Divisions and Precisions

Quote from tonight's Olympic opening

Quote from tonight's Olympic opening ceremonies, said with a completely straight face: "You know, Katie, it's never good when you're being chased by evil icicles who are up to no good!"

I shit you not. I about fell out of my chair.

Days of Inspiration

I woke up this morning and was immediately nostalgic. My mouth tasted like something had crawled in there, performed unspeakable acts and died horribly. My eyes, to paraphrase Green Day, felt like they were gonna bleed. My brain was as fuzzy as three week old bread. My muscles were sore and I winced as the radio blasted me into wakefulness, the DJs babbling about "Rollerball" or something equally frightening.

For an eerily blissful moment, it was spring of 1998 and I was a new MUSH addict. Sleep was a stranger for about a year. Nights were spent creating wild stories and dull stories, purple prose and poetic meanderings, being dramatic and being epic, or sometimes just being downright goofy. In the middle of it all, I was hanging out with people who would become some of my closest friends.

So last night I was up until about 4 am, sitting in front of a computer, creating wild stories, moving between purple and poetic, and chatting goofily with the people who saw me through that wild, sleepless season of my life. But of course, I wasn't MUSHing, I was working on the outline for my new book. I miss that sort of wild abandon that used to overtake me. I've grown up a lot, but in a way, I sort of resent it.

I am incredibly conflicted right now. I enjoy my new job. Most of the time. I enjoy using my brain at work and solving problems. However, I'm starting to chafe at the constant responsibility of it all. It's not that I don't want to be responsible, it's that I want to CHOOSE what I'm responsible about. I do not want to constantly worry about being responsible for customer service. I do not want a job that demands being my number one priority all day, unless that job is writing. My MUSH days are not all I'm nostalgic for. I miss my receptionist days, when I could get some writing done during the day without shirking my duties. There are days when all I want to do is write. Today is one of those days, and I can't do it, because I can't work and write at the same time.

Then there's school. I've been told that I can pretty much forget anything like flexibility for taking classes. If it's not a night class, I won't get permission to take it. Of course, this wasn't how I understood the situation to be when I agreed to come to support. Less flexibility, I was told, but still some flexibility. More and more I'm getting the feeling that if I stay in this job, I won't ever finish my degree.

I'm just... GRAR. I feel trapped. I love my life outside work right now. LOVE it. I love my apartment, I love living alone, but to keep doing all that, I have to make a certain amount of money. And right now, to keep making that amount of money, I have to sacrifice doing the things that are most important to me: school and writing. Which do I choose? I'm wondering. I'm actually wondering if I could/should go back to being a receptionist here. At least then I could go to school and steal some writing time during the day. But could I afford my rent? My car's going to need to be replaced soon, what then? I'm trapped by my own middle-class aspirations, apparently.

I don't know what to do, but I know that I'm growing more and more dissatisfied with the whole situation. Not with the work I do, but with the circumstances surrounding that work.

It's making me miss my days of wild irresponsibility.