So, today, I slept in, I took a nap in the afternoon, and generally took it easy. I didn’t do anything productive today, and just sat around, recharged the batteries, and didn’t worry about much. Tomorrow I’ve got a dentist’s appointment, but today it was just relaxation.

Pretty strange. Didn’t realize how tired I was. What’s even weirder is that I really have no good *reason* to be tired, other than catch-up from the stress that’s been so pervasive over the last four months of working. It feels, genuinely, like detox – like the body’s giving up the habit of being stressed, tense, all those things that you adjust to when you’re constantly requested to do ridiculous things.

I wish I had more time. Still, grateful for the few weeks that I’ve had (including the honeymoon, and time post-resignation where I didn’t really give a flying … care about work, it’s been longer, obviously). Realize how much I’d really *like* to win the lottery, and how well I’d be able to keep myself entertained/engaged without the structure of a daily job. I haven’t once wanted for something to do, or a *goal* to work towards. I put up trim in the downstairs. I wrote parts of the design I’d had in my head. I sketched out a painting I’d like to do. I spent some time in the garden, played a lot with the dog, and cooked the vast majority of the days I could.

I wonder how much of that I can maintain and have a job? In the past, it’s been difficult, but I think the notion of being home 10 minutes after leaving work will hopefully change that. I’m pretty sure the next month will be busy, but we’ll see how well I can manage this work-life balance thing. The grocery store is on the way home. No reason not to keep cooking.

Been watching House, M.D. – it’s a show on Fox, I believe it just ended its second season. Hugh Laurie plays the main character, who’s basically a sarcastic, snide, and incredibly gifted doctor. It’s sort of a “medical mystery” show, though unlike most mystery stories, you’re unlikely to say, figure anything out unless you have extensive medical knowledge – and the stuff they’re dealing with is incredibly obscure. What it’s really about is the interplay between the characters, and this setting provides a very compelling series of things that drive interactions. It’s to medical dramas as the movie Pi is to mathematics. The subject is sort of a MacGuffin – there to push the plot forward, but not critical to what makes the thing tick.

I think my dad would enjoy it, and maybe relate to the main character. It’s a fascinating show.

Which makes me think of a bunch of things I don’t really know how to say. I mean, I think people relate to House because he says what people think, when they put themselves in his shoes – that is, he talks like you might want to talk to a stupid co-worker. You’d want to tell them they’re an idiot. But at the same time, he acknowledges when people have done well, his staff is (for the most part) loyal to him, and even when he’s wrong, he’s usually able to figure out how to make things better.

So, in some sense, he’s the interior arrogant jerk that resides in me, that I wish the world would accomodate, but won’t. I wish I had the freedom to say the things in the way that he does, because he does it essentially without repercussion. His character operates in an insular enough world that he doesn’t really have to worry about people not liking him – regardless of what he says, he knows they respect him, and more importantly, some of them *understand* him. So, the arrogance, the directness, and the lack of social grace don’t matter. Ah, what a world that’d be. But it’s impossible, I think, both because that’s not the way the world works, by and large, and it’s also not necessarily the way I’m willing or capable of interacting with others.

I’d *love* to tell people I thought were idiots that they were idiots. But it’s not always that simple. Sometimes an idiot has other redeeming qualities. Sometimes you have immense respect for someone’s intelligence, but think they’re a jackass. (what I might think if I worked for someone like House.) But everything’s grey. Sometimes the right thing to do is be blunt, and honest, and not give a shit about how the other person will react in the short term, because it’s the long term change that matters. Other times, you lie, because the short term is all that matters, and you don’t care about making the investment to change their long term behaviour. Sometimes, you know they won’t be able to handle honesty. Whatever. It all depends. And to some degree, Malcolm Reynolds, from Firefly, was that sort of character, where it was interesting to watch his different approaches to different situations, because you knew the core of who this character was, and how he interacted with people he knew illuminated *them*, as it illuminated him.

House has some of that, but it’s much less pronounced.

Hrm.

Anyway. Yeah.