I’ve been exhausted by work lately — the tasks on my to-do list have been limited to things that require very focused attention (weeks of OCR proofreading followed by a few days of photo editing). The result has been basically burnout for the last 6 weeks or so. When I get home, all I do is surf the web mindlessly… Which means I haven’t been writing, nor blogging, nor even taking photos to upload to Flickr. I also haven’t been interacting very much through social media because I just haven’t had the energy to get into any in-depth conversation.
One reason I haven’t wanted to get into any in-depth conversations is that I am just plain tired of the same arguments. Politically, everywhere I turn it seems our society is going to one extreme or the other: either plowing ahead with no care for public opinion or listening to every little whimper put forth by every citizen and bringing progress to a halt. Mike and I had this discussion a few weeks back — basically everyone feels empowered to voice their opinion and they feel entitled to be on the winning side. I have a problem with the hyper-entitlement part of that equation so I’m trying to shut myself up so I stay out of that negative feedback loop.
My other issue is that I feel like I have spiraled right back to square one as far as Purpose Party goes. I am not teaching and when I got close to that, I self-sabotaged my every effort. But when I look inside, I am no longer sure if teaching is really where I saw myself or if it just seemed like something I might be able to do or I might be able to make fit. So now I need to start thinking again… and that’s wearing me down.
At least there is one thing I do want to do and I know I want to do: write. Since I am off work for a week, I shall do my best to do much more of that.
On that subject, the three of us who wrote stories for the cyborg body parts challenge all have our stories complete and ready to go. Or so I thought. When Jason (the third author) read my contribution he had an immediate reaction to the ending — he hated it. One of the others who read it also hated the ending so, since it had been a while since I actually wrote “Tracking Number,” I re-read it with fresh eyes. (Rule number one of editing: put your story away for a few weeks.) Jason was right. The ending was both abrupt and ineffective; I figure it needs another 2000 words. So that’s my job this week: to finish that story properly.
(p.s. It took me three days to write this post… I just am not motivated.)