zeptember

All these damned things buzz around in my head - mostly related to file organisation and genealogy - things that I really need and want to work on.

Then I get home after an hour and a half drive from work, and I need to wash dishes and fix dinner and prepare tomorrow’s lunch.

Then after spending 9 hours in front of a computer, I sit back down at the computer.

And then I forget what it was I needed and wanted to work on. Then the task becomes an overwhelming chore.

Now my back and neck hurt even worse.

9:09pm Edit: I took a nice hot shower to loosen up my muscles. It worked on my neck and back, but then my left calf for some reason felt the need to tighten and want to charlie horse. It’s still really tight and hurty, but has not charlie horsed, yet.
WTF? I’m falling apart!

Maybe this is the start of it all, then. Maybe I’ll just wake up tomorrow and find I can’t walk and that my spine has cracked, too. It could secretly be what I’ve wanted - to just fall to pieces all at once, and then wink out. It’d certainly be a release from all the years of mental illness.

And yet, I write this with calm collectedness instead of sobbing madness. I still have hopes and plans and goals even with wondering if my secret wish could come true.

Eh, it’s nothing.

Back on October 29th, I wrote, “Oh and as of yesterday, we’re officially in Mercury Retrograde. I need to watch my tongue and my attitude, my spending habits, and my tendency to overshare during Mercury retrograde. Pay attention, zept!!!”

Well, I failed in the spending habits department and my tendency to overshare department.

Mercury went direct yesterday, and we happened to be out wine tasting. I spent $126.79 while we were out.

That was uh, my grocery money.

I have $416 until payday this coming Friday the 24th. Doing a quick budget analysis based on money I expect to receive this payday, and then minusing out all my bills and groceries, I’ll have about $266 left to my name until payday on December 8th.
And I need two week’s worth of pay to live on in January for when I will be out of work after surgery. That means I should be saving $253 per paycheck. And I already missed one payment of $253 to myself. So I owe myself $506.

Note that I said I’ll have about $266 left to my name after my bills are paid from this Friday’s paycheck.

Oh and there’s also the rest of my debt - I owe my boyfriend and my dad money that isn’t there to pay back.

Now, mind you, the weekend spending spree isn’t the issue. After my first paycheck from the new job, I count TEN INSTANCES where I ate out or otherwise spent my money on non-essentials, totaling $193.14.

After the second paycheck from the new job, I count FOUR INSTANCES where I ate out or otherwise spent my money on non-essentials, totaling $184.95.

That’s $378.09 that could have been applied to paying down my debt.

This can’t be blamed on Mercury being Retrograde or going Direct.

This is me. I have a problem managing my money. I’ve known for awhile that I suck when it comes to managing my money. I think that if I had someone manage my money for me, and only give me an allowance every week, then I’d be okay, because let’s get real, I’m thirty-five years old and I still spend my money like a kid in a candy store every week when I end up with money in the bank. I have all these elaborate spreadsheets noting what needs to be spent and where and on what schedules. And then I go shopping or I eat grocery store-made sushi for lunch at a cost of $14.

This has to stop. I’ve been saying it has to stop for years. And yet I never stop it. I don’t know how.
I own and have read the following books TWICE: Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence, by Joe Dominguez, and How to Survive Without a Salary, by Charles Long.

And I tried to get through a quarter of the book Debt-Proof Living: The Complete Guide to Living Financially Free, by Mary Hunt.
I found the book too Christian and couldn’t get past that bent so took the formula “Save 10% of each paycheck” and tried to adhere to that for awhile.

All of these financial management books were recommended to me by friends.

I failed again, however.

Re-reading a book doesn’t help. Nodding to advice doesn’t help. Joining an “overspenders anonymous” type group won’t help because they are 12-step programs, which are Christian-based.

This is more proof that I cannot take care of myself - I need someone to look after me.

During my breakdown last week, I told my boyfriend that since Social Security won’t be there for us by 2041 anyway, I might as well tap into what I’ve got now and have the state take care of me, since I appear unable to care for myself.

But to hand myself over to the state means I have to prove repeatedly that I’m sick. Which means I have to get a chemical lobotomy in the form of psych drugs and live in a nice state-run(down) facility.

I think I’d rather be like the Reagan-era mental patients, and just be put out into the streets.

So, hoping to not come to that, I ask again, what is left for me to do - how can I learn to take care of myself when I’ve not learned this by age thirty-five?
Is that what it means in the traditional sense of being married in my mom’s day and in my grandmothers’ day? That some strong man will come along and take care of me? In this day and age, there’s no excuse for such behaviour. There’s no room for that. Couples are equals, not master and subbordinate.

But what of those of us who are mentally instable and in a relationship?
It’s not fair to the partner to have to take on a parental role.

Round and round my thoughts will go on this subject today.

I was right, I was in the process of bouncing.

Two things helped me along yesterday:
1. The big bossman boosted my confidence first thing in the morning after I took my first call of the day, which turned out to be a real pain in the ass. He said I handled the call perfectly.

2. I went out to dinner with my man, and afterwards, we joined some friends for Pissup Night at our old hangout, which we’ve neglected over the months since the Tiki bar opened.

Yesterday as a result, was full of smiles and laughter, the best medicine as they say.

Today is Friday, so I HAVE to get through the day unscathed so I can enjoy every second of my two days off of work.

This weekend and next may include trips to wineries so we can put our noses in the air, act all sophisticated, and slurp down some wine and port, and finally, mess with the snotty tourists once we are inebriated.
Hell, just our very looks mess with the snotty tourists. But there’s no fun in leaving it at that.

Hm. Looks. That reminds me. I have next to zero vanity photos in my journal posts. What’s wrong with me? I’ll have to work on that. Even some scenic photos might be nice once in awhile - show you where I live and all that.

Yeah. A project. Good. Ok, I’ll get to work on that.

I’m not sure if I’m still at the teetering edge of insanity, or snapping out of it. It’s still hard to tell.

Today is my one month anniversary on the new job.

The very week I started the new job, they had a server outage - ALL of their customers were DOWN for 36 hours.

The very week of my one month anniversary, they had a server outage (Wednesday). ALL of their customers were DOWN for nearly six hours with no explanation. The website just kept saying it was due to “unscheduled maintenance”. When I called the network status hotline after I got home from work, I found it hadn’t been updated since 4pm PST. They have us tell the customers that it’s updated every few minutes. I wasn’t able to log into my account until after 8pm.

My first week on the job entailed working 12 straight days for up to nine hours a day after the last outage.

This had better not be the case for the rest of this week. I am NOT looking forward to dealing with the shitstorm that is the result of this latest outage.

I work on average 1 hour to 1.5 hours overtime DAILY because they won’t let people leave without clearing out their inboxes of all support mail replies.

My daily commute averages an hour and ten minutes to work and an hour and a half home from work.

You all wondered how long this would take….. I’m looking for a new job.

If I get another job before the end of this year, I will have had FIVE jobs in one year alone.

Is there something wrong with me? Or am I just attracting the shithole jobs?
Some of my friends have already assured me that it’s not me. They’ve shared some of their horror stories. It’s so sad that so many people… I mean, it’s not me, it’s not just some of my friends. If it’s us, it’s hundreds or thousands or millions of people who go through this… it’s sad that we’re all so willing to line up for the abuse time and time again. This is the greed. This is trying to get by in the United States. This is what Capitalism does to you. No system is right, mind you. They’re all fucked. I’m anti everything.

I feel myself slipping again.

Just in time for the morning commute.

Was awakened crying by a nightmare at 2:40am.

I was being questioned by some Germans about a pair of brown cargo pants. I thought I had given them to the thrift store. I was genuinely surprised when the German SS reproduced my cargo pants and questioned me at length about how I ever came to have the pants and why I got rid of the ‘evidence’. I kept telling them that I’d simply become too thin to wear the pants and had given the pants to a thrift store.
They let me go.

However, my boyfriend was now being held for questioning on unrelated charges. They might torture him. Instead of going on my way like I was told to do, I hung back and began to spy on what was going on. Then they started coming out to the back area of the house - the back yard I guess… with my boyfriend to strap him to the torture table. I quickly dove under the table, which was stupid because there was no cover on the table.

It was one of those moments like when you’re a kid and you think that when you close your eyes tight enough, nobody can find you.

So I laid there under the table, somehow levitated under it, eyes closed. They strapped my boyfriend in to begin the torture. Then I felt MY hands being pried open and little candles stuck between each digit. The woman in charge, who had also interviewed me, lit the candles. I could feel the heat. They were small candles. I felt my fingers begin to burn. She then fixed her gaze on me; she’d discovered they were my hands at the head of the table that she’d reached for - not my boyfriend’s. I opened my eyes. Her eyes were filled with rage. She dragged me out from under the table.

SS men came rushing in while she was barking orders to them and yelling at me in German. I was ordered to be dragged off by my hair. My boyfriend looked on in horror but I smiled and told him something like, “It’s okay, my hair is thick enough, if I just lay on my hair on my stomach, I won’t feel the dragging.” That’s when they grabbed hold of me and dragged me off by my very thick long blonde hair.

I turned over on my belly and laid on the rest of my hair and felt the tugging at my scalp but it was okay. I didn’t get scuffed up from the dragging this way.

I was thrown into the head SS woman’s office up front in the house again. She felt almost bad to have to torture me for what I’d done. I tried to make it sound like I got lost, and got tired, and had to rest. She didn’t believe me.

She began the torture process while someone else looked on. She began cutting up my face. She meant to do something to my eyelid but I twitched and she scraped off part of my left eyeball. She and the onlooker winced. I pulled away and with wide eyes looked around and established that I could still see out of my left eye. There was blood dripping into it, though, and the vision was deteriorating. I looked back at the torturer and said, “it’s okay” and she continued.

I awoke and began crying.

I’d already been crying for four hours on and off from the time I was in commute on the way home from work. Now three hours into my sleep, I awoke crying again from a nightmare.

And yet, I’m going in to work.

We’ll see how much of the day I get through.

I haven’t eaten breakfast yet. I usually require a full protein breakfast before work. I know I will sugar crash at work unless i eat. I don’t feel like eating. I have to leave in 5 minutes for work.