I'm Inspired

So today I was checking out PostSecret and I came across this.

(Click to enlarge)

It made me think: I could do that. I could start a magazine like that.

Or rather, I could do it except for the part where I know NOTHING about how to start up a magazine, or how to go about putting together a big enterprise like that...but still, I could DO it. I know traditional-media sales are down, but I'd be willing to bet this secret-writer and I aren't the only two people who feel this way.

The very fact that I can even HAVE a thought like this means that things inside my head are improving.

(Oh yeah. Speaking of improving: GO KASEY! Two in a row, baby!)

A Day Off Can Do Wonders...

...even when I had to spend part of it with Tim and Squeaky. (He wanted to get some of his music files off my computer and onto his MP3 player for the trip to Vegas; she wanted to come with and even called off work to do so. To be fair, though, she DID pay for the pizza.)

Anyway, after they left I decided to play, and here's what came of it.



Not bad for a blocked creative, eh?

Why Am I Angry?

No--seriously, it's a valid question today.

Brief background: we have two buildings--Hyde Park and downtown. The downtown building is staffed Monday thru Saturday; I get most of the Saturdays, but part of my job is ALSO to cover for the evening-shift person downtown when he schedules a day off. So this Tuesday just past, I was informed by my boss that this had happened, and that I'd be working 1 PM-9:30 PM downtown on Friday.

Well, pleh, I said, because this means that I leave downtown at 9:30, arrive home at 10:15, and am then expected BACK downtown at 8 AM Saturday morning. Again--pleh. But whatever. I can deal. It's part of the job.

Anyway, on Thursday, as I walked in, three separate people including my boss asked me "Hey, is Bobbi Smith's computer ready yet?" I had two builds in the works--Bobbi Smith and Joe McBlow. I knew Joe McBlow was scheduled to start on Monday, and so I had to have his machine done by the end of the day; nobody had told me anything about Smith, but when three people ask you about something as you walk in the door, you sort of assume that it's high-priority.

So I spent the morning and early afternoon working on Bobbi Smith's computer. As I finished it up, I came across the note on the bottom of the final page of the spec sheet: This machine will be set up in the user's home in St. Paul, MN. Which means that there was absolutely, positively NO rush to it--I didn't have to break my neck to get the machine done after all, because the user wasn't even expecting it yet.

Along with the change in priority, the fact that someone's computer is going offsite means OTHER things change as well. It's the sort of thing I should know BEFORE I start, not after I finish. I spent way too much of the rest of the day trying to find out what I now needed to change, what I needed to do to fix it, and why, exactly, I wasn't notified of this beforehand. No one seemed terribly sympathetic or interested in helping me solve the problem. As a consequence, I only got to work on the McBlow machine at about 4:30 PM.

There are two ways to set up a computer if it's been used before--one quick but corner-cutting, one slow but correct. Normally I'm all about correctness, but I had two hours to get this computer configured start to finish...so yeah, I took the quick-and-dirty route. To be fair, I tested EVERYTHING before I declared it was finished, and everything worked.

I asked Max, my cube-mate, to do the quality check for me and deliver the machine on Friday while I was gone. He said that was fine, he'd take care of it. So Friday at 1:00, when I got downtown, I checked my mail and found a note from McBlow's supervisor, asking if the machine would be ready for Monday. I immediately e-mailed Max to ask what the progress was, and I got a one-liner response:

"Erwin had to rebuild it."

HUH? I said, and picked up the phone to call Max. "What happened?" I asked.

"I dunno--I came in this morning and he was working on it. He said it was supposed to be a full rebuild, not just a new profile."
"Okay, yeah--but how did he even know that's what I did? I never asked him to TOUCH that computer," I said.
"Nobody tells me anything," said Max.

So I called Joe. "What's the deal with Erwin rebuilding the McBlow computer?"
"What are you talking about?" Typical Joe--he's always the last one to know.
"Erwin is rebuilding the McBlow computer, even though I never asked him to look at it, because he says it's supposed to be a full rebuild. But he's not on that ticket and he has no business inspecting my work."
"Well...why didn't you rebuild it?" (Okay, granted, this is the six-million-dollar question. I -should- have. But I didn't.)
"Mainly because I ran out of time from working on the other machine, and figured as long as I wiped all the files from the previous user and tested everything, I could get it done faster..." (Hey, at least I'm honest.)
"Okay," he said. "But I don't know anything about it."

Finally I called Erwin. Now, if you'll remember, Erwin and I don't get along well. I find him to be an insufferable, complaining jerk who's only out for himself and has no sense of teamwork whatsoever--and he irritates me. He's the only one of my colleagues I actively dislike. So for HIM to be the one ratting me out, or making me rat myself out, makes it a billion times worse than if it were Alex or Max. So I asked him, "What's going on with the McBlow machine?"

"Well, you were supposed to rebuild it, not just add a new profile."
"Yeah, but everything worked when I tested it."
"I tried ApplicX and it didn't work, and then I started looking around and realized it was just a new profile, so I figured I'd rebuild it just to get it done."

Small problem: ApplicX worked FINE when I checked it. And that STILL doesn't answer the main question: What the hell was he doing looking at MY work anyway? I don't check HIS work without being asked--what made him think he was supposed to look at mine?

So, back to the original question: am I angry...
a) ...at myself for getting caught taking a shortcut, especially because it's something I don't normally do?
b) ...at Erwin for messing with my stuff without reason?
c) ...because it was Erwin who found MY shortcut and exposed it?
d) ...because Erwin is a colossal ass-blister who can't even get his OWN work right, so what the hell is he doing calling ME out on MINE?
e) ...all of the above?

I think it's e--all of the above. But from now on I'm carrying my cabinet keys with me; if someone needs something out of my desk when I'm not there, that's just going to be too damn bad.

Urgh.

Okay, so--Mother's Day? Yeah, I could do without. Particularly since it sometimes feels like that's EVERY day. (The grub-digging and lawn-seeding of last Sunday? Not medication-related--compulsory, At the Request of Mother. I -loathe- yardwork. Given the opportunity, yardwork would be completely not on my radar. But Mom refuses to just sod everything, and refuses to just pay somebody to take care of it all--so there is yardwork. Pleh, I say.) I invited Mom over and promised to fix her dinner for Mother's Day; this involves cleaning the house, which needs to be done anyway, and will also guarantee that the day is shorter than it would otherwise have been. Especially since my schedule has been grossly tampered with and I have essentially NO weekend this week, any moment of peace and quiet I can steal is much needed.

Other than that...Are things getting better? They might be. Waiting for the bus today I thought about the last time I'd waited for that bus, a few weeks back, and how horrid I felt. I feel less-horrid. I'm not sure whether what I'm feeling since the medication increase is "an increase in energy" or "agitation". I seriously don't know what "normal" consists of, and since there doesn't seem to be anything pathological about this--I can still sleep, I'm not obsessive, I'm not hyper, but I do have more motivation to do things and my body doesn't feel like it's strapped to ten-thousand-pound weights--I'm thinking I'm -SOMEWHAT- better.

However, there's still The Dream. That hasn't gone anywhere, though I wish it would go back to hell where it obviously came from. Twice or three times a week, variations on a theme: in the dream, I find out that JP was never dead, that he just faked it and disappeared to get away from me. That he never loved me, that I was always an irritant, that I never meant anything to him. Now THERE'S something to wake up from and face the day ahead. It makes me want to pry my brain out through my eye sockets with a grapefruit spoon. It kinda takes all the wind out of those promises people made to me: "Time heals," they said. "You'll be all right again someday, if you want to be." Yeah, okay--now, about the part where I'm still having nightmares fourteen years later? Could we work on that bit for a while, you think?

I'm not complaining, exactly. Well, yes I am, but I'm complaining while I'm still aware that I've been very fortunate, that things are working out incredibly well for me, that there is some kind of light at the end of this tunnel...but it's not always easy to keep that in mind when you wake up staring at the ceiling with your heart pounding, trying to remember where you are and what year it is. Things are better--at least, they're better the rest of the time. I think. The other stuff is fixable, I'm pretty sure...the self-criticism, the fear of failure, all that can be changed. So maybe things are improving--I don't know, for sure. I know I'm still trying, though.

Thanks...

...Eatmisery, for your concern.

I'm fine, mostly. I would say the depression is...maybe not abating, but settling down somewhat. Last week was the worst it's been in a while, but since about Friday afternoon I've noticed an uptick in my basic functionality. Which is good, because I wasn't getting a damn thing done; I took two sick days and just laid around in front of the TV in my pajamas, trying to rationalize my total inertia. At first I wondered if this isn't the fallout from the change in medicine/dosage; then I came up with a more-logical explanation. But whatever it is, I did not enjoy it. At all.

Friday night I sorta got a "second wind", and chugged off to work on Saturday morning; from the time I got home after work, I've been scurrying around nearly nonstop, working on projects for Mom both at her house (digging up the extremely-dead front lawn, putting down poison against the grubs that killed it, and then re-seeding) and here at home (scanning and transcribing some old family letters from the 1920's). The nice thing about THAT project is that it got me a brand-new all-in-one printer-scanner-copier, because mine gave up the ghost midway through the project and Mom is really, REALLY anxious for me to finish with the letters, and so she agreed to go halfsies with me on a new one. I appreciated the hell out of that; more so because...

Well, this is why I think I'm depressed.

My finances have improved GREATLY in the past few months. I still have a crapload of old bills to pay, but I can pay all the current ones and then some. And when my tax check came, I thought "Yay!" and started thinking of all the things I could buy...

...except for a promise I made about 18 months ago.

See, Tim has an old friend, Brandon. They've been friends since grade school, and they're pretty close. Brandon's getting married next month. Well, back in the fall of 2006, when Tim moved in with me after I got fired, he told me about Brandon's wedding and how honored he was that Brandon had asked him to be best man...but that he was really nervous, because the wedding was in Las Vegas and Tim wasn't sure if he was going to be able to afford to go, and he didn't want to accept and tell Brandon he could be in the wedding if he wasn't one hundred percent sure he could make it. "I don't want to let him down," Tim said. So, being me, I said, "Don't worry about it, Tim--if you need some help getting to the wedding when the time comes, I'll help you out." When I said it, I figured Well, he knows a year and a half in advance that this is an expense that's coming up; he'll make SOME kind of provisions for it. He has time to get a job and save up at least MOST of what it will cost, and if he needs me to throw in a couple hundred at the end, well, I can do that for him--after all, he's my friend.

And he is. But he is also, and I didn't know this when I made the promise, a different Tim than the one I knew when we first lived together. Being homeless did something to him, I swear, and the former sense of thrift and responsibility and planning ahead has been replaced by this day-to-day survival instinct which sees no time but right this minute. So eighteen months after making this promise, last Monday I found myself typing my payment info into the checkout screen on Orbitz--for just over $800.

This didn't eat up all my money. But it ate up every bit of my emotional reserves.

He wants me to go to Vegas with him. He claims it's because he feels bad about the fact that I'm spending my money to send HIM, but I'M not going myself. (If I was picking places to go, Vegas wouldn't be on the list, I don't think.) He also says he wants someone to "keep an eye" on him; this is so he can give a clean report to Squeaky, methinks.

I -could- afford it--just barely, but I could. But if I DID go, I would be going out of guilt.

Now I ask you: What kind of damn person feels GUILTY because she can't do something she doesn't want to do, for someone on whom she's already just spent more money than she's nearly-EVER spent on herSELF--and she's not even romantically involved with him, or even INTERESTED like that??? (Wait--I think I can answer this one: a DOORMAT. THAT's what kind of person.)

Well, all that crap rattling around the brainpan, coupled with the tweak in the meds, plus finding out that Debbi (my oldest friend) is apparently going to marry this guy who everyone in her life seems to think is beneath her--I can't say, since I've only met him once and other than being one of those disgustingly clingy, slobbery kind of couples I'm always secretly jealous of, I can't say anything bad about him, but he's definitely NOT the dream guy she's described in the past--anyway, she's supposedly marrying him next spring, and between hoping SHE'S going to be all right, and worrying about how I'm going to tell Tim I'm not going to Vegas with him, and wondering if that's the right thing to do, and dealing with Mom which has been a WHOOOOOLE nother story....

I've been a little overwhelmed, is what I'm saying, I guess. I'm certainly trying. Trying to do the right thing, trying to make everyone happy, trying to keep it together, trying to be a good person...trying to cover it all up and make everything seem normal when it isn't.

Also, I've been drawing. Before I bought Tim the Vegas trip, I took the proceeds of my tax check to the art-supply store, and I gave myself a merry little Christmas. I bought acrylics, watercolors, pastels, paper, pencils, brushes, ink pens...oh, I had a grand old time. There is nothing in this world that's cooler than having a brand-new box of paints and a brand-new set of brushes...

...Now, though, I have to set up a cat-free workspace. And that's not as easy as you'd think.

"Cat-free" pretty much means "in my bedroom", and it's pretty cramped in there to begin with. Full-size bed, two dressers, cedar chest, two bedside tables, a couple of small bookcases, an armchair--plus laundry hampers, boxes, assorted accoutrements of daily living...Maybe if I moved the bed out into the living room? I mean, it IS my apartment...there's no law that says the bed needs to be in the bedroom... :::laughing::: (See, THESE are the kind of problems I like. THIS is the kind of dilemma I'm equipped to deal with. "Where can I paint?" is so much softer and easier of a question than "What's my purpose in life?" If one question is like drinking cool water through a straw, the other is like trying to inhale a Buick through your nose.)

Anyway. All this is to say, there's no need to worry. I'm doing my damnedest to keep my pieces together, and though I'm not entirely successful at it just yet...well, we may be making progress. (And it's SPRING!!!! Spring helps my mood, quite a lot. It's more difficult to be depressed when every time you look around, you're confronted with fuzzy baby green grass blades, tiny little purple and yellow wildflowers, and noisy bright-red cardinals singing from the utility pole outside your window.)