Irritable, oh yeah.

For all the usual moon-related reasons, I am finding myself increasingly irritable this week, to the degree that I have now had to wall out my co-workers with louder and louder music through the headphones. Cocooned by indyrock and glued to my computer monitor with the pretense of working so intently I can’t participate in the distractions – I’m relying on this strategy to get me through until tomorrow when I can get a bit of a break from it. It’s not their fault, and I realize that – i’m feeling acutely my inability to relax – but in the meantime I don’t want to do or say something assholish. So I’m basically pretending to be a decent human on a day when I most decidedly do not feel like one. Of course, this monthly phase is always compounded by the fact I also appear intensely ugly to myself as well – and I can only suck it up for the 2 or 3 days I go through it and know it will soon pass (as in – Saturday can’t come too soon).

At least I have been getting good sleeps (albeit with bizarre dreams) in the last couple of nights. That definitely alleviates some of the stresses that seem to be pressing on me (work, union, jail support – all demanding a lot of thinking and writing and talking right now). And it has been nice to be going home on a regular schedule all week and spending nights in my own bed. I have found an increasing ambivalence about my home when I am on the road, but as soon as I get some solid time there, I realize how much I don’t really want to move and want to keep working on the place and making it more “mine”.

Got my passport application signed yesterday by my lawyer and the biography and project materials into the union they asked for and heard back today they are happy for all that. A good friend of mine told me last week he was disappointed that I was selected to go on the human rights tour and not him and now it seems that he is not really talking to me at all this week which does cause me some fretting even though I also recognize I haven’t done anything wrong and he’s probably just getting over his own issues (he has age, and more political power on his side, I think he was surprised by the outcome). I think I might be projecting a little because I worry so much about what other people think of me – and because so often my successes have been met with back-stabbing behaviour by others (so much so that I’m actually afraid to tell some members of my local executive about being selected for this tour).

I guess the objective – particularly as I want to run for higher union office – is to develop more confidence in myself and not let the unfounded criticisms of others stress me out so much (while still being able to hear constructive criticism and counter political analysis without getting defensive – that balance)…..

The past six months of having a lot of my political world torn apart and doing the support work has made me more brave rather than more fearful in general – because as I recently realized – I have been and will keep surviving this with as much integrity as possible. This is probably a lesson best extrapolated to other political arenas and life experiences in general.

The more I figure this stuff out the easier it is to be me.

And hopefully the less irritable I will be.