2002-01-07 - 3:55 a.m.
It's 2002, and I'm still here? Thank God.

Okay. The year has turned, the job has been lost, packing has commenced. Not many pluses there; but I'm surviving, right? Pulse ... check. Breathing ... check; a little raspy from the stubborn cold I acquired last week, but present and reassuring. Finances ... Well, sliding towards a definite nadir just now, but the future isn't as bleak as it could be. Hey, that could actually be a description of my entire current life!

I did the Unemployment Insurance application thing on the 2nd, and was told to make my first $$ call on Wednesday, this week. I thought I'd use the trip to Salem to fill out a job application at a place looking for an "Administrative Specialist", and in a nice little coincidence, the office was within easy walking distance from the unemployment place. Apps were due at 3pm and I finished mine up at ten minutes 'till; the lady at the desk didn't seem very impressed with me, but come Friday, I got a call inviting me for an interview. Also scheduled for this coming Wednesday, amusingly enough.

I hate interviews. My hands get trembly, and I have to clasp them together to keep calm. My skin goes all cool with blood loss, and my pulse races. I always feel like there are dozens of spotlights on me, and all my flaws are exposed to view. According to other people, though, I always look focused, bright, and friendly. I guess the automatic Polite Mode I go into during times of stress comes across as cheery and helpful. I sure wish it felt that way from the inside.

The job isn't one I really want, but it's one I could handle, and survive at, while waiting for something better to come along. Also, it pays about the same as my old job, which would stretch a lot farther in the Salem area than the Portland area. Green lights across the board, there. And perhaps, while pursuing this glorified secretary's career, I might be able to free up some brain time for serious writing.

My novel's been eleven years brewing in the back corners of my mind, waiting for enough maturity and experience to properly shape its flow onto the page. I think I could actually do it, now. People always ask me why I haven't done it before, but seriously, I've got a perfectionistic streak a mile wide when it comes to the things I create. If I can't do it right, it's not worth doing, IMHO. But now ... I've spent more than a year writing here; I wrote several hundred pages' worth of manuals for my alma mater; and I put in some serious time during the last few months studying fiction for the structure and flow and style of it. If I'm not ready now, I might as well give it up altogether.

I won't give up. I refuse. I'll just have to try as hard as I can. Giving up never gets you anywhere. Every time you do, something breaks inside, something difficult to repair that will always leave scars, no matter how well you recover. It's like any other spiritual damage; it leaves fingerprints, like a sort of tattoo that only the similarly-marked tend to see, and gravitate towards.

Whenever my mother makes disparaging comments about my friends, I always bring up this damaged-people theory I have, and her eyes skitter to the side, and she makes non-commital half-understanding noises. She hates that word, damaged, and others like it; broken, fragile, scarred. She especially hates to apply it to herself; but she does know what I mean. She knows what it's like. And she says, "I know ... I just hate to see people take advantage of you."

I know what she means about that, too. But as that train of thought heads into depressing territory, I'll decline to purchase a ticket tonight, thank you very much.

I have other subjects to discuss, but the clock tells me it's nearly 4am, and we're taking our first load of boxes Home (capital H, as opposed to home, meaning merely the apartment) in the morning. Ugh. Later in the morning, I mean. So ... I'll write more soon. Hopefully tomorrow. If the apathy of nothing-happening-in-my-life-worth-noting doesn't get to me again. *grin*