Jenna's House of Idiosyncrasies Version 9.0 // Critical Darling, Commercial Flop

I drove away, looking up at the Cheshire Cat moon smiling down at me, wondering if I would see him again.

This is the thought I had, word for word, driving down the road on Sunday night. This writing thing is sort of a gift and a curse, because you often find yourself narrating your real life as it happens in bombastic and high-handed prose. Even the phrase “bombastic and high-handed” is fairly bombastic and high-handed. That whole sentence was like a snake swallowing its own tail.

The point is, I pretty much spend my whole day doing this, relaying this ongoing commentary back to myself, seeing the words appear before me like a close-up shot of a old fashioned type writer in action. I've been doing this my whole life, and while it has tapered back significantly in the past few years, it still happens a lot. Lately all I've been getting are turns of phrase like this one, barely fit for a bargain bin first novel.

However there is nothing of substance to write about lately. I'm working a ton, and I must admit it is a blast. At least once a day I'm typing or uploading or dragging-and-dropping and it just hits me like a freight train: I love what I do. There was a time when I thought I'd mostly be out of the web business by this age, but apparently I'm just getting started, and the extra cool thing is I'm really fucking good at it.

When I'm not working my brain spins overtime parsing this “he–loves–me / he–loves–me–not” drama, which is like something we've all seen on some network comedy somewhere, young career woman in city, focused on work but looking for love, with generous layers of sexual tension between her and the male lead. Except not as funny as that show you saw, and, unbelievably, more pathetic. They don't ultimately get together because he doesn't love her, and without the Ross and Rachael/Carrie and Mr. Big/Buffy and Angel on–again–off–again mess, the whole thing loses steam.

I'm trying to get that show canceled so I can move something else into that time. Maybe something educational. That would be good.

Each year, we at the house take an intimate look at the last 12 months, in a frighteningly frank way. This is to keep things honest, despite anything else that may have been written. This year it seems more important that ever, because we haven't been checking in as much.

As always, if you think you may be offended by cursing, graphic sexuality, talk about death, destructive relationships, or substance abuse, among other topics, turn away now. Have some kittens.

In addition, if you feel that such talk might ruin your holiday, save the read until after the new year.

And now, on with the show. Read More »

Work is keeping me extremely busy. These days I'm mostly working 10-14 hour days, followed by going to bed early and then getting up to do it all over again. Making calls, responding to emails, doing research, and then some coding. Due to some rather sudden, unprecedented success, I'm having a rather difficult time striking a reasonable work-life balance, and the craziest thing I have done this week so far is singing while making shampoo mohawks in the shower.

Watch out world, I'm unpredictable.

The other fun side effect to having completely overbooked myself is one morning this week, I had an intense anxiety attack, complete with a rapid heartbeat, dizziness, and an entirely overwhelming feeling of despair. I was immediately convinced that I had gone into the wrong line of work, that I was never going to get everything done, that all my clients would end up angry with me, and that I would be sued out of existence. Not that my business would be sued out of existence, but my very person — that I would slowly disintegrate as each wronged party took their pound of flesh.

As you can imagine, this was terrifying. I immediately called my father so he could talk some sense into me. When he didn't pick up on the first try I started crying as if I was trapped in a room with some kind of psychotic killer and no one was answering my call for help.

Thankfully Dad did pick up on the second try, and listened to me rant about my general panic for about 45 minutes. Then I felt mostly okay, and got back to work. The only part that really sucks is that wasn't the first time that happened, and it probably won't be the last.

But hey! At least I'm not running out of work anytime soon.

Me, earlier: “You know you are like the third person this week who has told me that they're working up to a point where they'll want me to work for them exclusively?”

New, souped-up gmail with an inbox at zero (down from at least 200). Today has been a good day.

When you spend your entire work life in your email, this is something worth celebrating.

I'm not feeling all that great, Internet. The past few weeks I've been focused on my own broken heart, and I've been working in an unenthusiastic way, not concentrating as easily or finishing as fast as I have in the past. I also think I was probably due for a little bit of burn out, considering the pace I've been keeping and the stress that never goes away. So I slept a lot (I told some people whose calls I didn't answer that I “took a coma”), I stared at the TV a lot, I smoked a lot.

This week, however, I was ready to pull myself back up and pour myself into my work once more. I got a pep talk from my mentor, who has been through all the same things. Yesterday afternoon, after hitting the proverbial wall trying to make progress on an overdue project for weeks, the universe gave me a break and I was able to start moving forward. I was so excited to be back on track.

Then, the setback. Yesterday evening I had a sore throat and some sneezing, today it has turned into a full blown cold, the kind with dizziness and lightheadedness and permanently chapped lips. I have a headache, I can't breathe, and most devastating, I can't think clearly at all. Right now my mind is a big marshmallow when it comes to tackling the hard techie stuff.

There is something horribly unjust about getting a cold in the dead middle of the summer. On the one hand, it does prove what I was always trying to tell my mother when I was a teenager — that leaving the house with wet hair in the winter is not what makes you sick. On the other hand, why now? When the weather is perfect and people are having parties and my professional queue has been backed up for weeks? Why not in the giant holes of time I had last November or February? In the winter, when it makes sense? That's all I ask.

I know I'm not eloquent today. I'm just grumpy.

My business has been featured in D-Web Magazine, which as I understand it is based in New York. Fancy. The article about me (which is really just a simple Q&A) is here, and my logo is on the front page twice. All at least marginally exciting, one must admit.

Last night I had a dream that I got my old job back. It wasn't a fun place to work anymore. My coworkers all hated me for some reason. The ceilings were much lower and more oppressive than I remembered. I sat with my back to the aisle, where I sat before I was promoted the last time. I clocked in at eight, worked all day with my headphones on, and clocked out at five, not speaking a word to anyone and trying to ignore every one's dirty looks. Last night, this went on for weeks. Everyday was the same. The weather outside was in constantly thunderstorm-like, grey and dark and dusky. My superiors yelled at me constantly and tore me down. I was miserable, and I felt trapped.

However, there was another emotion making a play: relief. Misery or none, I had a steady paycheck again, so I knew I would now be making rent on time and eating on a regular basis. And in this dream, this paycheck was worth my self respect and my freedom.

In real life, I got a few calls from recruiters last week. I don't know what happened, but I seem to be something of a hot commodity suddenly, or at least a lukewarm one. The problem is everything involves permanent positions and relocation and worst of all: going back to work in a cube, with a manager, and all the Office Space like trappings. There would also be a steady paycheck involved.

I have to admit, it's tempting. Quite recently it feels like my priorities have shifted from finding happiness in this life to just plain surviving. Every day it seems like there is a new crisis; I feel like I'm spending all my time catching up with the rest of the world and putting out fires. There is a part of me that wants to go back to working for someone else; I like the idea that there is security there. But you are never secure when you are working for someone else, because you are taking your fate out of your own hands.

I know where my heart is, and I'll tell you why: when I woke this morning, the relief that I hadn't gotten my old job back completely outweighed the relief I felt when I thought I had. I'm broke, and I'm stressed out, but I'm free, and in control of my own future. Even though things are bad now, I have a really good feeling about what's to come.

I didn't get to sleep until six this morning. I had been nothing but exhausted all day yesterday, but when it came time to actually relax, my brain was having none of it. There is way too much crazy bullshit going on in my life lately, and as a result I'm sort of trapped up in my own head all the time.

Ironically enough working — actual problem solving and coding, not this 24/7 hustle I seem to have going lately that consists entirely of solicting — is the one thing that makes me focus on something that is not me. Unfortunately, at the moment, I am not getting enough work, and that is causing a majority of the stress. I'm not sure if that's the correct English professor definition of irony but it's damn close enough for me.

So I finally get sort of unconscious, and I kept dreaming of being trapped in a haunted house with the ghosts of some sick people. I don't mean ill. I mean ill in the head. It was terrifying. I'm pretty sure I woke up about every five minutes, until my empty stomach said “No more!” and forced me awake for good. That was 8:30 this morning.

So here I am, awake and oh-so refreshed on a bright Tuesday. I'm not going to go into specifics but so far today has been nothing but bad news. I'm guessing I have until end of business to turn things around, but lately I don't feel in control. I feel like I'm at the mercy of the universe, and if I believed in God, I would have to assume I'd done something awful and I must be smited. As it is, being a non-believer, I think I'm just running into multiple random acts of badness. Even so, I'm not sure how much more of this I can take.

I have a deadline I have to meet tomorrow morning, but I thought I would take a second to upload some backlogged photos to flickr, just to get them online. In the process of creating the tags, I somehow ended up spending more than half an hour looking for a synonym of “voyeur” with a nonsexual connotation.

I am a world-class procrastinator.

I ended up going with “spy” but I don't like it. It's too dry, not scandalous enough. On the other hand, while I can use words like “voyeur” in prose and can be mostly confident the context will prevail, I don't think I should be tagging photos with a word that brings up nothing but adult content in a google search. Just saying.