Natalie Merchant Wasn't Singing About These Days

I figured out the other night, sitting in yet another Junior League meeting out of which I got nothing, that 90% of my time is taken up by work and, try as I might, I cannot cram into the remaining 10% everything else -- running, skiing, blogging, relationships of all stripes, keeping the damn house clean -- and it frustrates me to no end to know that I cannot do it all. I started training for that half marathon last week, and how many days did I last until work interfered with a scheduled workout? Eight. Eight days, and that includes two weekends.

Work is crazy and all-consuming and there's no travel money so I'll be in DC again, like, never and even if I am, I will have no friends left and there are people with information who are not calling me and I am not allowed to call them and all I want to do right now is string them up by their toenails and beat them like a piñata and I will be stuck in this shit hole forever and ever and, with Monday night's workout needing to be made up for tonight, all I wanted to do was go for a run and then it was raining, so I had to go to the gym but everyone wanted to get to the gym and all I really needed to do was get there five minutes ahead of other people and then I could have a treadmill, but noooo, stupid traffic in the stupid rain took stupid 45 minutes to travel what should have been a 20-25 minute route and all the treadmills were taken and I was relegated to this horrible treadclimber piece of crap that I just barely know how to work and, god, doesn't life just suck on sixteen different cylinders?

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I had dinner with a friend from Junior League and we talked about life and work and what brought me to California in the first place, and at the end of the meal, we were served fortune cookies. Mine read, "Do it because you love it," and I laughed because, really? Am I not the last person on earth who needs to hear that message?

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All of the past few days weeks of stress and angst bubbling just below the surface (ok, and sometimes above the surface, too) and the nettlesome, malcontent version of myself could fairly well have been predicted, as the calendar led up to today, Wednesday, March 21 -- the second anniversary of my tenure here. There will be no flowers, no chocolate cake, not even a raise awaiting me at the office today. But at least I can be certain that I do it because I love it, and that's something.

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UPDATE: Oh, if wishes were horses... But, no. Today pretty much picked up where the last few weeks left off, which is to say, the seventeenth level of suckage. Something tells me my dinner tonight will consist of vodka and tonic and not much else.