Vacuosity

It's baa-aack

It's what I call the Inexplicable Sadness. There's no particular reason for it. It just is.

It's not entirely without cause. It's been building for some time. I've been feeling for a while that all I do is try to keep people happy. At work, there's a whole host of people I need to keep happy. Clients who need things, staff who aren't really happy with how things are going, bosses (yes, that's bosses plural, as in 3 of them) who all have their own agendas, and everybody needs stuff from me, me, me. I do not remember agreeing to this.

Then there's home, a household full of people to keep happy: a wife who needs more attention, a baby who's more or less always on the verge of unhappiness, and a boy who requires a lot of work to keep happy. Not to mention a sister-in-law.

Don't even get me started on the reading circle, and how hard it is to keep an entire roomful of kids happy.

I have begun to wonder whether I would ever put so much work into keeping myself happy, and the answer was pretty obvious.

The Inexplicable Sadness manifested itself today, in a desire not to go to an after hours work function: beer, wings, cholesterol, thanks a bunch. It wasn't just that I didn't want to go; I really wanted not to. I did, however, manage to muster up the strength to show up and put on a brave face, even if more than fashionably late.

I realized that I felt exactly the same way the day of our last work function, to which I didn't show. I couldn't bail again. I think it has something to do with a whole lot of unprocessed resentment toward the entity that steals my life away. I'm not able to go and celebrate it; I just get more depressed and angrier as the day progresses.

Beer helps, and so does pretending. It's not nearly as bad as last year when the Inexplicable became the Infinite. I can get up tomorrow knowing that the Sadness may be gone.

posted by David @ 10:50 p.m.