The Days Get Longer

Here’s a clearing house post, to make up for the fact that last week, while I had a great presenter I was stuck in a part of the country that made me want to beat myself over the head. No offense to the better parts of the Midwest, but I have to say that Indiana, Toledo in Ohio, and Michigan definitely qualify for “fly-over state” status. Anyways, I’ll give you a run down of things I’ve been thinking about:

Job Satisfaction

At some point in every job I’ve ever had I’ve lost interest. Maybe I have career ADD. I’m good at pushing through for defined periods of time though, something that has helped me with any class I’ve ever taken. Luckily, this job is extremely defined. Two more weeks and I’ll have the first real Christmas break I’ve had in a long time. Maybe that’ll help me wake up at 6am and actually almost care about what I’m doing.

Because in fact, waking up at 6am has become a process of dread. Every day I know I will face people who will not be satisfied… people who rudely refuse to fill out evaluation forms with only 4 questions, people who are insulted that you cannot solve all of the problems that they themselves should have checked on, participants who rudely insinuate that I’m insane to be doing this job, hotel staff that either move like molasses or go so far over the top to be nice that they cant get anything done for all their graciousness. There are plenty of folks who are nice, but it’s hard sometimes to put up with all of the crap that gets thrown my way… especially when I’m in places like Detroit or Toledo where there’s nothing to be done outside the seminar.

Luckily, this week I should be able to go traipsing through Phillidelphia and drive down to the lovely little part of Long Island that another PM and I found last time I was there. Then there’s Chicago… and man am I looking forward to that. It’s going to be great fun to wander around town with KAL, just being low-key but seeing a great city. That’s what I love about this job, and what I just can’t do in Toledo or Detroit—getting out and investigating cities. Detroit’s hotel did have a water park, but considering it had only one slide and I was the only guest in the entire park, it was just awkward.

The Future

It’s the thought of indefinite periods of time spent working a single job that grabs me by the throat and throttle the will to work out of me. That’s what happened with my last lab job… and what I fear will happen once this job is over. I don’t know much more now what I want to do than I knew before. All I know is that I don’t want to spend an exorbitant amount of money on grad school unless I know that it will be worth it. Debt has always scared me and I’d managed to avoid credit cards entirely until now (but those reimbursement checks cover all of that anyways), but to pick up debt in this economy without a clear method of paying it off scares me.

The state of the economy also scares me. What does one do when things are heading towards a depression and there’s no clear career path to head down? I think I need to start working towards a position that can become a career, because I need to be able to build into a promote-able position… but not knowing which direction to go in bogs me down.

In fact, I want to make a plea of anyone who actually reads this. Sometimes people outside of the situation have the clearest sight of the situation. If you don’t mind, I’m extremely curious what any of you see me doing as a career. Please leave a comment… Do you see me in a suit running business meetings? Do you see me back in a lab coat? Do you see me with a reporter’s notebook? Anything would be helpful.

NaNoWriMo

No, I did not finish. I got 60% done, and then realized I needed to rewrite a section of over 800 words as well as write all of the sections that I had not really thought out. Once I got bogged down in feeling sick and not wanting to eat, writing completely lost its excitement and I fell far enough behind that I couldn’t manage to continue. I’m going to try to get the story finished, and the plan is to push for Christmas. It’s horribly terrible in my opinion, and I’m at the point where I hate every word of it, but I wanted to do this, so I’m going to finish it. That’s what I do, complete assignments.

Christmas

As far as Christmas goes, I’m really not feeling it at all this year. Considering I don’t really feel a spiritual connection to the holiday, don’t really feel excited about spending it with family, and pretty much hate the present aspect, I wonder how I make it through every year. Many of my friends are going to leave town around the holidays too, which makes me sad since I finally have time to spend with them.

However, I don’t think I’m a scrooge anymore since I don’t mind that other people enjoy Christmas and I’m happy to try to make their holidays more fun. While I exempt myself from the cousin gift exchanges because I don’t want it to become my aunt buying me a present and my mom buying my cousin a present, I do like to give gifts. I just don’t like feeling forced to do it all at once along with the rest of the world and honestly I really appreciate giving little thoughtful things more than big all-out extravaganzas. Plus, I’m trying to get better at accepting gifts with excitement.

One thing I think I’ve realized is to ask for different things, no matter how much it feels odd to request things out of someone else’s generosity. I don’t want clothes (unless you’re getting me silly socks, underwear, or Christmas pj’s just for fun), but I like getting accessories, especially scarves and mittens and the like (anyone who hasn’t heard of it should check out Etsy.com for fabulous homemade things. If shipping doesn’t work out in time, I’m always a fan of getting a photo of what is headed my way). I’d love a stash of books to take on my flights, or CD’s/iTunes gift cards to entertain me. I’ve already got a decent book list in my archives on this blog, but as for CD’s, I’ll try to fill in a list at some point (although new bands I might like are always appreciated, I’m into slightly folksy music lately a la The Submarines and The Weepies). I also told Mom that I want stuff I hate buying for myself: makeup, perfume, gift cards for treatments like pedicures, haircuts, facials, or massages. Also, no matter how picky I am about coffee now, I’d still love the international coffee currency (ie a Starbucks card).
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So that’s that for now. I’m somewhere over the Dakotas on my way to Philly right now, connecting to Manchester, NH (if only it was England!!). I’m hoping to beg the Shuttle driver into driving me to town since I’m going to be lacking a car. Hopefully more posts will happen this week as I can feel the weight of crappy Midwest hotels and grouchy participants lifting. But expect a nice ranty post about the Newark Holiday Inn… ugh.

Southern (and Midwestern) Hospitality

It may be an outdated concept, but I definitely have been enjoying my couch surfing in the last two weeks. Let me start back a bit, with my stay in Green Bay with KN and her family.

First off, going to Green Bay was surprisingly fun! There were five of us PM's in total, which probably made for much more exciting times than had it just been one of us. We stayed with KN's parents and then met her whole family... a couple aunts, her grandparents, and a brand new baby cousin. Everyone was so adorably wonderful, just like KN herself (we know now where all those fabulous quirks come from!). We ate way too much, drank quite a bit, and enjoyed wandering around Lambeau and taking in the sights. It was all terribly fun while being completely relaxing, which helped since I had a very stressful plane ride immediately following.

On my connecting flight to Pittsburg from Detroit, NWA pissed me off. They never announced that the flight was running late, until 10 minutes after the time it should have left by. Then they refused to tell us how long it would be before we had a plane, and once the plane arrived and we boarded, we sat on the tarmac for over an hour and twenty minutes with deicing and "resolving weight and balance issues" by buring off fuel. It was depressing and horrible being trapped in a plane that long, especially since I wouldn't have needed to eat if the plane had simply taken off, or been deiced... the extra hour on the ground pushed me into really hungry, cranky Ari territory.

And then I had a week with a presenter that slowly sucked the life out of me. He was overly nervous about everything, even his physical appearance was full of nerves. He constantly twitched and fidgeted, constantly prattled on and on about stupid stuff, and was obsessed with stupid things (his hair had to be properly hairsprayed into place and he changed from his black wool dress pants to his black cotton dress pants for traveling so that the wool pants would "hang nice"). A perfectionist beyond belief, he had me packing up all of his displays into very carefully labled boxes which were diagramed so that everything could be put in them perfectly. When he introduced me in the morning to make my announcement he made a bunch of awkward, semi offensive jokes about the company I work for (and he works for...) and then kinda made fun of me as well. His personality was just icing on the cake: he was such an overt attention seeker that his presentation was more about making jokes and showing off than actually explaining the things he was trying to teach. I guess that's what happens when his teaching carreer was only default to his original dream of being a famous actor. A self-absorbed LA'er to the core... the only question he ever asked about me was literally in the last taxi ride as we were pulling into the airport drive.

Luckily, I had a weekend of fun ahead of me, so I made it through working with him with only a few problems (primarily a serious lack of desire for food after too many bad hotel dinners, even when I went all out and tried to have a nice chicken dinner it was dry and gross). Hanging out with MJW & Fiancee was really enjoyable. We slept in late, went to the art museum in ATL to check out a really cool Chinese exhibit, went coat and dress shopping, and headed out dancing later in the night. I haven't had so much fun at a club in a long time... although the prices definitely were right up there at the astronomical level and I ended up getting booze spilt all over my clothes. Luckily, one plastic bag later I can keep those clothes seperate from the mildly clean stuff I need for work.

The best news of all is that I'm going home tomorrow! Laundry and family dinners await, although turkey and all the fixings does not appeal to me yet... I have a car for these two days so I'll be going out to eat at places that are actually decent. Last night I had blackened mahi mahi that was spectacular... along with butter beans and corn and followed by Key Lime pie. I intend to wander around a bit and find somewhere equally tasty for lunch, then enjoy Richmond at dinnertime!

As far as NaNo goes... I'm not going to win. I haven't gotten any further after a lot of stress last week with food and the presenter, and then I enjoyed Atlanta at the expense of my writing time. I'd have to crank out over 20,000 words in this next week, and I just don't feel that I have the energy to do that. Hopefully I can get at least within 10,000 and then polish the story off in the next week or so. I want to print myself a lulu.com copy of the book so that I can say I wrote a novel. It's been an interesting experience thus far, and I'm impressed with how my story has changed over the years (it started as a dream when I was 17) and even throughout the month of writing it. There's a big chunk left to go, mostly back in the beginning, and it's a hard chunk. I have to somehow make a character more believable as well as develop further a bunch of characters in the early stages of the novel before the plot takes over and tests them.

It's not all horrible, although it's definitely not great. I don't think I'd ever attempt to publish this... it's more of an excercise that shows me that I can write a novel, and that I can let this story go. Once it's all tucked away in completion, I'll be able to bring more characters into fullness. I've used this strategy before, writing away something and finding myself finally able to let go of it. Who knows if I could ever actually get published or write a novel worth reading, but as long as I can put this one aside I can move forward right?

Oh yes, for all who are interested: I'm right back to drinking soda, although at a far lower level than I had expected. I'm definitely more interested in iced tea or coffee than diet coke. Perhaps giving it up for that long did make a difference.

Low Fat Quest

Turns out american food is all the same and all disgusting after a few weeks. I'm dying for Thai or Indian, but the low fat, home cooked versions. When you're forced to eat in airports and hotels you really do get the shitiest stuff too. I'm sick of chains and having no car. Next two weeks I'll be driving, THANK GOD. Three all fly weeks already has me drained. That and a presenter who's a real whackadoodle.

I feel gross from all the bad food I've had this week. Hopefully I can make something good this weekend with Mo....... Please, MJW let me cook for you!! :)

Closing In

Closing in on 25,000 words--halfway. I had to take a break due to an exciting weekend in Green Bay and the threat of an impending cold. I'm feeling better and writing again, although I'm intrigued by one thing:

I do some really messed up things to my characters.

I finished beating the crap out of my main character and now I'm forcing one character to accidentally kill his brother. How do I come up with this crap? :P

So much, so little

I'm one day away from completing my no-soda goal. Tomorrow the highlight of my day might not be sightseeing in Toledo but the diet coke I will allow myself to drink if I want it. It'll be interesting if I want it or if I've cured myself of the craving now. I've been craving soda all the time, but somehow I think I will be less excite to drink it than I thought. Just goes to show...

I'm aiming to knock myself to 20,000 NaNo words by tomorrow night. I'm at 16,500 so maybe it's possible? I'll still be behind, but much closer to pace than I am now. I have no idea if I can get through this, but I have hope and perserverence, or at least I hope I can perservere...

And I think I just got asked on my first road date by an older Michigan man... Ewww. Good thing I'm off to Toledo!

The Seasons

So I had a week of summer two weeks ago, then a week of fall in New England last week, and this week the trees are bare and I got my first snow flurry! It's fun having things change like that as I pass through.

Some days I don't take a lot of photos because I'm simply trapped in the hotel room or on the way to the airport. It's sad not getting a good idea of a city, but at the same time, I can't do and see everything. My exhaustion this week proves it.

I think I have hit the lull point of the new-job process, where I'm not quite 100% at the job, but it's familiar enough that I relax into it... and make a lot of mistakes. At least it's generally okay to make mistakes in life. I still feel bad when things go funky though.

I had an amazing conversation with my Kelly temp today, a man who grew up in Nigeria and moved to the US and then Canada. It's fun meeting people along the way and suddenly finding myself in deep philosophical conversations.

This weekend I need to do nothing on a grand scale.

An Off Day in Edmonton

Turns out having a perpetually sunny attitude wears me down after a while. I've definitely surprised myself with how consistently optimistic I've been lately even in the face of canceled flights and crappy speaker systems, but today for some reason I'm just off. The day started out fine, especially with the election results buzzing around in my head, but I just don't really have the energy to be particularly proactive. You think the room is cold? Well, you should generally have a sweater with you if it's only 40 degrees outside, so maybe you could put that on... The speakers stink? Let's adjust the volume as far as I can and then just give up to the worthless little speakers in the gigantic room. You want me to have a cab waiting? Okay, I'll make a call but who knows if it will show up on time...

My presenter isn't bad at all this week. In fact we had a ton of fun last night waiting for results to start coming in. I just think that Wednesdays are hard days for me. I'm fully exhausted and just want to not deal with another person who feels like they want their certificate at the afternoon break rather than waiting til the end like everyone else. If I wanted to hand out all the certificates at the afternoon break, I would be doing that. I made the mistake of giving a few out to some women who had a 3 hour drive post-seminar, and then suddenly EVERYONE had at least a 3 hour drive and I ended up passing out half the certificates by hand.

See, I just have this icky attitude creeping in. Maybe it has a little to do with the fact that I'm over 1500 words behind on NaNo... I think tonight I'll try to lock myself in my Calgary hotel room and write. Hopefully there will be no wi-fi there.

Election Day

Just to let all those in the USA know... I've heard two Canadian channels call the election already, and about 12 winter tire commercials.

I'm still holding my breath, considering the last two elections were definitely not something that I could believe and they still are the only elections I had any real investment in. I am really hoping that the voter turnout and eventual results actually make me proud to be American again.

[Edit 10:53pm MST]
There's really nothing I can say. I'm just deeply proud.

Yes we can.

Now I just hope we will.

Notes from Canada...

1. Winnepeg smells like cow.

2. I brilliantly went to get cash this weekend, and forgot that I am in Canada this entire week, thus necessitating CANADIAN dollars. Luckily, I didn't need to tip last night before I could get to an ATM and then find change at the front desk.

3. When will the wonky accent start to take hold of my vocabulary? Aboot now, eh...

NaNo NaNo...

The question I pose to you today is this: what would you do with 3+ hours a day of sitting at a desk with minimal work to do? If you said, "Write a novel in the course of a month," you should definitely join me in the quest of NaNoWriMo.

National Novel Writing Month has been on my list of things to do for a long time, but this is my first chance to have hours of unused time to spend writting 50,000 words in 30 days (that's 1,667 words a day for the non-math inclined). I'm going for it with a story I've ha in my head for a long time. Nothing earth shattering in my opinion, but it's there and fleshed out mentally enough to make for a good first NaNo attempt.

If you're planning on joining me in this quest (yay EGW!!) let me know and help keep me to my word. I plan on cheating a bit, and starting on the plane ride this evening. What else to do for however long my computer battery wil last?

This may mean less frequent posts on the blog, or more frequent writer's block posts... We shall see!