I am not going to cry tonight because I have work to do, damn it.

[apocalypsos]

However, this is one of those times where I feel like regardless of how much overtime I work (and if they're offering, I'm taking it -- I enjoy what they've got me doing, and even if I don't have another day off until March I'll go with it), I'm still never going to catch up with my bills to the point where I can just buy something nice and expensive just for ME again.

I'd like to replace my MP3 player (haven't picked up a decent one since right before I bought my car), I'd like to pick up a new laptop (I love my netbook, but I'd like a dependable full-sized brand-new computer with room to grow), I'd like to buy myself an eReader (*grabbyhands*), but at the rate I'm going I feel as though all that overtime I'm working is just going to end with me grateful to buy groceries, as per usual.

And I only JUST latched onto a story idea that wants to be written. That's sixteen days this year of fumbling for stuff to write and stressing out because books can't edit themselves and my muse fucked off to find a more functional writer to annoy.

Also, my cough has settled quite nicely in my lungs, which means me hacking up phlegm constantly.

Ugh, I don't know. In the grand scheme of things, there are obviously people far worse off than I currently am, and I'm grateful for what I do have. On the same token, I'm having a defeated very nothing-I-do-matters moment right now, and hopefully maybe just venting about it will take a load off my shoulders, although I seriously doubt it at the moment.

Comments

[laughingrat.livejournal.com]

Oh, honey. That's 16 days, it doesn't make you a bad writer. You're a good writer, you're good at sitting down and writing. Being too stressed to write doesn't change that.

Rest and do what you enjoy for a few days, whatever it is. You'll start to get over your cough, maybe, and you'll feel a little better, and soon you'll find yourself writing again.

It's true that if you pour your pay into necessities and back bills, it will be years before you can get anything nice for yourself. It's also not so healthy for you to do that to yourself. Can you put away ten bucks out of every paycheck, say towards the most attainable goal, the MP3 player? (I'm guessing that's the cheapest goal of the bunch.) Yeah, I know ethics insist that you put everything straight towards what you owe, but humans don't tend to function well that way. We gotta have a safety valve.

Wot she sed

[catchmyfancy.livejournal.com]

I've been there ("will I ever get ahead? Will it always be like this? Why can't I buy all the shiny things I want????") and yes, it can seem pretty dark and awful at the moment (esp. as it's winter there and that can really get people down) - but if you put aside a teensy bit of $$ each week, you have some Fun Money and maybe you can get the MP3 player eventually.

I have very great faith in your writing too - I like your stuff and I can't wait till you get something sold and in print. It.Will.Happen. You have an agent-shaped person - that to me says you are very serious and ready to get some decent writing into the marketplace..

I think (especially as it is cold and dark and you sound like you might need antibiotics - can you get some? - and you have officially entered The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul) that you are allowed 16 days to just tread water. Call it a Start-of-Decade-preparation period.

We've never met, but I send you greetings and good wishes anyway.

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

The problem is, those sixteen days are me rolling it back a bit. Because to be completely honest, I've only started one novel that I've actually finished in the past four years. I started GPW when I still lived in DC. Heroine Addiction is the only one I've been able to successfully finish the entire time I've lived in PA.

And the thing with trying to save it every week instead of waiting until I have a larger check to work with at one time is that ... well, it's a lot like that scene in Up where they never actually get to go on their trip because the gutters need fixing or the basement flooded. Every time I try doing that way, the car breaks down or the dentist needs to be paid or ... the car breaks down (something is always wrong with every car I own all the time). And then what ends up happening is that the ten bucks here and there I put on the side ends up buying me groceries for the week or putting gas in my car so I can get to work instead of going towards an iPod or a laptop.

The good news about the overtime I have right now is that I don't really have as much of a problem doing it as I did at my last job. I can work every day they have it if I want, and because it's only an eight-hour shift and an office job, it's very laidback and I can still have a life when I get home.

I just ... UGH, I came home to the shiny new dentist bill yesterday after being at work and doing the math with the overtime for this week and next weekend (if I take it, and I will) and figuring out that as long as nothing new pops up demanding to be paid I should be even with my bills in two weeks. It's like I jinxed myself. Yuck. *headdesk*