8th June, 2010

The Day With the Procrasination

I’m having one of those weeks where I have too much to do but – because of my recent tendency to procrastinate – I’ve now essentially run out of time to do it. Any of it. Ever.

What’s due? Let’s see. Two 3000 words assignments for my MSc. They’re due Monday and whilst I’ve written an essay plan for one, I’ve done fuck all else. They’re not even easy or familiar subjects that I can just try and blag my way through.

But wait – there’s MORE. The best bit is that I actually had a month’s extension following ill-health in April (don’t ask :( ), so even though I had an extra month, I’ve still left everything to the last minute. WTF? What a twat.

I’m also travelling up to North England tomorrow to speak at a conference. It’s only a ten minute slot, but there’ll be 200 people there and I still haven’t written – hell, even thought about – what I’m going to say. (Hopefully though, I think that this is one of those things I can blag. Fingers crossed).

And the best thing? Instead of doing any of those things RIGHT NOW, instead I’m sat here in front of my Macbook procrastinating my ass off some more.

Awesome.

Posted: June 8, 2010 at 6:04 pm | Comments (6)

14th February, 2010

The Day With the Insomnia and Big Questions

I’m often asked how I do it: the full-time job, the part-time job, the freelancing, the studying, the book, the kid, the husband, the gaming and the various other projects etc. etc. My reply is usually a rueful grin – aw, shucks, stop, just call me Super Vixx – but truth is, I actually don’t know. I’m starting to believe that there’s a considerable possibility that I don’t do it anymore. I’m starting to believe that the only reason I manage to cram everything in is because my awesome husband does the cooking, the laundry and most of the cleaning, and I’ve become the Queen of the Half-Assed. My unspoken mantra has become If Something’s Worth Doing, It’s Worth Doing Half-Heartedly And With As Little Effort As I Can Get Away With.

I’m been struggling with my sleep, though. It’s not something I’ve traditionally had issues with, so having to lay awake, tossing and turning, huffing and puffing … well, it hasn’t been helpful. I’ve never been able to run on little sleep, not even when S. was small and sleep deprivation was part of the job description. Even then, even when I figured I was all prepped and ready for it, M. had to step in and take more than the lion’s share as we established – pretty early on, as it happened – that our household was going to be a happier one if I scrapped at least six hours a night. That should’ve been the first clue, right? The first indicator that motherhood and I were barely going to be on nodding terms, let alone having coffee mornings together.

Anyway.

So, yeah … I’m losing sleep. And I think too much. Even as I lay there, listening to M. snore and staring up at the spiderweb cracks in the ceiling, I’m trying to figure out what it is that’s keeping me awake. ‘Cos it’s a sign of stress, right? Loss of sleep? Only, I don’t feel stressed. I feel perfectly fine. Yes, I’m busy, but I’m busy with things I enjoy, you know? Work’s great, and my book – though a little reluctant sometimes – is coming along okay (85k words in, my friends – Eighty-five thousand fucking words. Chapter 11 was kicking my ass for a bit, but now I think I have it head-locked and ready to give me back my lunch money). I don’t do the online thing quite so much anymore, and what I do is cool and great and perfectly manageable. I don’t get to play games as much as I’d like but pft, what’s new? We already knew that. And so I lie there, these thoughts tumbling about, and I’m starting to wonder if it’s simply the complete lack of stress that’s stressing me out. That it’s my feverish scouting for a reason, an excuse, that’s doing me more harm than fucking good. That maybe it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy when there’s no real reason to keep you up at night, meaning I’ll just keep on searching for an excuse and never find one until it winds me up so badly it finally does stress me out and I’m in a worse mess than when I started.

See? Told you I think too fucking much.

I need to stop taking my laptop to bed with me, though. And my phone. And I need to fall back in love with reading1. And, between you and me (‘cos, you know, the internet and my globally published blog is such a private forum), I suppose I have been grappling a little with the Big Questions, recently – the big OMG-I’m-Nearing-My-Mid-Thirties-How-Did-That-Happen? conundrum, and the Wait-A-Minute-Is-This-My-Life? stumper. I had my heart broken by people whom I had thought were my friends, and I once again regressed to spiral-permed, buck-toothed, unilaterally unpopular 14-year-old me (the me I was shortly before I had my braces removed and I realised that my breasts were weapons). Only this time, I’m all bitter and black and cynical and mean and thoroughly unpleasant and I can’t even redeem myself with the excuse that I’m just a kid. The older I get, the harder I get. One strike and you’re out, dude. I’ve got no time for second chances. Move along and take your sorry with you. Or bend over and I’ll shove it up your ass.

I try to be a better person and rise above it. But it’s like my core, the very essence of me, is just a bucket of dark, bubbling hostility. I read about people like Becca and think – holy Christ. She is such a good person. Me? I like to think that I’m a good person. That I’m a thoughtful friend, and a kind mother with a good soul and a warm heart. But the truth is I’m just me – confused and confusing, clusterfuck me – fumbling around in the darkness that is my life and trying to get to the other side without smashing my shins on the fucking coffee table.

Edit 19:15: it’s just occurred to me that I’ve written a long, rambling entry on Valentine’s Day without even mentioning it. If that, my friends, doesn’t properly exemplify how I feel about VD day then I don’t know what the hell will. Whilst I’m not totally without sentiment (I can get quite emotional and attached to the strangest things, and I have a steel box full of small, silly little mementos that someone, somewhere, touched me with), I’ve never liked Valentine’s Day. Having been in a safe, secure relationship for sixteen years with the love of my life, I can be confident that it’s nothing to do with being snide and single, either. I just find it crass and stupid and infantile and utterly without consequence.

See? I AM A DARK BUBBLING BUCKET OF HOSTILITY.

1 The last two or three books I’ve read have been shite. And since I won’t ever – EVER – quit a book, even if it sucks donkey balls, it means that for a moment or two there reading became really laborious. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to understanding M.’s POV when it comes to recreational reading).

Posted: February 14, 2010 at 5:42 pm | Comments (5)

13th December, 2008

The Day I Was Frrrreeeezzzzzzing

I am so sick of being cold.

In the UK, we’re not so used to weather extremes. We tend to bob along quite nice, shuffling along in mediocrity, rarely too hot or too cold or too windy or too anything. For the most part, I think this is why I’ve never been tempted to emigrate elsewhere; yes, there are lot of crap things about living in the UK – and please, don’t get me started on those – a ranty Vixx is not a happy Vixx – but at least I’m not boiling hot or freezing cold whilst I endure them.

Until now, that is.

The last few weeks have been ridiculous. Yesterday? Yesterday my dashboard told me that my car’s engine had been running for over an hour and there was still ice on the bonnet when I pulled into the car park at work. I’m regularly having to scrape the windscreen inside as well as out, and I’m going through a can of de-icer a week. I wouldn’t mind, but because we’re the UK – and we’re so used to oh-so-averages – even after weeks of this ‘cold snap’ no-one seems to be on top of it. I witnessed a car careering into another on Tuesday after the roads between here and S’s school went ungritted, my work just CANNOT sort out the bloody heating, sending us from one extreme to the other within minutes, and S had two impromptu days off this week thanks to the boiler pegging out at his school. I’m perpetually under one of S’s old nursery blankets, cuddled up into the corner of the sofa in a bid to get warm. But the worse thing? The very worse thing? WE HAVEN’T EVEN HAD ANY SNOW. My corner of the UK seems to be the only part of the country that hasn’t seen as much as a single flake. Seriously – how unfair is this?

This is the MAIN reason I stay in the UK. Along with the wondrous lack of engorged spiders and bugs, the one the the UK has going for it is its complete inability to cope with any snow. The roads screech to a halt, the trains, buses, businesses, schools . . . honestly, it’s awesome. So tell me: what the hell is the point of all this arctic air if I don’t even get a fucking day off work?

Posted: December 13, 2008 at 12:25 pm | Comments (5)