I’m reaching the point in my medical leave where I’m getting restless. I just haven’t gotten done all of the things I wanted to do. I knew I wasn’t going to get as much done as I hoped, I’m always way too ambitious. However, I’ve gotten so little done that I’m frustrated.

I’m not worried, per se. My finances are fine, as long as I make some time, probably this week, to get to the bank and give them money to cover the direct debits for rent and utilities and all that. I’ve been poking various things on the internet, and pulling in a little money – not enough to live on without dipping into my savings, but I guess a fair return on what little investment I’ve put into it.

(getting my investment strategy in line was another thing I meant to do… I haven’t switched any of my holdings in many years, it’s time to update)

I also noticed that someone has been clicking the ads here. Well, thanks. I don’t know who you are, and I hope I haven’t weirded you out *too* much… or at least maybe it’s the good kind of weird. I guess I’ll just take this time to say that the reason I’m using a bitcoin ad network is that I want to keep things anonymous, just to promote honesty in myself as I’m writing. I’m not sure what I’m even going to do with the money – probably just pay for hosting here, specifically. Anything extra is either going to go to another anonymous domain, or to charity. I’m not interested in spending any of this money on myself, it would ruin the whole point of this project if I started to, like everything else in my life, tried to write in such a way as to enhance profits.

Hell, I’m not even trying to work in clickbait keywords here. Like Cyrptocurrency lol.

I have altogether too many computers on my desk right now. I have to figure out what to do with them. One has a broken touch screen that makes it impossible to use, the other has a shorted out keyboard, one is having boot issues that I thought were coming from the battery but appears to be a dying graphics card, and then there’s this one, which I’m loving but honestly kind of afraid to ruin it by putting in any of my personal info in it.

It’s inevitable, just like me going back to work. I haven’t put any photos on it, but I have plugged it into my big hardrive book to look at some of the files from my other computers.

I guess without my files, all the other computers are pretty much useless. I should rip them up for parts, perhaps?

It kind of shows my age, how protective I still am over physical possessions. I remember when every computer was priceless, watching My father delicately solder circuit boards in the basement, and the joy my brother and I would have finding working pieces in the trash and blowing hairdryers at the power supply fans until we could pull together another frankenstein machine from the trash been – maybe one that was powerful enough to play minesweeper or even Tetris on. Pulling out a hard drive and finding files on it from so long ago, all the projects we had started and gotten so excited about, and never finished. I think my brother was little enough to actually fit inside most of the cases we were building into, and honestly I wasn’t much bigger, due to health issues.

Anyway, I’m ready to let go of these. They’re just getting more obsolete by the minute, just like me. I’ve got to get back out there and get to my work. I am not done my coffee yet, and I’m trying to stick to this new habit (which I actually have found, in this limited trial, is useful) but I so badly want to do other things right now. Quite possibly just because the caffeine is kicking in and it’s probably my best shot at getting the physical stuff done around my apartment.

I’m just frustrated because rather than having this time to catch up, I’m just falling farther and farther behind. I guess maybe that’s the lesson that I needed to learn. Is it time to go back to work and just put myself back in the grind again?

I don’t want to. I felt so overwhelmed in there, every day struggling to catch my breath before the next thing that I had to do. Yes, the money kept coming in, but god knows I could barely keep track of it, mentally at first and then just physically. From here, looking back, I can see now that I was *not okay* before this. I’m not sure what I can do to stop myself from getting sucked in again.

Because, yes, it’s happened before. The trouble is that I know exactly why. And I can see from here, right now, that I am going to do it again.

I love my job in that 1984 big brother way. It’s ripped me apart, and crushed my soul, but at the same time it’s the only place where I can go to make these broken pieces feel like they’re functional. What I do isn’t important yet (I can feel it coming) because I’m willing to bet every single scrap of bitcoin that I’ve made so far (plus what I’m trying to free from these scrap laptops) that your job has done the same thing to you too.

Money is one hell of an addiction.