#yes i'll get over it i always do

[bomberqueen17]

getaway

so it was my 20th anniversary with Dude this past weekend, so I got back from the farm on Saturday and on Sunday we drove to the Finger Lakes and stayed two nights in this.... well it was an inn, and it was just this side of bonkers, and it’s a long story but we definitely admired their ability to walk that fine line of wow this is weird and come up on the but i like it side instead of i gotta get outta here.

Anyway it was really lovely and we had a lovely time and the most important thing was the company, of course, yadda yadda, but I got home on Tuesday night into the worst case of Sunday Scaries I’ve had in a while, and I am just. So full of dread and despair today folks, so full of it.

cut for whining, mostly job-search-related but also existential!

Nothing I do is worth money, no job I’ve ever had has actually wanted me there except as a warm body to grudgingly pay the least amount they could get away with. I have no marketable skills. I can write novels, but not on demand. And really, that’s the problem-- up to 80% of my mind at any given time is taken up with fake things, imaginary worlds and situations, and I can’t focus anyway but even if I could, I wouldn’t focus on the real world, because the real world sucks, and I’m wildly productive at real-world things but not in ways that anyone ever in the history of ever has wanted to pay me for. i’ve done a lot of really skilled volunteer jobs but they are all things nobody is going to pay actual money for.

The only thing I want to do, the only thing I have ever wanted to do, the only thing I have ever consistently done, is write, and the way our economy and culture and publishing system works, that is something I can never be paid money for. I will never earn a living, and I will never even earn more than expenses unless I devote attention I simply don’t possess to marketing and other things, which I cannot do and have no skills in. So that’s out.

But I should be honest: all I’m doing is trying to earn enough paychecks in my life that someone will someday say “Okay you can stop” and let me go write for a while, and that’s not going to happen, so.

Yeah I also keep hoping they’ll find money to pay me with at the farm but that keeps not happening. I needed to find myself a job to do that would provide a revenue stream for them to pay me from, but when I tried to be the flowers person they refused to hire me for that one and hired someone who flaked out instead and this year’s plan for that is apparently none of my business, and now i was trying to be the person doing commercial kitchen stuff but they’re already talking about the people they want to hire for that and i’m not any of those either, and I guess I gotta put on my big girl panties and ask directly but I did that for flowers and the rejection really stung and so I’m not looking forward to that. but it’s better than wishing, i suppose.

I had always idly thought if I finished any of my original novels ever I could put those somewhere and sell them but well first I’d have to find the time, and second, watching joy demorra’s (bibliosphere) posts about how little money Amazon actually gives to her is so demoralizing. I’ll only do that if I don’t actually need the money, jesus christ. meanwhile i’d rather sate my encompassing addiction with fanfic because then i can at least be realistic that it doesn’t pay money. Again, better than wishing.

But I’m just old and tired, and all the frustrations of this job I’ve spent twelve years at being grudgingly paid the least they can get away with, with my poorly-defined job description it’s a nightmare to navigate on the daily, are just piling up extra, and I am so tired of the only things I enjoy and am supported in doing in this world are things that do not actually contribute to my actually having food and shelter. It’s not that I’m trying to do what I love or whatever, I know that’s a fake idea, I’m just so tired that there are so many calls for me to work hard in ways I love, and those have to come out of my own reserves, I pay to do them, and then I have to poorly do a terrible job at a job that dislikes me in order to get any money, to afford to be able to do the things I love that cost money to do, and it’s just frustrating because the things I love are also hard work and I don’t know how to solve that. I’m not even explaining it well! I’m just very tired.

It is all irredeemable whining but when I think too hard about this it cuts into my ability to write; I was making progress FINALLY on the next bit of Fit For Pearls until I got the crushing wave of nothing-I-do-is-valued-by-society ennui, which is no fair. If I’m so thoroughly worthless I should at least be able to write some lesbian porn about it, but I was denied.

Honestly that’s the only thing I need, is enthusiasm for that; I gotta solve my actual real world problems on my own. but i would super not mind a reminder that I’ve come far too far with Ciri and Lu to only come this far.

Though if anyone’s got any good leads on part-time remote work I could to to make ends meet that’d be pretty keen.