Right now I'm sitting in an uncomfortable chair, in a windowless basement, while I wait for my boss (who is my dad, so I can't actually complain, nor can I change jobs, although I do get excellent job security) to proof-read the mass mailer we are about to send. I worked on it for two hours on my day off in order to get it out promptly today. It is now two hours LATE and I'm still waiting... for feedback that I asked for two days ago and still haven't got.
That's a lot of very pointless whining. The actual point to this post is that I'm bored. I don't want to be here and I don't want to do what I'm doing. Technically this is the "Creative" part of my job, too, where I write ad copy and retouch images, and it's boring anyway.
Reminder to self: Being bored sucks. I am never bored when writing. Tired, frustrated, upset, or stressed, but not bored.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Purpose
I don't ever expect anyone but me to read this blog.
Its purpose is to help me keep track of my progress as I attempt to break out of having a job. I suppose I could just marry someone wicked rich, but I kind of like the husband I have already *blows kisses* and I get bored sitting around being decorative.
There has got to be some way to make a living doing something I like. I thought that would be working with animals and helping train animals, but it turned out my social anxiety is too severe for that to be a viable option. Discovering that was heartbreaking and I still haven't recovered. To say my self-esteem took a hit is a bit of an understatement.
I'm good at a lot of things, but I can't make a career out of them. I can cook, and enjoy it, but doing so as a career requires exhausting hours and I would never see my husband, who, as I've mentioned, I kind of like. I can draw, sort of, and would be able to draw a lot better if I practiced, but LOTS of people can draw and the market is painfully competitive and I lack the powerful calling that a real artist like my mother has. I love crafts and thought briefly that I might make jewelry, and then I suffered a repetitive-stress injury as a result of my job that I hate, which made jewelry-making impossible. I'm really good at solving problems, any problems (except my own, ugh), but it's hard to have a job title of "Fixer." For a while I thought I might become a counselor or psychologist/psychiatrist and help people sort through their problems that way, but... yeah, the anxiety thing.
Wow, that was a depressing and whiny paragraph.
I really realized all this after my dog had her puppies in the fall of 2009. I managed it, raised the pups and placed them in homes and did a damned good job, but I realized I couldn't do it again. God, that was hard. I was so hurting that I spent a lot of time in my head. I also started playing a game called Dragon Age. The two things combined to capture my imagination in a powerful way.
I love stories, and used to continually narrate what I was doing inside my own head, with embellishments to make it more interesting. I discovered fanfiction in college by accident, and for a while I thought all fanfiction was slash (homosexual porn). Then I found out that a lot of people are writing actual stories with actual content that just happen to feature characters and places that fans already know and love.
I read some Dragon Age fanfiction, hungry for more of that good stuff, especially the extremely hunky Alistair (you can slay darkspawn for me any day, baby). It didn't take me long to realize people are bad at proofreading their own stuff. I offered to help one or two authors. Soon I was doing more than just correcting commas, and soon after that I put pen to paper (metaphorically) for the first time.
It felt good. It felt really good.
For a few months, I thought about my story all the time. I worried I was obsessed, that my other chores and my job would suffer. The problem was that writing my story was more fun than anything else. ANYTHING else. Except maybe hubby, who I kind of like, just a little. When I confessed to said hubby in the darkness of our bedroom one night that I liked working on my story better than anything, he said immediately, "Then you should do it more."
Well, okay, but you do realize that means I will be NOT doing something else, right? What do you want me to stop doing - grocery shopping? Laundry? My job?
Actually, all hyperbole aside, I do spend an unfortunate amount of time doing absolutely nothing - sitting on the floor in the bathroom, for example, or blankly watching my email in-box automatically refresh, or minutely examining the texture of my hair. I don't know why it is so difficult to stop wasting time in this way except that I get more anxious until I feel I have to "stop" and spend some time doing something soothing and repetitive. There is probably a medical term for this and a drug I should be taking. I dunno.
Compounding the problem is a deeply ingrained attitude that I "should" be doing some sort of chore, and that writing is an indulgence. I'm pretty sure I feel this way for two reasons - it doesn't make money, and I enjoy it. It sucks that I feel guilty about doing a thing simply because I enjoy it, but I do.
I don't know how to get around that. But I do hope to get around the money thing eventually. Someday this will pay, and then maybe I will feel guilty about NOT writing. Wouldn't that be amazing? If Ariel asked why dinner was late and I could say "Because I was writing" and that would actually be a valid reason instead of an excuse?
That will be a very long road. The initial rush that I felt when I first started writing has now worn off, and is no longer powerful enough to overcome my anxieties and my guilt. As a result, it's become difficult to keep writing.
I don't want to stop. I want to finish these stories and then write more. I want my awesome mom to paint a book cover for me. I want to get a royalty check in the mail and know I actually earned the damned thing by doing something only I can do, with ideas from my own head, instead of just regurgitating HTML code than any jackass could do if given the training.
So I started this blog. I'm hoping it will keep me accountable. I want this blog to keep my eyes on the prize, and keep me on this road until I get to its end. I want to break out into a world where these black letters I am typing are my REAL JOB. I don't want to forget that and maybe, now that it's written down, I won't.
Wish me luck.
Its purpose is to help me keep track of my progress as I attempt to break out of having a job. I suppose I could just marry someone wicked rich, but I kind of like the husband I have already *blows kisses* and I get bored sitting around being decorative.
There has got to be some way to make a living doing something I like. I thought that would be working with animals and helping train animals, but it turned out my social anxiety is too severe for that to be a viable option. Discovering that was heartbreaking and I still haven't recovered. To say my self-esteem took a hit is a bit of an understatement.
I'm good at a lot of things, but I can't make a career out of them. I can cook, and enjoy it, but doing so as a career requires exhausting hours and I would never see my husband, who, as I've mentioned, I kind of like. I can draw, sort of, and would be able to draw a lot better if I practiced, but LOTS of people can draw and the market is painfully competitive and I lack the powerful calling that a real artist like my mother has. I love crafts and thought briefly that I might make jewelry, and then I suffered a repetitive-stress injury as a result of my job that I hate, which made jewelry-making impossible. I'm really good at solving problems, any problems (except my own, ugh), but it's hard to have a job title of "Fixer." For a while I thought I might become a counselor or psychologist/psychiatrist and help people sort through their problems that way, but... yeah, the anxiety thing.
Wow, that was a depressing and whiny paragraph.
I really realized all this after my dog had her puppies in the fall of 2009. I managed it, raised the pups and placed them in homes and did a damned good job, but I realized I couldn't do it again. God, that was hard. I was so hurting that I spent a lot of time in my head. I also started playing a game called Dragon Age. The two things combined to capture my imagination in a powerful way.
I love stories, and used to continually narrate what I was doing inside my own head, with embellishments to make it more interesting. I discovered fanfiction in college by accident, and for a while I thought all fanfiction was slash (homosexual porn). Then I found out that a lot of people are writing actual stories with actual content that just happen to feature characters and places that fans already know and love.
I read some Dragon Age fanfiction, hungry for more of that good stuff, especially the extremely hunky Alistair (you can slay darkspawn for me any day, baby). It didn't take me long to realize people are bad at proofreading their own stuff. I offered to help one or two authors. Soon I was doing more than just correcting commas, and soon after that I put pen to paper (metaphorically) for the first time.
It felt good. It felt really good.
For a few months, I thought about my story all the time. I worried I was obsessed, that my other chores and my job would suffer. The problem was that writing my story was more fun than anything else. ANYTHING else. Except maybe hubby, who I kind of like, just a little. When I confessed to said hubby in the darkness of our bedroom one night that I liked working on my story better than anything, he said immediately, "Then you should do it more."
Well, okay, but you do realize that means I will be NOT doing something else, right? What do you want me to stop doing - grocery shopping? Laundry? My job?
Actually, all hyperbole aside, I do spend an unfortunate amount of time doing absolutely nothing - sitting on the floor in the bathroom, for example, or blankly watching my email in-box automatically refresh, or minutely examining the texture of my hair. I don't know why it is so difficult to stop wasting time in this way except that I get more anxious until I feel I have to "stop" and spend some time doing something soothing and repetitive. There is probably a medical term for this and a drug I should be taking. I dunno.
Compounding the problem is a deeply ingrained attitude that I "should" be doing some sort of chore, and that writing is an indulgence. I'm pretty sure I feel this way for two reasons - it doesn't make money, and I enjoy it. It sucks that I feel guilty about doing a thing simply because I enjoy it, but I do.
I don't know how to get around that. But I do hope to get around the money thing eventually. Someday this will pay, and then maybe I will feel guilty about NOT writing. Wouldn't that be amazing? If Ariel asked why dinner was late and I could say "Because I was writing" and that would actually be a valid reason instead of an excuse?
That will be a very long road. The initial rush that I felt when I first started writing has now worn off, and is no longer powerful enough to overcome my anxieties and my guilt. As a result, it's become difficult to keep writing.
I don't want to stop. I want to finish these stories and then write more. I want my awesome mom to paint a book cover for me. I want to get a royalty check in the mail and know I actually earned the damned thing by doing something only I can do, with ideas from my own head, instead of just regurgitating HTML code than any jackass could do if given the training.
So I started this blog. I'm hoping it will keep me accountable. I want this blog to keep my eyes on the prize, and keep me on this road until I get to its end. I want to break out into a world where these black letters I am typing are my REAL JOB. I don't want to forget that and maybe, now that it's written down, I won't.
Wish me luck.
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