Reformatting February

For the past several years, February has just been an inordinately difficult month for me. That's when I've tended to get dumped, laid off my jobs, have fallings-out with friends, and so on. Despite its containing the birthdays of lots of my favorite people, I've just identified all too well with Dar Williams' song, named for the month, in which she declares that she has "lost to February."


Then, I realized something the other day: This year, this February, however, I did not have the urge to listen to that song a single time. In the past month, some other tunes that have been stuck in my head have changed as well.

It was:

I had resigned myself to probably never actually finishing this novel I've been working on (in an on-again/off-again sort of way) for a while. I was stuck on a major plot point that kept me from knowing where the rest of the story was going to go. Furthermore, the 30,000 words I had written were in notebooks that seemed to have gotten lost when I moved.

Aside from the fiction-writing, the site that was paying me to write started presenting just problem after problem. It went from being mediocre to hateful in a very short span of time, so that by the time I'd finished with that for the day, the last thing I felt like doing any more of was writing. Pop Bunker was the exception, as a relatively pressure-free environment where I could just write a few hundred words of what I felt like and know that a couple of nerds would laugh either at or with me over it.

Add to the professional and creative failures this feeling of social detachment because I couldn't afford to go out and do anything, seeing my friends and family depressed at their own crummy work/social/financial/creative situations, homesickness, and middle-of-the-night loneliness, and yeah, I was on team LifeSucks.

but now it's more like:

But then, just standing in the shower one night, this simple, painfully obvious solution to my plot problem just hit me over the head with staggering force. I dried off, made some notes, and decided I'd just start over if I had to, because after that moment of inspiration, I just saw the entire book unfold before me. But wait! There's more! As I rummaged through drawers in search of a pencil sharpener the other night, I found the missing notebooks! After the new revelation, a lot of those 30k or so words are going to end up on the cutting room floor, but there's a lot in there that I want to keep! I started writing the new beginning, and I think it'll shape up nicely.

As for the paying work, I've got a couple of new avenues I'm pursuing. One mostly involves ghostwriting and general online copywriting. The other is a job I'll report to, which has nothing to do with writing, but depending on how it goes, could be an excellent source of income, allow for a pretty flexible schedule, and let me travel a bit - and maybe rack up some frequent flier points, which brings me to the next change.

Socially, well, things are definitely looking up there as well. It seems like lots of friends are finally catching a break here and there, and there's a general upswing in the mood of those around me. I've been able to visit with a friend who's in town for work, spend some time getting to know some newer friends, and catch up at length with some long-standing friends who had fallen out of touch or been stuck in phone-tag limbo. Also, here's where the frequent flier points come in handy - I've met a boy! A really awesome one! It's new and involves a long distance, but I have a really good feeling about it. When I find myself continually looking over my shoulder to see who he's talking to, then realizing with delight that it's actually me... yeah, that's worth putting up with some inconvenient miles and wait-and-seeing.

It had been brought to my attention that I've been lax in my updates of late, but there you have it - so far, the Metal Tiger has been here for two things: to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and he's all out of bubblegum.

"You Can Waste Time With Your Friends When Your Chores are Done"

When I was in high school and college, I worked at a shiny new ice rink that opened up not long after my group of friends had decided that we liked ice skating and it was officially Our Thing. As a result, lots of us ended up getting jobs there and becoming fast friends with the other coworkers who stuck around for any significant length of time. After we closed on Saturday nights, after the busiest and most stressful sessions, we had a habit of unwinding at the IHOP until the wee hours of the morning. It was great - all of us so loopy by that point that we thought it was hilarious every single time Scott Lyons ordered onion rings and upon their being delivered to the table, would hold one up to the waiter or waitress and say, "look, sir, droids!"

It wasn't much, but it's those little things that get you through. I miss having things like that, and I wonder if it's not a big part of the reason I've been such a chronic procrastinator lately. I don't know a whole lot of people in my new town yet, and I don't have any rituals or standing plans to look forward to at the end of a day of hard work. So what happens? I end up not working so hard, because even though the reward is a paycheck, it's delayed and practically intangible as it goes straight from source to bank account to bills that need paid.

Therefore, here's another New Year's resolution: find something to look forward to at the end of every work day. Maybe it'll be a visit to some cool spot I've been told about. Maybe it'll be a walk to the coffee shop for a latte. Maybe it'll be a visit to a friend. Just... something I can put on my calendar as an appointment I've made, which can only be done once the paying work is done.

Why I'm Grateful for Broken Sunglasses

The day got off to a rotten start. No details; just trust me. It was a bad morning. After spending my lunch break ranting and in tears about it, I went on to have my next appointment blow me off. On the way to the appointment after that, my sunglasses broke. Just... broke. Fell right off my face in pieces with no jarring or anything. It was just their time.

After that appointment, I looked at the address for the next one and realized there was a Sunglass Hut in the same little shopping district and figured I could stop there and get a decent pair, which I'd been meaning to do anyway. I walked in and was greeted by the nicest sales clerk I've ever encountered. Actually, it turned out he was the store manager. He found me what I wanted and kept a friendly stream of conversation going while I checked out. In talking to him, I learned that his aunt very recently died of breast cancer, and that he and his mother had just been talking about trying to find some way they could get involved with raising funds and awareness for research and patient services. Guess what I do for a living. I hooked him up with everything he needs to get a team going for Making Strides Against Breast Cancer - paperwork, t-shirt, all that good stuff. By the time I left, we were both in tears and he was squeezing the life out of me with a big hug. He didn't even laugh at me when I walked right into the storefront window, thinking it was the open door.

Now, I'm not only the proud owner of a pair of decent glasses with polarized lenses, but I made a friend and feel like I'm doing a good job, even if the hard numbers don't always agree. Hooray for broken sunglasses.

Busy, busy, busy.

I am a Statistic

In other words, I am one of the ones now included in the near-record-high unemployment figures. I got laid off today.
Actually, to be more accurate, my company was so screwed up, it was impossible for me to succeed, so my job was just eliminated. They decided that since no amount of busting ass on my part was going to get my job done in the 40 hour workweek (ask me how many late nights I worked JUST last week...), that the system itself was broken and needed revamped - beginning with getting rid of me. It turns out that my boss actually had very little idea what I actually did there. So now, they're going to train her how to do it, then get rid of the redundancies and inefficiencies I'd been complaining about since I started, and then hire someone else to do it after a few months. Even if I was asked (and I won't be), that someone would not be me.

I'm not sitting around feeling sorry for myself though. I feel opportunity just around the corner, and in the next couple of days, I'm going to get to experience new places, see friends new and old, and who knows, maybe even discover a place where I could belong.

I apologize if you feel slighted for finding out about this in a blog post. With the exception of one person who was there for me right at the exact moment I found out, you're all getting the scoop at the same time. Just realize that there are so many of you who have extended your love and support that I just can't tell the story that many times. It's because I'm so spoiled rotten by all of you that I'm actually not all that upset at this point. I will prevail!