Struggling

This is a hard blog post to write. In fact, this probably would have gone up on Tuesday if I hadn’t already scheduled the review to go live (I do try to keep consistent) but then again…Tuesday was not a day when I was able to do much of anything.

Here’s what I’m trying to believe, and you’ll see why once I get a bit further on.

Tuesday was the day I became a writer.

Now, this sounds one of two ways–or really, possibly both. 1) It sounds ridiculous. “Rion, you’ve spent all this time talking about what makes a writer, and how you don’t need to be published to be a real writer, and now it just sounds like you’re going against everything you stand for.” Yes, this is true; it does sound that way. 2) It sounds awesome. “But this must mean that something amazing happened on Tuesday! Did you get a book deal, or your first publication, or something awesome like that?” No, unfortunately I didn’t. That would have been an awesome thing to happen, though.

No, on Tuesday, I got let go from my job.

Now. Being honest: I didn’t care for the job. I didn’t want to work in food service, and I’d had trouble with communication from the get-go. It wasn’t where I wanted to be in the long run, and I’d been looking for a new job anyway. But this is not how I wanted that to go, nor is it when I wanted it to happen. I haven’t found a new job, and my freelancing work makes applying for unemployment odd, if not downright impossible. (It’s probably going to require me to make a call, and I hate telephones. Absolutely hate telephones. Which is funny, given that I’m essentially looking for a job as an administrative type.)

But it means that I’m out at sea, for the moment.

One might also think that this means I now have awesome amounts of writing time! Look at all the free time I didn’t have! I could write a book in a week!

The trouble with this, is that inevitably (at least for me) when one is cut without decent reason from one’s place of employ, it triggers a fairly dramatic downturn in mood, if not outright depression. I feel useless. I feel worthless. I feel like nothing I do is ever going to be decent again, and I may as well just jump off a cliff and die. That is about how I feel tonight, and how I have felt since Tuesday after my shift, when it happened. I haven’t been writing as much as I wanted to. I haven’t been auditioning for new audio projects, despite the fact that I have two audition pages open. I haven’t been doing anything, because I can’t bring myself to.

This is the trouble.

That being said, today was better for writing. I got a story edited and sent off for review. I cleaned up another short piece and submitted it for review. I haven’t done nearly as many things on my to-do list as I’d hoped, but I did do some. I did some laundry. I went to the gym. I’m writing this blog. These are all productive things. But it wasn’t all sunshine and daisies. I spent the better part of an hour in full-blown hysterics over something happening in my relationship, which in the end turned out to be okay and able to be worked around. Under standard circumstances, that wouldn’t have happened. It may have been disconcerting and off-putting, but I would have kept a level head and I would have been okay. Not today. Not this week.

I’m going to be spending the weekend away, celebrating a birthday with a very good friend and being able to see my partner, which I hope will even out the nonsense that is my brain right now. Because on Monday, I want to buckle down and take on this world. If I’m going to be out in the open for a while, then I’m going to take advantage of that fact. I’m going to get writing done. I’m going to seek out submissions and send stuff off for them. I’m going to audition for books and maybe even record some. I’m going to do what I said I was going to do, when I first started talking about going out on my own.

Because if there’s one thing I don’t want to do, it’s give my former workplace a reason to believe they should have dropped me.

I want them to regret that choice, and wish they’d never let me go.