Today (er…technically yesterday now) has been THE longest work day of my life, it feels like. I am working on a couple of projects for Rennie (my big real estate client) and one of them is at the laying-out-floorplans stage, which is never fun. But, in this case, I had to make what is called a keyplan (basically a mini outline of the whole building and each unit’s outer wall boundaries) from a floorplate (which is a large version of the whole building with all units and their interior walls, door swings, etc.). This means I had to go into this existing file and remove all the door swings, interior walls, windows, appliances, etc. and patch up the gaps in the outer wall outline left by removing all that stuff. This sounds like no big deal, but this building has a bunch of weird angles, so instead of just making the wall sections that were left longer, I had to actually manually join them all. For someone who doesn’t work in Illustrator, this won’t make much sense, but the long and short of it is that it was absolute HELL and it took me a good 9 hours to do three floors. It’s a very detail-oriented thing to deal with floorplans, which is why it takes so friggin’ long!

I woke up at 8am and got started and stopped for a few hours’ break (and a sorely-needed nap) at 7pm to watch The Bachelor – After the Final Rose (that guy’s a fucking idiot for not picking Deanna even after she would have given him another chance – MORON!) and the new Reaper episode.  I didn’t think it was nearly as good as last week’s episode – seemed a little slower getting out of the gate and a lot of the dialogue seemed to be just filler.  I fell asleep for a couple of hours and got started working again at 11:30pm and I just finished the floorplans and sent them off at 2:15am. So, that makes a 14-hour work day for me today. Sitting in front of a computer selecting little points in Illustrator for that length of time is certainly a test of mental health! Sorry to be whining, but this really has been a hellacious day!

Tracey and I started tennis lessons last night, which was interesting. We have two more two-hour lessons on the next two Monday nights, so I hope it’ll improve my game enough to hit it across consistently without chasing the ball so much!  We’re probably a couple of the better students in the class, though there are probably a couple of others that are at about the same level.  There are a couple of people – a Chinese lady and a Russian lady – who are just hopeless and seem to have no athletic inclination or fluidity to their movements at all. 

I barely talked to Tracey at all today. She was at work in North Vancouver and I had my nose buried in Illustrator all day.  I don’t think I called her number once all day.  She phoned a couple of times during the day and then she called mewhen she got off work at about 7:30pm to ask if I wanted her to come over. I told her I didn’t care one way or the other.  Honestly, though, I was happy she decided to just go to her house, because after the long day I had (and it wasn’t even over yet!), I needed some peace and quiet time to relax and get a little rest so I could finish up.  But, it did make me feel lonely to not even see her, especially after having such a shitty day and, at that point, still having lots more to do.

I don’t know what’s going on with me mentally with regards to my relationship with Tracey.  I just feel like something has happened inside my head.  I feel like I’m giving up or something – very understandable considering the length of time I’ve given things to get on the right track and progress in a positive direction.  A couple of times today, I was just thinking about things and how it feels like what little is there is just slowly slipping away into oblivion and it makes me so sad.  I feel like I am witnessing the slow and inevitable death of something I’d very much like to see alive and well – or at least WOULD HAVE very much liked to see alive and well.  But, a garden does not grow without love, nurturing and effort.  I’m sick of being a solo gardener with the occasional gardening buddy and having things die on the vine only to try and replant again and hope something grows.

I was listening to some music when I got started working again and it’s amazing how much of a difference it makes to my mental attitude when I’m listening to music while working.  I have no idea why I didn’t turn any on for the whole, very long first part of my day today.  It’s one of those things where I just procrastinate on something for no reason at all, but it would have made the day so much more tolerable.  At one point, I felt like crying I was so frustrated with how long it was taking to get those goddamned keyplans done.  Angelica had a bit of attitude with me when I called her to say that we had no keys for each separate floor.  I don’t think they get how much work is involved when they say “oh, yeah, you just have to make one”.

Elyzabeth Diaga’s song Rivieres came on and it made me feel very emotional. I don’t remember the last time I listened to that song, but I remembered most of the lyrics.  That wouldn’t seem so odd, but for the fact that it’s a French (well, Quebequer, technically) song.  I was always touched by this one part of the lyrics that says “….et tout s’efface…et la lumiere se jeter au fond de l’espace et je ne vois plus la terre…” which basically means “everything is wiped away and the light is cast into the depths of space and I can no longer see the Earth” (or something like that)…I dunno why, but that has always captured something visual in my mind when I hear it in French.  I can picture sort of hovering above the Earth and seeing it slip into the distance as you drift farther and farther away.  To me, the song is talking about not knowing how or why something slips away and fades over time and it has a tone of longing and desperation that’s hard to explain unless you hear it.  I guess, given my current mental state about my relationship, perhaps that’s why it made me feel so emotional.  That, coupled with my ongoing confusion about where I should be – am I missing what I’m supposed to be doing, is this happening so that I will find my way to where I’m supposed to be – made me cry when I was listening to the song.  

Sometimes, I think that learning French came so easy to me for a reason – like I was supposed to be in a situation where that would be relevant for me on an ongoing basis – and that throws me into a whole other mindfuck.

Ferris has assumed the Tuck-Mommy-In position next to me, so I’m going to watch some of Anger Management and try to go to sleep. It’s so hard to come down off being so wired and in go-go-go mode for so long in a day and just try to relax enough to sleep.