6 to 50 -- 2004
As 2004 began, my life was dire. I was still doing medical billing, still on the shitty phone bank having no-win conversations---the SAME no-win conversation---40 hours a week. I'd leave work and pace the parking lot ranting with frustration---that and fear of having to drive home. I'd get home, eat everything in sight and spend the evening in front of the TV.
My social life was reduced to church, that was about it. I'd quit LARPing and left "custody" of the Camarilla to HWSNBN. Thankfully, I had peeps at work: in addition to getting me a job, she'd gotten ThunderBunny a spot, and 'Bunny had brought Vermonster on board. While we were all working there, we hung out during and sometimes after work/on weekends.
Finally, somewhere around March, I went into the big boss's office and cried and begged to get off the damn phones. I couldn't take it any more, I was coming unglued on a regular basis---I kept a box of tissues at my desk because I was prone to weeping jags---and I needed a change.
It didn't come immediately, but they put me in a cube doing paperwork, and best of all there was no phone in there with me. It wasn't involved work; I was looking at printouts and copies of insurance letters and connecting the dots. This required no more than 15% of my brain; I was able to focus on more than a screen and a phone, and the only way I can describe it is, my brain rebooted.
For the first couple of weeks, I was afraid it was too late. I was kind of spacey, and I kept forgetting things. I'd try to remember who was in a particular movie or TV show, and though I knew I knew it, it wasn't there. I'd try to place a quotation; that wasn't working too well either. I thought I was losing my mind...but gradually it cleared up.
And then...fan fiction to the rescue. I hadn't been writing in years. Little bits of things---character backstories for LARPing, not much more.
It was like looking into a pond, all covered with waterlilies and seeing little flashes of goldfish in the water...little ideas fluttering their fins and trying to get my attention.
A few years before HWSNBN came along, I'd rented Desperado and liked it. HWSNBN rented the sequel, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, and I'd enjoyed it a lot. Mind you, I was NOT a Johnny Depp fan until the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie came out---I thought of him as "that 80s pretty boy with the hair and the attitude"---but something about twisted, tragic CIA agent Sheldon Sands seized my imagination.
I wrote a coda. Then I realized that that wasn't the whole story, and wrote ANOTHER coda---a different 'verse, which term I didn't know in those days. Quite possibly the longest thing I'd ever written up to that time, and I rightly decided that anything that was such a landmark ought to be shared. I looked around, and that's when I found the Pit of Voles.
In short order, I started writing constantly. It was the most productive era of my life. I wasn't distracted as much by email---this was well before I had a following or a f'list---up early to write before work, write during my lunch break*---come home from work and write some more. Not surprisingly, I also lost weight without particularly trying. The scale went back to my pre-HWSNBN weight---about 345---and my mood became bullet-proof perky.
I even managed to say perky during hurricane season---and 2004 was a record year for us. Within six weeks, we had Frances, Jeannie and Ivan. I evacuated to 'Bunny's, and keep busy with my magnum opus, Wisdom's Gate a crossover between Gaiman's American Gods and The Ninth Gate. The added benefit to the hurricane activity was, the office was closed for a solid week, including my 44th birthday.
During this era, I made my first online friend---mojavedragonfly who was also my first beta. I was all over "Johnny Depp" as a fandom---OUaTiM was just the beginning---although I eventually branched out. In a lot of ways.
=======================================
* For the rest of my tenure at the billing service, I went across the street to a church and sat on their steps to write. Even when it was cold and raining. I had nothing in common with the co-workers I was on lunch rotation with---they were all married with kids, and I was definitely the odd woman out.
.
My social life was reduced to church, that was about it. I'd quit LARPing and left "custody" of the Camarilla to HWSNBN. Thankfully, I had peeps at work: in addition to getting me a job, she'd gotten ThunderBunny a spot, and 'Bunny had brought Vermonster on board. While we were all working there, we hung out during and sometimes after work/on weekends.
Finally, somewhere around March, I went into the big boss's office and cried and begged to get off the damn phones. I couldn't take it any more, I was coming unglued on a regular basis---I kept a box of tissues at my desk because I was prone to weeping jags---and I needed a change.
It didn't come immediately, but they put me in a cube doing paperwork, and best of all there was no phone in there with me. It wasn't involved work; I was looking at printouts and copies of insurance letters and connecting the dots. This required no more than 15% of my brain; I was able to focus on more than a screen and a phone, and the only way I can describe it is, my brain rebooted.
For the first couple of weeks, I was afraid it was too late. I was kind of spacey, and I kept forgetting things. I'd try to remember who was in a particular movie or TV show, and though I knew I knew it, it wasn't there. I'd try to place a quotation; that wasn't working too well either. I thought I was losing my mind...but gradually it cleared up.
And then...fan fiction to the rescue. I hadn't been writing in years. Little bits of things---character backstories for LARPing, not much more.
It was like looking into a pond, all covered with waterlilies and seeing little flashes of goldfish in the water...little ideas fluttering their fins and trying to get my attention.
A few years before HWSNBN came along, I'd rented Desperado and liked it. HWSNBN rented the sequel, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, and I'd enjoyed it a lot. Mind you, I was NOT a Johnny Depp fan until the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie came out---I thought of him as "that 80s pretty boy with the hair and the attitude"---but something about twisted, tragic CIA agent Sheldon Sands seized my imagination.
I wrote a coda. Then I realized that that wasn't the whole story, and wrote ANOTHER coda---a different 'verse, which term I didn't know in those days. Quite possibly the longest thing I'd ever written up to that time, and I rightly decided that anything that was such a landmark ought to be shared. I looked around, and that's when I found the Pit of Voles.
In short order, I started writing constantly. It was the most productive era of my life. I wasn't distracted as much by email---this was well before I had a following or a f'list---up early to write before work, write during my lunch break*---come home from work and write some more. Not surprisingly, I also lost weight without particularly trying. The scale went back to my pre-HWSNBN weight---about 345---and my mood became bullet-proof perky.
I even managed to say perky during hurricane season---and 2004 was a record year for us. Within six weeks, we had Frances, Jeannie and Ivan. I evacuated to 'Bunny's, and keep busy with my magnum opus, Wisdom's Gate a crossover between Gaiman's American Gods and The Ninth Gate. The added benefit to the hurricane activity was, the office was closed for a solid week, including my 44th birthday.
During this era, I made my first online friend---mojavedragonfly who was also my first beta. I was all over "Johnny Depp" as a fandom---OUaTiM was just the beginning---although I eventually branched out. In a lot of ways.
=======================================
* For the rest of my tenure at the billing service, I went across the street to a church and sat on their steps to write. Even when it was cold and raining. I had nothing in common with the co-workers I was on lunch rotation with---they were all married with kids, and I was definitely the odd woman out.
.