Tonight's conflict...

...is simple: on one hand, I need to be working. On the other, I'd much rather be drinking.

And I don't mean the hot tea I'm currently contenting myself with, oh, no. We're talking serious bourbon (or scotch) whiskeyage here, friends. One nice stiff shot, followed by as many others as are required to achieve the desired state of numbness.

It's not that anything truly awful happened today. Rather, I'm feeling the weight of accumulated problems, and we're just one or two straws from snapping the pachyderm's spine.

To know that difficult times lie ahead, particularly when I've been dealing with difficult times for some good long stretch already, is disheartening, to put it very mildly. So is the knowledge -- which I should be used to by now, but never am or have been -- that the work I do tonight (and next week, comes to that) will pay off in three months. Or four months. Or six.

If there was some way to ensure that what must happen in the next month happens without me while I curl up, unconscious, in some dark corner, I'd take it. You can bet on that.

And I don't need the countless minor irritations and disappointments that are my current daily fare to continue, thank you very much.

Part -- a small part, but definitely there -- of my problem is that at times like this, having no one to whine to directly (as opposed to whining here) allows everything to build up. Some things seem worse than they are, maybe, while others that might be solved if I had someone to discuss them with just go on and on.

What the hell. I'm bringing me down just by writing this. I'll shut up and go away now.

But I won't drink. I've been damn good about that since last February.*

And no, so-called virtuous behavior -- such as it is -- doesn't make me feel better.

Back to work. The perfect occupation for a Saturday night. Not.


* Not that I have totally abandoned adult beverages. I find it enough to avoid them when I'm alone. The occasional martini or shot of tequila on social occasions stops where it is, and I'm grateful for that.