Also I have a stiff neck.

I hate winter.

I hate winter and I hate job searching and I hate dating and I will be cold and alone and in a job I hate forEVERRRRR.

UGH.

Haaaaaaate.

In which I make up for not blogging by rambling for a very long time, which is obviously everyone's favorite style of blogging

Well, it's a new year, and it's been almost exactly 4 months since my last post.

I was sick in bed for a few weeks in October, then, since Halloween, I've been working on grad school apps like crazy (as most of you know).  It's felt like a 2+ month long exam week.  Barf.  But I'm finally done with the hard stuff -- research, writing sample, etc. -- and am just uploading, submitting, and paying schools absurd amounts of money for the privilege of letting them decide if they feel like rejecting me. Yay! 

The crazy thing is that through this process and through a little more talking to those of you who already have PhDs, I've decided I don't really want to go to grad school if I do get in.  So much incredibly miserable work (working on my writing sample reminded me I really don't like writing very much), with so little chance of reaching my ultimate goal, and I'm not sure it's actually a goal I'd even want if I got it:  even more incredibly hard work, stress, and busyness; not much free time or time for art or a family; dealing with ...students!  Ew.  So I'll probably stay in publishing.  I'm very glad to have at least come to some sort of decision regarding what I want to do -- it's been about 10 years in the making -- but I do wish I'd managed not to waste the holiday season and almost a thousand dollars on apps and sending out GRE scores figuring it out.  Realistically, I think that's the only way I'd have come to that solid a conclusion, but... *sniff* Christmas.  Savings.  Both... gone...........

Plus, now I'm in a bit of a pickle.  I'm looking for other publishing jobs; I've applied to one in Seattle I really want.  But if I do get into a grad program and by that point haven't gotten a new job I like, do I stay at Current Workplace in my current dead-end job, or do I go get a masters in the hope that it will help me achieve a better position in publishing, risking that I'll end up critically unemployed when the masters is over?  Woe.  In the meantime, I'm going to research what I should really be doing if my ultimate goal is, say, an acquisitions editor position or something.  

But either way, I have no idea where I'll be in seven months, which is disconcerting.  Roomie!K bought a condo with her boyfriend and will be moving out, and I'm not sure what the situation is with, uh, other-Roomie!K.  New Roomie.  Craigslist Roomie.  Who has been great, by the way.  My apartment's a fun place to live, and everyone's really friendly and good about being considerate and pulling their own weight.  It's a good situation -- too bad it isn't going to last very long.

In other news, I'm taking another pottery class. :)  I actually took one in November when all my grad school app work was ramping up, which... maayy not have been the best decision?  It was a raku class: raku is a relatively newly developed pottery technique which involves treating your pieces with certain kinds of glazes, taking them out of the kiln when they're orange hot, then enclosing them in metal containers with combustibles like straw or newspaper so the flames will either stain the pieces with smoke or leech certain chemicals out of the glazes and give you a coppery or metallic finish.  It was interesting, but I was really stressed and didn't technically have time for it.  Unfortunately my teacher won't be offering it again til next fall, and again, who knows where I'll be, so I decided to go for it.  It was a bit overwhelming, but interesting.  I'm back on the potter's wheel for this class, and it's tons of fun, and more relaxing.  

The pottery class and the fun, supportive roommate social atmosphere, together with almost having my apps completely done, are helping keep my mood up, and I just had a legitimately relaxing weekend for the first time in forever.  It was both relaxing and productive, which is the best kind -- I got tons of laundry washed and put away, I hand-washed some scarves and painted my toenails, and I got my room semi-straightened, the junk on my bedside dresser put away, a few things organized in the bathroom, and my purse cleaned out.  I also ran a few errands, getting my watch battery replaced, picking up a couple plain long-sleeved tees for layering, and I bought new slippers, too, which are practically perfect in every way.  (Much as I loved the pink bunnies R!Kim gave me when my old ones went kaput, these are a bit more practical and, well, harder to trip over.  Minus points for not scaring Gracie as much, though.)  It was so good to just shut myself in my room with my music and straighten things, or even just sit still for a bit.  The roommates, who used to reliably be gone all weekend every weekend, have been around a lot more this winter, as have their boyfriends, so it's been a full house lately.

Also, R!Kim's boyfriend decided for whatever reason that he was interested in watching the BSG miniseries this weekend, which was pretty much the frosting on my cake.  Can a weekend get any better?  

I just started reading Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking, which, although I'm not very far into it, has already been an empowering read.  It's good just to be reminded that just because you don't like meeting new people, going to loud parties, dating, or promoting yourself to businesses, doesn't mean there's something wrong with you.  It's a good read so far.  Also, people keep recommending it to me, which, at some point you start wonder about what that says about how you come off.  Holly, you really need to read this book about introverts!  It made me think of you!  Hmm.

Maybe now that life's not too crazy, I'll actually be back on here again after not too long.  I need to get back into a regular running schedule again (yay!), which will take up a lot of time, and I'm trying to promise myself more down time like last weekend, since it was so restorative.  And I need to see people, too. :) So we'll see what happens.  

Have a good January, people!  :)

Bullet points!

• We're still in desperate need of a roommate, and it looks like we're not going to find one and are going to have to move.  I'm very disappointed about this -- I love our apartment -- and I'm a little irked with RoomieJ for giving us so little notice about moving.  On top of this, I'm not invited to the wedding, but I am invited to the bridal shower/bachelorette party(???), which is just... weird.  I'm not offended, because I know J____'s a little odd like that and wants to keep the wedding very small, but it's weird, and I'm just really frustrated about the apartment situation.
  
  
• I started a clay class.  It is amazing.  I want to be a potter.  Can I just make pots and not worry about anything ever?  

Summer update

Well, it's been a good summer so far.  Lots of good news from friends -- jobs, apartments, engagements.  Lots of good social time, lots of ice cream and fresh fruit from the farmer's market, and I've been getting outside a lot the last few weeks learning to canoe, which has been really nice.  Haven't gotten as much done on the grad school applications front as I'd have liked quite yet, but panic mode's about to set in, and then I'll be flailing about getting everything done at once, which is how I work best anyway.  It's still my goal to be moving on from Workplace a year from now.

The parents' dog has arrived, and I like him a lot more than I expected.  He's a sweetie, and how irresistible is this face?:

Benji, with chipmunk

He likes to take my dad for walks:

Walk this way.

He also likes to bark at light fixtures, he does tricks for ice cubes, he's not very smelly, he's super cute, and he seems particularly affectionate toward me but doesn't jump up or drool on me, which is nice.  

They won the jackpot, dog-wise.  :)

Conclusions

So I had a nice long, depressing, navel-gazey post about current events and so on most of the way typed up last week, and decided to scrap it.  Just writing it had exorcised some demons, and you people don't need to share in the depressingness, amirite?  You're welcome.

Suffice it to say that last week was kind of rough on a number of levels -- national news items, local flooding and weather, I had a bad day at work, I read a couple of really depressing articles, I was in the middle of a very depressing book -- and I've decided to make a couple changes.

a) I will be trying to take a hiatus from news (or "news") articles that exist solely to inform its readership that the world is in fact an even more horrible place than we previously realized.  If someone links to an article that looks interesting, before clicking on it, I will stop and ask myself: Will reading this article actually change my life or point of view in some way for the better?  If not, how crucially important is it that I know about this in order to be a responsible, informed citizen?  If it is informing me about a problem, how critical is it that I know about it, how critical is it that I know about it right now, is it a proven problem or just latest unproven theories and findings blown out of proportion, and, most importantly, is there something I will be able to do to fix it?  If the answer's negative, I won't be reading it.

b) I'm backing away from facebook again.  I won't be deactivating it this time (Kathleen finally had her behbeh yesterday and I needs my updates), but I'm going to leave it logged out and try to only stop in a couple times a day.  I'd slowly started getting sucked back in until I was about up to my previous level of emotional involvement, and I need to nip that in the bud.  (This probably won't actually interfere with my interactions with most of the people reading this [all two of you] since I have you in a separate list I can check, and you rarely, if ever, say things that upset me.)

In general -- and this isn't just about last week, it's been coming on for a while -- I've decided that while trying to stay as up to date and informed as possible is all well and good, mental health is more important.  Unfortunately, "news" these days is I think formulated on some level less to keep you informed and more to keep you worked up.  Fox News and MSNBC are the obvious examples, but I think it's more subtle and pervasive than just those two -- I think a far smaller percentage of what comes our way masquerading as "news" actually qualifies than we realize.  I'm pretty sure I'll be well informed enough without clicking on every article that comes my way, or by wallowing in issues I already have set opinions about; the big, important news items gradually make their way through to me without my trying anyway.

Because, frankly, the extent to which my daily mental life has been filled with problems and conflict that I have absolutely no control over has left me in an unhappy and, I think, unhealthy place, and I need to start taking better care of myself.  I'm not going to start ignoring the news altogether, obviously, just try to keep it at a reasonable level.  I don't know how successful I'll be in enforcing these changes, or how successful I even really want to be, but I'm going to try to at least distance myself a little bit.

(That said, I love talking about politics and current issues with you guys -- our conversations are a very different experience than what I'm talking about.  So don't feel you suddenly need to censor yourselves around me or anything.  And this isn't so much a public announcement of Things People Need to Be Aware Of, anyway -- I'm just typing out my thoughts.)

In other news, the dog fence is in at my parents.  It's horrible.  It looks like the entire back of the house is in prison.  I mean, fucking hell.

Foiled.

Aw, dammit, my mom found the printer already. Nuts.

Keepin' busy.

So I'm coming around on the dog, a bit, and on the fence my dad's just committed to having built to create a dog pen around the back of the house.  I'm still not crazy about that last part, and, depending on how it looks, I may have it taken down again someday assuming I'm able to inherit the house in however many years.  The back stoop, its view, and the way I used to spring off it to run outside to play are a big part of the house for me, but at least my dad's trying very hard and spending a fair amount of money to try to make the fence look good.  And if the dog's not a big digger, maybe I'll plant perennials along it or something.

Speaking of the house, my mom's sister and 18 yr old son are coming to visit for the first time since the son was in diapers, and, needing only such an excuse, I spent most of the weekend out at my parents' cleaning the shelves in my old bedroom.  I'd left them in good shape when I moved out, but years of dust and the cats wreaking havoc really paid their toll.  In addition to the cats batting stuff around and knocking things onto the floor, my mom had started to erect small barriers in ineffectual attempts to keep them away from the most attractive items, and eventually she'd even taken a couple of my larger college paintings and propped them in front of the shelves, which, while failing to keep the cats out, did make it so that my parents couldn't reach and rescue anything that fell.  Then, of course, my dad had started storing crap in front of it all.

So, basically, after tunneling through my dad's book bags, empty shoeboxes, forgotten books and magazines, and various other stored items, and after removing the paintings and finding a place for them in the basement, I was confronted with an almost solid mass of my favorite stuffed animals all smushed and held together on the floor by a mix of dust bunnies and cat fur.  I dusted everyone off, said hello, and proceeded to go through each shelf, dusting and deciding what to throw out, donate, or keep.  My mom kept me company, dropping anvil-sized hints about once every hour reminding me that I was under no circumstances not to take my old college printer with me when I left.  (Joke's on her -- it's on the bottom shelf hidden behind a board game.  I'm waiting to see how long it'll take her to notice.)  Everything looks gorgeous now -- I even polished the wood -- and my dad is forbidden from storing anything directly in front of the shelves ever again.  (We'll see how well that works.)

The best part is I ran into a bunch of old printed emails from approximately 1999, mostly from Catherine, including her invitation (written entirely in rhyme) to the birthday party where we all went to see Mystery Men.  I'll be scanning some of the best of these when I get a chance.

And, inspired by all this, my dad has started working out ways to better arrange the furniture in there (it looks kind of awkward right now).  They bought a twin-sized foldaway a few years ago, which, frankly, is just too big for the space, but I think we've come up with a way for things to fit better, and I'm pretty excited that my old room might start looking nice again. :)