Antsy

I don't know if anyone else experiences this, but whenever I'm working on mundane, repetitive tasks, I start to get antsy. My focus wavers; my mind wanders to whatever else I could be doing instead; I start to feel this itch to hurry the hell up with whatever chore requires my attention so that I can move on to the next, less monotonous item on my list.

I feel this way not only toward washing dishes, for example, but also toward busy work. Setting up my templates in Obsidian and seeing those templates in action every time I create a character file satisfies me far more than linking those characters to their respective transcript files and filling out the actual details for those characters. Clicking the "Link" button repeatedly, jotting down important pieces of information, and specifying the date and sessions in which the character appeared is like filing paperwork in an office cubicle.

I yawn just thinking about it.

I felt the same way whenever I was required to check students' English grammar on assignments that I myself had no hand in making, reading the same answers, fixing the same mistakes, making the same notes or comments. It was monotonous, soul-sucking work, and I was screaming internally all while keeping my outward bearing as pleasant as possible, which degraded over time to a general irritability. Just by thinking about it, I can feel that familiar scratching inside my skull, a scritching that chants, "Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop." This probably falls more in line with workplace anxiety than a general antsy-ness, but how many steps removed are they from one another, really?

Thankfully, nowadays that feeling doesn't reach such extremes, and whenever I do feel it beginning to crawl through me, I have the luxury of switching gears. I can go on a walk; I can work out my body; I can come back to that particular chore later. I don't have a due date on it, but it will get done because that's just the sort of person I am.

Having that sort of freedom is one of the greatest boons of not working in an office with a boss constantly breathing down your neck, and I'm deeply grateful for it every day because I have experienced that feeling over prolonged periods of time, and it's not pleasant. No one should be faulted for listening to their mind or body whenever it's clearly trying to tell them something. Ignoring my own needs for so long was probably why it took me years to not only rebuild that mind-body connection but also listen to my own needs.

Other Notable Accomplishments:

• I have a solid grasp of Lynn's voice, just in time for her Session 0 come Sunday.

• Though I haven't settled on a name for her yet, the same can be said of my spider faerie character. I was having difficulty with her for the longest time, because I started to create her as an Anadi before we switched over to Daggerheart from Pathfinder 2e, but I like how she's coming together as a faerie instead.

  • I spend a lot of time on my walks getting into my characters' heads, talking as them and having conversations between them. If anyone manages to catch me and realize that I'm not actually talking on the phone, they probably think I'm crazy, but that's okay. Crazy makes the world a far more interesting place.

• I got hanging ab straps for my pull-up bar! Boy are hanging leg raises hard. I should also be receiving my weight-lifting straps soon, which will be nice, because my grip strength has definitely reached its limit on some of the moves.

• I ran my first C25K jog in a while. Jumped straight into Week 8 Day 2. It was...it was not good. I completed it, but the pace was...yikes. I expected as much, but that doesn't make it any easier a pill to swallow.

• I'll either be switching back to a fat loss phase at the start of December or lowering my calories to a maintenance phase to gain muscle and lose fat simultaneously. The latter takes a lot longer, but I anticipate my energy levels will be far better off than if I were to try and go into a full-fledged fat loss phase. I struggle with the whole hunger thing. Cravings for junky foods in particular rise, which causes me to yo-yo with my weight.

Real Talk:

• What kinds of chores or tasks cause you to become antsy? What are you able to do to mitigate the feeling when it arises? Do you use that time to take a much needed bathroom break? Sit back in your chair and take a few deep breaths to collect yourself? Just try to soldier through it?

• What idiosyncrasy of yours do you believe would have others turning their heads at you like you're crazy if they knew of it? I ask because 1) I'm curious and 2) chances are you're not the only one who does it.

This Week's Obligatory Cat Pic: Mura