Work

Turned on my desktop computer yesterday morning, and it began making noises that computers should not make.  Fearful of disk failure, I shut it off and called my boss and told him I'd probably be offline for the day.

Grateful that I have the knowledge and skills to diagnose the problem rather than having to take it someplace and wait, I dropped kid at school, came home and took the computer apart.

Luckily it was just one of the fans making the bad noise and not one of the disk drives.  But I tested out the drives, and then backed them up, which isn't a quick process when you're talking 1T of drive space.

So, I was down all day, but it didn't cost be anything other than lost wages, which is enough... but it could have been a lot worse, so I'll try to not complain.

I'm job hunting again. 

This job (with the bank), like the last one, has been wonderful and I've learned tons, but I need more hours.  So, I'm on the hunt for a full-time job... which is sucking up all the energy that I'd normally spend writing.

I've updated my resume, found a couple places to apply to (one of which I'm really excited about), and today I'm writing cover letters and sending applications off.

The agent is still sitting on my manuscript.  I emailed her last week to confirm she got it, and she did.  So it's more waiting.  Which is fine, as I don't have the brain cells to deal with it if she did get back to me. (Read more)

Good me.  I worked more hours today. 

I also got a few things done on my to-do list, including calling around to find a place that still had appointments for school physicals (bad me for letting it go this long), and critiquing a synopsis and 3 chapters. 

I also got more insight into Jane's characters... her guys are going to keep me on my toes.  Also pondered my other manuscript, but haven't made decision which file I will actually open first.

So, I'm tired but not sleepy... does that make sense?  I shall go up and ponder book more, that will certainly make me sleepy.  :-)

Blessings upon my boss for being understanding.

So, starting off with that, I worked today, because I really needed the money, unfortunately having to work didn't negate everything else that had to be done today, so I actually didn't even start working until 4pm today.  But I put in four hours on not-critical-but-useful stuff for work, so that's good. 

And before 4pm, I actually got a fair number of things checked off my to-do list for today.  Make note, that was only today's to-do list, not the overall to-do list, but I guess every little bit helps.

It also helped that today I realized I've been wallowing in victim-mode for the last few days.  When I recognize what's going on, I can deal with it, and as soon as I realized what was up, I knew why I was thinking that way, so I'm now working on thinking a more productive way.  It's not an immediate fix, but it's a start. (Read more)

For the longest time I haven't been able to figure out what's wrong with me.  No energy.  No ambition.  No motivation.  No drive to do anything.  No creativity.  No interest in much of anything.  No wanting to go anyplace or see anybody.

I knew I wasn't "depressed".  I've been depressed and that wasn't it.  So I called it "situational depression", but that didn't feel correct either.

Then last night I finally got hit by the flash of the obvious that made me feel as stupid as usual.

I'm burned out.

I knew it felt familiar, in a been-there-done-that sort of way, but I couldn't line up the triggers... because my two other cases of burn-out where work related, and I'm not "working" now. (Read more)

It's been a busy day from one end to the other.  I actually worked at my paid-job, not as long as I'd want, but I did work some, so I get brownie points for that.

Beyond work, I got done a few of the things on my to-do list, and one of those things was to get this new blog up and running and set up so it functioned the way I wanted it to function.

Why am I moving blogs?  The main reason was that I was tried of having to update two different sets of software... with the blog now hosted on the software that runs the rest of my website, I only have to update one program. (Read more)