The Bottom Drops Out

Today seemed like any other day. I came in to work with a lingering malaise, and an odd belly pain. I started going about work, and was irritated by people, but largely tried to ignore them. I sent my report that I make every day early in the day, and got a response back from my supervisor that messed everything up. She offhandedly commented how she was mildly surprised that I was in, and that she guessed I didn’t get selected for jury duty. That began a very stressful chain of events. I replied that I had forgotten and needed to go.

I drove home then, at a rapid pace, because I didn’t have the paper that told me my juror number, so I couldn’t figure out if I was supposed to go today or not. I tried my best to remain calm during that time, and realize that whatever happened was not something I could change at that time, and I could only acquit myself as well as possible given the circumstances as they were at the time. I got home in a reasonable amount of time, and tried my best to remain calm and look for the paper that had my juror number. I had a rough idea of what numbers were being called, but as it turned out, I was wrong about that. It took me some time to find the paper, and I called Megan to try to see if she knew where it was, and my hands were shaking after a while of not being able to find it. When I finally did, I looked up my number, and I was supposed to report at 8 this morning. It was about 9:45 by that time. I wasn’t sure what to do, nor what the penalty for not showing up to jury duty actually was, so I called Megan to ask, and she said to just go, so I did. I tried to remain calm and prepare myself for what was to come as I drove to the parking garage. I ran most of the way to the court house, and found the door to the juror room closed, so I asked at the information desk, and was told that it was okay to enter. I told them (in a rather emotional state) how I had simply forgotten that I had jury duty, and came as soon as I realized. They had apparently sent something down to the judge already, but called down. I had to wait for a little while, but people were overall quite polite, given the situation. Eventually, I was called into an office and told that because I was so late, that I should come back tomorrow. I thanked the woman who told me the news profusely and headed back to my car.

I tried my best to calm down, and realized I ought to go back to work. I would have liked nothing more than to simply go back to bed, but I was already going to have to use leave for this, so I made my way back to work. I told my supervisor about it when I got here, and thanked her for reminding me… then tried to get past my distraction and get back to work amidst explaining to curious co-workers why I was back again. This has made today a very strange, stressful day.

All of this was partly caused and compounded by last night. I came home at a regular time, and Megan had been teleworking, so she had started baked potatoes. Since we hadn’t slept well the night before, we planned to watch the back episode of Agents of SHIELD that we had watched, then the new one, and then go to bed. Jim was stopping at the store to pick up toppings for the potatoes, so we took showers. During that time, the Cat Genie started making an awful noise it had made that morning. In the morning, it had stopped by the time I got up to investigate, but since it wasn’t stopping, we checked and unplugged it in the evening. Since dinner was ready, I figured we ought to eat before addressing that… and Megan had it in her mind to make the peanut butter cookies with the Hershey kisses that I had wanted to make, so we also did that while heating up the other things. We ate and then watched the SHIELD stuff we had planned… though we hadn’t finished the older one by the time the new one started, so we finished it during commercials. Afterwards, we tried to fix the Cat Genie and failed, and decided we needed to call the company. They had a backlog, so there was a message saying to leave your information and they would call back. Once we did that, the message said there was an estimated 35 minute wait time. It was already bed time, but it was too late then, so we got clothes for the next day and programmed the coffee maker, so we could sleep a tad later. It was over an hour later when they called. We had just about nodded off by then. The person on the phone was relatively helpful, and suggested ways to fix some things it could have been, but once she heard the grinding noise, she knew what it was, and since we are not under warranty any more, we could either order a new processing unit for half the price of a new Cat Genie with a 90 day warranty, or a whole new Cat Genie with a two year warranty. We decided to think about it, and haven’t really addressed it, what with all that happened today. I had trouble falling back asleep, but it was too late for me to try to take something for it, so I just suffered through it.

I think lack of sleep is contributing a great deal to my negative mood. I think I will try my best to catch up on that. I will lay out some good clothes to wear tomorrow. I think it will make me feel a bit better about the leniency I received together to make myself presentable. Then I think we should try to go to sleep early. I need to remember not to go to work tomorrow, and to go to the court house.

I got a somewhat rude and sexist sounding private note on my last entry… or so it seemed. It was actually fairly indecipherable. Despite the rudeness, it did mention how there was a lot of negative language in that post. I haven’t had time to review whether that was the case or not, but it is, I suppose something to consider. The part that was bothersome was how the noter talked about how she laughed at the depths of my depression, and how I used a lot of words for a guy. I’m not sure why being a guy means that you don’t write or know how to use words. It seems like it should be neither here nor there. Anyhow, that perturbed me a bit, but I am trying to not let it bother me… and with the greater stressors today, I haven’t given it quite as much thought… though it did upset me at the time.

I read more of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations today. It’s still challenging, but I am growing more accustomed to its ponderous, rambling sentences, with lots of linked clauses, and archaic language. While some things aren’t coming through, and there is the irritating manner in which the translator is trying to mold the work into a Christian one, there are still some pretty useful bits of wisdom there, like the meditations on the brevity of life, and how little things ultimately matter. On a day where I have been feeling overwhelmed by the possible consequences of a mistake, that is something I needed to hear. I think it is also something I could extend to other areas of my life where I have become less bold overall than I was in my younger years… like stage fright, or not quite being as unique as I have been. It also fits in rather interestingly with the other spiritual ideas I have favored in the past, Wicca, Taoism, and Zen. They form a rather interes

ting grouping with Stoicism. As difficult as it is to read this book, I am finding it valuable, and I think it will integrate nicely into my worldview, as a lot of my world view is Stoic.

I feel like there is a lot more… probably because of the lingering scraps of stress from this morning… but I think I have covered things rather thoroughly. I’m not sure what jury duty tomorrow will be like (having never done it before), but I will be going, and gladly, having faced the consequences of not doing that, I think it’s a pretty good trade. I do think I will maybe bring an actual book, since electronics seem to be fairly restricted… and hopefully, I will get a good night’s sleep.