(no subject)
It seems like I've been missing some birthdays around here. mildred_bobbin, rhapsody11, vulgarweed, probably some others I am missing. I must say, it mkes me feel like I'm in good company of the birthday crowd. I wish I had thbue energy to wish you all a happy birthday properly, but I don't, sadly. Maybe it will be at least a portion of the complement I mean if I say I thought of you all kindly when I saw the birthday wishes roll in, and I wished you all good things in your next trip around the sun?
... the rest of this is kind of personal and not all that cheery, but not exceptionall dark, I don't think. So I hope the three birthday girls and everyone else won't feel obliged to read any further. In fact, I'll put in a cut.
Lately, work's been pretty much dominating life. It's not that it's particularly bad, just entirely too much to get done. It's easily 9-10 hour days on average and longer than that when things just don't get done. I had another batch of superbills dropped on my desk today from the doctor's visits, which is a reasonable part of my job except again they were lacking the ICD9 codes. That means another 2-3 hours of looking through notes and tracking down the correct codes, which means at some point I'm just going to have to either work from home after a full day or stay thereuntil 9:00 because the days are quite full just running the clinic and doing my normal tasks. If it were appreciated or even noticed, I expect it would feel quite a bit different. As it is, it just feels like I'm tapped out and have nothing left to handle things that take a bit of a longer view. And I do see places where we could do things better, incredibly so - I just have no time or energy to take that initiative, and even resist it when I'm asked because it feels like "extra."
Which means I don't feel like a very nice Marta these days. I complain constantly to anyone who will listen, which isn't a person I ike being but seems the only way I know to ask for help. Arguably worse, I found out that a coworker is pregnant, and my first thought was panic, that now there was no way I could ask her to take on things I didn't have time to handle. I don't like being this person, at all. I just want to do my work, eave at a decent hour, and go read for a bit inmy park, maybe watch some Doctor Who or listen to Cabin Pressure. Or even write. I miss that, and have an idea for a fic I'd really like to work at, a kind of epistolary exchange between canon Holmes and Adler. It would arguably be slash, but not explicit, really about the precise nature of Adler's scandalous past (that contralto bit in Bohemia is really interesting!) and about whether other kinds of scandal are worth risking in the wake of 1895. I think it could be fascinating if done well, and I fancy I could do it well.
The trouble is I have no time and energy to put to it. No time for fun. Part of that's working full-time and then some, but I think it's also feeling emotionally tapped out. It just feels like there's this unfairness at work, even if there's not, and the unfairness eats away at me. As does this idea that my time and life have less meaning or validity or whatever because I'm not rushing home to take care of kids or be with a boyfriend. Even the reading in the park thing, one person said that could be good because I'd find a boyfriend just sitting there and being around people. I think that's feeding a lot into my reaction to K.'s pregnancy: it felt like it had to excuse her from work at some point that would inevitably fall on me, because how could it not and that could be a good thing, whereas me wanting to take more time to write was just flat-out self-centred.
In a lot of ways, though, things are better. I'm feeling more of a proper wanting, even imagining specific plot bunnies in detail like the Irene Adler thing. And I'm doing more things for myself, even if it's just reading a chapter or two of fanfic on a park bench as I'm coming home. Today, I stopped at McDonalds for an ice cream sundae and french fries, which is really really bad for you but so delicious (something about the salt and sweet together), just because I'd survived the day and wanted a treat.
... the rest of this is kind of personal and not all that cheery, but not exceptionall dark, I don't think. So I hope the three birthday girls and everyone else won't feel obliged to read any further. In fact, I'll put in a cut.
Lately, work's been pretty much dominating life. It's not that it's particularly bad, just entirely too much to get done. It's easily 9-10 hour days on average and longer than that when things just don't get done. I had another batch of superbills dropped on my desk today from the doctor's visits, which is a reasonable part of my job except again they were lacking the ICD9 codes. That means another 2-3 hours of looking through notes and tracking down the correct codes, which means at some point I'm just going to have to either work from home after a full day or stay thereuntil 9:00 because the days are quite full just running the clinic and doing my normal tasks. If it were appreciated or even noticed, I expect it would feel quite a bit different. As it is, it just feels like I'm tapped out and have nothing left to handle things that take a bit of a longer view. And I do see places where we could do things better, incredibly so - I just have no time or energy to take that initiative, and even resist it when I'm asked because it feels like "extra."
Which means I don't feel like a very nice Marta these days. I complain constantly to anyone who will listen, which isn't a person I ike being but seems the only way I know to ask for help. Arguably worse, I found out that a coworker is pregnant, and my first thought was panic, that now there was no way I could ask her to take on things I didn't have time to handle. I don't like being this person, at all. I just want to do my work, eave at a decent hour, and go read for a bit inmy park, maybe watch some Doctor Who or listen to Cabin Pressure. Or even write. I miss that, and have an idea for a fic I'd really like to work at, a kind of epistolary exchange between canon Holmes and Adler. It would arguably be slash, but not explicit, really about the precise nature of Adler's scandalous past (that contralto bit in Bohemia is really interesting!) and about whether other kinds of scandal are worth risking in the wake of 1895. I think it could be fascinating if done well, and I fancy I could do it well.
The trouble is I have no time and energy to put to it. No time for fun. Part of that's working full-time and then some, but I think it's also feeling emotionally tapped out. It just feels like there's this unfairness at work, even if there's not, and the unfairness eats away at me. As does this idea that my time and life have less meaning or validity or whatever because I'm not rushing home to take care of kids or be with a boyfriend. Even the reading in the park thing, one person said that could be good because I'd find a boyfriend just sitting there and being around people. I think that's feeding a lot into my reaction to K.'s pregnancy: it felt like it had to excuse her from work at some point that would inevitably fall on me, because how could it not and that could be a good thing, whereas me wanting to take more time to write was just flat-out self-centred.
In a lot of ways, though, things are better. I'm feeling more of a proper wanting, even imagining specific plot bunnies in detail like the Irene Adler thing. And I'm doing more things for myself, even if it's just reading a chapter or two of fanfic on a park bench as I'm coming home. Today, I stopped at McDonalds for an ice cream sundae and french fries, which is really really bad for you but so delicious (something about the salt and sweet together), just because I'd survived the day and wanted a treat.