Reinventing my life

Well, I guess not reinventing my life, more of a reorganization of my life.

If you've been reading this, you can see that I have been working only part time in retail since May.  Which is actually pretty great for my health and sanity.  It lets me work on artistic and creative things, and it lets me get a good amount of sleep, and working retail means I am not sitting on my fat ass.  Well let's face it my flat ass.  I'm up and about.  And I like all of that.  It also gets me out of my house which is good for my emotional stability (if I was just not working I would live in a cave of blankets on my bed and not see other humans while I forced myself into a downward spiral of depression and an upward spiral of weight gain).

All of those are good things and mean that I have a life I am really pretty happy with.  I could list the reasons why my life is not flawless but who's life isn't flawless?  And that just gets petty.

So my life is good.  But it has also precipitated a bit of an identity crisis for me because I haven't been a person without an identity wrapped in my own work since I was in high school, probably before, even at points when I was unemployed but devoted to some thing.

But now I don't really have an identity that I feel comfortable sharing when people ask what do you do.

I don't want to say I'm a part-time manager at a large national home goods retail chain because although I do that and I enjoy, I don't think it reflects what I am.  Okay and maybe because I am a big snob.  And maybe because I am embarrassed to say that to fancy people with fancy jobs who ask me this when I am out with the fiancee who's fancy job let's me work part time.

I'm a quilter is tricky because I am just an amateur at that really.

I'm a stay at home cat mom, but that just makes me sound cuckoo bananas.  Although it sort of is the most true.  I am in planning to become a stay at home mom for whence we have babies in the future.  So I can't just stay home with the cat now.  I don't even really want to.  But I keep the place tidy, I make dinners and stock the fridge and run the show and do volunteer work.  All of which would be acceptable as my life IF I had a baby or two, but I don't so I worry that I sound like a spoiled baby myself (and maybe I am, maybe that is the root of the crisis).

I don't even know exactly what I would want to be.

Well, that's not entirely true.  I would like to be a romance novelist.  I have several bits and pieces of novels, some of which are total crap and others that could be a good novel if I ever finished them.  Before I didn't have time.  Now I do, and if I set down to finishing them and refining them, I think--no I KNOW--I could get them published.  And if I could replace my part time job income with a novelist income (I'm not looking to be Jennifer Weiner or Nora Roberts or Danielle Steele, I am just looking for a few books a year from like Blaze or Harlequin) then I would have my ideal life.  I think (I know, I am so non-specific about this).

So that is the root of the reorganization.  Changing/structuring the life I have today to give me time to/force me to write on the novels, so that someday soon I will have one to submit to publishers so that by the time I quit work to have babies or adopt babies or whatever, novelist income will be sufficient that I never have to go out and get a job again.

The reorg means no more sleeping in for no reason and getting up at a regular time each day.  It means voicing the secret goals so someone somewhere will hold me accountable to them just by checking in on my status.  It means using time to write each week a few days a week for a few hours a week.  Which technically is what I should be doing now.  But I plan to build all these steps in slowly so I work my way up into a habit (like I've done with flossing and my nightly face routine).  I need to learn to walk before I enter a marathon.

Working it out

I have actually been so productive today that I have astounded myself.  Especially because included in that productiveness is finishing 70 pages of a novel that I did before all the other stuff even though it wasn't on the to do list.

And also I found a pair of pants that I thought were lost for good which is extra good as all my work jeans have developed holes at the same time (which I guess isn't shocking as they were purchased at the same time like 9 months ago and I wear them pretty non-stop).

Also, the cat seems to have decided he likes me more than the fiancee even though I bought him a tiny vampire cape for Halloween.

I have been very slow to post lately

And update on the audition was that I was not cast. Which is fine, it had a really huge potential to screw up all of the rest of my life for a part in a play that meant I would probably never act. Although the director had seen work of mine that I had written myself and performed in the Tim Miller workshops and that was awesome for me. Possibly as awesome as not being recognized and getting the gig.

I did get promoted at retail job which has pros and cons. Pros are I have a set schedule that never involves flex shifts that I may or may not work and I am paid quite a bit more an hour. Cons are that there is more responsibility on me when I am at work (which I am not against just that I am leery of this for me fluffy part time job as it might leech out the fluffy) and I have to do truck which means getting off work at 1:30am one day every other work and then taking public transit home.

I also got put on an advisory committee for the Lincoln Park Zoo education department which means I get to spend the next two years MAKING UP our new carts and curriculum! I am stoked. It is volunteer but super fun.

Also wedding planning is moving forward. We are working on not having it involve yelling. That might need some more work (from me as much as Sam).

Please cross your fingers

Because I have an acting audition with a not BIG big deal theatre company here but a really awesome second tier theatre here to be a PAID understudy to a supporting role on the first show of their season. Which means it is totally likely that I could get that job and never actually act.

But it would be an awesome experience, and it is for the Sarah Ruhl play In the Next Room (or the Vibrator Play) so please cross fingers, and certainly at least pray that I totally don't screw it up.

Wedding Planning makes me want to shoot myself in the face

I mean, not really but kind of. It is just so much work and so many people and so many dictums that make is SOOOOO complicated. And it is just too hard. Especially from looking at it on this side of the to do list.  Instead I want to cover my face with my bed sheets and skip it.

Also other people are soooo excited that we are getting married. I mean we were always getting married. We just didn't know exactly when. Now we know. Calm the heck down. Also maybe they are excited because they won't be planning this shit. UGH!

Forgetting

I am trying to devote some time on Tuesdays and Thursdays to writing projects although this week it has been curtailed by weird and crappy work shift on Tuesday and being way behind on a quilting project for the shop on today. Last week I did awesome though. So this week I am getting a little bit of writing done right now and maybe some more on the weekend.

However, I had a really great idea for a blog post for the quilt shop and now it is GONE. Totally totally gone, no idea about even remnants.

And I HATE that.

It is so infuriating.

Especially because I think the greatness of the idea grows in proportion to how little I can remember of it. Chances are it wasn't even that awesome, but now I think it is because I have no idea about it.

Poop.

Scared Straight

Well, not straight exactly. Just scared. Scared because wedding planning officially commenced yesterday evening with an email to our preferred venue and an email to the wedding planner I thought we were going to hire like 18 months ago when I thought I was really wedding planning. SO, basically that means very soon we will have a date and then we will have to get married. Not that I am opposed to getting married, but it seems I am very trepidatious of all the wedding hullabaloo that goes into the planning. It is very very stressful.