Overwhelmed.

Overwhelmed.

My body is rested but my mind is not. I took Friday off as a gift to myself, an unexpected three-day weekend, but while I certainly caught up on my sleep, the pulling and nagging at the strings around the perimeter of my brain hasn't subsided much. I can't figure out what the source of this mental decomposition is.

Maybe it's the weather's refusal to just repel all the remaining cold to finally definitely usher in the Spring? Maybe it's the residual ripples of readjusting to living in an apartment on my own? Maybe it's the extra $400 a month ($4,800 a year!) spent on Betty's daycare that is making it near impossible to keep ends meeting that's doing it? Maybe it's the feeling that I never have enough time to stop and relax long enough to actually read a single book all the way through; instead I keep munching and snapping at bits and pieces of novels, trying to fit them in amongst the never ending stream of RSS feeds, magazines, and newspapers?

It's probably all of the above, and more. I know there are lots of positives I should be reflecting on to turn back this dark tide: job, relationships, the band, my music and entertainment writing, DJing, Betty getting snuggly next to me on the couch, Pickle just generally being an adorable kitten ... but it's Monday, I just woke up after a late-night bout of insomnia, and I just don't feel like exerting the effort to actually replace the blahs with the smiley-er moments I should be stuffing my brain full of this morning.

The funny thing is that by the time you actually get up and read this, I'll probably already have eaten, dropped off Betty, gone to the gym, and settled in at my desk at work, and by then my mood will probably have improved considerably, and the usual optimism I try to employ in my day-to-day living will have settled back into place, and I'll already have started to find ways to solve the problems and worries that plague me and shroud my mood at this very second. The darkness won't be eradicated but I'll have already started doing what people just have to do and figure out how to deal with it.