Last week was a long week for me. Very long, and filled with last minute scrambling. Also, lots of finger-pointing, as though I haven’t been saying You need this. No, more than that. Really. for the last three months at least - more like the last six or eight. There were some genuine moments of appreciation and sighs of relief when I delivered good news, but right now I’m having a hard time concentrating on those over some of the moments of nastiness.

I think it’s Generic Summer Burnout - seems like I always spend a few days wishing I was elsewhere at this time of year, and again as the new year starts. Neither do I help myself much by looking at neat places that are offering jobs I think I’d like to try - a bookstore in Cambridge offering full-time, a customer service/GM type position at Turbine for one of their MMOs (granted, WoW is the only MMO I play, but I bet I could do the job). But right now, I’m unwilling to take a pay cut and I’d be forfeiting any potential bonuses that might come from the last months of hell.

And damn it, I’m going to get more satisfaction out of this nightmare than just the gnashing of fangirl teeth (although that is at least a small balm, by itself.)

I had a pretty good weekend, at least. Started on Housework: The Decluttering and got my kitchen and study looking nice, plus a good chunk of laundry put away. I also went through a pile of comic books, separated them out by series, then put them in order. Now I can go through and see what numbers are missing (I’m sure there was a cat-related accident that made me have to throw some away a while back.) Though, I’m also fairly certain there’s at least another stack or two of comics hidden away somewhere - I found big gaps across several series, all the same month’s issues.

I need to buy longboxes to store them in. At least one, maybe two. Not that I have any idea where to put them…

It’s been a kind of listless week for writing so far, too. Several things I want to start, or continue, or finish, and yet whenever I open up their gdocs, I find myself just staring at the screen. I’ve partly overwhelmed myself, so I’m not quite sure where to start, or which one is shouting at me the loudest. Yesterday I thought it would be smart to simply go in chronological order. That didn’t go so well, either.

I’m feeling generally blah about my writing right now, too, which is never useful. On the one hand, as so many people have said whenever I bemoan how many titles on the bestseller lists are junk right now: if that kind of stuff can not only get published, but also succeed, it should be a comfort knowing that I can do better. But I’m frustrated by it and I think it’s getting under my skin enough that it’s been hard to write the last couple of days. Silly, I know, but there it is. What should be inspiring me to produce something better is instead making me look at my own stuff and wonder if I’m actually capable of doing better. It’s intimidating.

So, for the moment, while I could wait for the Muse to come kick me in the ass, she seems to have gone off on a bit of a jaunt. I’ll muddle through without her for a bit, pick something and stick to it and see what I can crank out that’s worth keeping in the meantime.

I am an occupational hazard waiting to happen today. I wish I could say that the stacks of samples perched willy-nilly along the edges of my cube’s walls were the building blocks for a Fortress of Evil, but alas. It’s awfully hard to make a Fortress of Evil out of colorful children’s books. Bunnies and farm animals just aren’t all that intimidating.

So, instead, I watch as people walk by and cringe if someone’s footfalls are too heavy, waiting for the inevitable crash. I’ll have a hell of a mess to clean up if they fall (and maybe some apologizing to do, if the heavy-treaded ones are too close.) But right now, there’s nowhere else to put anything; there’s so much sample material that it has overtaken the surface of my desk and made me resort to the stacking of things atop narrow ledges.

However, once it’s all mailed out and the leftovers put away, I am sorely tempted to open up a package of monsters and a package of knights and lay out a battlefield along my desktop.

The only problem with that is that Cthulhu is one of the monsters (yes, we have a children’s book featuring the greatest of the Great Old Ones.) I think he might eat all the others, rather than side with the rest of the hellspawn.

And then, when I come in one day and find that all my coworkers have turned into fish people, I’ll feel really bad.

(You got it, you got it)

I went walking at lunch.  They were there. 

I have a good job. For the most part, I love my company, and the people I work with. We have a great benefits package, more vacation time than I sometimes know what to do with (I’ve used almost all of it this year, but in 2006 I had to take a bunch of time off late in the year because I was in danger of losing carryover days. I know, poor me, right?) I’d like to make more money - who wouldn’t? - but every time I’ve looked, the only things I really qualify for that pay more are high-pressure sales jobs.

Yes, I am a sales rep. But I’m a very laid-back one. I probably could push harder for some things, but booksellers tend to dislike being strong-armed. I tell them what I like, what I think will do well, and they take it into consideration. It’s worked for five years. The idea of going to sell some other product somewhere else and having someone constantly looking at how close I am to hitting my quota makes me shudder.

Plus, I don’t think there’s anything else I could sell convincingly. So, really, if I leave here, my next job won’t be in sales unless I’ve hit the lottery and opened my own store.

I’m having one of my random wish-I-was-somewhere-else weeks. Despite all the pros of this job, I’m dwelling on the long days (11 hours, when you factor in my commute) and wishing I worked closer to home. I keep looking to see what openings are available elsewhere, especially at the college I went to. Six months working there, and I could start taking classes again, which I’d love to do, given the time and (what else?) money.

But the pros here still outweigh the cons. Unless something stellar (and bookseller-y) opens up close to home, I just need to suck it up and buckle down. There are things I could do to feel more productive at work and at home. It’s a matter of getting in the right frame of mind and doing them.

However, until I can kick my own ass into that mindset, I’m going to be at my desk, brooding and bleh.

I don’t know if this is a rant, a whine, or some strange kind of pep-talk, but it feels at least a little better to articulate whatever this feeling is. Best name I can give it is work-related wanderlust.

Wanderlust, by the way, is an awesome word.