0201C: Stress, Frustration, and Regret


So Tobie's asleep again since he kicked off International Tabletop Day with a Doctor Who related RPG session last night with friends while I was at work. Again he stayed up long enough to see me home and struggled to stay awake while I got through another work call, but eventually had to go to bed. I tried to send him to bed earlier a few times but he was stubbornly trying to hold on and wait for me to finish. It's both endearing and heartbreaking at the same time.

I know my work ethic can seem a little unhealthy sometimes - I take work pretty seriously and I've experienced issues on the home front in both of my relationships when work seems to swallow me up. This seems particularly true now given all the changes going on and just how much I have on my plate these days. I'm trying to work smarter instead of harder in order to free up more time somehow, but I'm painfully reminded of how human I am at times and how my brain can only take so many branching paths of possibility.

But as much as I try to deny that I'm competitive in life, in truth I know I am since my Mom raised me to always strive to be number one. I hate saying things like I'm probably a perfectionist or something, but I know in many ways I am and I get frustrated when I'm not "winning" or when I'm not achieving the goals that I've set out for myself. I just want everything to fall into place and things aren't quite there yet and that just frustrates me.

For someone who always wants to win, I also want to "win" on the home front and be a good housekeeper and more important be a great partner for Tobie. And at times like this with so much going on and my brain feeling like it needs to run a million miles a minute in any number of directions all at the same time, I can't help but feel I'm losing where it counts and I'm not doing right by him. And I keep wanting to make it up to him and I try to convince myself that this period of stress is temporary and it'll pass in time and then I'll be able to make amends. But one thing or another comes along and things get bad again and I feel like I've gone from being a bad partner to a terrible one over and over again.

And so I look into Yoshi's eyes and feel my spirits lift a bit and decide the only thing left to do is to join Tobie in bed and hope things are better when we wake up later. Life would be so dismal without the power of hope.

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