Seems like every time I sit down to write lately, nothing comes out, and the only stuff that bubbles up in my head is bad, very bad.
Work is a nightmare lately. I come home every night feeling completely deflated and exhausted. I take a few minutes to myself beside the closet or in the bathroom to sob my helpless little stress sobs but I suck it up quick before the other half notices what I’m doing. Tonight I was so fucking busy and frazzled that at one point my brain seized up and I thought I was having an aneurysm. And when I realized I wasn’t, I got a little annoyed because a deadly aneurysm would have solved all my problems. And I came home and noticed that my nose was bleeding, and I was all FINALLY, RELIEF. That is not a healthy thought to have, but I am so unbelievably burned out that there are nothing but apocalyptic scorched-earth visions in my head. I feel like a hamster who’s tasked with powering an oxygen machine but who is also expected to solve complex and very, very stupid personnel conflicts and figure out scheduling issues while running at top speed to keep humanity alive, and then some asshole just keeps throwing dirty socks at me, one sock after the other, some with really stupid grammatical errors printed on them, until I am trying to run on my little wheel under a heap of smelly-ass, questionably worded socks. I guess I can’t really get it all out here, which is a real bummer, because so much of my ongoing shit mood (and my God what a shit mood I’ve been in for a month now … okay maybe two months) is tied up in my work situation and oh how I would love to vent to you, dear internet, just to get it out of me, just to let there be a bloodletting, just to indiscriminately distribute the suckage like so many little bits and pieces of subprime mortgages. But I don’t have the energy to deal with the repercussions (although it turned out OK for Dooce, holy shit) and instead will click absentmindedly through job listings on the internet and wince when that meager beam of hope that had shined within me gets snuffed out entirely.
Oh wait, there it goes. Hurf durf.
But seriously. I can write, edit, take pictures, blog, make pretty layouts, work on deadline, work alone, work on teams, multitask, talk like a pretentious fuck about typography and white space, make semi-funny jokes about … all sorts of stuff. I could be an asset. I do not want to be 29 years old and in a career rut, working nights and weekends for the rest of my miserable life, having to take a vacation day if I ever want to do something mundane (like go to a movie or see a concert or have dinner with a friend) on a Saturday, constantly battling against the Powers That Be to have my pragmatic voice heard and respected when I care enough about an issue to speak up. Shit rolls downhill and lately I am working at the bottom of a hill and I am drowning in shit.
Something’s gotta give.
Fairly sure it will be me.
I know exactly — exactly! — what you’re talking about. Minus the nose bleed. In the past, that’s when I would start a new project to take my mind of the uber-ridiculous, kill-me-now-itude of the full-time gig. And now I have at least half a dozen little projects and they’re getting annoying and time consuming; evidently that wasn’t the solution. But if you find it, let me know. Until then, I’m going to try to distract myself with something shiny.