Bork Slowly Borking

 Ended up kind of missing out a day of work. Got a call from my vet friend about a dog they just had signed over to them. Another case of an uncaring owner that didn't want to pay vet fees and instead just wanted the dog put down. The vets balked. Ended up owning the dog. The owner for his part laughed about it. And walked away. A farmer this time. People being assholes aside, I went to go meet the dog, in case I wanted to pick up a bit of a rescue. Eva, 7 year old labrador, only ever kept in a kennel, never taken for a walk. Creaky. A bit overweight. Labs turn to fat really super easy. Old labs turn into blocks of cheese. And their joints blow out. All sorts of issues with her. But chilled. Fine with other dogs. Just. A bit switched off. Never got to be a dog. Of late, I've been trying to let the universe tell me things. Give it a way to talk to me without outright sending me letters. Because. The universe, if it can talk to you, can't send you emails. So how would a unive

 Busy stressy day today. I had to calm myself down a few times because of crazy levels of rising stress, and flickers of panic. Big fucking yikes. Take a breath. Calm. One thing at a time. Andy popped his head up at day end. I half ripped his head off. He poked a bit more, I ripped the rest of his head off. He protested his innocence in some things. His fuck ups in others. Meh. It did clear the air a bit. I blew off steam. I have not had any time other than that to do much of anything else. Just focused on work. And an intense burny hot house level of productivity and stress. Been there. Done that. I'm too old for this shit. Pflah. My brother has had another run in with covid. This time he thought he was a goner. He even stuck his password as a post it note on his computer in case he didn't make it. No doubt the covid was a knock. But. It also seems to continue on a trend of struggling and a subtle downward trek he's been on since our mom died. He has, by and large, retreat

 I am no fun to be around. Or read. The colour of my mental landscape has infected me down to the bone, and I don't have the will to fight it anymore. There is always, for me, when observing others, a tipping point you can see. When their particular quirk, dysfunction, corner they have painted themselves into becomes more than just a feature and becomes a core part of who they are. They get warped into the shape of their demon(s). And they get stuck. I've noted it's also correlated with age. The older people get, the more they get stuck. Slowly sinking into the mire. But there is no one measure to rule them all. It's different for different people. And depends how many monkeys are on their backs. I fear that has now started happening to me. I can't escape the gravity of it, and the memories of when things used to be different become more and more distant, and ever more theoretical. Shifting into a background of imagined things instead of the reality they once were.

 A few even days, followed by a bad one. I am hollowed out. On an even day, everything is flat. There is, somewhere in there, a horrible horrible sadness, but, it doesn't come out, doesn't strangle me. There is just a quiet numbness instead. An acceptance that this is how it is, and just, exist. Wait. I am aware it's super not good. Today a plague of problems, black eyes, not great breathing, straight into a migraine that has kicked around for most of the day. Feel like shit. Uh huh. I kinda took care of it, rolled over, slept. And the hours peeled off. And I dreamed on a familiar variant. Of being at some school. College. Whatever. Many I had once knew had long since left, graduated, but I had been there for many many years. A state of not exactly knowing when I should leave. I had tried and failed many times. And now it seemed like I was finally done. Not in success, just, had run the course. And now it was time to leave. I remembered. That I had already gone around and s

 Quiet. I find I have less and less to say to people. This is absolutely the giving up of hope, on people, on yada going on with me. I've said all that needs to be said. Everything else, or, almost everything else, is just repeating myself. And there's no point. I'm aware it doesn't bode well. My health has been bumping along the floor. I am good enough to get up, be alert for part of the day, sleep for much of it, and then rinse and repeat for another day. But not much beyond that. I struggle coming out of sleep or during it. All my problems seem to get much worse on the other side of sleep. Heart struggles. Brain fog. Pins and needles. Everything ratchets up a notch. And it can take me many hours to begin to "thaw". And it seems to slowly be getting worse. Very slowly.  Eh well. I am also. Resigned to this. Given up. Just. Waiting. Not doing anything. Just. Waiting. No plans. No hopes. Just. Waiting. Til it stops. Again I am aware this is really very shit. I

 An alright day today, well, alright for me, which in the objective scale of things is pretty shit, but, in my world, I'll take it. Went out for a walk. Got a burger with Hazel. Did some shopping. Sunny day. Wasn't bad. Of course I slept 12 hours, felt very shit until mid afternoon and had to drag myself out. But. Eh. That's par for the course. I managed to setup my new fire tv stick and doodads today. In the before times, this would have been an easy task that I would blast through. These days I have to build up to it, have a good day and the wind behind me, and I can fiddle with shit. It's not the mental bit. It's the physical bit. I just blow out so quickly. Sometimes halfway through a task, and then.. just... leave it. To literally gather dust. Anywho, I did it. Packed up the old gear. Put a new fire stick in. Part of my cutting the cord and ditching of the TV licence. New tech is lovely. It just works. It figured out my tv, figured out I had an amplifier in the

 I have taken the foot off the gas workwise. Which has made me feel better. But still shit. But. Also shows that work is affecting me a lot. Work has collapsed into a bit of a nightmare. I am now faced with Doing Everything Myself because of various fuckups and I think not a little of Andy basically losing his nerve. Which is not good for me. It's one of those tasks that never finishes. The worst kind of psychological torment - as you get to the finish line, someone pushes it further out. Andy at his worst can be terrible with that. He loves to do it. Doesn't understand the consequences of it. Eh well. Whatever. I am attempting some heft work compartmentalising - stop thinking about it outside of work time. Today I had a stranger stick their finger up my bum. Which depending who you are is either a horrifying assault, or an absolute win. Of course, seriously, it was neither for me, it was the doc, having a rummage around and in the butt hole. The doc was good. And not just bec

 Work is just an unending clusterfuck at the moment. It's difficult to explain in simple terms, but basically, Andy has managed to screw up just about every aspect of an ongoing project due to.. well.. being out of his depth and not understanding what he's talking about. So I, like an idiot, and as ever, fill all the pot holes, cracks and bullshit to actually get you where you need to be. It's exhausting, frustrating, demoralising and stressful. So. That's nice. The latest wheeze is Andy having a major misunderstanding about key aspects of tech. Without getting technical - trying to use a tractor to go sailing. I thought, he said, we would just use our tractor to go sailing around... stop. What the fuck do you think that sentence means. He repeated himself. What the FUCK do you think that means I said again even more angrily. Well.. you... sail...in... a.. tractor. NO . I don't know whether you're being this dumb or just pulling my leg or being wilfully ignora

 Tough day today. CFS is kicking my ass, my body feels like it weighs 10 tonnes, tired, sluggish, struggling to even sit. I very slowly did a self check. This is the problem. At points. Even just sitting, doing nothing, is an excercise in low level pain, low level ill and exhaustion. It's at the point where you can't distract yourself from it, it's always there and is interrupting your thoughts, your everything. You can't ignore it. Which means, every moment is a low level agony. It's ok. You can deal with it. There are way worse moments and things to have wrong. But it's not pleasant. And it's always on. You can't concentrate. You can't relax. You can't fade out. It makes you present. And pretty much useless, can't do anything. Which means you get a real strong push to just sleep. Because. It's miserable. So sleep. Sleep will take it all away. This is the other end of the spectrum from my bullshit. When there is nothing screamingly wron

 Andy was in his common anxiety state again today. Really, super, proper anxious about having fobbed off a client for so long with delays. Which is par for the course. The pattern is this. Client phones. Andy panics. Even though it's often not a thing to panic about. But clients, of course, always want service. Don't we all. However. Andy is a pathological people pleaser and cannot set boundaries. So. Immediately anxieties up. Yes We Will Do Everything By Yesterday No Matter The Task ! He passes the anxiety on. Must do this. Just do this now. Can we just look at this. So we do that, and push whatever we were working on back. Rinse and repeat. Until. Original pushed back work is now chief anxiety. We Must Do It. Very Quick. We Are A Failure To Our Ancestors. Have you done it yet ? Have you done it yet ? Are we there yet ? You should do that very soon. Optional extra - Something else comes up and becomes the Chief Anxiety. Neatly overruling the previous Must Do Anxiety and pushin

 Up and down and round and round. Business as usual. Yesterday the new laptop arrived. Installing a completely new dev setup is to be honest borderline capable for me these days. A lot of effort and faffing. It has to be a good day for me to tackle that kind of task, and even then, I probably wouldn't. It's not the complexity. It's the stamina required. I still know shit. But my open for business hours are short. Erratic. I will be building no more Great Walls of China. But I had a plan. Ghetto style upgrade. First thing I did on breaking out the new laptop, not switch it on, not plug it in. Flip it over and take it apart. Which admittedly probably gives many pause for thought. Here is a brand new just bought laptop and the first thing you do is break it. Uh huh. Pulled the SSD out. And put the other laptops SSD in. Straight like for like swap. Which is dirty. Fired it up and waited for all the sirens to go off. Predictably almost every driver had failed to load. Display wa