Caterwauling

*updated*

For all my crowing about how much I love working at home (and I do, believe me), it’s starting to have its downsides.

One, the fridge is five yards away. Damn sammiches. 😉

Even though my deal with myself is to only smoke while I am at the computer, well, I’ve burned through two packs of Camel Lights in the past two days. I don’t even remember lighting most of them!

I’ve gone through my supply of chai tea and french vanilla hot chocolate.

I’m mostly caught up on e-mails, but with a long trip out of town looming, I know I will come back to six million messages and listserv digests and whatnot.

I’m trying to think positively about my three weeks away from home. I mean, this is the girl who hasn’t taken a vacation since 1995, and that was my first-ever escape from my day-to-day life. I guess I’m worried because, not only will I not be getting paid for my time away, this is also valuable time I will be losing in looking for new projects.

On the other hand, I keep thinking that I will find freelance leads while I’m gone. Or maybe, with no real ties to here or anywhere in the country, I may decide to sell all my crap on Craig’s List and move elsewhere. Stranger things have happened, and I’ve proven that I’m not opposed to walking out on my current life and starting anew anywhere but here.

Anyway, today logic is battling with hope. I want hope to win out. Truly I do. But the pile of unpaid bills (gaah — didn’t I just pay those last month?) is mocking me. As is the pile of work I’m doing right now — it’s begging for my care and attention (I’ve given everything at least one to two edits; I just need the wherewithall to do the third and final once-over).

The work is good for me, actually. The assignment is a familiar one, and I’ve found unexpected joy in things that used to drain me. Distance is such a blessing. I wish this assignment could recur, actually, but alas, to everything there is a season, and this leaf blew off the branch and will be replaced by a whole new tree. And, in that, I guess there is the story of my life right now. Maybe it’s time to kill off the roots and take the seed elsewhere.

I see my future, with all its splendor and sunlight. It’s just getting through the “right now” that’s the challenge.

UPDATE
Zach Braff said it best in a Quarter-Life Crisis interview:

“The way I describe it is it’s like being long overdue for the next chapter of your life to open up, I think everyone can relate to that, life is a series of beginnings and changes, and then there’s times in your life where you’re like ‘I am so due for an epiphany, I am so due for something new to happen to me, a new girl, a new job, an epiphany, somebody please send me an epiphany.'”

On iTunes: Willa Ford, “I Wanna Be Bad”

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 16th, 2004 at 1:59 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.