"the trouble with resisting temptation is you may not get another chance."

i have a bit of a problem with tunnel vision. i focus on one (or very few) thing/s, making my universe clausterphobic enough to feel manageable, and if any of those things goes minutely awry, i'm devastated. i especially tend to sabotage relationships this way. the beneficial thing about working too much: i get huge scheduled chunks of time to not have to think about myself and my internal dramas.
alternately: i work so much that i am always at least somewhat exhausted (whether i realize it or not; i frequently view sleep as an inconvenience), which makes me a bit unreasonable and neurotic.
or there is no external explanation; i'm simply wound too tightly.
worked at tacoma today. 9 hrs stretched into 10. i spent the last 3 at the microscope. that is definitely my favorite thing to do in veterinary medicine, but i eventually staggered away with a headache. cells are the most beautiful things up close. it is gratifying to have visual proof of the world making sense. every symptom has a monocellular source. i sound a bit flaky right now, but thoughts like these make up for all the indignities i see at work, like the dangerously anemic dog that the owners, for religious reasons, are refusing to do any transfusions on. (jehovah's witnesses, apparently. "why are they bothering to have their dog here in the first place?" i said, not trying to subdue my scorn. apparently keeping the dog all alone in a cement run, where it has been alternately barking and vomiting, is acceptable.)
"can you hear me knocking" is on sirius. definitely one of the best rolling stones songs. i never liked the stones until recently... unlike the traffic song in a posting prior, this song is best meant for driving speedily, getting fucked up, or having insane sex. no wallowing, no indeed.
for as busy as the tacoma ER usually is, the ER in olympia has been rather crickety of late. monday started off frantically; everything either declined treatment or was euthanized. by 3am the doctor had gone to sleep and i was alone in the clinic, wide awake, that peculiar combination of being full of ideas and motivation but too unfocused and hyper to execute any of them. i ended up doing my divorce paperwork and playing with the cat someone had abandoned at the clinic over the weekend. the owner hadn't been reachable since saturday and she;d been almost overly inquiring before then. i ended up calling the sherriff's dept in the morning to see if they could do a welfare check on her house. she was elderly and on disability, and her neighbor had already called us and accused her of poisoning her cat. (these sort of scenarios are fairly normal in the olympia area. it is a fun place to work.) the doctor awoke and told me about her dream. i drove home in traffic, the sun in my eyes, smoking to stay awake, singing aloud.
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the above quote is from laurence peter, whomever that may be. that may well be my new m.o. it is a bit more cerebral-sounding, at least, than "fuck it."