Mini meltdown

I write tonight's post wearing heavy boots, as Oskar Schell might say. Once again, as I felt some progress being made, I had a pretty disappointing set back. I'm still hoping it's a case of two steps forward, one step back rather than the reversal, but still, it's hard to swallow.

Last night, after a black out the night before and a day spent feeling hungover and groggy, I had the best night yet. There were no signs of tiredness at all until right before the 6am nap (although that may have been helped along by an impromptu two hour semi-business phone meeting with my business partner Morgs at 2am). I was generally feeling quite pleased with myself until after the 10am nap.

I'm still not sure why but after that nap I slipped into a foul mood that just grew more and more mephitic as the day wore on. It could have been the sheer pressure we were all under yesterday with four separate groups staying here - one of the more complicated logistical days we've had since being here, it may have been the guilt of trying to grab last minute naps in the midst of all that, knowing I was leaving everyone to deal with those pressures alone for up to half an hour at a time, it may have just been time for me to have a tantrum (I think we all need to have little tantrums from time to time and blow off some steam). Whatever the reason, I was an obnoxious jerk to most of my friends here (especially Angie, horribly enough - why do the ones we love most always bear the brunt of these things?), and retreated to the library at around 10pm for my nap and final escape from work.

Coming out of it, a couple of people tried to come in and talk and I steadfastly refused (including Angie). Normally in moods like this my body's only defense, its only means of coming back to some kind of equilibrium, is to shut down and sleep it off. This is exactly what happened last night, which means another five hour period slipped away from me.

As I observed last time, even with the heightened emotional intensity of this discretion in the schedule, I need to remember that it's just an experiment, and although I'm personally acting as lab rat, I still need to maintain some kind of neutral distance and simply observe what I'm going through rather than judge it at this stage. Now that I'm awake my anger's gone (leaving an uncomfortable, slight nausea in my stomach and my friend Dan's predicted metallic taste in my mouth), and I can look at the whole situation a little more calmly.

I guess no matter what the specific reason for my mood was, whether it was due to sleep deprivation, the workload of the past two days or just an emotional culmination of events that was bound to happen anyway, I really need to spend some more time on this schedule working on myself. One session of yoga and a half arsed five minute meditation around falling asleep each day is probably not sufficient. Instead of cramming more work into the night (a lot of nights I'm spending a bit more time working on accounts, cleaning rooms and other bits and pieces around the resort), I probably need to spend more time focussed on keeping my mind and body a little more healthy. Just eating really well, which I am, is not enough. This probably means less time on here as well and more time out walking at night, meditating, reading and writing. Funnily enough, all the things I wanted to do more of in the first place, which partly prompted this whole experiment.

So the end of result of today is another falter (not a failure), and a view of what needs to be done. Onward and upward, as they say!