Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Holiday, Schmoliday

It's only a few days after Thanksgiving, and I'm already sick to death of Christmas.

I can deal with the decorations in all the stores, but do they have to play Christmas music now? Even the local Classical station, though they have a separate online channel just for Christmas music, has let the stray chorale and little bits of The Nutcracker loose already. It's especially irritating that so many Christmas songs are about snow and cold, while outside it's sunny and warm. Irritating, I tell you!

You have heard (or rather read) me complaining about my family Christmas tradition before (and if you haven't, check the archives to your right), and this year I face it with even more dread than usual. For some reason, the very idea of doing the exact same thing in the exact same place and the exact same way fills me with a sense of loathing that is almost physical. I cringe at the thought of the coming festivities.

Or maybe I'm just cringeing about my birthday. Exactly thirty days from now, I will turn forty. I'm not especially bothered by it, or at least I don't think I am... maybe I'm just supressing it, and it's coming out as a hatred for Christmas. But I've been practicing for forty all year, I should have gotten a handle on it by now.

Either way, I am straining against the desire to run away, to spend the next month holed up in a motel in Pocatello, Idaho.

But I won't, of course. The Grandmother needs my help putting together the family's labor-intensive traditions... cleaning the house, decorating the tree (a hateful epic of its own), helping bake pies and stuffing and yams, it's just endless.

So anyway, what else is going on? I've hit a speed-bump in the novel, I wrote a part of a chapter that I think sucked balls, and though a faithful reader gave me a very helpful critique, I need to expand the chapter considerably... and I'm not sure how. It requires the development of characters who are very vague and shady in my mind, so not only do I have to write the development, I have to develop the characters first.

I've also stopped taking mood-stabilizers. The last one I tried, Abilify, didn't do much of any good; I caught more than my share of side-effects (constipation, akathasia, waking up every two hours all night long, sexual side-effects, and something called urethral resistance syndrome that made it difficult to pee) and wasn't getting over my demophobia or losing weight... it was instead making me sad and logey. My doctor recommended that I try upping my dosage of Prozac to counteract that effect, but all that did was make me incredibly grouchy and unhappy. So I stopped taking the stuff altogether, and I feel a lot better.

I don't know what to do about the issue of manic episodes and preventing their occurrence... my doctor has been singing the praises of using Omega 3 fish oil capsules to help control bipolar disorder, and so I guess I'll try that again... I tried it for a while, and I had the most nasty-tasting burps... fish oil tastes just exactly as bad as you think it would. But nasty burps aren't as bad as constipation, akathasia, poor sleeping patterns, and all the rest. We shall see.

So I guess that's all that's going on in my life these days. I'll let you know if anything exciting happens. Cheers!

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

The Boring Bore of Boredom

I don't quite know what to do with myself these days. I'm so bored at work that I'm having difficulty functioning. I mean it's nice to have steady work to do, and it's nice that the work isn't too difficult. But it's so barely bearable in its boringness that making myself do the work is sometimes very difficult.

It's all so repetitive and featureless: take the file apart, scan the file, save the scan to the provider's subdirectory, put the file back together, get another file. It's endless and tedious and makes me want to cry sometimes.

I've tried reading the files, but that's not very entertaining. I've tried seeing how many files I can do at once, but after one or two I want to slit my wrists. I listen to music while I'm doing the work, and when a good song comes on I bop around and even dance a little, but that doesn't really help with the central problem.

I have a feeling, however, that my problem is one of acceptance rather than of functionality. I mean, my last job wasn't a thrill a minute, either, but I managed to enjoy it a lot more than this one. I think the problem is that I haven't learned to accept this job at its most basic level, I am resisting it. And that resistance is what I have to overcome. I just don't really know how.

Speaking of which, though, I guess I'd better get to work, since they're paying me and all. Take the file apart, scan the file, save the scan to the provider's subdirectory, put the file back together, get another file. What could be more fun?