the trick is to keep breathing

so in addition to my commissions (which are, yes, still coming) i've taken on some content writing work for with two different clients. It's easy stuff, for reasonable amounts of money - not a survivable income yet, but making enough for me to slide along until 01 May - and while some of it can be fun, i'm realizing that i don't want to be an online content writer for money.

no, it isn't meant to be interesting work. and there's a certain -- not pleasure, but the sense of having gained a skill, i guess, to be helping my brain learn how to do dumb work for money. if you all remember, i was severely overinvested in my career to the point where it was used abusively against me, so there's a good lesson for my head to learn on how to be detached.

but it isn't what i want the sabbatical to be like. i want my sabbatical to be writing, working on my own original fiction, building an audience in fandom, trying to actually go for it before i have to turn back and find a corporate job again.

it's funny cause i fucked up my money and that's why im here, pumping out silly 500 word articles for bit cash, so it isn't a complaint, more an awareness. I need the cash, but it also takes up so much of my time?

i feel like there are stories in me, stories i can tell, stories that would sell, and i want to reach for that - jump for it, have nothing to do all day except let words come out; i feel like i really could do it if i could settle down (and defeat ADHD and executive dysfunction, and depression, and my dumb body, of course) and have a month or two to really bang it out. in november i wrote 57K in 10 days because i did nothing else. i can do that.

anyway for now lol i need paid so i'm off to write some really ridiculous stuff, yay

I am about 50% behind, and the rest of my November doesn't bode too well for giant word dumps, but Rosigo is a thing that exists now and is having words inserted into its face on a near-daily basis no matter how small the quantity, no matter how far behind I am.

I'm always surprised at how many hours there actually are in a day.

I really shouldn't be, because I've experienced this phenomenon once before, when I was still working my full-time long-day 40-hr-week job and also attending a 20-30-hr-week graduate lab class: if you literally spend every spare minute you have doing something, it's a lot of work. (And I mean it. Sometimes I see people posting, "I'm soooo busy~!" but if I've seen you posting 10K in fic in the last week, or reblogging tons of stuff on Tumblr, or otherwise hobbying-- maybe you're busy, but that isn't actually spending every legitimate moment you have on work-like things. I realize this makes me a judgmental ass and I'm sorry.)

But really, I'm still continually surprised at how much you can actually work in one day. Because I have basically spent every free hour I have had in the last 7 days helping to basically remodel a basement which is my responsibility to fix. I don't even have time to tell you everything handyman that I've done. But I'm just still for whatever reason surprised at how BUSY you can actually get. When you come home from work at 6:15 and change and eat and then drive up to the house at 7:00 and work until 11:00 and then come home and make a lunch and do the dishes and go to bed at 12 and get up at 6:30 and go to work at 7:30 and then do it all over again, for an entire week? I mean it, there is busy and then there is, "life sat on me." They aren't even really in the same order of magnitude.

Had I known the level of fucked this problem was, I wouldn't have started it now. But you don't know what's under the carpet until you pull up the carpet.

I thought I was busy before. Turns out, there were plenty of hours in my day that could be filled up with things that make me miserable.

I am stressed as fuck, I have gotten absolutely nothing done this week, my exchange ends this weekend, I am leaving tomorrow afternoon and I have not yet finished packing. This week has been just awful.

Some day I will turn this experience into a "Handyman How-To" post because I've actually learned a lot of fun shit. Today is not that day.

- - -

I just printed out all my itineraries and reservations and flight info and blah blah and it's basically a short novel, I've killed a tree doing it, it weighs more than my laptop, etc etc.

This trip-- I am not even looking forward to it. i'll be honest. Work is so awful right now, and there are a bunch of due dates WHILE I AM GONE, so I have to work ON my trip, and just. ugh ugh ugh first world problems etc but.

I carry my stress in my shoulders and neck, and I nearly can't drive a car right now. I am pretty sure my back is about to leave me for another woman.

Whirlwind tour of the US is as follows:
- to Boise this weekend for my cousin's wedding
- fly to Vegas Mon with family, night in Vegas
- drive to Grand Canyon Tues, two nights in GC
-- work due Wednesday, have to work Mon and Tues to submit Wed
- return to Vegas on Thurs, night in Vegas
- Fri, fly directly to Houston, spend weekend weeping in a pillow fort
- Sun, pick up Japanese BFF at airport and head off to the plant
- Mon, tour of plant with guest
- Tues-Wed, work at the plant
-- work due Tues, will have to work the previous week to compile it
- Thurs, return home

- THE FOLLOWING MONDAY, submit a report of the work I did on the plant trip to the Overlords because
- THAT WEDNESDAY/THURSDAY, our biannual meeting with the Overlords begins

- probably every day forever: cry into beer, from stress and frustration

- date of freedom: 20 June
- 21 June: lose self in Diablo III for three consecutive days

I am trying for serenity now and I'm not sure I'll make it. OH GOOD. When can I give up on everything and be a crazy cat lady hermit hobo who never goes anywhere?

ON THE PLUS SIDE, I now have an app on my phone that can send a postcard photo from anywhere for $0.99, so if you want a really dumb postcard from Vegas or the Grand Canyon, email me your address.

ADDITIONALLY ON THE PLUS SIDE, I've written 4 Korra drabbles in the past few days. On my phone. While in meetings or otherwise working. Seeing as I haven't written a thing since December, this is cool.

I HAD ANOTHER PLUS but I have forgotten it so.

( This was supposed to be me venting about a horrible test and it has somehow turned into a rant on higher education and why I hate that professors are often such fucking assholes who refuse to take responsibility for their own goddam jobs. An actual rant, with a point and all. )

So, yes, I am going to go drown my sorrows in the Trick or Treat Meme and in Pirate AUs. Be alert, because Pirates may be appearing in your LJs in the future.

[ETA] - I actually didn't realize I'd made a "studying sucks a nut" tag before trying to tag this entry. Sometimes I make myself laugh.

[ETA #2] THIS IS IMPORTANT, GUYS! This week's cockeyed_art challenge is FF characters in Halloween costumes. YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO DO IT, DON'T LIE.