Work-Related Injury

I am all alone.

As people leave my office "to pursue other opportunities", my workplace becomes quieter and quieter. Which means I get away with more and more. I've been the only person in my whole block of cubicles for weeks, and yesterday the offices along the wall also emptied. So I've gotten braver about singing along with the songs on my Pandora Radio. It's way fun. But today I got a little carried away today, doing a Muppet dance to Maneater in my chair, and conked my ankle against a metal bar on the stool I use as a footrest. Owie.

Not much else to distract me here. I feel like I should be singing cowboy songs -- just lonesome me and the tumblin' tumbleweed...

Understandably Misused Words

Would it be too obnoxious to complain again about some word mistakes I hear? I'm pretty good about not correcting people, I think, but a girl's gotta vent her grievances somewhere. I even looked these things up, to make sure I wasn't nuts.

1. To quote a T-shirt a friend of mine has, "There is no 'X' in 'espresso.' "

2. Nor is there an "X" in lackadaisical. I think people combine it with lax.

3. There is no hard "C" in et cetera, which means it's pronounced et-set-er-a, not ek-set-er-a.

4. It's not wrong to pronounce the "T" in often, but I find it unnecessary. We don't pronounce it in soften.

5. If you're on guard or cautious, you're wary, not weary. Weary means tired. I think people combine wary with leery.

6. If you're haggling over a price, you're bargaining, not bartering. To barter means to trade without the exchange of currency -- like swapping raccoon pelts for blankets.

So there they are, a few of my little pet peeves. Gotta run, but feel free to add some. And if I got something wrong, well, I'm pretty much asking to be corrected, aren't?

Faceless on Facebook

I done been taken to task by my Mama for not posting enough. I can't argue. I confess, I can't quite figure out how to handle the blog, Facebook, email -- all these things I want to do to keep in touch with people and respond to what they've written, without falling into another legalistic situation where it becomes all pressurized (the pressure coming from myself).

I wouldn't even have a Facebook page if I hadn't been invited to join a group there. I don't think my profile is complete. I definitely don't have a picture up. And I might not have specified my gender, because it seems to think I'm a man. It has been nice to be found by people I haven't been in touch with for years, so that's something cool. I usually accept the games and add-ons people send me, which means that, among other things, I'm a knighted hottie werewolf with the power to freeze people and the beginnings of a vegetable patch that will end global warming.

I should know better than to make predictions about future diligence, but I sometimes think I'd be better at keeping up with online communication if I didn't spend all my working hours in front of a computer, and I wonder if you all would hear more from me if I had work that suited me better. There are vague memories bouncing around my head of my time as a musician, when email was something I looked forward to, and wasn't merely a desperate distraction from, uh, work-related emails. Of course, when I land my dream career, if I'm still just as delinquent as ever, you'll know it's not the job at all; it's just me.

Speaking of which, I've amended by hoped-for job description: Rock-Star Actress Comedian Writer Princess. That last item is new. A bit different from the others in that one must marry into it, but it seems like the surest way to end up living in a castle. So if you run into any Scottish dudes (or lads, I should say) of royal lineage, let me know.

Just don't send them to my Facebook page.

Free Horribleness

Hi, guys! It looks like you can watch Dr. Horrible for free now, because they're showing it with commercials or something like that. So, in case the whole payment thing turned you off last time, here's another shot: http://drhorrible.com/

There's a button for "watch it right now."

Sample lyric, to whet your appetite:
This is his dry-cleaning bill -- four sweater vests!

Tired Girl

I work not with the reading material people buy for pleasure, but with textbooks.
Not with the textbooks themselves, but with the supplements that accompany them.
Not with the content of the supplements, but with the formatting.
And the production schedules:
Has authoring begun yet?
No, that's late. Will that make the supplement late?
Yes, that will make it late.
It's taking a while for the author to answer the copyeditor's queries, too. Will that make it late?
Yes, that will make it late.
I just sent the author some files I found, rather than wait for you to send me formatted ones. Will that affect the formatting?
Yes, that will affect the formatting, and it will make it late, because it will take time for me to fix it all.

Are you bored yet? Falling asleep, maybe? Me, too. Literally. I fall asleep at work. Shhhh, don't tell anyone. You might wake me up.

I start to feel tired on Saturday night, at the thought that only one day separates me from having to return to my job. Most days I don't hate it, but some days I do. And I'm always looking forward to the weekend, when I'll be able to rest. I haven't figured out how much of my tiredness is related to my medical condition (which has improved since the second surgery -- yay!); how much to my lack of inspiration at my job; how much to my lack of physical activity (which my roommate and I will try to change this coming week); how much to the fact that I'm nocturnal, and I won't be well-rested until I'm allowed to sleep past 9am on a regular basis; and how much is my non-physical temperament, which means I'm always more inclined to recline than to jump up and down. Whatever it is, it feels physical, mental and emotional -- the Complete Tiredness Package.

The thing is, I've had worse, at least as far as jobs go. I've done retail, where I was constantly apologizing to customers who assumed that because I was wearing an apron, I must be stupid. I've worked in sales, where the boss liked to call people into his office on a regular basis an yell at them (and I mean yell). I've temped. I've earned much, much less than I do now (which is really saying something). So I haven't been inclined to leave my current job unless I found something fabulous to take its place; I need a benign job to keep the bills paid while I figure out what I really want to do, and this job fits the bill.

At least it did.

This past week, I started wondering if there might be a better interim job, something that could be a stepping stone to the pipe dream. I certainly don't want to pick something arbitrarily, and I'm wary of getting stuck in something that's just good enough to keep me complacent and cause me to stop looking for my ideal. But maybe there's something out there that would be worth smiling about in the morning.

I do OK. It's a bit like math and science in high school were for me: I'm smart enough, and work hard enough, but they sure as heck weren't my strong points. I can get the job done, but it doesn't showcase any of my greatest gifts (except for some people skills). And now that most of my immediate colleagues have left and I'm picking up their work, I find myself being asked on a fairly regular basis to do tasks that I just barely understand. It's like spending all day writing with my left hand. Oh, did I mention that I work with computers all day? Surely the it's only a matter of time before the incongruous pairing of me and computers tears a whole in the universe, creating a vortex into which space, time, and reality itself are sucked and altered forever.

I hope that doesn't result in a new universe in which I'm again asked to work with computers. Then the vortex wouldn't be the only thing that sucked.

Anyway, this isn't to complain. It's just what's going on. In the interest of balance, here's some good stuff about my situation: I love having a salary, with paid sick and vacation days and holidays. I like not having the pressure of having to job-search, especially as I don't yet know what kind of job I'd want to search for. Because my salary has gone up a bit and my rent has gone down a lot, I feel financially comfortable for the first time in my adult life (this is a biggie!).

So yeah, it could all be much worse. Much, much worse.

But I'm still holding out for better.

Smouldering Wick

I am in possession of a book which bears the same name as my blog, albeit with a classy British "u" in "Smouldering." It's in the form of a devotional, which means it's a collection of very short essays, usually less than one page each, and is meant to be taken in small doses rather than read in large chunks.

So far, I'm recognizing the thoughts expressed by Adam Pope, the author, as lessons hard-learned. On the surface, many of his statements appear simple, even obvious, but I know that in my own life it took painful, difficult experience to drive these truths home in my heart. I'm enjoying having these lessons reinforced. And when I run into lessons I have yet to learn myself, I'm confident that they come from a place of experience, even though it's an experience I haven't been through (yet).

Adam's style is unique (or at least unusual enough for me not to have seen it before) in that he writes in the second person, as if talking to himself. It's important to keep this in mind when reading. We're not used to hearing or seeing "you, you" unless it's from a preacher or teacher, someone looking us in the eye or pointing a finger. But these are the reflections of a man wrestling with God, on his knees before God, on his face before God, asking himself honest questions and telling himself truths he doesn't want to forget.

If you enjoy the more serious, contemplative parts of my blog, you may enjoy this book as well. You can check it out here:
http://www.mioomi.com/adampope/