It's a question I've been asking myself
for what feels like a very long time. And
I always have the same answer. I don't want
it to be.
I
suspect that the question came from how
borked the site has been for the past week.
My hosting company migrated my account and,
in the process, changed the index page,
changed my password and IP address and may
have lost stuff. After four frustrating
late night and early morning calls to tech
(cough) support I still couldn't access
my account. The story of how I finally got
on needs some preamble.
The
building, in which I have lived for the last twelve
years, was sold to some really worrisome
people. Sad because we had a truly wonderful landlady
before this and I had another wonderful landlady in
the apartment I lived in when I first got to SF. Now
I have fear and loathing. My neighbors and I got together
to talk about it all. My next door neighbor does web
design and was kind enough to help me figure out my
FTP program. He has a story on his
site about a time when the fire alarm went off in
our building. It's a fun
read in which I appear as the nice lady with the
phone cradled in my shoulder who was in fact unconcerned
about the possibility of a fire. Out alarm is touchy
and has gone off before. It's quite loud. I can't remember
who I was talking to but I do remember feeling like
there wasn't any danger and I wanted to keep talking.
When he asked if there was a fire in my place I
did something I too often do. I answered a question
that hadn't been asked. I answered the question: is
everything OK? I don't know why I do that. We don't
know how crazy things will get here. Our new landlords don't
have a very good rep. Most of us have lived here for
a long time and we all like it. It's scary when I think
about it. I try not to think abut it. It was good to
talk with my neighbors though.
A
few months after I started working at EA
all of the tester contracts were sold to
VMC. Nothing
much changed for me but now I have an open
ended contract in which I will never get a raise and
can't go to company events. It's a way for the company
to have employees and not have to make a commitment
or proved benefits. Right now we're working overtime.
I leave the house at 7:00 and get home around 10:30.
On the weekends I feel like I have the flu. My digestion
seems to fall apart. I need to sleep for hours. I can't
focus. Late on Sunday I sometimes get some energy. Just
enough to do what I need to do to get ready for the
next week. Things are just weird and I don't seem to
have the wisdom, character, vision, drive or whatever
is needed to make it better.
Is
it over?
When
I couldn't get the info I needed to fix the site and
days were going by I was incredibly sad. I kept telling
myself that it didn't matter because I'm not writing
anyway. I keep telling myself that it doesn't matter
because I can only do what I can do. But it does
matter. I don't want it to be over. I want to find a
way to write.
So,
once a month I write something to reclaim my space.
And then I get ready for the next week.