Wednesday, May 31, 2017

What now?

For the past hour and a half or so I've been having what I call a "quiet anxiety attack" because it's not as bad as they can get, and it's not completely crippling, and if you were to talk to me it would probably seem like nothing is wrong. What happened is I called work to get my schedule and they gave it to me. Nothing went wrong, I put my schedule into my calendar, and then I started having a quiet anxiety attack because immediately I went to all the ways things could go wrong.

For example: I'm not scheduled to work for the rest of the week. My thought: Does this mean the person I asked didn't see that I work this week and so told me the wrong day and now I'm going to get a call when I'm in the middle of something else and not be able to make it? And then what will happen?

It's irrational. I doubt the person misread anything. But if they did, it's at this point out of my hands; I called and got my schedule and I will be going to work for those days that I was told I was scheduled to work. Done, nothing else to do. If I get a call tomorrow I can tell them what happened and I can know it's not my fault because I have no way of knowing.

Another example: I'm schedule to go to work early and unload trucks. I haven't been schedule to do this since last summer and I don't know the etiquette. My thought: what if it isn't trucks? What if we're doing something else? What if I wear the wrong uniform? What if I get there too early.

Irrational. I keep reminding myself that I'm being irrational. Everything will work out and I have to remember that.
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But why am I telling you? Well, I think it's time we talked about work on here because my job, a part-time retail job that I rather enjoy when it's not giving me anxiety attacks.

I know it's not a permanent job and I've long planned to leave it after December of this year because, if things work out, I'll be studying abroad and won't be able to keep it while I'm abroad (I have to work once every so many weeks to stay on the payroll). Then, next summer, I can try to get an internship in publishing. It works out perfectly! Yet even though it's not permanent, and I'm more than halfway done with it, and even though I really do love working where I work, inside it's kinda constraining.

I'm not the most people person out there and I know it. Interacting with the customers drains me and by the end of a shift I don't want to do anything. It's made me realize, more than anything else, that I can't live this sort of life and I have to be a writer. That may sound... strange? I don't know, but it may sound sorta selfish too, perhaps. But having his job has convinced me that, in the long run, I can't be happy with this life and I need to have a life where I can write and make money on that writing.

One of the goals this summer is to really stick to writing and get things done in a large enough capacity that I feel like a real writer.
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But to be a writer I need to have something I'm working on and right now, I don't. I mean, I do, but it's not one solid project. I've been bouncing around from project to project because it's become difficult finding something that really grabs my muse and allows me to tell a story right now.

Last night and tonight I reembarked on a television idea I had and I've begun outlining. Tonight I think I'm going to finish outlining season one and work on the script of the series. Is this the most feasible writing to begin with? Absolutely not because what am I going to do with these scripts? I can't exactly sell them and get a job that way. At least, not that I know of. But it is really fun to return to this idea that I had several years ago, tighten it up, and explore the world I had in mind. If nothing else, it's a good set of writing exercises that I can enjoy doing.
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I haven't been super active on the blog and I know that. Things are going to pick up this summer. I want to do a weekly check in if I can manage it, talk about the projects I'm working on, and give you an idea for how things have been going.

This is partly for myself and partly because I think you all might find it interesting. I've also been considering doing a monthly vlog, starting at the beginning of the month and every time I do some major writing or need to vent about progress, taking it up with you guys and then editing and posting it all early the next month. We'll see how that goes, though. I've also considered getting an instagram again to talk about writing and reading things. Again, we'll see how it goes.