cardinalgirl75 | Entries tagged with life and other frustrations

ARGH! Work is as frustrating as ever, and about to get worse. This is my fault because I've allowed myself to be used as a doormat by a couple of people and I'm about to pull that mat out from under them--which will make for a fun workplace, let me tell you. So much for that resolution.

No writing done AT ALL.

Eating healthier is driving me insane, because all I see around me is junk food, junk food, junk food!!

And to top it all off, I'm coming down with either a bad cold or a sinus infection.

Lord, could you please give me a sign or SOMETHING to make me think things will get better? Because six days into this year, I'm ready for it to be over.

Current Mood: cranky
Current Location: the computer desk of blah
Current Music: The Contender--good movie.

Man, time has really gotten away from me. The year's coming to a close soon, and when I look at all I thought I'd get done this year, I've come woefully short of the mark.

A lot of it has to do with adjusting to the new job. It's been harder than I anticipated. For one thing, I lost an hour of productivity a day because I'm at work from 8-5 (I get an hour off for lunch). My routine used to be going to the gym in the morning, catching up with things on the computer, and then spending the rest of the morning until lunch time writing. Over the last year, I haven't had the motivation to do anything outside of read when I get home for the day.

For another, I became obsessed with needing to exercise as much as possible to take off the weight I gained while I was out from surgery. Guess what? It didn't happen. I can't explain what changed over that course of two months where I was recovering, but before I had surgery last November, I weighed 173 pounds. The lowest I've been this year--and that was truly a fluke--was 180. All the exercise didn't do me any good, so I've cut back. Fortunately for me, my weight has not gone up as a result. But my efforts to try to lose the weight put me at the gym for two hours every day--an hour before work and an hour after. Less time to write, less time to keep up with things online.

I could use the excuse that Little Sister is getting married in March, but that insanity is still to come.

I guess the truth is that I wasn't feeling the urge to write, combined with less time to try and force myself to do it.

The good news is, now that I've cut back on the exercise thing, I have more time in the evenings to write. I've been stealing a little time over my lunch hours (which I usually spend with my employees) to get a little bit in. And I've got a very good start on my next story, which as I promised after finishing "Waiting for You," isn't going to be especially angsty after the beginning. I might even sign up for the LuRe Christmas challenge thing, because even though I've dropped to lurker status in that community, I still feel I have something to contribute to it.

For the first time in almost a year, I feel optimistic about my writing. My muse will not desert me again...as long as the cookies hold out.

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Location: in the living room with Ariel

It's too hot to write and I'm not feeling inspired right now. I'm not feeling inspired to do much of anything right now except read Off Balance (Dominique Moceanu's memoir) and eat Chewy Sprees. The former is okay, the latter...not so much.

The audiobook I'm currently listening to is Such a Pretty Fat by Jen Lancaster, which is a hilarious chronicle of her weight-loss struggle. Early in the book, she's having a conversation with her husband Fletch that really hit home with me:

"Now that you’re actually losing weight, you’re completely fixated on body image, and you never were before. Doesn’t make any sense.”

I consider this for a few moments before responding. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s because before I started dieting, I never thought about my weight or what I ate.”

“If you keep obsessing, you’re ultimately going to fail because no matter how much weight you lose, you will never think you’re thin enough. That’s a recipe for unhappiness right there."

I'm afraid of that last statement, because even though I can see I'm in good shape, I still obsess about my diet. I fear that I eat too much. My sister, in an effort to jump-start her own weight loss program at the beginning of the year, downloaded an app to her phone which keeps track of every calorie she ate and every calorie she expended exercising. Naturally, I had to download the app, and even though Little Sister's long since given up on keeping track of her diet, I'm on there every day looking at the numbers and doing my best to keep my overall total on the negative side. Way over on the negative side--I consider it a bad day if my calories used doesn't exceed my calories eaten by at least 1000.

Planning to go out with friends is agony, because I tell myself I'm not going to go overboard wherever we choose to eat at, but I inevitably do. Then I feel guilty about it and fear that I'm going to slide back into my old habits. Once upon a time, I didn't worry about this. In fact, in the early days of my diet, I told myself that it was okay to cheat occasionally because otherwise I was doomed to failure. Not anymore. The more weight I've lost, the better I've done, the more obsessed I've become.

I don't think I'll ever become anorexic--that's just not in the cards. I'm afraid that I'll get to a point where I can't lose any more weight, get frustrated, and give up. I don't want that to happen, but my mindset over the past three and a half years has been to lose weight. How to do I switch from "you need to lose weight" to "you're at the goal line, now you just need to stay here"? I wish I knew.

Current Mood: hungry
Current Music: Law & Order

Well, the good news about my Big Bang story is that the first four chapters are done, and I've got bits and pieces of the next three chapters written.

The bad news is, it's the end of the month, and that means one thing: the paperwork crunch at work begins. It's not that I let my paperwork pile up on purpose. It's just that I had a whole week this month where I had no free time to work on it, combined with very chatty coworkers. I've been spending a lot of my free time at home working on it as well as the free time I can grab at work, and I'm still about a week and a half behind with only a few days to get caught up.

Maybe by next week I'll be able to get back to work on the Big Bang story, but I swear, I'm never getting that far behind on my paperwork again. I don't care what I have to do to get it done--muzzle the coworker, lock myself in an office and refuse to answer knocks on the door--I'm going to keep caught up.

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: the computer desk of industry
Current Music: Law & Order

In college, I took a class about science fiction. I thought it would make a nice change of pace and would allow me to explore a genre I'd never read before. And pretty much never would again--I'm not a sci-fi fan. But one story stuck with me. I don't remember the author or the title (for some reason, I think it might be "The Machine Also Stops"), but what I do remember is that it's about a world that becomes so dependent on machines for everything that the world is thrown into chaos when the machines stop working. Or something like that.

I thought about that story over the weekend, in which my household went without our usual Internet access. Dad tried to work around this by using the Sprint connection on his laptop, only Sprint service is a joke in our neck of the woods, so it was pretty much a no-go. I did very basic net surfing on my iPhone, but AT&T doesn't have 3G here, either--which is why I always feel like throwing things at the screen when I hear them boast about having the best 3G (4G?) service around. But our usual Internet surfing was crippled until this morning, when it was finally back up and running.

In my Reverse BB story, Reid and Luke resort to writing to each other because modern forms of communication are forbidden to them. Having experienced part of this problem myself, I think I'm in a position to better understand how frustrating this can be.

Edited to add: I'll be damned--I was close on the title of the story. It's just called "The Machine Stops." The author? Knock me over with a feather--it's E.M. Forster. Having read a couple of his novels, I never would've guessed he was the author of this story.

Current Mood: grateful
Current Location: in the living room with Ariel
Current Music: Are You Being Served?

So I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I've written 6000 words on my larger Reverse Big Bang story already. Too bad I opted not to write anything more on it today. I wrote on one of my LuRe Bingo stories, but then decided I wasn't happy with most of it. Basically, I wasted an entire day. I guess there's a chance I might be able to use what I wrote for another prompt, but right now, I don't see it and I'm not happy that I wasted the day. I feel lazy even though I wrote, because it wasn't productive.

Maybe tomorrow things will improve on the writing front. I sure hope so, anyway.

Current Mood: frustrated
Current Location: in bed with Ariel
Current Music: Cards vs. Cubs--go Cardinals!!

Sick again. I suspect either strep throat or a sinus infection, because my throat is killing me and my fever has ranged from 99-102. And, of course, this had to happen on the week that I would've had overtime on my paycheck. Life is so unfair sometimes. :(

Current Mood: sick
Current Location: in bed with Ariel
Current Music: Law & Order

( Two steps forward, two steps back... )

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: the computer desk
Current Music: Just Dance 2

( Uh... )

Current Mood: disappointed
Current Location: the computer desk of disappointment
Current Music: Swagbucks TV--I'm saving up for something, but I don't know what

When I said I planned to start my New Year's Resolutions on Monday, I really did mean it. Well, except for the reading thing--I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Sunday, starting off my resolution to read more this year. But then I got sick Sunday night. And spent the entire night being sick. So I spent all day Monday resting instead of going to the gym or doing any writing at all. I guess you could make a case that I stuck to my diet, since I hardly ate anything. And I did get a movie watched--I saw The Help, which I thought was very good.

I hoped to get off to a belated start on Tuesday, but then I got called into work early. Yesterday, I had a staff meeting. And trying to write anything at work is impossible right now because all of my December paperwork has to be in by the end of the week, so I'm working my fingers to the bone getting that finished.

The good news is, I'm finally back at the gym. After two months away, I feel weird only being there for forty-five minutes instead of my usual hour to hour-and-fifteen. I tell myself I'm going to work my way back to that, but right now, I'm afraid I won't be able to. Or that I won't want to. I guess I'll just have to see how it goes, and how I feel.

But the writing...I may have to wait to get started on it next week, since the rest of this week is going to be full of other activities. :(

This entry was originally posted at http://writergirl2006.dreamwidth.org/21012.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Current Mood: frustrated
Current Location: the computer desk

I know there are still a few LuRe BB stories for me to read, but right now I'm not able to read them. I had surgery on Wednesday and will probably not be able to do much more than lie in my recliner for the next couple of weeks at minimum. Taking a very short shower today was enough to do me in for the rest of the day.

I hope I'm better by mid-month, so I can get caught up by Thanksgiving, but the way I feel right now, I just don't know.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

Current Location: at home

I just found out that I lost all the work I'd done on Chapter 26 this morning after a power outage. I'd saved the file, but something happened and file is now corrupt. I can't use it. If I hadn't had what I'd done yesterday backed up, I'd have lost the whole damn thing. But dammit!! I was nearly done with the chapter and now I have to redo the most important part--the part that was the hardest to write!! GAAAAAH!

And I was so optimistic that I'd get a lot accomplished today. Now I feel depressed and I feel like I'll never make my posting date--and actually, I have to have the story finished and beta'd by Oct. 18, because I'm leaving for Vegas on the 19th. Fifteen days to go...I need some cheerleaders. And some high-powered energy drinks to keep me awake. And for real life to quit getting me down by sending power outages and unexpected frustrations at work. :(

Current Mood: pissed off
Current Location: chained to the computer desk again
Current Music: Are You Being Served?