Tamara L. Siuda, unplugged
Made it through week 3 and most of week 4 of my treatment. Spent the majority of last week traveling, including an unexpected side trip that had me not flying back home but taking a cross-country train. The train ride extended from Chicago to New Orleans (Tuesday and Wednesday, 29 hours), then back to Chicago (Thursday-Friday, another 29 hours) and on home to Portland (Friday-Sunday, and more than 50 hours). Even reading that is exhausting, and it was.
Someday I would like to make the Portland-Chicago portion of the trip again, when I am both prepared for it and not in the midst of so much other stress. It seemed like it would’ve been pleasant, had I not been running behind and in no position to afford six days without internet (and thus working) access.
Home again and finally starting to feel the ground beneath me and not a monotonous swaying and clatter. The enforced quiet time was good for my brain in some ways, and I arrived home with lots of ideas on how to make some current projects go better. In other ways it was far too much time to be alone with my thoughts and staring at a pre-winter landscape with largely nothing in it between Wisconsin and Montana. If you can’t be alone with your own thoughts, you have some personal work to do. That said, there’s still a space where just like any other company, you’ve spent too much time together and you need a break.