Tis totally beyond me why I should have a massive case of the blues today, but I do. Perhaps because I pinned a bunch of hopes on having lots of things done this weekend, and next to none of them were done (note the impressive use of passive tense in that last phrase). I need a day or two where I can get a massive running start on doing things I don’t necessarily want to do. If there’s somewhere I need to be in the middle of the day, it pretty much ensures I won’t get anything done before, and I’m not so likely to do so after, either. (Note lack of agency implied by phrasing here, too.)

Yesterday I did some volunteering that completely sucked dry any social energy I had. I’ve long thought of myself as shy, but as I’ve gotten older I think it’s more that I have a finite amount of social energy. In small groups or one-on-one, I can go for quite some time, but big parties where I don’t know many people deplete that energy faster, and going from one thing to another can mean I don’t get the recharge I need. So last weekend I was at Wiscon, where I did tons of socializing (though not as much as in previous years, as the art show prep kinda wore me out), and then I slammed right into the work week, then Saturday I made phone calls for a get-out-the-vote drive. This is completely outside my comfort zone. Three hours of that was enough to send me home to bed at 4 pm instead of to the party I’d been planning to hit. I told the campaign volunteers it wasn’t in my comfort zone, and they were awesome to coddle me and ply me with sweets and say I was doing great. Still, I think I’d rather have a root canal.

It’s interesting, considering Friday I did another volunteering gig, my Meals on Wheels run for the season (we have enough volunteers I don’t get to do more than 1 or 2 runs per season). I was having a morning that, to say the least, lacked in awesomeness, but I was looking forward to the meal deliveries. There you’re knocking on doors, but people are so glad to see you and the smiles you get are so genuine. It makes me happy that I am contributing to older people being able to live on their own, and to know someone checks on them every day (or nearly so). I don’t know if it gave me energy, but it gave me a mood lift, which I needed.

This doesn’t have much to do with creativity, except why I’m just thinking about getting started on something crafty. And I have no idea where my Velcro[TM] is. There was going to be a massive amount of clearing off spaces and organizing and decluttering, but I’ve been spending time with my funk and my laptop most of the day. I did go to a graduation party for an hour or so this morning, and did see the friends who tend to energize me, but I came back to sporadic fits of dishwasher loading, bill paying and piddling away the afternoon online.

I do have a project that’s a hair away from being finished, so I’ll get to it as soon as the cat gets off my arms. Just needed to talk about this energy stuff.