Fuck this week...

This week has been a stressful one, my blood pressure is up, the tension through my shoulders and neck is bad enough to keep me awake at night and if that wasn't bad enough, I have been suffering through my first gout attack in 20 years... not much fun. Work is off the rails with crazy... and I am missing home in a vicious kind of way. This too shall pass, right?

I am once again stuck wondering what I want to be when I grow up, and reading back through some of my posts from when I was in Grad School. I was good at that, I mean really good.... not revolutionary by any stretch of the imagination, but I was good at the reading, the interpreting, and the - well the just being in University. What I wasn't good at was the politics, and the publish or perish world, or the thoughts of spending 10 years working sessionals trying to obtain a tenure track... maybe I need more stick-to-it-ness, or maybe I am just not good at doing the same thing for long periods of time. I have been in my current occupation stream for 5 years, been with the same team for 4. This, for me, is something of an anomaly. Most of my working life, I was used to a six week gig here, a four week gig there, etc. And the techs/directors or the actors would change up, so life was constant learning or at least experiencing.

Then came school, more learning every day. I like that part, it makes me feel fulfilled and happy. For the first 3 1/2 years where I am now, I also got that feeling of learning something new everyday, and it was a pleasure to be at work. Now... well now I am still learning new things every day, but those new learnings are a little more like soul-crushing experiences. Learning things that either sound so crazy from the outset that no one could reasonably believe that they would be true, or things that just plain make a person crazy.

How does one find that happy balance? I put this to those who have been in the same business / workplace / whatever for extended periods of time? I am an incredibly loyal person, loyal to my team, to my friends, to  my family, etc. So how does one balance that loyalty with the need to not have one's soul obliterated on a daily basis?

And more importantly, how does one not drink to recover from each of those days?