A flat(tening) week…

Hearing therapy session got cancelled – Jen called in sick :(
I really needed this session – we’d made good progress in the previous session, and I was still reeling from Sunday’s mess.

Weekly mean weights

Weight has been trending up dramatically, after three weeks of heading down. Sunday’s gorging at the party, Monday’s cake feast, and yesterday’s gallons of red wine – all contributed. Culprit was clearly a weak will.

chart

Clutter free is stagnating – growth burst is over, and user numbers have been up and down since the US Thanksgiving.

Not enough users are signing up for premium support subscribtions. If the trend continues, I’ll have to cull time allotment to, if not kill entirely, the extensions. 40,000 users aren’t worth anything if even 1% of them don’t think these are worth paying.

Not a good week, so far.

The upside: week’s not over.

— Ever the optimist :)

Noise notes

Yesterday was a bad day for noise exposure and I’m still feeling its impact today – in higher tinnitus and grinding of teeth. The silver lining is that the social event I was dreading went way better than expected, but I did suffer more than usual at the cafe later.

We had a party at friends’ house. 4 families, one sleepy dogs, and some young kids. It was noisy at times. However, I don’t remember being irritated or hurting from noise most of the time. Even when I was with the kids in their room, or when one of them was playing the piano (for me, and really well!), and another trying his hand on drums (badly). I was happy, and a bit drunk. I guess the alcohol dulled my senses, and happiness kept the anxiety levels low despite the noise.

Later I walked to town for my Sunday evening coffee and reading break. The cafe (Nero) had more people than a usual Sunday evening. I found a comfortable seat but with noisy tables around – chatty teenager girls, and louder-than-usual talkative couples. I tried using my earphones, without anything playing, to reduce the sound. It didn’t help. After a while, I was able to ignore the noise and continue with the reading. But I think the noise stress accumulated below the surface. I was stressed out for rest of the evening.

Finally, before sleeping, I was reading (and wildly nodding my head to) this article about noise in restaurants and cafes. The pain from the noise in the cafe, combined with recurring visual (and aural) memories of several such experiences came rushing back. I got a headache, and the ears started hurting again. I could feel, and not stop much, my teeth grinding and anxiety flooding in.

I had to take a paracetamol (for headache), and use a Calm sleep story (Shipping forecast) to help me sleep. They worked.

I have been awake for an hour, trying to work. The tinnitus is louder than usual. The room is awfully quiet too, as expected at 6:30 AM, so that may be a factor. I’m still occasionally grinding my teeth, and stopping myself when I notice myself doing it. Anxiety levels are a bit higher than usual, but better than last night.

Solace in Chaos

After yesterday’s heavy exercise, I needed a load of coffee to get myself working today. So, settled down in a cafe to work, instead of my regular work space.

It’s a shocking surprise how much more efficient I’m here in this noisy, chaotic cafe, than I’m at my usual, super-quiet work space.

One immediate reason I grasped upon was the fact that there is so much noise here, that I’m unable to comprehend, and thus get distracted by, anything. In the usual workplace, everything and everyone is so quiet that even a whisper across the hall is clearly audible and understood. Each whisper, each motion, every door opening is a disturbance, a distraction.

Ironic, but surprisingly true, I’ve found solace in this chaos :)