the good, the bad, and the frumpy
So starting with the good news, I GOT THE INTERNSHIP I WANTED!
Next month I will be an intern at a real live publishing house. Tachyon Publications--support me, buy their books! It was origionally supposed to be a paid internship for like six months, but now its unpaid for three with the possibility of being hired on.
BUT LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE INTERVIEW.
I drove down to Oakland the day before to stay at Lis's house (where I will also be living at the end of the month) so I could drive to my interview from there. I don't know if it was a spider bite or if there's something in proscuitto that I'm allergic to, but I woke up the next day looking I like got Pamela Anderson collagen on the left side of my mouth.
Being me, and being home alone with nobody to talk me down, I freaked out and drove to the ER where I then paid a hundred dollar copay for them to tell me I'm fine and give me generic claratin.
Long story short, I got out of Kaiser just in time to drive to my interview, but I was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. I decided to be a little late so I can run back to the house to change into one of the THREE nice outfits I brought and the new shoes I bought just for this interview, but as I was getting out of the car I realised that I'd locked the door on the way out and nobody was home to let me back in.
So I went to the interview on time in jeans and a sweatshirt and my paper Kaiser bracelets--I couldn't even take off the sweatshirt because underneath it I was wearing my Reel Big Fish concert "We're Not Happy 'Till You're Not Happy" shirt without a bra. (Later dad would ask me why I even own a shirt like that and I pointed out that I was currently wearing a tshirt with two kittens batting a hand grenade).
So either I was somehow mega awesome at the interview, everyone else sucked, or I was the only one but I got the gig! Lookit me, I'm such a grownup. If someone asks me what I do I can say "I'm in publishing." I don't get paid for it, but hey, semantics.
The bad news is that I found a lump in Simon's testacle. It could be a cyst but it's probably cancer, as rats are exremely prone to cancer. He could have an expensive ball-ectomy, and while I'm at it remove the other glands down there giving him problems, but I've decided against it for a few reasons. The first of which is I can't friggin afford it. The second of which is he's nearly two, and that's about the life expectancy of the average rat whose owners don't go for expensive surgerys. I've heard of rats that have lived to be five, but had a fuckton of health problems, probably due do being about five hundred in rat years. Given Simon's age and his weight (huge! you try making a rat diet) I just don't think surgery is the way to go even if I could afford it. I actually wasn't expecting him to live much longer after Charlie died, rats tend to be very unhappy without cagemates but with his infections I couldn't get him a playmate. He seems to be okay, though he needs more attention from me. He's a bit more sluggish than he used to be, but that's normal for his age (and weight holycraphe'sfat). I'm just going to try and keep him happy for however long he naturally has left and I guess that will be that.
And now the frumpy.
I've been having this recurring dream where I'm back at school--sometimes its high school, sometimes its UCSC--but I've overslept and I'm late for my first class. I try to get to it, but I don't remember my schedule, and I get lost trying to find someone who can tell me. I wonder around campus groggy out of my mind, needing to get to class because its two weeks in and I haven't shown up once, but all I want to do is take a nap.
I've been thinking things over and I've discovered something--that is, I hadn't realized until now how much my anxiety disorder has effected my writing. Even though the worst of it was freshman year, it got me into a cycle that I still haven't successfully broken. I've always had trouble finishing things I start, that hasn't changed, but I never used to have troulbe starting things in the first place.
In high school, what I was mostly writing was fanfic, though I had a big enough stack of half started novels which I used to think were brilliant and now realize were probably just anime on paper. But anyway. I may not have been fast at updating my fanfics but it friggin GOT DONE. I wrote, I wrote A LOT, even if it never got posted.
I don't write a lot anymore. I think about writing a lot, I have long, wonderful, conplex stories in my head that I want to get out, but I haven't put them on paper. I've barely tried. The writing I've mostly done has been for class, and it's been good, but when the class is done so is the writing and that is much less good.
It started with high school graduation, with the panic attacks that kept punching me down and turning me into this spaztic, terrified person. I had never been unalbe to act before in my life. Before, I would act or I would not act. I'd take in the possibility of failure, weigh how much I cared, and decided. It had never occurred to me before that fall in 2004 that I could decide to act and then be unable to do it.
I was never a stranger to irrational fear ( I was terrified of the dark and slept with a nightlight until I was like, fourteen) but fear had never left me paralyzed before. I hadn't known it could happen, but once I found out, I couldn't unlearn that. So now, every time I'm anxious about something, even if it's only a little bit, there's always a grain of that paralysis in me. More often than I'd like to admit, I let it win, and I stop. I just stop.
I started writing when I was fourteen, because it helped get me through depression. My mother died and I thought "Well if I can get through this, I can get through anythying," and I was powerful. And then that power was taken away from me by my own body, my own brain, and I never completely got it back. I probably haven't even gotten it half back.
I really do want it back, because like it or not I am a different person than I was back then. You can't have a total breakdown and come back the same person. That's why all the writing I started in high school won't get finished, not even TGG which used to be my friggin opus or whatnot, because even though I still love the story I don't know how to write it anymore.
I have stories I love now, too. Stories that I do know how to write, if I could just cross this anxious bridge and start them.
Next month I will be an intern at a real live publishing house. Tachyon Publications--support me, buy their books! It was origionally supposed to be a paid internship for like six months, but now its unpaid for three with the possibility of being hired on.
BUT LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE INTERVIEW.
I drove down to Oakland the day before to stay at Lis's house (where I will also be living at the end of the month) so I could drive to my interview from there. I don't know if it was a spider bite or if there's something in proscuitto that I'm allergic to, but I woke up the next day looking I like got Pamela Anderson collagen on the left side of my mouth.
Being me, and being home alone with nobody to talk me down, I freaked out and drove to the ER where I then paid a hundred dollar copay for them to tell me I'm fine and give me generic claratin.
Long story short, I got out of Kaiser just in time to drive to my interview, but I was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. I decided to be a little late so I can run back to the house to change into one of the THREE nice outfits I brought and the new shoes I bought just for this interview, but as I was getting out of the car I realised that I'd locked the door on the way out and nobody was home to let me back in.
So I went to the interview on time in jeans and a sweatshirt and my paper Kaiser bracelets--I couldn't even take off the sweatshirt because underneath it I was wearing my Reel Big Fish concert "We're Not Happy 'Till You're Not Happy" shirt without a bra. (Later dad would ask me why I even own a shirt like that and I pointed out that I was currently wearing a tshirt with two kittens batting a hand grenade).
So either I was somehow mega awesome at the interview, everyone else sucked, or I was the only one but I got the gig! Lookit me, I'm such a grownup. If someone asks me what I do I can say "I'm in publishing." I don't get paid for it, but hey, semantics.
The bad news is that I found a lump in Simon's testacle. It could be a cyst but it's probably cancer, as rats are exremely prone to cancer. He could have an expensive ball-ectomy, and while I'm at it remove the other glands down there giving him problems, but I've decided against it for a few reasons. The first of which is I can't friggin afford it. The second of which is he's nearly two, and that's about the life expectancy of the average rat whose owners don't go for expensive surgerys. I've heard of rats that have lived to be five, but had a fuckton of health problems, probably due do being about five hundred in rat years. Given Simon's age and his weight (huge! you try making a rat diet) I just don't think surgery is the way to go even if I could afford it. I actually wasn't expecting him to live much longer after Charlie died, rats tend to be very unhappy without cagemates but with his infections I couldn't get him a playmate. He seems to be okay, though he needs more attention from me. He's a bit more sluggish than he used to be, but that's normal for his age (and weight holycraphe'sfat). I'm just going to try and keep him happy for however long he naturally has left and I guess that will be that.
And now the frumpy.
I've been having this recurring dream where I'm back at school--sometimes its high school, sometimes its UCSC--but I've overslept and I'm late for my first class. I try to get to it, but I don't remember my schedule, and I get lost trying to find someone who can tell me. I wonder around campus groggy out of my mind, needing to get to class because its two weeks in and I haven't shown up once, but all I want to do is take a nap.
I've been thinking things over and I've discovered something--that is, I hadn't realized until now how much my anxiety disorder has effected my writing. Even though the worst of it was freshman year, it got me into a cycle that I still haven't successfully broken. I've always had trouble finishing things I start, that hasn't changed, but I never used to have troulbe starting things in the first place.
In high school, what I was mostly writing was fanfic, though I had a big enough stack of half started novels which I used to think were brilliant and now realize were probably just anime on paper. But anyway. I may not have been fast at updating my fanfics but it friggin GOT DONE. I wrote, I wrote A LOT, even if it never got posted.
I don't write a lot anymore. I think about writing a lot, I have long, wonderful, conplex stories in my head that I want to get out, but I haven't put them on paper. I've barely tried. The writing I've mostly done has been for class, and it's been good, but when the class is done so is the writing and that is much less good.
It started with high school graduation, with the panic attacks that kept punching me down and turning me into this spaztic, terrified person. I had never been unalbe to act before in my life. Before, I would act or I would not act. I'd take in the possibility of failure, weigh how much I cared, and decided. It had never occurred to me before that fall in 2004 that I could decide to act and then be unable to do it.
I was never a stranger to irrational fear ( I was terrified of the dark and slept with a nightlight until I was like, fourteen) but fear had never left me paralyzed before. I hadn't known it could happen, but once I found out, I couldn't unlearn that. So now, every time I'm anxious about something, even if it's only a little bit, there's always a grain of that paralysis in me. More often than I'd like to admit, I let it win, and I stop. I just stop.
I started writing when I was fourteen, because it helped get me through depression. My mother died and I thought "Well if I can get through this, I can get through anythying," and I was powerful. And then that power was taken away from me by my own body, my own brain, and I never completely got it back. I probably haven't even gotten it half back.
I really do want it back, because like it or not I am a different person than I was back then. You can't have a total breakdown and come back the same person. That's why all the writing I started in high school won't get finished, not even TGG which used to be my friggin opus or whatnot, because even though I still love the story I don't know how to write it anymore.
I have stories I love now, too. Stories that I do know how to write, if I could just cross this anxious bridge and start them.