Then there followed days of kings,
Empires and revolution.
Blood just looks the same
When you open the veins.
Sometimes it was faith, power or reason as the cornerstone;
But the furrowed brow has never left his face.

He said:
“How could it come to this?
We’re really living in a landslide…
How could it come to this?
Yeah, we really wanna know about this!”

Monday

Woke up feeling completely unrefreshed. Rolled into yet another day of meetings, mostly around the newly accelerated project schedule that we’ve been lumbered. I’m starting to suffer from what I’ll call Zoom fatigue; all the different sessions blended into one and I’ve no idea whether I’m coming or going. By the time 5:30 rolls around I’ve been both frazzled and frustrated at a lack of getting anything I’d planned done.

At least lunch, sandwiches made with the fresh sourdough, was awesome. I need to spend more time outside; had a little bit of time to tend to the vegetables and the was fantastic. Ordered a bunch of beer from Big Drop Brewing, who specialise in alcohol-free beers. I’ve been relaxing with a drink at the end of the day far too much recently and I want to avoid overdoing it. Not that I’m drinking more than one beer most nights, but that’s probably one more than is entirely good for me.

Finished up the day making up a new batch of beer, The Beer Called American Dave. The original Dave was a traditional saison, this one is a twist on the original made with West Coast hops. Took a break around 10 to watch StarLink go past, then crawled into bed around 11:30.

Tuesday

Woke agin, feeling even worse – groggy and headachey, as if I’d been drinking heavily. Nope; dug out some paracetamol and hoped I’d feel better later. Any thoughts that today might have been quieter, work-wise, than Monday were swiftly dashed. Standup, then the architecture meeting, then an hour of knowledge transfer with a new member of the performance and chaos team, walking him through our environment creation automation. All good, but talking to a screen for hours is exhausting. Broke for lunch, then back for a meeting with various development teams that didn’t feel all that useful and ended inconclusively. Finished the day with a vendor meeting that didn’t go to plan but at least got something concrete out of it.

Both kids were restless in the evening, at one point while I was catching up with friends over a couple of FaceTime beers. I caught one of them coming out of the other’s bedroom at almost nine o’clock. At half past, there was a loud wail from A outside my office door, in the form of “Daddy, I can’t get to sleep!” No idea what was wrong, but she decided she wanted her mum, and finally went to sleep 15 minutes later being hugged. Turned in myself about an hour later, after a little bit of shipping goods around in X: Beyond The Frontier.

Wednesday

Woke up feeling rested for a change. First email I read is from D, saying he’s taking the day off at short notice and cancelling a number of today’s meetings. He pinged me on Slack not long after; turns out he’s not actually taking a day off, just working in stealth mode because he’s been snowed under, just like me. There might be a little bit of good news; no promises yet but even the suggestion that deadlines might be flexible has lifted my spirits just a little.

The sample jar of saison wort I left on the windowsill seems to have started to ferment spontaneously. I’ll have a tiny sample of some sort of lambic soon, it seems, as well as the main fermenter which has gone off like a rocket. The kids are exhausted – after last night, I’m entirely unsurprised.

Maybe an early night for everyone was in order, but it didn’t happen; while A was happy to go to bed, Sleeper Jr. wasn’t; after the bedtime story he wanted to talk to us but couldn’t verbalise his feelings. Ended up holding him, sobbing, for twenty minutes while he had a good cry. I let him have a bounce on the trampoline in the dark before bed, then got into bed with him and let him borrow my childhood teddy bear overnight. Teddy Edward always seems to help the kids feel safe when they’re down. I think a return to schoolwork has brought back the realisation of just how much he misses his friends.

Eventually we finally sat down to relax on the sofa at gone half nine, watching the second episode of Dark Matter. Don’t ask me what happened in it in any detail though, by that point my brain was mushier than mush. Things are taking their toll.