Monday, September 13, 2010. 28 years, 50 weeks, 6 days.

I woke up and immediately felt unprepared for the week ahead.

That’s not the kind of way you should feel as soon as you open your eyes in the morning. Especially not on a Monday. It should be prohibited as an emotional state.

What’s more appropriate? Maybe, “It’s morning!” possibly amending “Already?” Or, “I’m tired.” Even the old standby, “I’m hungry.”

Those are the sorts of feelings to have upon waking up. Lingering dread is more the sort of feeling you want to avoid.

It wasn’t any one thing looming over me, but a collection of them. An Arcati Crisis show to rehearse and print CDs for, two Filmstar rehearsals, freelance articles due, an editorial calendar to manage, and – oh yes – my actual job.

I went through the morning motions quickly and bolted out of the house, cell in one hand and laptop in the other. My cell yielded an interesting link and I tossed off a blog post in lightning speed on the El before we hit the tunnel – a good start.

I just needed the rest of the day to be exactly that productive, including spending my lunch break sending reminder messages to the people I thought would be most-likely to come to our gig. It wouldn’t even be an entire lunch break, really – just a few minutes – but it would yield bodies in seats on Thursday.

The block of time I affectionately think of as “lunch break” came and flew away, as it typically does. I eat lunch once a week when I can. One o’clock, meeting prep. Two o’clock, meeting. Three, another meeting, Four. Five. Six.

The day was gone. Work was as stressful as work can possibly be, such that I had coworkers tweeting about my stress level. I boarded the train home late and drained.

Back home late, I had to eschew the gig reminders again, this time to focus on the freelance articles I had gamely (and insanely) volunteered to pen. This was my only night off until Saturday, so my only other option would be to writing during my lunch breaks.

And we know how that would wind up.

I broke around midnight to pull together blog posts for Tuesday. Still no gig reminders or Brown Bags, still plenty of writing left to do, but if I wanted to end up with a voice for our show on Thursday I needed my rest.

I was right – it was the only good rest I had until after the gig.