I have to not think too far ahead because I’ll start to panic a little. Not panic attack panic; I’m not that bad anymore. But these weird days when the kids aren’t back to school but I have to work and think around their noise are like an alternate universe. In fanfiction type realms, an AU is something like this: imagine you know two characters from pro wrestling. In the AU, you might take those two people and place them in a high school setting or a sci-fi movie setting as the impetus to write a story. In my life, my regular world is: go to work, kids are at school, come home and we live our familial lives with dinner and sports, and all that domestic stuff.

But in this AU, everything is all jumbled. I don’t think the same way I normally do. Schedules are too different and my routine that I count on doesn’t exist. There’s a temp routine and it’s too short a time to really get accustomed to so my entire world just feels off-kilter. I know some people like this; they can roll with it so much better. Me? I just feel like another person I can’t identify.

That said, I do function nominally well IF I take it slowly as mentioned. I also fill in the minute cracks of my life with diversions. For now, rediscovering Ghost, HIM, and Type O Negative really help balance me. Discovering Incite and Eureka Machines has also made me happy.  I’ve been writing too, trying to immerse myself into characters and settings, really working on pacing and word diversity. This helps to stabilize my brain and at the same time, it keeps me from sleeping in my chair at night, which is a waste of time – even though I probably need the sleep.

Granted, I fell asleep last night. Ash put on Critters and I was gone in 20 minutes. I think I really needed that though because I’d allowed myself to get sued to sleeping in on break and when we had to go back to waking up at 5:55? I felt rough. Time to get back to it though. Monday, the semester begins and I’ll need to buckle down and think. But I don’t wanna!