The Second Week of the Rest of My Life
October has been... unexpected.
The first week of self-employed life was spent almost entirely not doing any of things I'm theoretically employing myself to do. What is was spent doing instead was taking care of mom and rescuing kittens, with a side of going to the last appointments w/ counselors and chiros we'll be able to afford for a bit, because shenanigans in the House of Reprehensibles. Right now all funds are being conserved for mortgage, with occasional dispensations for food and kitten care.
Speaking of kittens, Fluffy got adopted by someone at the vet's office! So he's got a good home now and we're down to three kittens, which has taken a bit of edge off the overwhelmingness of them. Buddha and Dasher are comfortable enough with them that the kittens pretty much have run of the house, although we still put them to bed in the library at night so we can
I should probably apologize for the vehemence in ranting on that subject last week; my mind hasn't changed (except for the factual errors, which I have owned up to since), but it didn't help anything to snarl about it like that. The one-two (three-four) punches of already being stressed and concerned about finances, followed by the shutdown, followed by the kittens, all of which dolloped in the thick gravy of taking care of an elderly parent pushed me beyond my normal tolerance for legislative dumbfuckery and I regret my various digital outbursts.
This past week was a little better, if only because I finally started doing some of the actual work that I left the rat race to do. I finished one commission and I've made some serious headway on a second, as well as doing a lot of groundlaying work for the new Michael Macbeth novel, all of which pleases me.
However, cabin fever is definitely starting to be a thing. I love lythandra and the cats, but sometimes, especially at night after I stop working, I start feeling like the world is collapsing into nothing but the studio I work in. I feel very isolated, much more than I would expect given what an introvert I tend to be. I need people to "talk to," even if I prefer that talk to be in the form of text, but the problem is that it can't just be any talk. It has to have some kind of depth to it, or I end up feeling like it wasn't worth the effort... and let's face it, how easy is it to have deep conversations all the time?
This has always been true of me, it's just becoming more pronounced now that I don't even have the relatively banal interactions of saying hello to the person in the next cubicle over. This is one reason why I wanted to get a laptop to take to Starbucks/B&N/whatever and go work from time to time. Being among people, even if I don't actually interact with them beyond ordering my mocha, is still likely to help. It's just that for most of the past two weeks, even getting out that much has not really been feasible.
There is a bright spot, however, in that I'm having a party of sorts today. Really it's a glorified cookout with the usual gaming group plus a few extras, but it's still more people than I've been around so far this month and I'm hoping we'll have a lot of fun. (I'm also hoping that at least one copy of Card Against Humanity makes it to the house. I need to get myself a copy of that at some point.) With the incessant rains we've had all week, it's not exactly "cookout weather," but it's about the people, not the food. :)
-The Gneech
PS:
The first week of self-employed life was spent almost entirely not doing any of things I'm theoretically employing myself to do. What is was spent doing instead was taking care of mom and rescuing kittens, with a side of going to the last appointments w/ counselors and chiros we'll be able to afford for a bit, because shenanigans in the House of Reprehensibles. Right now all funds are being conserved for mortgage, with occasional dispensations for food and kitten care.
Speaking of kittens, Fluffy got adopted by someone at the vet's office! So he's got a good home now and we're down to three kittens, which has taken a bit of edge off the overwhelmingness of them. Buddha and Dasher are comfortable enough with them that the kittens pretty much have run of the house, although we still put them to bed in the library at night so we can
I should probably apologize for the vehemence in ranting on that subject last week; my mind hasn't changed (except for the factual errors, which I have owned up to since), but it didn't help anything to snarl about it like that. The one-two (three-four) punches of already being stressed and concerned about finances, followed by the shutdown, followed by the kittens, all of which dolloped in the thick gravy of taking care of an elderly parent pushed me beyond my normal tolerance for legislative dumbfuckery and I regret my various digital outbursts.
This past week was a little better, if only because I finally started doing some of the actual work that I left the rat race to do. I finished one commission and I've made some serious headway on a second, as well as doing a lot of groundlaying work for the new Michael Macbeth novel, all of which pleases me.
However, cabin fever is definitely starting to be a thing. I love lythandra and the cats, but sometimes, especially at night after I stop working, I start feeling like the world is collapsing into nothing but the studio I work in. I feel very isolated, much more than I would expect given what an introvert I tend to be. I need people to "talk to," even if I prefer that talk to be in the form of text, but the problem is that it can't just be any talk. It has to have some kind of depth to it, or I end up feeling like it wasn't worth the effort... and let's face it, how easy is it to have deep conversations all the time?
This has always been true of me, it's just becoming more pronounced now that I don't even have the relatively banal interactions of saying hello to the person in the next cubicle over. This is one reason why I wanted to get a laptop to take to Starbucks/B&N/whatever and go work from time to time. Being among people, even if I don't actually interact with them beyond ordering my mocha, is still likely to help. It's just that for most of the past two weeks, even getting out that much has not really been feasible.
There is a bright spot, however, in that I'm having a party of sorts today. Really it's a glorified cookout with the usual gaming group plus a few extras, but it's still more people than I've been around so far this month and I'm hoping we'll have a lot of fun. (I'm also hoping that at least one copy of Card Against Humanity makes it to the house. I need to get myself a copy of that at some point.) With the incessant rains we've had all week, it's not exactly "cookout weather," but it's about the people, not the food. :)
-The Gneech
PS:
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