Just got stuff from EDD after it being missing from my mailbox for months. I have been earning money off and on and need Unemployment to kick back in. There is no money attached to these forms and I am freaking out.

I know it isn’t really a big deal. There isn’t anything wrong, I earned too much for the weeks I sent the forms in and I need to fill out the next set. But they did hit home the reality of how close to zero I am since I didn’t bother with UI while I was earning money off and on and I didn’t earn that much. I don’t know what they are going to do now that they have my temp agency listed as my last employer. It is a new system to learn. It makes sense that I am a little wiggy until I know how to work the system instead of the system working me. Which means right now it is appropriate that I am wiggy.

But I am still wiggy right now and freaking out. A friend looks to lose his house the monday after Xmas and he has been squeaking by for two years. I don’t know how others do this. I just start shutting down and not doing anything.

Wiggy wigggy wwiggyy
freak freak freak freak freak.
whimmper.
:Z

One day of productivity (babysitting and doing some freelance work, being around people and socializing).

One day sleeping (through the night and through most of the day. Finally got up around 8pm)

One day of doing nothing (dosed through the night, watched lots of tv, played on the internet, caught up on LJ, nonosweeper and solitaire for hours)

Day of maybe something (still working on getting up. plan to spend day with mom and she annoyed me. still working towards taking a shower).

Last time I hit this cycle it was coming back from Loscon and I had a very stressful morning and collapsed. No such overwhelm this time.

I am getting better then I fall through one of the holes of my foundation. I thing my recovery time is better but I don’t know if my baseline has dropped or not.

Laundry is clean from last week but it needs to be put away.

Yesterday I made it to Dickens. By myself with no plans to meet anyone or be there for any one. I didn’t realize until I was there for a little bit that this was an event where I knew people and had no reason I had to be there. These are the sort of things I have been finding impossible to make. I will plan to go. I have every intention of going. Sometimes I will even get completely ready and still I don’t make it out the door. I just don’t go. No reason, no explanation. I just end up not going. Part of me that doesn’t talk to me or show up on the feeling side so I can tell what is up takes control and derails myself. Not really even a distraction where I forget the time and miss it. I just watch myself not leave. I am full aware of what I am doing, I just don’t seem to have the power to do anything about it. I had gotten to the point I accepted that was how I am right now.

The fact that I made it to Dickens is sort of a big deal (thanks to David for the free pass so the admission cost didn’t get in my way). I made it to Loscon but a lot of people depended on me so it was a requirement to go. I made it to the Pit O’Scorpions but since I am one of the guests of honor, it was sort of a requirement to go. I could have gotten out of it but it would have taken work. I didn’t make it to the former BGI dinner before the Pit. I wasn’t needed there but people would have been happy to see me.

I did make it to Fentons for Promise’s birthday party. I had planned my day so I would be near by. I was late which I think is part of this problem (not my normal lateness stuff). I did make it to FNW when I was working near by. I sort of beat on myself to go since I was under 2 miles away and I live 50 miles away. I was late to that because I didn’t want to go and I had to sort of shame myself into going. I plan to go next friday since I will be working at the same place. I wish I wasn’t aware of my issue so it could be like Dickens where I just go and figure it out later.

Competence needed directly upon waking up and maintained for 4 hours = complete meltdown for 2 hours and 24 of total rest/collapse. Other than 1.5 hours of tv and a dinner in there somewhere, I pretty much slept from noon yesterday to noon today. Planning for low operational levels through Friday. There is a steep price to pay for things now.

I had a good time at Loscon but the last two days really went downhill due to many unresolved issues, a button of mine being hit too many times, feeling the need to play guessing games to avoid drama, needing to sit on stuff of mine to keep drama as low as possible. Nobody did anything wrong, nobody did anything that was against me, I did notice a lack of anybody doing anything for me (there was some and it was good but usually too late to be much help). If I wasn’t feeling so far down and depleted then the neutral in relationship to me wouldn’t have looked and felt as much like anti-in relationship to me. I am pretty sure if anyone knew what was going on they would have tried to do something but I really had no way to let people know without blowing up and becoming a drama epicenter. I kept trying to take care of it myself and it kept not working.

I ran into the attitude of “just suck it up” so many times before I fell far enough that it could easily be applied to me. It hurt every time and it took me awhile to realize what was causing the pain and why. Any body coming at me with anything along the lines of “it doesn’t matter how you feel you just have to suck it up” had better be prepared to have their ass handed to them and maybe even be booted out of their place in my life for awhile. This is something that has taken on a lot of meaning before I have had a chance to expose it to the light. The reaction will far outweigh the trigger. Drama-free be damned.

While the Gina Maintenance Team may no longer be in operation, my therapist suggested setting up a buddy system for events with many people since when I am having trouble, I am not capable enough to resolve the trouble. It is an interim step towards being able to do this stuff for myself.

While yesterday was really bad and I was not ok and there are many things to deal with and resolve that I am still not looking at I do want to acknowledge that the first half of Loscon was so good that I wasn’t even craving sugar. I did eat chocolate cake one time but that was because I love chocolate cake and was willing to pay the price. I do also want to acknowledge that there were times when I got support when I needed it and that it helped a lot. I did feel like I needed to not ask for more because I needed to take care of myself so I probably dampened the good that support gave me.

The bad that happened to me was not anybody’s fault and I blame no one but me. It is my attitude that needed changing. But there was a lot of room for others to help me adjust my attitude and I did fail in trying to do it on my own. I don’t know how and am trying to learn how to let people know when help is needed/wanted/useful and how to put a stopper on the help that is turning out to not be useful so it doesn’t take me down farther.

There was a blowup Sat evening that was handled the way I consider good. It was completely cleared up and I have no left over problems from it at all. It was great to be able to talk about it afterwards and laugh. I would like to use it as a template for how to make other things work out.

I generally greet client needs with a gleeful smile and get right on it. I am finding that I am really dragging my feet in my current assignment.

I am at a branding company that was worried about getting stuff finished an onto the next step in the production (which is video made of the ppt files I created). A reasonable time frame would be for the files to be finalized by EOD last Friday. They were created last Wed. Well…content has continued to come in during this week and we still don’t have sign-off.

Every step of the way it has been worry on this side and when dealing with the client, it is “sure, we can take care of that,” said in a very upbeat way. It seems like the client is getting no resistance to making fundamental changes so late in the game. No mention of needing to pull overtime to meet the deadline and how many other things are at risk due to being up against the last possible moment. I get the feeling that the client thinks the deadline is X and they can make changes up until X and it will be done. And it will be. These guys are pushing to the very edge to make it happen. And the client doesn’t have a clue.

When the client doesn’t know how hard they are making the job, then they get this idea that the miracle you pulled off by sacrificing something of yourself is a baseline and they then expect that. I don’t mind pulling off the miracles, I love pulling off the miracles but I think it is important that the client understand what it took to make everything happen. I don’t like Scotty’s approach of estimating 3 weeks and getting it done is 2 hours in an emergency. I need to put some padding in unlike Geordie’s approach of stating exactly what it will take because I tend to estimate what the time will be if everything goes right.

I think what is going on with this project is either poor project management or poor client management or both. I don’t know if they have a good handle of what is involved in the critical path and what flex room is available so they started worrying too soon. I am pretty sure the client isn’t being handled well. As a client I would be really upset if I was thinking we had time for a change I consider important and then am informed that we are past that point. I would want a ramping up of resistance so I could adjust my focus to what is critical. Every step of the way, every change, from a minor typo to centering the text to actual content change, it has been all treated as very important changes. There hasn’t been time for us to push back when they make a choice that is poor for the look of the presentation. We just do it the way they want it rather than suggest options that might make their point even more clear or work with the overall design better. It is very slap and dash on our side.

The face everyone here shows the client is “Sure, we are happy to do that, what else can we do to make you happy.” I have gotten to the point of “sure, I can do it and would be happy to but this is what it affects, do you want me to go forward with it?” It is a very different approach. I don’t know which is better. They have a thriving business and I am doing temp work. I would love more training in project and client management.

I came up with the idea that when I work with a client for a set price, there is a listing of deadlines and number of rounds of edits. If the work goes beyond that, which it almost always does, I would like to have some sort of compensation built in, like an hourly fee that will then get tagged onto the set price. That way the client can decide if the edits are worth it. As is, the client will keep poking at it and keep changing their mind because it doesn’t cost them anything but time. Not being paid based on my time, the more effort I spend on something, the less I make. I end up doing things for free. I haven’t seen this structure mentioned in the online research I have been doing for graphic designers. I would love to work for an hourly wage but if I am going to do set prices, I think this approach is the most reasonable.

Details
It is a branding company that is getting a bunch of stuff ready for a big client for a big conference including some ppt decks which I was brought in to work on. On a reasonable schedule, everything needed to be finalized last Friday and I started creating the first ones last Wed. This isn’t a problem if the content is close to done but it turns out that the content was in the early draft form. Thur saw it nailed down to which ones were going to be kept (7 decks) and some of them completely changed content. Friday was making the first round of edits to them. All of last week there was worry about how late the client was pushing getting us material.

We were extending the deadline to early Monday morning as being within reason and ended up with half hour meetings with 5 content owners really working over each presentation. Fundamental changes were happening. Entire focus of presentations were put back to where we had moved them through the edits from the prior week. This was the first the content owners were getting to say anything about the presentations. We were working on content, not design. To make things work the way the content owners wanted, the quality of the design went downhill. We started with some high quality and now I am not sure I would want this in my portfolio.

Monday day was spent on the edits and getting things into shape. There was a review phone conference as the two different people overseeing the entire project went over the content owner changes and made their own. Those edits were made in time for an in person meeting at 2pm. At 5, we had another entire set of edits. Each round were major changes but at least these edits weren’t all changes in content but more focused on format. Here we are at the end of Tues photoshoping images, getting new images, changing charts (which are in Illustrator) and moving things around. I stayed until 10:30pm making most of the changes.

Monday, the head of the project at the design firm leaves for the holidays. Tues the one that took the lead from him leaves (at 8pm to start driving to LV) for the holidays. It is now Wed and it is just me and the proofreader and we just finished the last set of edits which were at the typo and minor modification level (what I think should have been done Monday morning). One of the presenters is coming in at 2:30pm for a demo and we are hoping to take the materials with her so we don’t have to ship them. We close down at 3pm.

I didn’t do this for my birthday but it is well timed. It came to me in a dream….
I was in that inbetween space between sleep and awake and had thoughts of where I want to go, what I want in my life. It was really hard to hold onto them and get them written down but I did manage to get the gist of them. Looking at them a day later, I am pretty amazed at how dead on these are. There is a part of me that thinks they are all hokey and a waste of time. It is the one worried about posting these and how stupid I will feel and how empty these things will seem later. I try not to pay too much attention to that part and just keep moving forward.

During my waking hours, I want to feel the ease of life and the contment that I feel when I have just woken up from a deep sleep. I want to be in tune with life instead of fighting it.
I want to feel peace and serenity with who I am and where I am and what I have before me. I want to see the beauty of everyday things instead of feeling the need to nitpick the edges.
I want to see the glow of each person’s character rather than the dull form of their external shape.
I want to be a part of the process of living instead of resenting the fact that I exist
I want to experience life instead of withstanding it and feeling beaten up by it.
I want to feel graceful and light rather than heavy and plodding, to float rather than fight my way through waist high mud or against the current.
I want to slide through rather than hacking a way through
I want to feel rather than hurt or lack of hurt
I want to relax rather than colapse
I want to change, or reorganize me instead of feeling the need to make the world change to suit me.
I want to feel like I don’t have to be in charge to have things work for me.
I want to find a path that works for me and that I can keep to.
I want to be settled rather than lost
I want to explore and delight in the new rather than feel the need to be afraid and hide.
I want to expand rather than contract.
I want to feel the joy of the moment when there is nothing happening.
I want to be able to enjoy the quiet.
I want to folow and be taken care of and to rise and take care of others when it is appropriate.
I want experience glow rather than glare.

I want to find a tradition, path,practice,way, path thatkeeps me orented and grounded in what I want, need, looking for, going forward.
I am tired of flailing this way and that searching for anything to add to the pile. I want a measure of how well I am doing to cling to for when I am not feeling like I am doing well.
I want a space where I can take a break without loosing ground.

I am tired. I don’t want to do this any more.

I am getting the message to just suck it up. I have learned how to open up to be able to actually enjoy for once and it is back to suck it up. I don’t feel I have the resources to go back to sucking it up. I don’t think I am willing. I am back to wanting to quit.

Tomorrow is another day. Lets see what it brings.

Another two loads of laundry done. Mostly put away. I did two loads sometime last week (I think). Still shaky, still needing to rock myself to keep calm. But I did do it with no panic attack. Big improvement, small baby steps. Still have a long way to go but there is movement. Wow, movement, glad to have that.

Got up and out for a walk at the Albany Bulb at 1pm. Hit my limit a few times and had to sit down and recuperate. Got a Subway tuna sandwich afterwards. Energy is just not coming back. I am soooo tired. Not sleepy but feeling ready to go to bed. It is not even 6pm yet.

I still feel a little warm in the face which may be leftover sun but I am too tired to look into it. People would probably call today a nice weather day and I felt it was too warm for a walk. I didn’t feel comfortable until the wind picked up.

This getting back into shape thing is not pleasant. But I know is it good to do and I want the results.

Follow-up: it is now 9pm and I am wide awake. I have spent the last three hours on the couch surfing the internet and chilling. I have had one ice cream sandwich. That’s it and I am wide awake and feeling like I have energy. Guess it took longer than I expected to recover from the hike.

I sort of feel like I haven’t moved all day.

Coraline,the stage production is coming to SF. Goldstar was offering free tickets (plus fees) but they are all sold out. They still have $20+$5fee tickets. Regular price $30-$40.
Anyone want to go with me?
Nov 24, Dec 1, 8, 9, 26, 30 are the dates covered (assuming tickets are still available when it is time to buy them).