"Sucking it up" and "pulling it together", despite still feeling a bit like repression, seems to have helped get me out of a funk. I've been more enthusiastic about stuff at work (a really cool project I'm working on that's also critically important for my career growth and success). And my sex drive has increased again, and I'm feeling more myself in that regard.

I have noticed, however, that my "repression experiment" is approaching the limits of its sustainability. I'm feeling how my grief about losing Adam and Billy (and fucking everything else) is vying for my attention at the periphery of my awareness. And I'm increasingly easily triggered by themes in TV shows and certain kinds of music. (Without giving away any spoilers, s01e08 of WandaVision had me desperately wanting to drive out to Fairplay and sit on the property where Adam and I were going to build our future home, and just cry my guts out.) I have more of a sense of everything will be okay, but I still find myself breaking down a few times a week, weepy, and then I have to "suck it up" again. I'm wondering whether just making sure that I have some space for that is good enough of a pressure valve for releasing the grief.

Meanwhile, I'm working on overcoming my severe sense of feeling overwhelmed, drowning in administrative overhead that's really the result of irresponsibility and failure to adult effectively. Thanks to the support of my friend Vicki, we're now doing "parallel play" as often as our schedules allow, where Vicki comes over to my house, and we just knock out otherwise-hateful administrative tasks. Surprisingly, these tasks felt less hateful in this context, and I found myself looking forward to the time together, getting things done. It helped me to feel less anxious about the mountain of crap I keep putting off leading up to the session, and then I got into a state of quasi-flow even after she left, allowing me to maintain the momentum of the productivity. So that's pretty good.

I also find myself a little bit more resilient to "micro-disasters", including some unpleasantness that's been gnawing at me in the last few days, where someone in a training/support group I'm in is unintentionally and unknowingly trying to drag me into drama. I don't think she has a single malicious bone in her body, but the way she has been approaching me about things she finds unpleasant about our interactions reflects a deep wound and severe emotional and behavioral dysregulation, all of which is ultimately very unpleasant for me. And after numerous attempts at getting on better footing, I already see how there's nothing I can do within the bounds of truth and authenticity to help improve the situation or her experience. And so I just have to let it go (and I'm definitely disengaging), but I still find myself easily distracted by ruminating over all the hypocrisy and unfairness and tragedy of the situation.

In more pleasant news, I'm starting a new mesocycle today, and I just hope that I can muster up the discipline to consistently go to bed ridiculously early, so that I have enough time for stretching, too, before I start my workdays.