I'm The Saddest Sicky You'll Ever Meet

I don’t like getting sick. Truly, I don’t know many people who do (“Oh wow that cold looks awesome! Can I drink from your glass there?”). But as hubby points out regularly, I am down right pathetic when any type of illness strikes me. I’m not the “suffer in silence” type.

Two weeks ago I had some stomach bug that caused me to pray to the porcelain gods for most of the night, and ultimately took the next day off of work – which I never do. Hubby was sweet and brought me water so I didn’t get dehydrated, and came home for lunch with a container of chicken noodle soup and crackers from our local grocery store. Ultimately it blew over two days later much to my relief and everything was hunky dory.

This past Saturday night hubby and I had our long awaited Halloween Pirate Party. Hubby had kicked his cold for the most part so we seemed all ready to go. Everything went great and we had good food, dirk, and excellent company who could have stayed long past midnight if I hadn’t all of a sudden been felled with the symptoms of Hubby’s cold at the stroke of midnight. Luckily there were only a few revelers left, and I think me starting to clean up may have been a sign for them to exit. Yesterday morning I woke up much later than normal to Cleo whining to be let out and feeling as if I still had a pillow over my face due to the lack of ability to breathe, my throat on fire, and my head buzzing like an angry anthill. My response: groan like I’m dying.

I spent most of yesterday on the couch or in bed bemoaning my fate and wondering if I should call in sick to work again. Ultimately I decided that since I wasn’t really dying I would go to work and go to the store on my break to get some medicine. This morning while getting ready for work, and generally feeling bad for myself I found a set of Dayquil liquid caps in my medicine cabinet that may or may not be more than a year old, I took them in the hopes they would help. As of this moment don't feel nearly as horrible. I'm just hoping the phone doesn't ring all that much today, I don't know how much talking I can do with this sore throat.

What I do know, is that I'm going to be stocking up on the airborne the next chance I get, because I can't really afford to be so pathetic.

NaNo Insane Mo

Well, it’s come to that time of year again: National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I have a love hate relationship with November for this reason. This year, like the last two years I have attempted this, I have no idea what to write. Since here we are at mid-October I’m trying to be proactive and come up with something before Nov. 1 rolls around the corner and smacks me square on to my keister. The reason I keep submitting to the glorious torture of NaNoWriMo, other than that I fancy myself a writer, is that the first year I did it, 2004, I was able to complete the challenge of 50,000 words in one month. That in and of itself is what keeps taking me back to the wondrous suffering of the month. The idea that I came up with in 2006 was very half hearted and not well developed at all, and 2007’s effort was developed but probably not enough to carry my interest through to the end.

So, I have made the goal that NaNoWriMo 2008 I will finish. We’ll ignore the fact that that’s what I said last year. And the year before that. This month, I have been trying to prepare myself for the NaNoWriMo by writing unnecessarily verbose emails to friends, family, and coworkers, I find myself eavesdropping on conversations trying to think if it would be a good plot point or story line, and of course I’m totally writing off every idea I come up with thinking I couldn’t get a full novel out of it. Except for one.

When I was in college I took a course in Creative Non-Fiction. Most people make no differentiation between Non-Fiction and Creative Non-Fiction, but oh glory is there a big difference. What you find in text books and newspapers is Non-Fiction, Creative Non-Fiction is how one might qualify a memoir or travel writing for example. My professor explained it that the story is all based on fact and things that really happened but if you can’t remember all of the details (what someone was wearing, how many people were in the room, etc.) certain parts can be fictionalized as long as it is 95% factual and it had to “read like fiction”. I’ve been thinking of trying this for my NaNoWriMo novel writing it much like the book I am reading right now (Eat, Pray, Love) but my main challenge with that is I wonder if my life is really interesting enough to replicate on paper, and after checking my bank account I’m pretty sure I can’t afford to bank roll a trip of self exploration to a different country let alone a hotel for a night.

So I have fifteen days left to decide what I want to write 50,000 words about. Try it, it’s not an easy task.

At Your Administrative Assistance

I was talking to OfficeNinja on the MAX ride home the other night and we were discussing various projects we were helping out with in the office. She, being OfficeNinja / the in-house go-to when things need to be done, and me, being the Gatekeeper/Assistant at Large, get quite a few projects from various people in the office. What brought up the upcoming part of the discussion was a result of me overhearing someone that I had helped with a large project of theirs talking about said project. I proceeded to tell OfficeNinja about my frustration with not getting any credit for helping out or contributing to the projects, just contributing to someone else’s glory or “the greater good”. I’m fine with helping out on a project, don’t get me wrong, it is a part of my job after all. The part I’m frustrated about is “all the guts, none of the glory”. I suppose that just means I’m annoyed with being a measly assistant instead of a mover and shaker in my company.

Previously I had been happy not to have the responsibility (and the hours) that those positions required, but now I really want to do something other than entertain interviewees, transfer phone calls, and do someone else’s work. Perhaps a lot of the enjoyment I got from working this job previously was a result of me working at The Bank and allowing myself to screw up enough to get fired and send myself into a depression. I liked only taking responsibility for the simplest things – answering the phone when it rings, signing for deliveries, checking the mail regularly, typing up meeting notes coherently, etc. After a year in this position it seems like child’s play now. Maybe that’s just a sign that it’s time for me to move in to something more challenging. Don’t get me wrong, I love working at The Company, always have. There’s a great energy here that would be difficult to find elsewhere. So my goal is to get another job within the company – something that doesn’t require a MBA – and see where it takes me.