Though the writing is still slow, I’m spending a lot of time doing nothing much in particular, especially since I bought a laptop from work (they upgraded everyone’s computer to a Windows 7 box, I got a very good deal.  I still need to fix my other laptop, but it’s no longer as urgent).  I end up sitting in the recliner, rocking my son to sleep, and multi-tasking.  Generally surfing websites or playing games on Facebook and watching tv.

The question remains, since Apoc used to be my place to escape, why don’t I log on more frequently?

When I went so long without Internet last year, I allowed my characters to rent-die (don’t tell me about MUDs that don’t have rent, I’ve tried them and lost interest).  After they rent-died, I figured I might as well reroll anyway.  The characters were over 50 and just getting old.  Plus, my thief was only level 11.

So now I have a dilemma, my cleric is level 12 or so, but I’m having trouble getting the stats I want for an AP (Anti-Paladin).  With few people on much of the time, I’m not sure if I should continue to try to roll an AP or to try to roll a Thief since that’s what I’m now most familiar with playing.

I’m thinking AP still, even though I won’t be able to make the same types of runs that I made with the Thief.  I think perhaps I should try to roll an AP this weekend while I’m designing my new site that didn’t get done last weekend.  If I don’t get the stats I want, maybe I should consider Thief after all.

Three of my kitties are stalking my toes right now.  They’ve mastered the art of living in the moment.

Hoever, living in the moment needs to be balanced with planning ahead.  That’s something that we’re supposed to learn as we get older.  The question remains, how many of us actually get past the stage of living solely in the moment. 

Yet even those who live from moment to moment sometimes prefer not to spend time with themselves.  They may insist that there always has to be music playing or the television on.  There has to be something going on to keep from having to face themselves. 

It can be hard to know who you are if you don’t spend time with yourself.  Granted, even though you can spend too much time thinking while listening to music if there isn’t much else going on, as a general rule that’s not facing yourself.  Instead, your thoughts go around and around like a little hampster on a wheel.  At times, the end result is merely anger at whatever your thoughts have centered on – for example, how someone has wronged you.

My goal for tonight is to spend 5 minutes with no external distractions.  I want to learn more about who I am.  The lack of external distractions can help in other ways.  Sometimes you need these external distractions to go, so you can determine which negative voices are still affecting you.  Whether it’s the kids at school who picked on you, or something that your friend said that hurt in ways that they didn’t intend.  These thoughts can sometimes live on well past when you think you’ve forgiven.  These thoughts can hold us back.  We need to learn to turn these negative thoughts into positive ones.

The ones that stick in my head are from someone I was close to after high school.  This person called me stupid, lazy, & fat cow among other things.  I thought I had forgiven.  I vowed 7 years ago that I would no longer allow this person to live rent free in my head.  However, my subconscious hasn’t forgotten.  When I start making plans or a list of projects, the word lazy comes to mind.  When I want to do well at something, the word stupid comes to mind.

The last thing I am is lazy or stupid.  I know this, and continue to work on the negative reinforcement that I received when I was young.  One day soon, those words will be replaced by other words.  As an example, I can use the comments of the editors at the company I write for.  They’ve said several times that my articles are well-researched and virtually error free grammatically.  That’s not stupidity, that’s something else.  Something I can be proud of.

It’s been an interesting week and it’s only Monday.  It’ll be something to see how this week goes, though I doubt we’ll see the end result until after October 1, if not later.  I’m still not entirely sure what to think about the job situation.  We were told that our department is going to change to the QA side of things since that’s how the other company handles the differences in the departments… they’ve got the regulatory side separated from the plant side of things…

We were told to dress up all week, or at least refrain from wearing tennis shoes/sneakers and dress nicely.

Today, the department head came in to speak with us.  He told us we definitely have a job until the end of the year, but if we were offered a job by one of the companies in town that is growing and doing well, we should take the job.  He said don’t jump at a job flipping burgers at BK, because those types of jobs will always be there, but if we are offered a job at a good company…  He repeated himself several times, which made everyone uncomfortable.  He said he wasn’t trying to convince everyone to jump ship, but we need to think about job stability as well.

Which means, I have a job until the end of the year… and I’m not the only one who got the feeling that he was telling us to start looking for another job.  Pretty much the whole department got that sense.  He also said that some of the computer or network techs are interviewing elsewhere.

The final thing he said left me with something to think about.  He made a comment about starting a business if we end up without a job after it’s done.  He looked at me when he said it, and he even suggested the type of business I’ve been thinking about starting.  I guess that’s just the final indication of what I should be doing.

So my ‘normal’ writing may dry up.  That’ll mean more time to blog…

The owners of the company I write for are selling.  I just wish I had enough money to buy it for what they’re asking, which  is lower than what they’d ask from someone who is not one of their regular writers.  The email said they’re offering it for a discount.

It’s all good, though.  It’s just shoving me in the direction I need to go, whether or not I’m ready to do it.  Life is certainly interesting lately.

Anyway, the munchkins are going to be up soon, I’d best get a nap.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?” ~ Matthew 6:25

Something I’ve learned over the last year.  I need to stop worrying about things that I have no control over.  Of course, over the years I’ve worried about a lot of things that I have no control over.  This takes a lot of the fun out of my life.  It’s kinda hard to enjoy yourself when you’re worried.

My goal this weekend is to let go and forget about the job situation.  I have a website that needs to be designed (http://www.seocopywritingdesign.com) and will work on that as well as picking up the house.  Though I won’t have to mop, my husband mopped on Thursday because the kittens peed on the floor.  Only one of the four has figured out the litter box.  That’s still not bad at 5 weeks.

Something that was sent to me in email a few years ago is this:

“Take the most difficult challenge you are now facing and turn it into the greatest opportunity to grow simply by changing how you see it. Dead ends then become turning points.”  Bob Perks

It definitely gives me something to think about.  I have a few idea for the weekend, including a bunch of reading.  I need to check into an inter-library loan… or else I can spend some time working on the afghan I was knitting for my sister’s son.  I have a couple of other yarn projects going if I can get the afghan finished.

I was reading something from a copywriting course that I signed up for, and it got me thinking.  They suggested that if I want a niche to write or blog about, I should find something that I’m passionate about.  The question remains, what AM I passionate about?  What do I find interesting enough to do the necessary research that I can become an expert?

It’s difficult to imagine that anything would hold my interest like that… but there are a few things.  They’re just not exactly what you’d think about when you ask someone what they’re passionate about. 

For example, fantasy – whether sword and sorcery or alternate universe/timeline type.  Silly, huh?  I have at least 3 fantasy stories floating around in my head, I just need to go through the effort of writing an outline and spend the time getting the stories on paper.  But some days, that effort just seems to be too much.

Another example, graphic design – though it isn’t very obvious with how little any of my site has been redesigned in the last few years.  I love spending time playing with a graphics program to see what I can come up with… but then again, the effort seems to be too much.

When I was designing websites, I loved the back-end programming that was needed for many of the database sites I worked on.  Though I often found the programming frustrating at times, I felt a thrill when I finished the work and got everything working like the customer wanted it.

Even couponing has slowed in the last couple of months.  I still clip the coupons, but they sit in the box, not even sorted in my binder and I don’t use very many.

The question remains why do I let my life slide past as I put off doing things I enjoy?

It’s one thing to procrastinate the things I don’t like doing, but to procrastinate on the things I do like doing?  That’s just silly… or it’s perfectionism rearing its ugly head.  I can’t get it exactly how I want it, whether because I don’t know how I want it, or another reason, and I just put it off… it gives me the perfect excuse on why I haven’t gotten anything published other than the writing I was doing for the SEO company.

Or maybe that’s zen.  I always forget how the word is spelled for a silly reason.  A friend of mine used to use the name Xen when playing morts on the MUD.

Work is getting more interesting, but it may be a year before we know anything definite about what’s going to happen.  That means a year of doing what I’ve been doing… I can manage that.  The longer I work, the more I can get put aside in case I lose my job, and/or the more bills I can pay off so I have that many fewer bills if I lose my job.  It’ll all work out, or it won’t.  So instead of worrying, I’m trying to focus on my writing… or finding other places to write since the place I normally write is very slow in the summer. 

Eventually, things will work out as they should, or they won’t.  Severance packages at other facilities they’ve closed have been as little as 1 week of severance pay for each year working for the company.  Considering this is one of the biggest employers in the area, it’ll be interesting to see how the economy in the area fares with these changes.  I feel bad for the visible head of the company… one of the founders.  He was no longer running the company, the next generation was running the company.  I suspect all they saw was dollar signs.

All the drama at work has the added benefit of making me realize how lucky I’ve been over the years.  One of my coworkers has been through a large number of mergers, some of these mergers have meant job loss.  This is my first time facing this type of situation. 

It’s best to let go of the worry.  Nothing I do can change what’ll happen to myself or my coworkers.  All I can do is be sure that I don’t backstab anyone just to keep my job.  Backstabbing others is not the way I’d choose to save my job.  I’ rather lose my job and someone else keep theirs in that situation.  Because I’m not sure I could handle the guilt… besides, something always comes along, and all I have to do is focus on writing to get more income on top of any unemployment I’d get…

Time to sleep.  Hopefully I haven’t bored anyone too much lol.

So today, the big-wigs at work sprang a big surprise on everyone.  Everything that we’ve heard is that the company I work for has been doing well.  However, today there was a meeting with the 2 people that founded the company and the current CEO.  They’re doing a merger with 2 other companies, our sister company and one based out of Cincinnati.  A venture capital type firm is going to be the majority owner in the new company, and the CEO of the company based in OH is going to be the CEO of the new company.

No one knows what’s going to happen and there are a ton of rumors going on that they’re going to close the plants here in OK. 

I’m afraid that the owners didn’t help at all because they gave some information during the meeting that was contradicted when they sent out a FAQ later in the afternoon.

It should be an interesting few months for sure.

Monday night, I turned my back on my 19 month old son for a few minutes (less than 5 minutes tops) and he picked up a tin can from the trash.  He got his finger stuck in between the lid and the side and cut his finger.  I got the bleeding to stop and put a band aid on it. 

Tuesday, I put on liquid skin on his cut because band aids wouldn’t stay on with those curious fingers.  He had gone through four through the day.

Wednesday, the bleeding started again and my husband couldn’t get it to stop, so I brought my son to the hospital… which had me feeling like a bad mom because I started thinking that I should have brought him in on Monday.  Especially since he couldn’t get stitches because it had been 2 days since he was injured.

The PA that looked at the cut said she wouldn’t have brought one of her kids in either, but she sent in an EMT to wrap the finger in a compression bandage.  It’s looking much better, but I keep thinking about how I could have handled it differently.

I’ve been doing a lot of extra writing lately.  It makes it difficult to keep up with the updates some weeks.  I’ve also been reading a weight loss blog on the NewsOK website (http://www.newsok.com/fat-to-fit).  It’s rather interesting to see someone else’s point of view on weight loss.

I did find out today that a knitting needle can break through your skin.  I now I have a hole in my leg because I’m a klutz.  Not big enough for stitches, but deep enough that it burns to walk much 🙁 I even bled through the first band aid.  Ick.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled boring lack of updates 🙂