![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Last Home Year
Sep. 12th, 2004 06:59 pmOkay, it's 7pm and I'm just about to fall back into my old schedule of writing 7-9pm again after a week and a half of completely avoiding it. No, not really avoiding it, more like slacking off, just not even worrying about it. Guess this was a REAL vacation, where I did as little as possible, including writing. To tell you the truth, I think it was a wise choice to do that. I look at my writing/word count calendar (yeah, I'm that much of a geek), and I haven't taken this many days off since, oh, February or so? So yeah, it was a nice respite.
Now if I could only get rid of this damn cough. It's not as bad as it was a few days ago, but it's still there. Of course, mowing the very dry front lawn today and kicking up mounds of dust and dirt didn't help matters...
So tomorrow I'm heading back into work. Whee! Sure, there's a part of me that actually can't wait to get back. No, really! Sure, I could do without the department running me ragged all the time, and I could certainly do without the coworkers who do nothing but gripe all day (we all have those, don't we?), but other than that, I look forward to seeing Bruce and Leslie and Dom and Aaron and the rest of the gang of malcontents I work with.
----
Maybe it's just me, but this has been going through my head the last few days...
Do you remember those days in high school when, after a crappy social life last year, after the disengagement from your classmates for a few months so you can heal from embarrassment, stupid decisions, and teenage angst, you promised to yourself that when you returned for another round, you'd be more confident, more focused, more positive? Remember how you did your best to hold onto these hopeful virtues, promising yourself that you wouldn't let the outside world affect you as much as before? Remember how sometimes it worked, other times it didn't?
So here I am, coming back from a week and a half of vacation, coming back from WorldCon--an important stepping stone in my writing career, in some ways--and I'm sitting here at the computer on Sunday evening, writing on my computer just like I always do, and feeling like it's the first day of school. But this isn't one of those "blissfully hopeful" moments...it's more like it's the night before senior year of high school. My last year before I make the big, BIG BIG choice of what to do next in my life.
Maybe it's me, but that's exactly how I'm feeling right now. It's early September, I'm off to another year of working at YC, and in the midst of making many important life choices. I'm no longer picking up comic books (guess Showcase closing was a good thing after all...), I'm hardly buying any cds (what...five or so in the last months?? Believe me, that's a BIG improvement...), and I'm looking after my health again (thanks for the idea, Lynxie) (okay, enough with the brackets)...
I'm about to start the long hard road of piling away as much money as I can in the next six to eight months as overtime looms in the distance and the Christmas season starts. Like I said before, I'm just about sick of saying I'll move out soon and never getting around to actually doing it. With any luck, I'll have enough saved away that when all the college kids move out in the spring, I can make my move at the apartments down in the Valley. It doesn't have to be anything big. Just enough for me to set up my writing, a space for my music and books, and some light to let the sun in. Oh, and of course parking is always good.
I haven't lived on my own since fall of '95 when I moved back home from Boston. Jeez-lou-fucking-weeze...ten damn years! Well, it took me five of those to a)get out of debt, and b)heal from all the emotional bullshit (mine and from others) I'd had to contend with while in Boston. The other five was spent perfecting my writing craft and figuring my life out. Yeah, I figure ten years is long enough. Time to get the hell out. :)
So.
The Last Home Year. I came up with that phrase my senior year of high school when I was taping music from WAMH...it would be the last year I was home before college, and these radio tapes would be sort of a final goodbye to life in Athol as far as I knew.
So.
The Last Home Year.
Second time's the charm, as they say. Let's hope so.
Now if I could only get rid of this damn cough. It's not as bad as it was a few days ago, but it's still there. Of course, mowing the very dry front lawn today and kicking up mounds of dust and dirt didn't help matters...
So tomorrow I'm heading back into work. Whee! Sure, there's a part of me that actually can't wait to get back. No, really! Sure, I could do without the department running me ragged all the time, and I could certainly do without the coworkers who do nothing but gripe all day (we all have those, don't we?), but other than that, I look forward to seeing Bruce and Leslie and Dom and Aaron and the rest of the gang of malcontents I work with.
----
Maybe it's just me, but this has been going through my head the last few days...
Do you remember those days in high school when, after a crappy social life last year, after the disengagement from your classmates for a few months so you can heal from embarrassment, stupid decisions, and teenage angst, you promised to yourself that when you returned for another round, you'd be more confident, more focused, more positive? Remember how you did your best to hold onto these hopeful virtues, promising yourself that you wouldn't let the outside world affect you as much as before? Remember how sometimes it worked, other times it didn't?
So here I am, coming back from a week and a half of vacation, coming back from WorldCon--an important stepping stone in my writing career, in some ways--and I'm sitting here at the computer on Sunday evening, writing on my computer just like I always do, and feeling like it's the first day of school. But this isn't one of those "blissfully hopeful" moments...it's more like it's the night before senior year of high school. My last year before I make the big, BIG BIG choice of what to do next in my life.
Maybe it's me, but that's exactly how I'm feeling right now. It's early September, I'm off to another year of working at YC, and in the midst of making many important life choices. I'm no longer picking up comic books (guess Showcase closing was a good thing after all...), I'm hardly buying any cds (what...five or so in the last months?? Believe me, that's a BIG improvement...), and I'm looking after my health again (thanks for the idea, Lynxie) (okay, enough with the brackets)...
I'm about to start the long hard road of piling away as much money as I can in the next six to eight months as overtime looms in the distance and the Christmas season starts. Like I said before, I'm just about sick of saying I'll move out soon and never getting around to actually doing it. With any luck, I'll have enough saved away that when all the college kids move out in the spring, I can make my move at the apartments down in the Valley. It doesn't have to be anything big. Just enough for me to set up my writing, a space for my music and books, and some light to let the sun in. Oh, and of course parking is always good.
I haven't lived on my own since fall of '95 when I moved back home from Boston. Jeez-lou-fucking-weeze...ten damn years! Well, it took me five of those to a)get out of debt, and b)heal from all the emotional bullshit (mine and from others) I'd had to contend with while in Boston. The other five was spent perfecting my writing craft and figuring my life out. Yeah, I figure ten years is long enough. Time to get the hell out. :)
So.
The Last Home Year. I came up with that phrase my senior year of high school when I was taping music from WAMH...it would be the last year I was home before college, and these radio tapes would be sort of a final goodbye to life in Athol as far as I knew.
So.
The Last Home Year.
Second time's the charm, as they say. Let's hope so.
