#the work week

[imathers]

And so the work week comes to an end! I'll probably never forget that on Monday I went and saw the remastered Stop Making Sense on IMAX (good seats, too). Not my first time seeing it, or even my first time seeing it in a theatre, but the remaster sounds incredible (kudos to Jerry Harrison and the other people I'm not remembering who did it) and of course the sheer joyous scale of the thing pretty much had me floating all week. Hope you have a good weekend, floating or not.

[imathers]

Well, my work week actually ended yesterday. My uncle died last Friday (obit is here) and it's been.... tough. I'm going back this weekend for the celebration of life. Hopefully by Tuesday when we're back in the office I can work fairly normally again.

Saturday, at my aunt's place, we all went through the studio and picked out paintings, like he wanted us to. It's something he and I talked about in our last conversation. He was feeling fine, but knew what his prognosis was. (And even then he suddenly had a complication, so we both dreaded it and had it take us by surprise.) These are the two I took, the flower is technically Anaïs's pick. It was tough being there. I'm really glad I was there. I hope you have a good weekend.

[imathers]

And so the work week comes to an end. Unfortunately after something like 2 1/2 years of very rarely leaving the apartment and generally being cautious enough that the world has often made us feel like we were being irrational, COVID has hit the apartment. A few days after we saw my dad and others outdoors last weekend he tested positive (he’s also been taking precautions, so we don’t really know how he got it) and of course the immunocompromised person here is the one who got it. I’ve felt fine the whole time (well, physically... please see the above for a depiction of my mental/emotional state). And while Anaïs is having a rough time she was also able to get paxlovid as soon as she got the faintest positive result. She was worried she was asking about it too early but the nurse confirmed that they want to get her on the medication as quickly as possible. So we’ve got about 10 days of pretty intense stuff as long as she continues to get better - she’s seen some small improvement but is still very low on energy and breath. It’s terrifying and we both feel that as well as furious (not at my dad, to be clear) and guilty and exhausted. Somehow I’ve actually had a pretty productive work week despite this, so I’m going to just look after her and try to sleep more over the weekend. Hoping you’re all in good health.

[imathers]

And so the work week comes to an end! The goal for next week... consistently fall asleep significantly before 5 or 6 am. Have good, restful weekend.

[imathers]

So

I meant to cue up an end of the week post, but between one thing and another I didn’t. Because this past week, on a personal level, sucked. Like, I don’t know if this is partially some feelings/stress hormones/etc from last year finally surfacing after a month of vacation or what, but this past week is either the worst I’ve ever felt (yes, worse than anything involving the cancer I had) or just bad in a uniquely new way where the novelty hasn’t worn off yet.

Between work and the level of anxiety I now have there (somewhat alleviated between me finally asking to talk to my typically understanding manager and having her agree we need to lighten my workload a bit) and finally getting a sleep study (good), having it confirmed I have sleep apnea (bad, like ‘waking up’ from restful sleep to light sleep 130 times/hour bad), getting a loaner CPAP machine (very good, I’ve barely needed a nap since I got it and it keeps the incidents down to anywhere from 0.2-8.1/hour, and that’s without me going in for my follow up where they’ll help me adjust it etc), and then finding out that I am not adjusting to it 1/10th as well as Anaïs did (I think I’ve found the right mask out of the couple I brought home to try, but for a while there I thought I was going to have a panic attack trying to use it), well... this isn’t a joke, or not just a joke, but let’s say the only two things that were causing me anxiety were waking up and going to sleep.

Upside-down smiley emoji?

Anyway Anaïs has been a fucking rock through it all, and obviously some of the bigger background stuff that’s playing into all of this (pandemic! politics local and not!) is wearing away at her too, but I genuinely don’t know what I would have gotten done this week if not for her and Nugget (as it is, I was about 1/100th as productive as I wanted to be). I’ve called our health centre to talk to our nurse practitioner about mental health stuff and as mentioned had a talk at work about how bad I’m flailing, and also my boss reassured me I do not need to/should not do anything but relax over the weekend, so I think things will be better soon. I don’t do a ton of super personal blogging here (mostly laziness tbh), but I don’t know, this seemed noting as this work week comes to an end. We’ve got some tidying up and rearranging and cooking to do this weekend and it feels like that will be restorative as well. Hope you’re all doing well and/or that you have or will have soon support and love if you’re not.

[imathers]

Please ignore that thumbnail, it was chosen at least partly as a joke.

Look, I know I’m linking a four-hour YouTube essay about a series of video games to you, but

I’ve timestamped it to start 50:49 in [edit: I tried to do this and it doesn’t appear to work; just skip to 50:49 if you don’t want the preamble], when he starts talking about Red Dead Redemption, because everything before that, while great (I love all of Caldwell-Gervais’s work and watched it happily), is a little inessential except as a comparison for what didn’t work, and the last 7 minutes or so are just Noah reading patron names

I’ve never played a minute of either Red Dead Redemption and probably never will and I don’t mind telling you that not only was I riveted by the entire length of this video (and am watching it again today as I continue working) but that Noah damn near made me tear up half a dozen times about Arthur Morgan alone

If you have any interest at all in the Western, particularly its thematic qualities, the revisionist Western, the political implications, etc. you have to watch this video please, I’m asking very nicely, and then please talk to me about it when you’re done!

If you don’t give a shit about Westerns but you love deep and loving analysis of both the game and story parts of video games, again, please please please set aside some time and watch this video

Honestly, even if you’re just interested in intelligent writing about aesthetics and narratives, again, please watch this video

Whatever your opinion of the source material he’s got to work with here, on top of everything else Noah’s just a hell of a storyteller; I’m always going to be a sucker for something that includes lines like "This is one of the benefits of being a trustworthy sort. You deprive your past of the opportunity to sneak up on you and drag you back down."

Anyway, we worked a crazy amount yesterday and I’m going to be here for a while trying to finally kick this thing in the dick, so this is also my work week piece (since if I can get enough done today, I shouldn’t have to work over the weekend) and yes I’m basically giving you homework but I bet if you take me up on it, you’ll thank me later. Have a good one.

[imathers]

Apologies for the unplanned absence... I’ve been too busy trying to kill my last work of the year (which is proving to have a certain Rasputin-esque hardiness to it) and I haven’t even had time to queue up some reblogs. I did have one of my rare remembered dreams, a disjointed series of nightmarish vignettes that seemingly stemmed mostly from memories of the Dark Army in Mr. Robot and the apparent mistake I made of playing this while I was working late last night:

Anyway, back soon, love you all, overwork is bad for you but I did use all that extra money to pay off my last student loan a good half a year early, etc etc etc.

[imathers]

And so the work week comes to an end! I just love this song, and I was thinking a bit about how I’m never going to get to see them live again with the main singer here (unless he rejoins) and it made me a little sad. Great song, though. Have a good weekend!

Summer’s in the city, do what you gotta do