Cheers

Tomorrow's always better, people.

Steph's work is taking them all out bowling next Friday, and since the Old Man has no interest, she's taking me to be her bowling partner! Whooo hooo!

That's three weeks of bowling in a row! (I have another bowling date on Saturday)And this one's free! Also, free beer and pizza! (because trust me, I deserve it, people!)

All that bowling is good for the ass. I'm telling you, though, my ass is really gonna have to start shaping up.

Today, at our work workout session, we added lunges to our sets and increased all our weights. Not just lunges in place, but across the gym. I'm not a weakling, mind, but I could barely get down the stairs afterward. It occurred to me that having a personal trainer is a lot like having an agent. That is, it's having somebody who can do/think about a piece of a process for you so you don't have to think about and you can actually concentrate on your work. Sure, you must be *aware* of that process, but you don't have to take up all your time worrying about it.

I don't have to remember how much weight I lifted last time or when I need to increase it or what exercise is next. They keep track of that and tell me and mix up the exercises every four weeks to make sure we're getting different types of workouts that keep us seeing results. I don't have to make up routines. About all I need to do is, you know, the actual work, and maybe count my own reps.

I could get used to this free personal trainer stuff.

Tasty, tasty work benefits.

The Return of the Overdraft

One of the things I discovered when I got my free credit report is that I had a student loan payment that was 120 days late.

I found this rather confusing, since I didn't remember receiving any kind of notice that this payment was due. I deferred all of my student loans back when I was unemployed, and two of the three of them duly resumed sending me statements after six months. Why this one didn't, I don't know, and in my hazy financially lazy mind, I figured they'd just granted me a 12-month reprieve instead of a 6 month, and never followed up.

My bad, yes. I'm financially retarded. I'm working on it.

I owed them $248 in overdue back payments.

I looked over the money I had in the bank, and according to my fuzzy math, I could pay them this and still stay in budget. I could make up the difference by paying less toward my CC payments next month (not paying the loan further injures my credit score).

But, once again, my lazy, imprecise "well, that's about right" math didn't work, and I overdrafted again for the first time since I started my new budget.

The real killer about the student loan payment is that it's another $64 I have to pull out of my budget somewhere. I'm honestly not sure from where. I can cancel the Netflix and maybe - maybe - take $40 out of my food budget and pay $10 less a month toward my old medical bills, but... well. I have to keep paying those huge payments to my credit card debt every month if I ever want to see the sun again, which means that money has to come out of things that are nice, but unneccessary. And no, I don't want to pull it out of my $100 fun budget.

That $100 fun budget is killing me as it is. Chopping that to $50? I wouldn't make it. What's that, a movie once a month and a couple Chipotle runs? No bowling, no coffee dates, no buying pants or socks when I need them. No occasional coke or peanuts or avocados.

I can barely do it as is right now.

I hate money.

Today

I did absolutely nothing useful today. Seriously: nothing. I'm not sure how I so effectively did nothing.

Also, now that I've gotten used to working out every day, I can seriously notice the deleterious results when I don't.

Ug.

Deleterious. That's an excellent word. I haven't used that one in awhile.

Anyhow: no news is good news?

Things Not to Do Even During a Snow Day at Home

Eat four sugar-free pecan cookies and coolwhip an hour after eating a carbolicious pancake for lunch that had raspberries and more of the aforementioned coolwhip.

You will get a sugar headache and find it difficult to concentrate for the next hour or so (no, these headaches make no sense. When I test my sugar, I'm at 122, which is a perfectly decent number. I don't know why my body does this when I have too many carbs at once sometimes).

Mmmmm diabetes!

Homemade Samoas... (my favorite Girlscout cookie! At a fraction of the cost!)

OMG the goodness!



I'm already concocting ways to make these more diabetic friendly. They will never be diabetic friendly, but at least I can make them *more* diabetic friendly, people....

Taking a Swim in Devil's Pool

I wanna go!

Rugby canceled tonight. They're sending us home from work at noon.

There's seriously not a lot of snow out there. I lived in Chicago for four years, and the city didn't stop for 4 inches, people. Oh well.

Home at noon!

Mmmmmm

Sweet library goodness.

More for Today

It appears I'm just going to keep filling up my social calendar until I explode and can't take it anymore.

I realize I'm doing it to distract myself. It's working, and keeping me focused on improvement instead of wallowing.

But... but, well.

In other news, I ate some pizza today at work. It was divine. I'm paying for it now with loose numbers, but hey. It was divine.

Anyhow, dates and rugby and bowling oh my this week!

I've started keeping a Google calendar to keep track.

Oh, the ridiculousity.

1099

Got an official 1099 from Hartwell for my Year's Best SF sale. That was quite nice, actually. Most short sales don't send you 1099s.

I honestly couldn't remember if I'd made $75 or $100 for it.

Yes, all you dewy-eyed young writers out there: making a Year's Best Sale will net you an incredible $100!!

Want to know how much I made writing just 500 more words the year before?

$4,000

Seriously (and yes, I made that money 10% talent, 80% pure luck through a writing colleague who was looking for writers. No, I don't know what the other 10% was. Math is hard).

I don't know why it never occurred to me before this year to turn to corp writing. No experience in it, maybe? I couldn't find a way to position myself for a cushy corp writing job. The one I fell into this year, again, was 80% luck.

Right place, right time, just like relationships.

There's writing work to be done that'll actually pay you for it. Why fiction doesn't?

Go figure.

Writing & Money

Scalzi has a great post up about writing and money.

Everything he says here is basically stuff my roommates have been telling me. You know, they of my same age who have a house, two cars, no credit card debt, and IRAs.

I wouldn't take back any of the shit I did in my early 20s. They were awesome experiences. Looking at it, though, I would have managed my Chicago job money a lot better. I blew loads and loads of money on books that I have since given away and/or never read and going out to eat twice or three times or more a week; blew loads on coffee, of all things (at one point I was spending, I think, nearly $200 a month in books and coffee).

Going on trips is one thing; blowing money on food, coffee, and books you'll never read is quite another. I also very nearly slaughtered myself the year before I got sick by nearly passing on the "free" health insurance I was getting through my company. I mean, hey, I'd get nearly $80 a month back if I chose to opt-out, and you know, I never got sick, so why not?

Yeah, seriously, in December when we were renewing, I seriously thought about opting out. In May I got a 30K hospital bill, all but 7K of which was paid for by my insurance company.

It's not worth opting out.

In some ways, looking back at everything that's happened the last few years, me getting sick is the best thing that could have happened for me, financially. Why, you ask, when health costs are so high?

Because it's forcing me to keep my day job no matter what kind of advance I get for ANY book EVER.

I spent much of my early 20s just spending money like water, figuring I would pay off the debts with my first 10K or 20K book advance. After that, I'm sure I would have quit my day job with the next Great Advance as my career improved, but that's always been my goal: make enough money writing full time to make it my day job. Give up the 8-5 grind.

But.

But, well... It's something I can never do now. I pull my own weight in every relationship I get into. "Quitting" just isn't an option, even if I were to ever have a spouse that had benefits (which would also require me to get married. It would take a pretty fucking amazing person to convince me to marry them. I have yet to meet this person. So).

So I work for my own benefits. I make more as a technical writer than a lot of freelance writers who write fiction exclusively make, and I have great health insurance.

Living alone in a garret and bleeding all over your pages while slowly starving to death or dying of consumption sounds a lot more romantic than it actually is. I lived something close to that in South Africa, and though it's fun for a year, it's not the kind of life I want to build.

I want to be financially secure and successful. That means every penny I make right now is going toward debt. And it fucking sucks. All I want to do is go to Chipotle and buy some expensive cheese and go to the movies all the time and some shows downtown. As it is, bowling is something I can do maybe twice a month and about the only sort of dates I can afford these days are coffee dates and maybe some evenings spent watching Netflix.

And that's how it's going to be for the next couple of years. Because you know what? I'm tired of being poor. I'm tired of being uncertain, and being poor doesn't make you a better or worse writer than anyone else. Starving for my art just isn't all that cool.

Like Scalzi said, writing is a job - my day job, in fact, and my weekend passion - and I treat it like a job.

I'm inordinately lucky to be able to do a job from 8-5 that I love and get paid for it. Not everybody's that lucky. If you're going to be a writer who makes an actual living wage, though, this is a nice way to do it.

I like my living wage, my downtime for freelance writing, and I'm currently looking for other freelancing opportunities to help with aforementioned debts and bowling money.

Being poor isn't any fun. Not going to Chipotle isn't fun either, but it beats being poor.

Church-going in Ohio

The roommates have been looking for a church here in Ohio, and though I figured it would be too liberal-hippie for them, I told them I was looking into the local Unitarian church just north of here. I figured it would get us all out of the house, and it would get me socializing at a place I could feel comfortable talking about ideas of faith, history, and religion in.

Overall, it was a good experience for me. It was the first time I went to a church and didn't feel like I was some kind of imposter. I don't generally feel welcome and comfortable at churches. They spend a lot of time saying, "here's what we are and what we believe, and if you don't believe this, you aren't welcome" Or, "if you don't believe this, we'll make you believe it, because we'll use fear and coercion to convince you, because your lack of belief makes us uncomfortable."

This church was more about talking about faith and religions and ideas thrown around in other churches, questioning those, looking at different texts (including the Bible). It was focused on faith and love and acceptance more than stony religion, and I appreciated that.

It was funny, though, afterward, talking to the roommates about it. They thought the church was nice and enjoyed the experience, but didn't feel at home there.

The Old Man put it in just the right way. He said, "It seems to be the kind of church where people go who feel like outsiders, who feel like they never fit anywhere else. And you know what? That's not a part of my experience. I don't share that."

Which makes perfect sense, really. A straight white Christian guy comfortable with his family and faith growing up in a society that largely preaches the same values of faith and family and is geared toward making straight white Christian guys successful wouldn't share that experience.

But me? With my "mostly" straightness, queer-friendly thoughts and ideas, discomfort with the idea of a fire-and-brimstone God that hates the very people he's supposed to have created, never feeling that religious certainty or comfort in what I'm doing, what I think, what I believe, because the things I think and believe aren't really scripted... well, for me, it was the first time I actually walked into a church that didn't make me want to run screaming from it.

I appreciate a minister who says, "here's what I think, but I don't expect it to be what you think. Let's talk about it."

That's a pretty cool idea, and something I'm drawn to.

I don't like being preached at, and I don't like folks who preach hate or intolerance. "Hate the sin but not the sinner," is a stupid, hypocritical piece of garbage. If the sin you hate is "teh gay," I'm sorry to say, you also hate the person. Because like it our not, our fears, our desires, our passions, are also intrinsic parts of who we are. You can't take one away without changing the whole. You can't tell me that a love between people that makes them both better and stronger and more whole is somehow bad. Why don't we encourage people to be better for the sheer joy of being better, of having love in their lives, instead of using fear and coercion? A society that uses fear and coercion to control its people isn't a society I want to promote.

I believe in loving and respecting people and helping in whatever way you can. I get uncomfortable in places telling me what I should think, or believe, especially if it means believing that otherwise good and decent people are so hated by God because they question Jesus's true paternity or don't believe in the Trinity are going to hell. At the same time, I like the idea of a community where you can explore faith and religion in an open, accepting environment.

That sort of environment is a faith and belief system all its own, of course. And it's certainly a place I'll feel more comfortable.

Steph and the Old Man will be looking into other churches in the area, but I think I'll be going back to this one at least a few more times. It challenges me to think; it gives me a safe space in Dayton, where I often feel like a total freak (I always feel far more comfortable in places where same-sex couples feel safe enough to hold hands or put their arms around one another in public. It's like my whole body just relaxes, like, "Oh, OK, it's safe here to be different. I don't have to play by a script").

In conservative Dayton, it's a breath of fresh air, and something I think I need right now, you know. Finding some people who won't freak out if they find out you one dated a woman you cared very much for once, you vote democrat, you believe in social justice, social programs, and equality, and you don't feel welcome in a mainstream religious establishment.

It's nice to go somewhere I can just take a deep breath in and not worry about being "outed" as... well, as whatever it is I am.

Outed for being me, I guess.

Who Would Have Thought?

Went bowling with the not-boyfriend for a couple of hours. Good times were had. This morning, I awoke to find that, damn, my ass hurts.

I didn't expect bowling to result in a sore ass. Sore wrist, maybe, sore arm.

Sore ass?

It was totally innocent bowling, I promise!

Yes, Yes, I Know: More Rollerderby, Less Boyfriend

I'll get there.

Rugby's rescheduled for Tuesday, as Dayton public transit sucks, and getting home from downtown at 10pm was near impossible. Rugby folks will help me set up a ride home for the Tuesday practice instead.

Date

Huh.

That was a very nice date.

Now I really need to finish my novel.

Rugby

Thursday, 8pm.

It's a date!

Dayton Has a Women's Rugby Team

Oh yes indeed it does.

One of my workday workout companions suggested this, actually, after watching me doing my assisted pull-ups yesterday. She mentioned Dayton had a team, and I said I was interested. She has a friend who coaches, and said they're always welcoming new folks, even those without rugby experience.

I checked out the website and asked them for more info. Wouldn't that be a blast?

Quote of the Evening

Was clicking through some shows tonight while finishing up my Greek yogurt, and happened upon Dr. 90210, in which a porn star was having her third breast augmentation surgery because the first two had been screwed up.

While the doctor pressed and cupped these enormous bubble breasts protruding from her tube-shaped boyish body, he said, "See, by tightening up this here they'll look much more natural, but still sexy."

That's right, ladies, this doctor is so talented he can make unnatural breasts look natural... but still sexy. Newsflash: unnatural breasts are the only kind we're supposed to find attractive anymore.

When she came out from under the anathestic, she contorted her face into a grimace of pain and began to sob because it hurt so much.

Please stop doing this to yourselves.

If this is the future, I want my money back.

Things That Make You Go "Hm"

"...and their women"!!!

Forgetting

Today's xkcd

Because Life is Short

I did 50 minutes of cardio on a *Sunday.*

I have two low-cost coffee dates set up for this week (because life is better when we socialize, people). I don't like to think of this as me dating again. I am merely socializing. We'll see what happens as a result.

I lost 6 lbs, for some odd reason (lack of cheese, probably).

According to my (highly fuzzy) math, I should get back $947 on my tax return this year. I'm not holding my breath. Me and math don't get along very well.

Would be lovely, tho. Oh yes it would.