Not gonna give in to it

For whatever reason, today just never really seemed to start. And oddly enough, it's not because did what I normally do on my day off from work - sleeping easy, doing nothing. (It's attractive.) I was oddly productive today, getting out to the grocery store pretty much first thing, followed by mailing a package and depositing a check. I also finished my proof from Dreamspinner that I've been working on. But for whatever reason, I just can't shake the funk off today.

I think a lot of it has to do with the weather. It's COLD today. 51 degrees for May 10th is unseasonably cold. It FROZE the other night - something that while not unprecedented is also not common. It's gray and rainy and were this a fall day, I'd be reveling in it. But instead, it's supposed to be spring and it today feels like a step backward. From what, I'm not sure, but a step backward nonetheless.

Another thing that is really getting me is that despite having 8 days off of work, I am still operating on a significant sleep deficit. And I've finally figured out where my sleep deficit comes from - it comes from my early shifts. It's not so bad getting up at 5AM, even though I vowed when I was in college that I would never have a job that required me to report to work prior to 9AM. Life never goes quite like you expect it to and your ability to adapt to it is directly proportional to your success. But getting up at 5AM requires me really to not only be in bed no later than 10PM but honestly, I need to be sawing logs by 10PM. That just doesn't happen. In my younger days (read: my early 30s) I could handle this, but it's been one of the first real signs of aging that I've felt. So I end up going to bed at 11:30PM or midnight and wondering why I'm tired the next day.

Of course, all this sets me up for failure because not being well rested affects pretty much every other aspect of your health - both physical and mental. It messes me up and takes the smart part of my brain offline and puts the more primitive parts of my brain in charge. This is exactly what leads to anxiety, depression and general crabbiness.

I went out with Heidi to the chiropractor this morning and I was listening to Olivia Newton-John, having been put in the mood by last week's Glee, and the song "Not Gonna Give In To It" came on. It's a latter day Olivia song, recorded long after her hit-making days were behind her. It comes from the album Gaia, which was written almost wholly in response to her experience with breast cancer. I love this song because it has a positive message without seeming like a platitude - this isn't "a smile is a frown turned upside down" territory. I like the honest confession that we really are alone in our troubles. Others can support us, but we're ultimately the ones that have to do the work. Witness:

And I feel so alone
For although you care
No one else can share
It's my own misery
In the end it's all up to me

I never even knew this song until I saw Olivia in concert with my sister Wendy in 2005. The performance of this song was electrifying and fit in well with all the oldies. While this performance isn't quite as good as the one we saw, it's the best one I can find on YouTube.



Really, I live a charmed live. I'm amazingly lucky, but much like everyone else in the world, it's not always a walk in the park. It's times like these that I remember what my grandfather always used to say "Life is great as long as you don't weaken." And to tell you the truth, that's really just another way of saying "I'm not gonna give in to it."

Grandpa and Olivia - what a strange pair they would have made!