10/10/12 - 1:03 p.m.

Stress.

I'm at the library writing this. I came back to return a library book that was almost due - but also, because I thought it might put me on a "new track" for today. I'd been sitting at home playing game after game, and it's a cycle that's hard to break out of.

I was going to do that work I need to do this morning. But then I decided to re-boot my PC. And then it decided it wanted to install some software upgrade. ("1 of 5....") So I walked the dog. And when I came home, I re-booted the PC.

But while I was walking the dog, my cellphone rang. It was frustrating to deal with the call -- yank the phone out of my pocket -- and it was just a robot, from Comcast, telling me to call them back, but not telling me why.

So that was frustrating too. I think that was the "origin" of my frustration. I was trying to hurry the dog home, and then I was trying to hurry the dog home and answer the phone. And then it was "YOU HAVE ONE NEW THING ON YOUR TO-DO" list now. So even if I got the dog home, I still couldn't get back to work.

I called Comcast during the walk, so I could at least get a jump on this. I didn't know who to talk to or why I was calling (or even my account number), but none of that matter. It turned out that my girlfriend didn't pay the cable bill. So I made a payment over the phone of over $200.

She was messaging me during the walk about what a terrible day she was having. So I didn't feel like I could say, "And you also forgot to pay the cable bill." The upshot of this is the first thing when I logged on wasn't focussing on the work I had to do. It was checking the balance in my bank account to make sure I had enough to cover the cable bill payment that I made because my girlfriend forgot to.

Right there. That's the moment. That's when the day slipped away from me. The computer, the dog, the Comcast phone call, and the crazy girlfriend who forgets to pay our bills. I didn't deal with it. I just went on the internet to play games.

But, okay, so I'm here now. And what are we to make of this morning, all laid out like a patient etherized upon table? It all came all at once, I might say - too fast to deal with, too many things piled up. And there may be some truth to that, but the other truth is I didn't deal with it very well. Which is why it piled up.

As a kind of epilogue: I did call my girlfriend during lunch. And I told her -- without getting angry - that she didn't pay the cable bill. She was sorry. I told her not to be, that I just wanted to be sure we were on the same page. That was me trying to at least let some of this anger out, by talking about it rather than bottling it up.

It will never happen again - because we'd already decided that from here on out, I'd be paying the cable bill. (And I just looked it up. Late cable payments do not affect your credit score.) Actually, looking it up made me feel better. So that threat is done with.

So in that spirit, I've also looked up the updates that Windows was installing for "patch Tuesday," and I found a web page about them. And the author of the web page doesn't seem that worried. Most of them seem to affect things that I rarely or never use, like SQL or Microsoft's server software. Looking up the information made me realize that: it's irrelevant, because I did perform the upgrade. So guess what - that's all done with too. And for that matter, the dog has been completely walked. He pooped and everything, and he's back home now, snoozing on the couch. So let's review the score...

Dog: dealt with. Phone call: finished. Comcast: out of my life again. Bank balance: everything's cool. Reviewing all of this is supposed to help. BUT THERE WERE STILL FOUR OF THEM!!! And, honestly, you do have to lay some of this on my girlfriend. I'm walking her dog because she never does. I'm dealing with Comcast because she didn't.

I should also note that my PC is really old and drives me crazy - that's why I had to re-boot in the first place. And there's some "background stress" from the fact that I don't have a regular income, so I do have to worry about my bank balance, and I probably would've worried less if I'd checked my balance before I made that payment. I didn't have in my head an exact memory of when I'd requested the last deposit, and when it had gone through.

But, so, there you go. All the things I had to be stressed about. That's me dealing with it. Unfortunately, I feel like I have to go through it again, because it was all so disparate, I don't feel there's any way I can feel like I've really got a handle on it.

And, well, part of the problem is I'm so unpredictibly moody lately. So there's no guarantee I'll have the energy to deal with anything when it comes up. That's where the stress is really coming from. I want people to leave me alone, so I can groove on the new joys that today might bring.

Not the new problems...