. Trying to look at this job like a means to live the life I want, but I can't help but wonder how I can do that when I have almost zero personal time aside from the weekend, and a workplace that resents people taking time off. I make personal time and get not enough sleep, or I get enough sleep and continue to feel robbed. Either way it's so....
I was already doing a pretty poor job at not resenting spending most of my waking life at a job in general. Objectively, it seems so obviously unhealthy.

Plus, life is not coming so easy for me right now, for reasons both mental and external. It's hard to speak so generally about it (and I can't spend my journal disclaiming about how lucky I am), but I wouldn't feel comfortable writing about the business of people that includes but is not limited to me.

The bottom line is I'm just not happy. Happy happy. That has very little to do with the external though.

So them's the facts. I'm pretty good at being optimistic, but not all that great lately at not being negative. It's a painful contradiction. I'm trying at a lot of better things. And I am lucky. Sam is so good to me, and good for me, in so many ways; I couldn't ask for a better partner if I tried. And my Mom is, strangely, a source of sanity for me. Even though my lows make me feel physically ill, I've gotten better in a lot of ways. And I'm not giving up.