What I've Been Up To

I've been spending a good deal of time recovering from sickness and catching up on all the things that didn't get done while I was sick. There were a lot of things.

I had several writing-related commitments to finish in addition to regular things like house chores, bills, and laundry. Got my book out to the Agent, wrote a recommendation for promotion letter for my academic advisor in SA, edited a paper for my brother, and have started in on my first contracted writing assignment for a software company.

On top of that, the Day Job has been busier than usual (meaning I'm actually doing things work-related during work hours), and everybody on our Indy team is wound a bit tight, especially Yellow, which makes working with him a little twitchier than usual. I've got a number of daily updates/reports to generate, which are annoying more than difficult. Been working on cutting myself away from work when it's over. I've been letting stress get the better of me, which is likely one reason I got hit so bad with the flu. I need to wipe my hands of work when I leave the office. It's just not worth stressing over. I'm not going to be doing this stuff much longer.

B is in town this weekend (yay!!), and we're snagging a hotel for a couple of nights because Jenn has a couple of friends in for the weekend and, well, we've only got one bathroom, alas. Looking forward to eating junk food, watching boxing and movies, and going to the Field Museum with B. And sleeping. And sex.

You know, good stuff like that.

I'll be heading back to the gym next week. After a week and change out with sickness, I started back up on my morning free weights this week, so I figure progressing to gym work next week is a nice, steady way to get back into things. I really don't want to wear myself down and get sick again.

The real fun month will be November. I've got the World Fantasy Con in Madison from the 4-6, flying to NY to visit B the 18-20th, and visiting my buddy Stephanie and her husband Ian in Ohio from the 23-26 (I'm bringing the wine, baby!). I've got more traveling in December. Because of B's school schedule, I'll probably be doing NY again December 16-18th and then hitting my parents' place for the holidays from the 22-28th.

There are a few more things that need to start happening in these next couple of months, too. I need to get out my application for the MFA program at Brooklyn College, and I need to start putting away money for my move to NY next July. I've been doing preliminary work looking into prices/areas of Brooklyn/Queens/Manhattan and looking at what sorts of jobs are available, and that process will increase in intensity as the time for movement nears. We'll need to start looking in earnest for a place in April, and by May I need to be looking into jobs if the BC College thing doesn't pan out. And, of course, temp jobs if it does. And let us not forget that my book God's War has a January completion date.

Busy life, good life.

Who Will Be Eaten First?

The Elder Gods are going to rise and eat us all!!

Orgies are the way to ease social tensions, claims US judge

..it turns out that there is another side to Justice Antonin Scalia: he thinks Americans ought to be having more orgies.

Challenged about his views on sexual morality, Justice Scalia surprised his audience at Harvard University, telling them: "I even take the position that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged."

It seems unlikely that this is what President Bush meant when he promised to appoint more judges like Scalia to the court, should the opportunity arise.

The first major study of an experimental vaccine to prevent cervical cancer found it was 100 percent effective

No shit?

I'd like to see a study that wasn't done by the maker of the vaccine, but if this turns out to be true, it's hellacool:

The first major study of an experimental vaccine to prevent cervical cancer found it was 100 percent effective, in the short term, at blocking the disease and lesions likely to turn cancerous, drug maker Merck & Co. said.

Gardasil, a genetically engineered vaccine, blocks infection with two of the 100-plus types of human papilloma virus, HPV 16 and 18. The two sexually transmitted viruses together cause about 70 percent of cervical cancers.

I Want to Grow Up to Be Just Like You!

(thanks, K!)

How Time Flies

At the weekly office meeting today, I was startled to hear that Blaine, my old boss, had been at the company two years as of this week.

I was startled because I started working here a month after he did.

I'll have been here two years next month.

Where did the time go?

Work

Work has picked up (the old 3 months on/3 months off cycle), so things will continue to be slow for a bit.

Will be back later.

Good Morning, Chiklits

I seem to have weaned myself off coffee during my sickness.

This is very sad.

Comment Spam

Dealing with it. Hang in there.

Serenity

It's good. Go see it.

Hat & Coat Weather

I am clawing up from the dregs of sickness and discovering that there's a whole bright, beautiful world out there.

I'm also catching up on the three trillion things that I had to let slide while I was confined to bed, too weak to even read for long periods.

It was a bitch.

I've gnawed at the pile of stuff, and am feeling better about it. House chores, bills, e-mails, ticket reservations for Thanksgiving in Dayton, need to reserve my damn hotel room for World Fantasy, new contract writing job with a software company (paperwork, first little assignment), tackling the huge mindless waste of space that is my day job (full of dates and numbers and five daily reports and bullshit, bullshit, bullshit Xs 2), finishing the last of the Book rewrites so I can get that out by Friday/Saturday, and itching to get back to working on God's War.

I'm feeling awake, I have energy, I'll just be stirring around the rest of the week finishing up my backlog. I have lingering weakness and some trouble eating certain foods as yet, but I'm definately in recovery mode.

An Encounter with the HR Manager

I bumped into the HR manager in the hall, and she asked if I was any better.

I said, well, no.

JZ, one of the lead architects, is still out with the same thing (he still has PTO time. I burned all my up on writing days and trips to NY). After lamenting about the fact that I've been barely able to get down toast and soup for the last week, she said, cheerfully, "Well, you're getting really skinny!"

ARRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHGHGHHHRRHRHHRRHRHRHHRHRH

That's because I'm FUCKING STARVING!!!!!!!!!!!!

HOW IS THIS A GOOD THING????

And I know it's all muscle mass. You know the amount of retraining I'm going to have to do?

America.

You're sick and starving, but hey -- YOU'RE LOSING WEIGHT! Be joyful!

I just want some goddamn nachos.

Still Down for the Count

Tried to eat real food on Friday, and promptly gave it back over to the porcelain god. I've been living on a bowl or two of soup and two slices of toast a day, because that's about all I can keep down.

And I've been dreaming of food. DREAMING of food. Nachos, Taco Bell, hot dogs. It's a good sign that I have cravings, but I'm filled with a nausea that won't let me consume very much of soft bland foods, let along anything hardier. I'm still very weak, and I hate the nausea. It's like there's a fist in the middle of my chest, and beaneath that, this broiling slosh of burning stomach acid that refuses to let me eat anything it doesn't like.

Drinking lots of water, soda, apple juice. Apple juice is good. I just can't believe this is going on this long. I'm afraid that if I do buckle and plop down $150 for a doctor they'll say "Sleep a lot, and drink some apple juice." ARRGGG

We'll see. I tend to have more energy in the morning, less at the end of the day, when I tire myself out. I'm optimistically saying that I do feel a smidge better each day, but I can't really back that up.

I'm still down for the count, irritable, weak, tired, and have trouble concentrating. This is crappy for a number of reasons, because I have a lot of shit to do, but my body's telling me to STOP, and I have to stop and wait for it to recuperate before I can even start thinking again about doing something non-useless.

I Went To Work Today

Which was a mistake. I feel terrible. Not as bad as on Tuesday night, and yea, I can eat whole food, but damn, I feel like I've been hit by a truck. Drinking lots of fluids. Should have brought some chicken soup.

Turns out yet another guy from the office was out with the same thing. Add me to the list, and that's four people from my office, so I'm not sure what's up. In any case, ready to go home. The commute was a bitch them morning. I was such a clueless, invalid-looking zombie that somebody actually stopped and tried to help me off the bus.

Oh dear. Do I look that weak? Well.. I guess I am, actually.

If Pirates Ruled...

Photoshopping contest.

P.S. i am still sick ug ug ug

In Which the Protagonist Gets the Plague

ugugug Stomach flu: vomiting, shaky, chills, achiness ug ug ug

Dee, the design manager, was out with stomach flu yesterday. Tuff was out a couple days before. Damn, who else had it? ug ug ug

The protagonist will be staying home from work tomorrow and living on green tea.

ug ug uggugug gu ug

Good morning, chiklits

Coffee is guuuuud.

I am a little bleary-eyed, but functioning. Jenn, the astonishing roommate of doom, picked up some more computer ink for me yesterday (thanks again, Jenn!). I've got a huge print job for Friday...

Worked on God's War yesterday as well, and I'll likely post another excerpt soon. I love that little book.

Now I'm going to get more coffee.

Drunken Persistence, Redux

I got hooked on Laborie pinotage some time back, when I took a tour of the Winelands in Cape Town. It's amazingly gorgeous there. Trader Joe's had a special on some South African pinotage this week, and I snagged a couple bottles. Laborie it ain't, but it's made me nostalgic. And a little drunk.

Sometimes, I am struck by where I am in my life, the people I've known, the places I've seen, the accomplishments I've made at 25. I have been running, running, running, working so hard to get to this place, to have these experiences behind me, to be looking forward to more, to life, to what lies beyond the horizon.

I was talking to both Jenn and B about how tough the last couple of years here in Chicago had been. Not the actual living part - the living has been happy and mostly easy. I can pay my bills. I love my roommates. I enjoy the weather, the public transit. But I've invested two years of my life working an admin job, turning down career opportunities that would require me to curb my writing (and my health) in order to advance. A career in the cell phone industry just wasn't what I was looking for.

Every time somebody asked me what I was working toward with each successive degree, with each job, I told them I was just *this* close to making the books pan out, to making money writing, to being a writer, working to build *that* career above all others. That was my life. That's what I was working toward.

But two years of giving up on more traditional opportunities can get to you. You can start to lose hope. You start to wonder what you're doing. You start to wonder if you're crazy. I'd been talking with both Jenn and B about getting other jobs, about finding ways to take in more money, about sacrificing writing time for something more tradtional, some other life. And I talked about it like a woman who was ready to grow up, to put away childish ideas about what could be and what might be and start worrying about how these student loans were ever going to be paid off.

I started to understand how people got trapped in jobs they hated, so they could buy things they didn't need, so they could have a life they didn't want.

I've bought some of my favorite wine, and I'm sitting here drinking it and staring at line edits I need to finish by Friday, and I'm haunted by the life that I want, the life I know I can have. I've said to myself, over and over, I just need to work harder. I can have this. I just need to work harder. Because there's always somebody out there who's willing to work harder than you are.

I have a blind belief in what I do, in this writing, in what I have. I'm not a genius, but I'm getting better every year. Each book is better than the last. And I have a secret:

This is it. This is what I want to do. I want to write fantasy books. I want to make a living at it. I want to be the best at it, whatever that is or means. I want, I desire, and it's a desire that eats me up.

I want to write for a living, I want to travel, I want to dip my toes in every ocean. I want to go bungee jumping in New Zealand. I want to climb Kilimanjaro. I want to hike up to Machu Picchu. I want a big, wide, bold life. I want to be an old woman on her death bed, gazing out over the pictures of her life. I want, I desire.

How does one want so much and keep going, keep striving in a world that tells you every odd is against you; you're too fat, too slight, too tall, untalented, too talented, not pretty enough, too pretty. It's a world that doesn't believe in anyone or anything, a world that watches faces get their 15 minutes and then moves on, callous, regardless.

And there's no answer to that, really, and whatever answer you do find is a little mad.

Because the answer is you just keep doing it while people tell you no. You keep getting better at it, because you want it. And you do it as long as you have to, if you have to spend five years at a shitty admin job and traveling to foreign locales on credit cards. You do it because the alternative is not to do it, and that's a far, far, more frightening fate.

B sent me Amanda's post over at Pandagon today, about all the things men had told her was wrong with her, about how she'd finally decided to ditch her boyfriend. And I was reminded of another time, another place, when I cared what people thought of me, when I valued myself based on my attractiveness to others, when I tried to mold myself into what other people thought I should be.

I wanted to reach out to Amanda and hold her and cry and say, "Honey, fuck everybody and leave the whole world. Go buy a one-way ticket to somewhere you've never been and start a whole new life and find out how strong you are. Don't go out finding yourself, go the fuck out and fucking create yourself. That's what life is. You find out what the fuck you can do. You realize how strong you are. You realize you can fly."

I can fly.

Even in the darkest times, when I'm freaking out and stress eating and missing the gym and scared and lonely, I know exactly what I can do. I know I can trek alone 160 km into rural Africa. I know I can buy a one-way ticket to Fairbanks, Alaska. I know I can pull together an entire person from the ashes of someone else entirely, and I know that even in the darkest times, during those dark teatimes of the soul, I will come back out of it awake, alive, ready to pursue my desires until the end.

Because this is who I am, this is what I do.

And I seem to have finished this bottle of wine.

I am a little drunk

This is a healthy thing

yaarrrrrr!!!

Wasting Time

I am sitting here at work spinning around and around in my chair. I am kinda sick.

Yellow and Sarah are off to Indy until Friday.

heh heh

I'm going to go eat some cookies.

It's not a bad life. Still wondering why I haven't quit this job yet?

Back to line edits...