Dear Diary: Agitated
I’m a bit agitated at this evening. That’s the word for it, too. I’m not anxious, really, or worried, or fretful; just stirred up. All right, I’m a litle bit fretful. WiFi connectivity issues again. Nothing like yesterday’s, but now that I have some perspective I can give you an idea of how screwed up things were yesterday morning.
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TimeWarner had a brief problem that shut down Internet access (although not “connectivity” for a little while — so far as I know, it lasted for no more than fifteen minutes. So that was one reason for the 404.
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Then there was the netbook’s power save/WiFi access problem that I didn’t even know about. Again, signals loud and strong, but no connection.
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Finally, the WiFi booster in the bedroom has been giving us both grief. I suspect that the cable connecting the router to the booster (without which the booster wouldn’t be worth the electiricity that it consumes) has been crimped by running, for a winter, beneath two sash windows. Must replace.
The hair it tears. How’s one to fix what’s on the fritz when everything is on the fritz?
For the rest of it, though, I was simply agitated, like clothes in a washing machine. I got a tremendous amount of writing done. That ought to leave one calm and glowing, but it rarely does, perhaps when nothing is actually finished. Not finishing things is fine; I’m trying to get into a rhythm of working on things, instead of trying to dash them off in one go. Call me ‘elated’ rather than ‘contented.’ Agitated.
At eleven at night, an old friend called, to announce a long-considered career change. And a long-expected one. I’d been worried about the posture of the decision, foreseeing one of those “You-can’t-fire-me-because-I-quit” scenarios that sound good for about a minute. As it is, nothing in our friend’s situation precludes an animacable parting of the ways. At our age, though, this sort of thing is serious, heart attack serious. Our friend almost had a heart attack just making the final steps toward the decision. Agitating.
During the day, my Web master and I exchanged several emails about automating the DVD project that I’ve been writing about this week in the Diary; we also came to terms on a plan that meets all requirements of masculine interest: it’s more ambitious, more expensive, and more exciting than anything that crossed my mind on Monday. It’s so serious, in fact, that, as I wrote to Steve, I don’t for once have ants in my pants. Hey, I’m still getting used to Blidgets, and feeling guilty about having so few fabulous insights for the Aviary of Ideas. Ambition + expense + excitement = Agitation.
Finally, there was the croaking woman. I had picked up supplies at the Food Emporium and collected the mail, and I was waiting for the elevator by myself when a shortish woman in a blonde bob that she was much too old for wheeled up on her cell phone. She was walking, but she seemed to glide; she was certainly oblivious. How stupid do you have to be to walk right up to an elevator door that is not unlikely to open on a crowd of exiting passengers. But she was on her phone, talking in a toneless baritone that so dramatically amplified the awfulness of her yakking that I could not board when the elevator arrived. I could not trust myself to share the space with her. Had I followed her into the elevator cab, I should have been obliged to set down my shopping bags and apply a garrotte to her neck. The woman was the most socially unacceptable creature that I have seen since the New Year. A package of heedlessly obnoxious unattractiveness, she needed to be tossed to the lions — but the lions are in the Bronx, and presumably too well-fed not to be as repulsed by her as I was. Che agita!
I’d love to say that I know of something that’s going to stop the agitation and quiet me down, but I don’t. Once again, I’m wondering how I got to be sixty before I confronted the fact that I am, very simply, high strung.