orange juice and caffeine pills

Every so often, I take a break from my usual iced coffee that I seem to love so much and replace it with a yellow, bitter caffeine pill. That is, of course, when I need to be alert. Or as the tiny bottle says: “When alertness is needed.” Most days at work, I need to be alert enough to catch inaccuracies on the applications I’m reviewing or whether or not the red light on my phone is rapidly flashing.

True story, the ringer on my office phone is defective. Even with the volume turned up to 11, the phone will not ring. Yet if the backup battery that keeps the phone’s info (clock, date, last numbers called) is taken out, the phone will ring. The speaker phone also is affected by this. I don’t understand it, but I’m so passive about getting it fixed that I’d rather blog about it than contact my job to report it and possibly get a new phone. Why? It might require me going to the main office which in my eyes defeats the purpose of working at home. There’s a method to laziness.

Anyway, today I managed to finally “get back on my game” and wake up at the crack of dawn, go to the gym, and get a sack-o-potatoes worth of work done early on a Monday morning. The past few months have been rather lackluster and I only have myself to blame. I’d also like to blame a few of my friends, but they aren’t responsible for waking me up in the morning. Although I give one of those friends credit since she gets up around the same time my alarm goes off and occasionally sends me text messages to make sure I’m awake. (Actually she demands I bring her coffee on her lunch break, but that’s another story.)

There's a story about that bottle of Purell hand sanitizer too. Notice, also, the chewable orange flavored vitamins.

Some mornings I’ll actually make a cup of coffee when I’m not quite feeling up to par with the chirpy birds, frolicking squirrels, and other bright eyed and bushy tailed morning creatures like the sun and construction workers. Other mornings, like today, I’ll skip out on the coffee and pour a refreshing glass of cold orange juice. I’ll add in a caffeine pill because I know I’ll feel I’ll need a kick to keep going, even after a trip to the gym.

They say you get more energy after a good work out. But since I’ve been off my game for so long, I’ve just been feeling sore and I’m crawling out of the gym and into my car, trying to stay alert and focused enough to get home so I can die in a safe place. By that time, I’m usually okay, so I go to work.

Such was the case today, and I felt myself continuing the drag while on the clock, so I had my hyper orange juice (I actually don’t mix the pill with anything… it fails miserably dissolving into anything–hot chocolate, tea, juice, applesauce) and began to feel the get-up-and-go an hour or so later as I blazed through a hefty number of files. Another note on the pill, and all pills for that matter, I think I have a phobia of swallowing pills. So if possible, I end up chewing them. I’m aware it’s not good for me. But unless I have chewables or liquids, I’m going to suffer the bitterness and any other affect (like tongue numbing) that chewing these pills has to offer.

I probably made the mistake of getting a cup of coffee at lunch. That’s the reason for this now. I’m thinking about what I did so much that I’m distracted from doing more work. I may have mentioned “unraveling” before… I think this is me wound up. Or at least a portion of it. If I were speaking to you, I’d be highly animated as I told you a story with heavy embellishments. I’d probably be shaking a little too. I’m shaking now, and it’s actually helping me type faster.

But now that I’ve got some of this energy out, I’ll be able to continue on with work. The funny thing is, I have quite a few different things I’ve could’ve used this energy to write. The Emmys, recent viewing of movies, future friPods posts, or even working on scripts that have been piling up in various idea notebooks I carry around with me. I even owe some people emails! I’m slacking on a lot, so it seems.

The good thing I’m looking forward to is the inevitable crash, which I’m hoping will begin between 8-9pm. However, these are the times I’m actually around a TV. My shows that I like to watch if I’m home: Adventure Time (which is an awesome show that completely caters to the state of mind I’m in as I’m typing, or just makes me laugh for being so random), Misadventures of Flapjack (optional viewing, but quite entertaining if I’m in the mood), and The Good Guys. I’ll probably force myself to stay awake one more hour after that just so I don’t wake up in the wee hours and forage for food. It’s a bad habit, but as long as I can sleep through the night, I can count on waking up with the sun and squirrels and repeat the process I described above, but be wise enough to skip the second helping of caffeine so I’m not writing another useless blog post.

Time to get back to work!