Holiday hangover

Quote of the Day:

The Pussycat Dolls do not represent feminism. It’s consumerism appropriating the rhetoric of feminism to sell sexism to young women.

Courtesy of thefword.org.uk

I’m not actually hungover – the title refers to my inability to concentrate on work after my week off. I’m on my fifth coffee and it doesn’t seem to be helping. I’m also worried about my cat who is having lung tests today.

The clocks changed so we have evenings again. Like any change I am desperately hoping it will stimulate productivity. One day I will accept that only I can change my activity levels but today is not that day.

Fails and Wins

So I have failed to blog for a long time. That’s quite a big fail. Did you miss me blog? I missed you.

I’ve been busy with NaNoWriMo. Ultimately that was a Win, both because I actually won the challenge and because it made me write a whole book-length piece of book that I was kind of afraid to do. I miseried my way through the month, moaning incoherantly at the laptop and refusing to enjoy the beauty of creating life. I also failed at life for the whole of November and let my partner do all the cooking and chores. I owe him. When it looked like I might bail out at the 95% mark he threatened to burn my most treasured possesions – I love him.

I’m a little bit excited about my novel. There is a huge amount of work to be done on it. But it does exist. No novel written by Gwendolyn B Virginia existed before. This pleases me. I am planning to spend six months editing and revising it to make it a little more beautiful. Then I’ll stand back and see what I’ve got.

In the mean time I just survived the second round of redundancies at work. Which is cool for two reasons: a) I’m not out of work right before xmas and b) it means despite being the least experienced I’m one of if not the best on my team (from a dozen it’s now been whittled down to three). It also sucks for two reasons: a) I now have no one to sit next to on the train and b) I have to work reception one day next week. This has been stressful and I am now going to be even more careful with my money. I’m sure that will be a piece of piss during the most expensive month of the year…

Sweet Dreams are made of peaceful lunchbreaks

So maybe it will only annoy my boss to see me procrastinating online when I actually have work to do, and when it’s not lunchtime. Apart from now when she’s messaging me about it :s

I’ve been gearing up in a writerly sense for a new project called “Sweet Dreams” – we’ll see how that goes.

Oh, and kitty is sick. sadface: both for her illness and me having to clean it up at 4:30am.

Excuses excuses

It is so hard to work with a head full of smut. I’ve been researching since I heard a certain women’s magazine takes open submissions for sex stories. After a fasle start I’m almost ready to start writing. You can appreciate how hard that makes it to concentrate on consultancy services.

I’m also excited because my friends are coming to stay for the weekend *yay*

Your favourite kind of post

I know how much you love to read about dreams. I don’t often remember dreams but the one I had this morning was so vivid it felt true. I dreamed it was the day before I was going to go into space, a special privilege for having discovered a comet. I was staying in a large school-like complex but like most people there too excitedto sleep the day before the big event. I was nervous about having to spend so much time in so small a space, afraid I would get claustrophobic with no way of stepping out to calm down. It was a special night too, midsummer, but it didn’t get darker than the warm glow of dusk despite being three in the morning. It added the magic of anticipation.

Imagine then my disappointment when I woke up with a cat on my bladder and remembered my real job was in an office next to a concrete ringroad.

Meritocracy

Amendment: did I say “demotion” in my last post? I meant redundancy. Sigh.

Still, not me. I’ve had my official debriefing with heavy emphasis on the “none of this was personal” aspect and detailed description of how all our work has been assessed on various catagories for the last few months. It is reassuring to know that I am working in a meritocracy, as any workplace should be. It means that web use and desk naps are not taken into account, just the quality of the work we produce. Strangely the changes, scheduled for Oct 1, will create an almost total gender balance in our part of the office from the existing mostly male writing team with female project managers. I don’t know if this will make any difference. Probably not. Personalities are far stronger than gender characteristics, but there are some people here of very limited understanding.

Since most of the housefolks moved out me and partner have been spending more time in each other’s pockets. I find this interesting because although we’ve been living in the same house for 2 years we’ve only just started formally sharing a room and with our only other housefolk little more than a cackle at the top of the stairs it is much more like living alone as a couple. A final stage of adjustment/trial of if we could or should live together. So far we have spent half this time with me ill and him nursing me. At the moment we are still in the transition phase, one night we couldn’t think of anything to do and moped about, last night we were full of giggles and ate noodles in bed while watching DVDs. I’m sure it will balance out.

An interesting thing that came up while watching said DVDs was a discussion about American dating practices as represented on TV. I was wondering if the multiple dating concept was as prevalent as TV makes out of if it’s a middle class urbanite thing, and partner said he didn’t like the idea at all and preferred the “once you ask someone out that’s who you’re dating” method, aka the British method. I told him that that was just a part of our culture to think that way and he looked concerned. I’m sure to him it feels as natural as cheese on a pizza but it is just a concept of our particular society. I think his concern was that I might believe that and want to date someone else. I do believe it, but I am quite happy being monogamous with him. Meritocraticly I believe he justifies this choice.

The ground is falling away

You will be pleased to hear that I am not scheduled for demotion, unlike a third of the people in my office.

The cushy job of minimal work that made me so bored I started this blog looks like it may be coming to an end soon – to be replaced by what you ask? More of the same, as far as I can tell, just much more of the same old same old.

I think I’m going to re-read all my books on plotting.

Writer’s block?

Sounds oh so melodramatic doesn’t it? I want to write – something. I haven’t decided what. I was trying to sketch out some plot ideas this morning and no matter what kind of events I try to wedge in the over all plot petered out pretty quickly. I want to develop progression. That will be of course be easier once I’ve decided what I want the story to be about. Gah. Such a brain fug. Strong urge to retreat to coffee shop. In fact I think someone in the office did earlier, out of frustration at having no work on.

Is this real or am I still delusional?

First of all: did autumn happen yesterday? Did I miss it? It’s just sort of here now, all sharp and chill in the air (thank god no more mugginess).

Second: I take a few days off work and what happens? Major changes are in force: there are going to be reshufflings including “finding people different roles” ie giving them jobs they hate so they’ll quit without having to be fired. They also changed the doorcode so I couldn’t get in this morning o.0

In all fairness we have been coasting along with too little to do for too long. I guess I was hoping/expecting they’d just find more work for us, like they kept saying they would, rather than laying people off, which they’ve assured us won’t happen. I’m pretty sure I’m safe, it’s a good thing I’m actually better at working than I am at slacking, it’s just all so serious all of a sudden. And I can’t afford to lose my job.

Win

Two things of Win: first that they finally got back to me about a shiny new career advancement test at work which I shall be taking shortly, second that apples have come into season and I can now buy British again: screw you Belgium with your icky sour jongereds.