It's a Dog-Eat-Dog World and I'm Wearing Milkbone Underpants

Shit-tacular.  If it isn't a word it should be.  It best describes one of the worst weekends I've had in years and the cause of my subsequent epiphany.  Do you ever feel like the universe is trying really hard to tell you something and it takes a lightening bolt to finally get through to you? Do you ever feel like Lindsay Lohan has never had one of these moments?  Do you ever feel you shouldn't be having feelings about Lindsay Lohan at all but yet she remains in the back of your consciousness even though you have only ever seen one of her movies?

It all started on Friday...[Insert crap-tastic things here, add a dash of salty tears, a pinch of peppery conversations, more foolish fighting than Foo Fighting and Col. Mustard in the library with a candlestick]...and now it's Tuesday.

By yesterday morning I was looking into the restorative benefits of going to bed for a week.  I kept thinking why do these weird things happen to me in spurts like this? How could I be so scatterbrained lately? Then it occurred to me that there is only one thing that changed in the last year - my socializing.  Back in those years before I didn't have time to live free and wild like the Mystery Monkey of Tampa Bay.  I was focused.

Part of it is how my mind works, or doesn't work.  Since I was a kid I have lived with a mind that runs 100,000 revolutions per minute.  It's as if my brain is like a water cooler sized bottle with an opening the size of a soda can. There is just so much stuff going on in there at all times it feels like I can't shut it off.  Part of why I went into Project Management was because that structure is how I have to live my life to make sure things don't slip through the cracks.  Call it ADD, call it naturally scatterbrained, call it blonde, call it what you will but that's me.  I learned how to manage it well over the years.

Anyone who spends a lot of time with me knows that when at my fullest faculties I am always checking for things. I say "Where are my keys, my cell phone, my purse...". I always inventory things I have a predisposition to misplacing.  It probably drives them nuts but then if you hang out with me you are probably a bit off yourself. I'm the one that always has us ready for the road trip, has the extra just-in-case Bendryl, Ibuprofin, the flash light, the twine, the Swiss Army Knife and anything else we need in case of a MacGuyver related incident.

However, when I am out having some cocktails it's as if my head turns to Cotton Candy.  I forget things. I stop being paranoid about where my phone and car keys are. I leave things sitting in places they are never meant to go. I will leave the door unlocked, the eggs on the kitchen counter, the lights on in the hall and the toothpaste in the silverware drawer and never realize it til later.

In the last year I have had the luxury and also the curse of being able to let my mind and life be freer. I'm not driving to Dallas every day of my life. I'm not up doing project plans at 4am with people from Barcelona.  I don't have to write To-Do lists that are five pages long so I will fit everything into the few hours I have to sleep.  I can relax, enjoy spending time with my friends and let my mind be what it wants to be.  I can go out for Happy Hour because I actually get home in time to go there.  I don't have to worry whether I should go home after only one because I will be exhausted the next day.

It's great to have this kind of freedom, but maybe freedom from all your mental faculties isn't always exactly good for people like me.  I thrive well on structure and stress.  I need a new challenge, something to get me going again.  Many of the people I socialize with have had really weird things happen to them this year also. In some ways those incidences are contagious.  It's why we are all sitting there commiserating about the same stuff.  It's also why people who like professional wrestling tend to have their four-wheelers breakdown all in the same week. 

So it's time for me to slow down just a bit, get back to my life of lists, structure and challenge. It's not that I am giving up my social life entirely or not drinking ever again. It's just time for me to add back in some good healthy things along with it.  It's time to clear out the old and start anew.  And of course, Keep Calm and Carry On.