May have found a cello teacher. She wants me to go buy a 2000 dollar cello though. J wasn't happy about that. Started an argument, trying to portray me as a spendthrift when actually I have no debt and 10,000 dollars sitting in my checking account. This was while I was still feeling sleep deprived. Not having slept decently for days on end. And the resulting bad physical feeling was causing a heightened state of fear/tension/anxiety for day after day. Then her going on about a cello, when in a decade I've basically bought a computer and that's it. And sometimes I drive down the road and think how nice it would be if I just yanked the steering wheel... And finally, had enough. Shut up!

Bought a bike pump, bike rack, and non f me up the a bike seat. By the time we drove home I'm so tired I'm feeling delirious. So long since I slept decently. I lay in the passenger seat with the seat back all the way down and look out the side back window at the trees and houses. It's like being a child again. I've no concern for the actual driving of the car. Endless houses pass me by. I wonder who might live in these houses... It's like seeing what I see everyday from an entirely different point of view, seeing it brand new.

Almost half asleep I write a song. No plans to remember it. I write and forget all my vocal/lyric songs.

We get home and I stagger out of the car like a sleepy 6 year old.

J says I snored while sleeping. I don't normally snore and I would normally want her to wake me for her sake. But she figured for once that would be a really bad idea, and she's right, it would have been a really bad idea. I might have gone nuclear I think. (sigh) And I'm not that sort of person at all....

I have a nightmare where my current boss is teacher and I haven't done my assignment. And now it's due. What am I going to do!!! I considered running off and becoming a homeless person. I slowly wake still trying to figure out the answer. Totally awake and still I sit there trying to figure out what to do about this. Trying and trying and finally, what the hell am I doing? This didn't really happen. Quit torturing myself.

I want to lay there until it's time for J to get up. 10 minutes before the alarm I'm allowed to wake her up for snuggles. So I lay there for an hour. Finally go down, put bike rack on, put new seat on, then come back get snuggles. Then off in car to ride bike.

In the car I put in Skinny Puppy-Bites-Dead Lines. Haven't listened to it in so long. After finally sleeping well music sounds so good. Plus remembering the far past. Monterey, Calinfornia. The long runs out under the sun. I possibly didn't even have this particular album then, but it works for me. A nostalgia. Perhaps largely based on a faulty memory. But a past time when I felt such hope at least.

It's too cold to enjoy the bike ride much. The faster I go the more wind chill. Right thumb really starts hurting. But on the way back huge hill, push myself to the very edge making it up it. Wonderful feeling to be that exhausted. To push myself to the very edge. Then lay there exhausted. Outside.

I imagine something. Some place where this is a daily occurence.

Stop at very cheap restaurant on the way home and have coffee, OJ and blueberry pancakes. Read about WV in the final four. The coffee hits me so nice. I'm shaking slightly, so cold still from the run. Perfect. There's three somewhat distinguished older black men at this diner. That's so unusual for here. Black peope do live here. Do they normally just not eat out...?

They look like me though. In a way whites around here never do. Big boned. Sharp faces. Wisdom combined with tough lives. The whites generally look like puff balls. Like they've had it so cushy. Like they've got nothing in them.

Home. Another minnow is dead and this time it's confirmed. It's body has been snapped in half. The one cat is killing them. Have to go get the glass before she kills anymore. Down to 9 minnows in a 80 gallon tank. I feel guilty to stick large fish in only an 80 gallon tank. Not quite so guilty that I'm not writing this before I go get the glass apparently... They're just tinsy minnows...

The anxiety. The insomnia. The fear. The physical pain.

Robin Hobb's best book is the one where the main character is put through the worst hell of all. In reality she's a somewhat annoying cheery lady. Yet her characters are always going through hell. But Fitz the Bastard had a very special hell indeed.

At the moment I think I'll get through this life without ever having an actual breakdown. I don't think I'll start having actual panic attacks. I don't think I'll end up long term unemployed... Lately though having feelings that really do go in that direction. And I want to try to closely document them. For one thing, to try to head them off. For another possibly to someday help others understand these feelings happening within themselves. And finally because I want to blow Hobb and her Fitz out of the water.