(Insert String of Creative Expletives Here)
Tired. Really, really tired.
There's not much to say for myself. I had a positively awful weekend attempting to get things done and clean my apartment and managed to get nothing at all done in the process, except perhaps to depress myself further. Mostly trying to clean up for Dad coming to visit at the end of this week (as a sort of birthday thing for him or something like that), but also need to clean up a bit because they're coming to tear out my ceiling the first Monday that Dad is here.
Around a month back or so, I noticed some water stains on my ceiling by my linen closet (I call it that, it might not be) in the general vicinity of where I keep most of my shoes. I'm on the top floor, and it hasn't rained in months, so I figured maybe it was from earlier and I simply hadn't noticed it before. Two weeks ago, I noticed a black spot too large to just be another of my spiders or bugs (besides, my usual bathroom doorframe spider is an albino). It was some kind of mildew or mold. I wasn't happy about it, but I figured I could maybe wait to deal with it, since I was starting boot camp classes at the time and had some work demos coming up. It's now about 1/5 inches across at the widest point, and kind of oblong in shape. So I called to have it fixed.
Now, over the weekend I mentioned this to Kerry, who points out that I've been feeling ridiculously tired and generally out of it this past month... which is apparently a symptom of black mold poisoning :( I did not know this, and was treating this spot as just a spot of mildew. I don't know how to get this tested or if the complex will do so for me, and if it IS black mold, I'm bringing my dad in right when they'll be opening the ceiling and he might get sick from it, too :( Great.
Also, there is a greater-than-fifty-percent chance that I will lose my job within the next week or two, because my project has ended and apparently there's nothing around to pick me up. These days, no project means a pretty swift ejection, given the layoff-happy conditions at my workplace. Honestly, I know my manager is probably trying to find me a place, but sometimes it just feels like he's trying to get rid of me. I get shunted along to wherever needs more work because of the current conditions and the fall of a lot of larger projects that leaves too many fish in the pool snapping at a meager sprinkling of project budgets. All of this has done nothing for my confidence--I'm constantly ramping up everywhere I go, and since I'm never in at the ground stages, I'm the one that is behind in whatever group I work with. I feel like a perpetual idiot, and I never gain much depth anywhere. It puts me in a terrible mindset for interviewing. The project I thought would come to my rescue, an arm of my current project, looks like it won't. I'm back to nothing, and I... just can't do the interviewing thing. I really know I can't.
Today, I got to comb through code I don't understand to find a problem I don't understand, and somehow I got that sorted out and the person actually responsible for the problem helped sort out a solution, except I can't test it because... everything on my system has failed. Somehow, nothing is working anymore and I can't even compile right, which is dumb because I can compile the piece separately, but when I compile it with everything else (or perhaps when other things try to use it) it fails. In new and frustrating ways each time. I also don't have access to the system on which the things I am actually responsible for produced an error. And when we tried it again, it worked, so I can't reproduce the error, nor do I have access to the logs. It's killing me.
Today was so happy when I originally planned it--this evening I have a class scheduled for using silver clay, which is something I've wanted to try out for years (ever since I'd heard of the stuff, really), but before this opportunity, it's been too expensive to justify. Suddenly, now that there is the opportunity right in front of me, I can't remember anything I wanted to try with it. There is no creativity to speak of left in my empty shell. My one chance, and I'm feeling painfully dull and uncreative. It's like my eternally green tomatoes which will never ripen because there isn't enough sunlight; I'm just not bright enough for any decent thoughts to come to fruition.
It doesn't help that I'm also trying to make Dad's birthday card and I have no ideas for that, either. It's already late, and I hope he's not disappointed, but.. there's just nothing here. There's nothing to pull from, no interesting images or sounds or... anything. All of it is grey and blank :(
I've really got to get it together by tonight. Yet I know it's not happening. I feel awful.
There's not much to say for myself. I had a positively awful weekend attempting to get things done and clean my apartment and managed to get nothing at all done in the process, except perhaps to depress myself further. Mostly trying to clean up for Dad coming to visit at the end of this week (as a sort of birthday thing for him or something like that), but also need to clean up a bit because they're coming to tear out my ceiling the first Monday that Dad is here.
Around a month back or so, I noticed some water stains on my ceiling by my linen closet (I call it that, it might not be) in the general vicinity of where I keep most of my shoes. I'm on the top floor, and it hasn't rained in months, so I figured maybe it was from earlier and I simply hadn't noticed it before. Two weeks ago, I noticed a black spot too large to just be another of my spiders or bugs (besides, my usual bathroom doorframe spider is an albino). It was some kind of mildew or mold. I wasn't happy about it, but I figured I could maybe wait to deal with it, since I was starting boot camp classes at the time and had some work demos coming up. It's now about 1/5 inches across at the widest point, and kind of oblong in shape. So I called to have it fixed.
Now, over the weekend I mentioned this to Kerry, who points out that I've been feeling ridiculously tired and generally out of it this past month... which is apparently a symptom of black mold poisoning :( I did not know this, and was treating this spot as just a spot of mildew. I don't know how to get this tested or if the complex will do so for me, and if it IS black mold, I'm bringing my dad in right when they'll be opening the ceiling and he might get sick from it, too :( Great.
Also, there is a greater-than-fifty-percent chance that I will lose my job within the next week or two, because my project has ended and apparently there's nothing around to pick me up. These days, no project means a pretty swift ejection, given the layoff-happy conditions at my workplace. Honestly, I know my manager is probably trying to find me a place, but sometimes it just feels like he's trying to get rid of me. I get shunted along to wherever needs more work because of the current conditions and the fall of a lot of larger projects that leaves too many fish in the pool snapping at a meager sprinkling of project budgets. All of this has done nothing for my confidence--I'm constantly ramping up everywhere I go, and since I'm never in at the ground stages, I'm the one that is behind in whatever group I work with. I feel like a perpetual idiot, and I never gain much depth anywhere. It puts me in a terrible mindset for interviewing. The project I thought would come to my rescue, an arm of my current project, looks like it won't. I'm back to nothing, and I... just can't do the interviewing thing. I really know I can't.
Today, I got to comb through code I don't understand to find a problem I don't understand, and somehow I got that sorted out and the person actually responsible for the problem helped sort out a solution, except I can't test it because... everything on my system has failed. Somehow, nothing is working anymore and I can't even compile right, which is dumb because I can compile the piece separately, but when I compile it with everything else (or perhaps when other things try to use it) it fails. In new and frustrating ways each time. I also don't have access to the system on which the things I am actually responsible for produced an error. And when we tried it again, it worked, so I can't reproduce the error, nor do I have access to the logs. It's killing me.
Today was so happy when I originally planned it--this evening I have a class scheduled for using silver clay, which is something I've wanted to try out for years (ever since I'd heard of the stuff, really), but before this opportunity, it's been too expensive to justify. Suddenly, now that there is the opportunity right in front of me, I can't remember anything I wanted to try with it. There is no creativity to speak of left in my empty shell. My one chance, and I'm feeling painfully dull and uncreative. It's like my eternally green tomatoes which will never ripen because there isn't enough sunlight; I'm just not bright enough for any decent thoughts to come to fruition.
It doesn't help that I'm also trying to make Dad's birthday card and I have no ideas for that, either. It's already late, and I hope he's not disappointed, but.. there's just nothing here. There's nothing to pull from, no interesting images or sounds or... anything. All of it is grey and blank :(
I've really got to get it together by tonight. Yet I know it's not happening. I feel awful.