Confusion, Criticism and Clean Air

The word of the week is ideating.

Oct 14 - Wha?

I think I'm confusing the universe of late.

What I mean is, my world has contracted to work and writing. My social life is rather nonexistent, with the occasional coffee and movie with a friend being the exception. While such a contraction feels out of character to me, it's something I know is necessary in order to give priority to my writing. I still have to figure out how to balance my day job with my personal goals( which include my writing projects ) and once I have that hammered out, a social life won't really matter until a few of those goals are realized.

That's not a bad thing, albeit it will be a bit socially stifling.

It should be noted that around a dozen people visit my blog every day, which is very gratifying. While I do keep track of the total number of visitors, from previous experience I know that about a dozen of my friends drop by once a week or so to view my blog, which is all I can ask. I don't pretend that I am interesting enough to have all of my friends visit even once a month to see what I'm up to, but I'm honest in what I put into my blog and I do my best not to turn it into a personal journal that would record all of my churning thoughts from day-to-day.

Right now, there's not much else that I should be doing save paying my bills and writing. By doing the latter, the former should follow naturally if I can transform it into a way to make a living.

Oct 15 - Quiet Time

Of late, my days off have been precious.

Unlike my previous job, my days off are not islands of refuge in a sea of unrelenting stress but rather time that I can use to do other things. I'm not bringing home the job like I used to, always at the mercy of a ringing managers phone, though I have been attempting to complete some training courses online on the side - both for my own interests and for the courses offered by my workplace.

What hasn't been happening is writing.

I've been too exhausted and my mind has been working over conflicting problems that I just can't find resolution to. Some of which has to do with relationships and a lot of which has to do with defining my own perception of success in relation to the world, my peers and life in general.

Which is why quiet time is important. Everyone needs time to themselves to reflect, to regenerate and replenish their inner resources with which to face the challenges they encounter everyday.

For me, the accumulation of those challenges have been such that I suspect my mind simply can't let go of them. Being able to just simply set things aside and to step into another headspace to do my writing would be wonderful, but it hasn't happened and I'm finding it to be very worrisome.

There are bits and pieces that I've written in the last month or so, but the headlong rush of creativity that I enjoyed last summer in completing my novel has thus far eluded me in editing its third draft.

My self-imposed deadline to have the third draft on is approaching a few months. At this point, I'm not sure that I'll even be half-done by then. Work has been very much on my mind, in terms of having a day job and what it pays and I think that more than anything else is where the measure will be taken.

As the old saying goes, you shouldn't quit your day job to be a writer. What's not well known is that it should be a decently-paying day job and right now that's not the case for me, which is causing stress.

Oct 16 - Working Lots

I failed a few weeks ago, at work.

Not in terms of customer service or and doing my job, but in terms of promotion and challenge. I took a test as part of my training to become Copy Lead, which involved various questions in a live online seminar as well as the production of a test booklet. I was the only one of the group to actually produce the booklet( and correctly, I might add! ) But I failed three questions and thus the test itself.

For me, failure is something I take very personally.

It's not the same as making mistakes, which everyone does and we all learn from. No, for me failure is that complex mix of reaching for a challenge and not succeeding through a combination of lack of preparation, skill, or desire. In this case, it was definitely a lack of preparation, as I had little warning that the test was coming up. Though I have so far done my job fairly well on a daily basis, there are many areas that I have not been fully trained in or feel comfortable in my overall skill set.

What really bothers me is that the people I work with know that I'm not as capable as I appear. My own personal self-worth and self image is based on capability and to have failed has run cracks through that solid foundation to my personality. Those cracks attempted to join others that are already there: my inability to find ANY sort of job for year despite my skill set and experience, my inability to form a long-term relationship, my inability to do any of half a hundred things that I think I should have accomplished by now my life… you get the picture.

I'm not allowing myself to widen this particular crack further; despite the insidious nature of my minds whisperings, I don't believe that this particular failure is a major one in my life. Yet it still goes on the list of failures and I'm not going to forget it anytime soon.

Oct 17 - Energy Lack-ish

I'm feeling a little better this week, with a little more energy than usual.

My diet has changed, in such that I'm having more protein and I'm eating more often - usually it's two or three hours in between meals or healthy snacks. Just as I've minimize sugar and meat in my diet for the last year, so I'm now increasing things like eggs in what I eat in order to try to even out my wobbly energy levels. As my shifts are now going to be split between Copy and Tech, I'll be working a lot harder some days as I rush about the floor instead of standing in Copy and that's going to be tough on me in terms of having anything left at the end of the day for my writing. And for all I know, it's my adrenal glands:

That's just the way it is.

Also, I've broken out the sunlamp and I'm spending a few hours every day under its full-spectrum light. We're due for a solid week of sunshine this coming week here in Victoria and I'm very much looking forward to the energy boost that such wonderful weather will give me. Given that I'm moderately sensitive to the weather in terms of SAD, being able to spend time out in the sunshine will definitely pick up my mood.

Oct 18 - Clean Air

Just a brief entry today about air quality.

For the last six months, my next-door neighbor has been smoking in his apartment. Which he's entitled to do, as it's his own personal space. Yet due to the poor seals around their door, the stench of his particular brand of cigarettes permeates the entire hallway outside, necessitating the placement of an air cleaner in the front hall of our apartment. We're not just talking a whiff here - it stinks, like an ashtray that hasn't been emptied in months.

It also means that my sister and I have to hold our breath every time we enter or leave our residents, which I don't think is fair in the least. And I won't get into how many times we have to close our windows during the summer months whenever people step outside onto nearby balconies to 'enjoy' the privilege of smoking a cigarette. The same thing happened to me when I was first living here in Victoria on Moss Street, where I suffered in a stiflingly hot apartment with the windows closed rather than let in cigarette smoke from the smokehole below on the front walk - directly in the path of the prevailing wind, right into my window.

While it's galling to me that many smokers seem quite indifferent to where their secondhand smoke drifts, there does seem to be some improvement in local smoking bylaws here in Victoria. A recent change to amend the distance that smokers can linger around windows or doorways as well as parks and playgrounds, is a step in the right direction I believe. 

Being as sensitive as I am to secondhand smoke, I'll be glad to see the day when entire swaths of the city are declared smoke-free, hopefully including most rental properties.

Oct 19 - Dressed up, Nowhere to go?

After last year's cobbled-together costume was received with some success, I decided to put together one for this year with a little more forethought. I won't reveal what it is until my first blog entry of November, but suffice to say it's one I've been looking forward to for years, even though long practice of the accompanying voice has thus far eluded me. Hint: it's a character from a popular 80's cartoon!

Unfortunately, even at this late date I have nowhere to go to show my costume. The party I attended last year at a friend's place is going on again… but unlike 30+ other guests, I haven't received an invite.

That's… disappointing.

I hope it's an oversight, and I'll send the hosts a message a few days before the party date, but I don't want to be 'that guy' who is invited because they don't want to hurt my feelings.

I'd rather be the guy that they WANT to have there in the first place, and not have just forgotten. Which, I am WELL aware, that I am guilty of having done on at least a few occasions of my own over the years. So perhaps this is cosmic karma kicking in; we'll see.

It's still a cool costume though.

Oct 20 - Depth

I worry.

Which I shouldn't; Neil Gaiman himself has said that if there was one thing he wished he could change about his own life, it would be to have spent less time worrying and more time DOING.

Getting things done, is always the trick, isn't it? There's always so much going on in one's life that half of what you think you should have done last week is still waiting for you to get to next week. And so it goes.

Worrying about such things just uses energy I don't have right now. It's enough that I work pretty much full time every week during the day( no more night shifts! )and take care of my small domestic responsibilities during the evening. Worrying that I'm not eating properly does help keep me honest, though my mindset still hasn't developed the proper habits over the last while to make healthy and timely meal preparation part of my daily routine. I think that I'm a grudging the energy it takes to do anything else, including preparing meals, as taking away from time I could be writing.

It's just hard right now to find a smile for each moment that deserves a instead of just getting about doing things. There's so much that I am grateful for and that I should be grateful for and that I should recognize as being just the first steps on a long road toward success, yet the immediacy of my present situation weighs on me. I know it sounds awkward and depressing and frustrating, but that's just how it is for me right now - maybe it's my constant low blood sugar. Who knows?

We'll see how I am next time I check in here.

This week, I discovered a new word: ideating, which means to create or conceive an idea. It was purely by accident, a word misrecognized by my voice recognition software yet it led me to discovery. It's strange how these small missteps in life can lead you to new understandings and I think that's an excellent way to sum up this week's blog.