Oh, the balls.

Three days away from the launch of the super secret project I have been working on... and I am stressed to the max. I should have gotten a lot more work done today but instead decided NOT to cancel my D&D plans, which turned out to be a great choice because it was decidedly the most fun night of encounters I have had to date. It also helps that I am beginning to get more of a grasp on things.. 

Also, I'll be writing a big post tomorrow on the state of the blog and life and what I want to do with those things, so. Yeah. If there is anyone out there listening, I'll want your comments tomorrow!

Don't Read This, I'm Just Ranting.

Do you ever just really want to rant about something to anyone who will listen, but you know it's all been said before and you don't want to be redundant and annoying in your ranting, but then you think to yourself, "This is my blog!" so you do it anyway?

I just want to quit my job. I know, I know. I've said it a million times. It's not new news. It's not even old news, it is just the thing that occupies my mind with worry and resentment five days out of the week when I have to drag my ass out of bed and get into the office. I am dreading tomorrow, but even more so I am dreading Tuesday when my boss comes back from vacation and I have to be, you know, professional about things.

You know it's bad when you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning. But I think it's gotten to a worse state now, when it's Sunday and I am already in a bad mood because tomorrow will be Monday, and even though generally Monday and Tuesdays are my favorite days of the week, I dread it anyway. 

It just wasn't a good day today. 

I spent yesterday with Daryl, Todd and Zak, having a million laughs and more fun than I've had in a while with them - I think I might have peed myself a little, that's how much we laughed together. Then, this morning I was woken up early, by surprise, when Elise was dropped off by her grandparents hours before I expected her. We lay in bed most of the day, watching Netflix and probably eating too much, and then for whatever reason I thought going to a movie would be a good idea... 

Then things just fell apart. She threw a fit about brushing her teeth, I mean an actual screaming, throwdown on the floor, banging head against the wall FIT over brushing her teeth - something that's not new, something we do every day and she knows she has to do it - and I lost my shit. Yes, that's right, sometimes mother's lose their shit. 

I sent her to bed with no story and no song and I took one of her stuffed elephants away - and I told her this has to stop.

I don't really talk much about Elise - I don't want to be a mommyblogger. I think that when you write about your kids online, you are just asking for unsolicitied advice or comments and I want none of that. NONE OF THAT. I will struggle through motherhood on my own, or I will confer with my closest friends and family, but there is nothing that gets a bug up my butt faster than someone commenting or advising on my parenting without being asked. So, yeah. 

Her behavior is very bad, though. Bad in school, and lately getting worse at home. And you know what? Sometimes rewarding for good behavior isn't the answer - punishment for bad behavior is. She's got to GET IT at some point that she is not in charge, that I am her mother and I am in charge, and she needs to listen to me, and be nice about it. 

Holy hell I just ranted on and on, didn't I? Too bad it didn't make me feel any better about anything.

Shifting

Something remarkable happened today. I was given the opportunity to be honest with my boss without the fear of retaliation, and I told him that I was unsatisfied here at my job, mostly due to not being paid what I feel I deserve, and I told him that the best thing he could do for me at this point is give me a stellar job recommendation. And he will. 

I've been wanting to leave my current job for a while. It's not something I've blogged about since I don't want to get Dooced, but the job has really been one of the biggest dark clouds hanging over my life in the past few (six to eight) months, and now that I know I can take my time finding a new, better job with a great recommendation from my current boss, it's like a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. I feel liberated, free, and easy. Really, it feels like I've been walking around with a ton of bricks on my shoulders and I've just finally been able to set them down.

I'm still nervous about job searching, but nowhere near as nervous as I would be if I didn't know that I was going with my bosses' blessing, and certainly not as nervous as I would be if I were currently unemployed. I get to take my time now and find something that is right for me, and figure out what I am going to do to navigate the next part of my life. 

***

Lots of bloggers pick 'words to live by' at the end of the year, and Shmutzie, one of my favorite writers, has picked Shift for her 2012 guiding word. I was thinking of doing this myself this year, and need to come to a decision soon. Shift isn't quite it for me, though. I want to shift, yes. I want to shift out of my current job and into a new one, out of my current home and into a new one - but I want to settle as well. I want to be comfortable and rested no matter where I am in my life or any of it's stages, but I haven't gotten there yet. I'll figure out this word eventually, just like I will eventually write about Christmas and reflect on Elise's birthday. I just feel like so much has been going on lately, I've hardly been able to do anything CREATIVE.

***

I have been following a writer named Nova Ren Suma for some time now. I adore her blog, she has one of the best writing/book blogs I've ever come across in my life, and I was waiting not so patiently for my anticipated Christmas gift of Amazon gift certificates so I could get some books I have been dying to read. So tonight, Nova's book Imaginary Girls arrived in the mail, along with a few others. I started this one right away, mostly because not only did I anticipate it, but I sort of feel like a tool talking to this author on Facebook and on her blog and not having read her novel. Well, here I am up late, I could barely put it down and will pick it up again after I finish this quick blog, because, wow. I'm being blown away by her writing. It's WAY BETTER than I ever thought it could be. See, I am usually into urban fantasy and paranormal YA books, I have not found many regular "literary" YA books that I've enjoyed, and this... I am not sure yet what genre this book will eventually fall into, other than the genre of AWESOME. 

Attacked

The sickness still has me in its grips, and I think it's getting worse today. Again today I got no writing done, but I did get a lot of WORK done this evening, you know, actual work for work since I left sick early today to come home and take a nap.

It's getting harder and harder to be there every day. It's getting harder to tell myself that I have to just work so that I can get my bills paid, even though I have the opportunity to come and go as I please - I still need to stay so that I can make a living. In a way I can't wait for NaNo to be over already so that I can do more of that other writing and see if I can make a living off of it or not... probably not, but I am in a pessimistic mood today.

Tonight, Linda dropped Elise off after her gymnastic's practice, and just a few minutes after she left, Gary, Elise's grandpa, called looking for Linda. She never keeps her cell phone on, so I wasn't surprised he'd called. He didn't sound weird or anything, we didn't talk much, I just told him she'd left about five minutes ago and he thanked me and that was that.

Hours later, Mike called me to tell me that Gary had a massive heart attack tonight and I guess it's not looking good. They are trying to stabalize him, and if he makes it through the night, in the morning he'll be having a quadruple bypass surgery. 

We aren't close, Gary and I. It's weird when terrible things happen to people who are close to you, like, their lives are intimately connected and intertwined with yours, but you don't really have strong emotional attachments to them. So it took me a while to feel it - the pain - not pain that I'm feeling over this really, but the pain I know Elise will be feeling if anything happens to him, if he doesn't pull through. Like the feelings I have about my own grandfather whenever something happens to him. 

I'm not ready for death. She's not ready for death, is she?

Winter's Coming

I am, by design, a night owl. Most nights, regardless of whether I need to be up at seven in the morning to get Elise on the bus, I stay up until the wee hours of one or two o'clock, and sometimes even later if I am writing and on a roll. 

Last night, I was feeling funky. I wasn't really tired, but I didn't really feel like doing anything either - I wanted to blog but didn't know what to write about other than the usually fluff of complaining about writing (hah), I didn't feel like working on my outline for NaNo or working on VZFS! or the zombie story that I've been hacking away at for years... so I put on some Desperate Housewives around 11pm... and I was passed out.. soon after. I woke up a little after midnight, having no idea what I had just watched or whether I had processed any of it at all, and then I just shut off all the lights and went to sleep for real. It's probably the first time that I've gone to bed early in, well... I can't even remember. Since I've been sick, probably. But I'm glad I did.

This morning, I woke up and I wasn't tired. Novel idea isn't it? Going to bed when I'm tired, and not when I'm DONE doing things for the day? I woke up and actually had a spring to my step. I got Elise breakfast, packed her snacks and bag, helped her brush her hair, and got her on the bus.. then, oh man, I came back in the house and made myself a cup of coffee. I got back in bed and read a book for a while, made another cup of coffee, had some cereal, and now here I am. Blogging in the morning. Awake, wide awake, feeling good. 

Still, there is the half-dread that in forty minutes when I walk into work I'm going to have my day ruined by the presense of my boss, the spirit crusher. I never know whether he'll be there, what the mood will be like, whether my resentment will grow as it has been doing pretty consistently for the last six months or so. It's hard to tell.

But I can tell you one thing - I took Elise to the Shack for dinner on Friday night and as I was watching the waitresses bustling around, delivering food, smiling at patrons, making little conversation as they freshened coffee and took away plates - my heart literally ached, that's how hard I came to the realization that I just want to go back to waitressing again. I just want to have the kind of job again where I go to work, do my job, and just come home. No thinking about things left unfinished, no worrying about bills and spending money that isn't mine... I feel like that guy in American Beauty - I just want a job with as little responsibility as possible. It sounds wonderful. 

But that means I have to be brave - I have to go out on a limb, first of all, and do that thing that I hate doing more than most things, which is go job searching. Am I ready? I should be. I don't know what I am waiting for sometimes. 

But meanwhile, I'll keep getting ready for NaNoWriMo. I'll finish my outline, I'll say my goodbyes to friends and family and social life, and I'll be so glad when next Monday comes, so I can get writing at midnight. I'm really looking forward to it this year, for a lot of reasons. I'm really looking forward to an excuse to stay in and spend more time by myself, for one thing, because as much fun as I've been having with the campaign and friends, I feel like it's sort of wearing me out a bit. There's a reason, there's definitely a reason, sometimes I'm much better off alone.

And, winter's coming. This is not a good thing. Last night I fell asleep in a sweatshirt under blankets and I was still cold, but when I woke up I was sweating because the heat had turned on in the middle of the night for the first time this year. It was only about 40 degrees when I took Elise out for the bus, and I imagine it was much colder than that during the night. This is not a good thing. But if the winter's coming, here in my room is exactly where I want to be. 

It's just one of those days.

This is one of those glum, rainy days where all I can do is feel sorry for myself that I am "stuck" with a job I can't stand and the dreams of accomplishing my ultimate goal, which is to make a living writing, seems so far off BECAUSE I am stuck at this job I can't stand. I think to myself, if only I didn't have to work five days a week, I could get more writing done. If only, if only. It's all I want in life - to not have to answer to anyone, to support myself. Well, okay, it's not ALL I want in life, but lately, and especially today, not having to come to work tomorrow is at the top of my list of things I want to have happen. 

I shouldn't complain, because last week, I "won" the Indie Ink Writing Challenge. My short story that I posted last time, Hannah, got the Editor's Choice. The confidence boost this gave me was amazing, but it was brought along with a healthy dose of shock. I didn't expect this, if only for the reason that I didn't try very hard in writing it. I saw something in my head - a scene - and I picked one of my favorite themes to write about, which is disappearance. Then that thing happened - if you are a writer, you will know what I mean. That thing, where the story just comes, the words just come. How do I write? I have no clue. I just do it. Evidently, with Hannah, I did it really well. 

So now, I'm in this situation where I signed up for next week's challenge, it's due tomorrow at 9pm, and I have no idea what I am going to write about. Creatively, I'm a deer in the headlights. I want to write to the best of my abilitity, I don't want to produce crap after producing a winning entry last week, but at the same time I don't want to get to thinking that I HAVE to win - I signed up to do this for fun, as a creative excericise, and now it's morphed into this psychological thing that I am stressing out over. 

It's just one of those days.

I need to make more time for myself. I do intend to do NaNoWriMo next month, and I am actually nearly halfway done with outlining the whole thing, which I have never done before, but with doing NaNo comes giving up pretty much everything else. I am going to have to tell my friends that I won't be around next month, and why. I'll have to force myself to lay off the Netflix and stick to Pandora radio. I'll have to be prepared with a case of energy drinks the likelihood that I won't get a good night's sleep for a month.

Above all else, I just have to write. It's what I have to do. The more days that go by, sitting at a desk at a job that I hate, the more I know there's only one thing in the world I'm capable of being good at and enjoying, and that's writing. And I want to enjoy life. I want to smile when I get up in the morning, not groan. I want to do this, and I have to find a way to make it happen - soon.

White Rabbit

That's the episode of LOST that I am about to watch instead of blogging properly today. After years, YEARS of pleading, yesterday I was finally able to convince Alisha to watch LOST with me. We watched four episodes on Sunday, then she watched one without me because obviously she is totally addicted to it.. or at least I think she is?

I also have a lot of work to catch up on, which is easy to do while watching TV.

Oh man, date night is Wednesday! I'm getting nervous.. perhaps I'll lighten things a bit up with a post about how strange online dating is and the weird things I am noticing about dudes on OK Cupid.