Laughter Through Tears

It's not a done deal, but the job front is looking optimistic right about now.

By the end of the week, I'll know how I feel about this development.

I have a job interview lined up, and another application in the works. It's time, again, for me to turn my mind onto the dilemma of how to write a novel while working full time.

(I do not need advice about how other people do it. I am not other people.)

Blue Rose (tentative title) is at about 13K words. My broad goal is to complete the first act (30-35K words) by my birthday in August. That's assuming I'm still unemployed and writing more or less full-time by then. If I become gainfully employed some time between now and then, that estimate immediately drops by half (at least).

My problem is that I can't 100% rely on either outcome, so I have to plan simultaneously for both (and several others, besides). It's frankly exhausting.

So it's Friday. And Fridays are weird days. Weirder still when unemployed, because I don't have a work week to set the tone. For example, today I woke late, only did a minimal shopping, did no house chores and barely left the house. Whereas when working I would do a big grocery shopping on Friday morning-ish, or else at least try to clean, or run a laundry. And in the afternoon I would take advantage of the weekend atmosphere to take a walk down one of the more interesting streets. Maybe do some shopping chores, maybe not. Maybe sit in a cafe.

The lack of employment makes it hard to delineate the weekend.

I have a draft saved of a meta post I'm working on regarding using the setting of a story as an independent character. I need to do more research, though, and I may delve into TV Tropes to help me recall some good examples. I am a great fan of treating places and objects like personality-holding characters with motivation and volition. I feel it adds something to stories that nothing else does. I find myself returning to this trope a lot.

My grocery shopping today was both more expensive and heavier than usual. Heavier is because of the various beverages. Expensive might be for the same reason. I'll have to go over the receipt. On the other hand, I just deposited a rent check and set up a transfer from my savings, so I know I can cover it. The only question that remains is whether I'll have a salary to pull at the end of October.

I have a job prospect lined up. The person in charge already told me twice that he wants me for the position. There seem to be an inordinate number of logistical difficulties. I want to be hopeful but I also want to be wary, but most of all I wish for certainty. It has come to light that the uncertainty of the human element is probably the source of most (if not all) of my anxiety.

Also, I love that it gets dark earlier and chilly late at night, but still warm and close-aired and sweaty in midday. And by love I might urgh.

In other news, Skyrim. In compliance with the mandate to be several years behind everyone when it comes to things like this, I started playing it about two weeks ago, when it came on sale for 4.99$. "Price of a cup of coffee" has become my metric for a leisure expense so small that there's no need to sweat it. And so far I've been enjoying it! Smart purchase yay.

I have the draft of a book post saved. Really should have posted it yesterday for Reading Wednesday or whatever.

I sent out a metric assload of resumes this morning and received two callbacks, the second of which just now. I had already set up an interview next week and I was now talking to someone else about the possibility of an interview, trying to be serious and professional and answer all the technical questions. All the while I'm squirming and pacing and groot!dancing with excitement.

I don't want to get my hopes up high.

But I kinda do.

Today is shaping up to be a day I'm going to need to salvage. So, some salvage techniques:

Take a long walk while the weather is still pleasantly summery (ish, it's supposed to be a high of 18 today). Do grocery shopping and get a treat. Cook something easy and tempting that I haven't made in a while, like peanut butter rice. Draw OCs. Write random porn. Play a particularly brutal round of LLTQ. Ogle pictures of cute bis on OKC. Call a friend and try to arrange meeting for coffee tonight. Put on pink nail polish (on my gnawed fingernails). Look up skydiving websites. Skim my logic textbook. Watch a TED video or a iTunes university video. Play some music that I haven't listened to in a long while and just sit and listen to it without doing anything else. Make hot cocoa with lots of milk.

The Big Name Company people haven't given so much of a peep, so I'm putting them out of my mind. Sending resumes and planning for an interview and getting ready for the OU semester to open very, very soon.

Valentine's Day was my parents' anniversary and that's about it.

Meanwhile plotting gift exchanges and playing lots of games. I considered posting an invitation to write for CotD on a writing comm but I'm not sure it's ready. Flight Rising occupies many of my idle minutes. I caught a live show on Thursday and I'm hoping to go out tonight or tomorrow.

Life stuff. I just wanted to post about the mundane

I was pumped full of adrenaline or something like it through two job interviews this week, and it seems like as soon as I got home yesterday, all of that energy whooshed right out of me. The cold doesn't help, it makes me want to stay in bed longer in the morning, and that throws off my routine and disrupts my productivity.

Today (and yesterday afternoon/evening) was an acceptable loss. Tomorrow I want to reestablish some good habits. Showering and getting dressed first thing is helpful, although eating breakfast in the kitchen hasn't been as effective as I might've imagined. I think I'll adopt the snooze function of the cellphone on a more regular basis, too, instead of just when I have early morning interviews. This is exactly how hours bleed out of my schedule, which leads to demotivation.

I have several unedited and unposted works. I have an MIT video that I got interrupted midway through. I... lost track of writing this post halfway through.

What I need is a priority list. Don't try to do all the things and complete none of them. Don't do one thing, and then lament the things you didn't do for the rest of eternity. Just make an explicit, conscious choice that some things are not going to get done. Prioritize.

I... don't really want to write a blog post. But I'm kind of dispirited and I need to order my mind.

TV: Sleepy Hollow continues to be great and surpass my expectations. Agents of SHIELD continues to be something I only watch socially. Lost Girl is... I keep waiting for the level of crack to supersede my enjoyment of Bo and Kenzi, but it's hasn't, yet.

Writing: Too many projects going on at the same time. Same old, same old.

Work: There's some sort of tech related open event this week and I'm going in hopes of weaseling into a QA job, which would hopefully be a first step in climbing back up to dev.

Life: Fuck property tax and its fucking inconvenience.

Now that my fic-related deadlines aren't weighing on my mind, and since no call was forthcoming from either of my interviewers, and since I visiting my old employers and my old boss wasn't around... I am back in the Rails game.

Now, I figure I know just enough Rails to create something small and semi-functional. No, not a micro-blogging clone, something that will actually hold my interest. At this point the trick is to create in increments and not immediately drown myself in an overly elaborate plan. My main experience is with demo apps and so I can't expect to start with anything more complicated than a series of interconnected tables.

Once the basics are covered I can think about getting creative.