Bad Things Happen To Good People

Nobody has promised me a happy ending.

I can cross all my T's and dot all my I's. I can endlessly research every investment strategy. I can only buy a house if I follow the approved formula. I can work hard, be smart, play it safe (except of course when I should take risks), and tomorrow I might get struck by lightning and instead of dying be caught in some sort of lucid coma where I know my life span is directly limited by how far my family can be driven into poverty by medical bills.

I am at a point in my life where this is being made very clear to me. Again.

I'm beginning to accept that if things do not change soon, I will be in trouble. Not starving trouble, though. I have a place to sleep, and people who will feed me. But I'm in the kind of place where I need to remind myself that even if I lose my job and my car and my credit and my 10 gigs of music, not to mention a few friends, I can still live and probably write via the local library.

The internet is a wondeful place. Out there, somewhere- though not here, yet- out there are hundreds of people who could tell me exactly what I did wrong, exactly how I could have optimised for this future that is now the present. Except, if I had done so, there is no guarentee that I would have gotten this future. Bad things happen to good people, bad people, all people who have a biological desire to not die and then die.

"You make your own luck" is a sentiment akin to "If I do this dance it will rain," or, "If you tithe, God will bless your earnings." It's a great feeling- I have been rewarded because I have done well, not because I got lucky; and if I keep believing this, I don't have to confront the fact that another stroke of luck- or a plain old stroke- could take it all away. America likes to believe that it's a meritocracy- that the best and brightest are always rewarded, and thus, the average and dumb are rightfully punished. Which is sort of fucked up, if you think about it. It's the law of the jungle baby. Screw the old folks, the retarded ladies, and those pencil pushers who do what society told them to do so they can eat- it's a meritocracy! Prove you have a right to live!

Take your older-and-wiser and shove it, baby.

Ok, so perhaps I'm not as serene about the whole at-least-I-can-eat thing as I'd like to be.

Super Stress!

I am unemployed.

Except, not really- if I were really unemployed, I would be able to collect unemployment. I am on the payroll, but I am most certainly not getting paid.

This is the suck.

I have a car loan and student loans and a bill from law school to repay. I am sleeping on my mother's couch. A draft of my novel is finished and I have the suspicion that it is complete crap. The suspicion stems from this: the plot is flimsy and the characters suck and the fantasy world that I built is utter bullshit and both unconvincing and uninteresting. (The hook still looks good, oddly enough.) Also the ending is weak. Also none of the side-plots are resolved.

I am not on a dig THIS VERY SECOND because some people at another company dropped the ball. I need that goddamn ball! GIVE ME THE BALL.

I thought I should take a break from the writing, to give myself more perspective, but I'm thinking that was a bad idea. Because the magic still works- while I'm working on a project, the world fades. I need that. I need escapism. In the Land of Escapism I am the Pretty Pretty Princess. But I also need a job and so I am taking today to apply for some summer positions for the government. Tomorrow I go back to slaying dragons.