and time yet for a hundred indecisions

things I have to get done today

• make an appointment with my doctor so we can talk about medication some more
• finishing editing the script that’s my first real job from my freelancing attempts
• assuming it’s even still available, apply for this copy-editor job I can probably do remotely
• look at more work-at-home possibilities I found, bookmarked, and didn’t read
• finish my professional bio (urk) for this writing-consultation/editing firm an acquaintance is starting with me??
• call the IRS, again, and be on hold for a long time before I can finally tell them that hey, my e-filed return keeps being rejected even though the thing that was getting it rejected—my birth date being wrong in Social Security Administration records since ever—got fixed a week ago
• try and fail to get my sister to 1) control her dogs so Fozzy doesn’t eat the cat and 2) clean up some of her stuff now she’s properly moving back in and it’s taking up basically all our space downstairs
• actually do some work on this guy’s book I agreed to edit over a year agodear God I fail at life
• …
• profit?

Weird encounter of the day (from yesterday, at this point)

Customer is upper-middle-aged guy wanting flowers for somebody’s high-school graduation, or a school play that a graduating senior is in, or something; he’s not real clear.
Him: It’s at South High School, do you know where that— *looks at me* Oh, you’re not old enough to have graduated.
Me: I have two degrees from UAA.
Him: …oh.
Me: But I didn’t go there, so no, I don’t know where it is.
Him: *carries on merrily like mistaking an adult for a high-schooler isn’t pretty insulting*
Come on, I know I look young for my age—well, lots of people think I’m way younger than I am—but this hasn’t happened in a while, and really? You think I can’t possibly even be out of high school? Hey, here’s a tip: maybe don’t make assumptions about people to their faces, especially when there’s absolutely no point to it. My age has very little bearing on whether I know how to get to a specific high school. At some point I would really like this to be ACTUALLY USEFUL. Like, you know, be constructively underestimated or go undercover as a teenager or something. Of course, working a job often done by high-schoolers doesn’t help, which is another reason to be glad I’m done with it. I have two degrees—I didn’t put all that time, energy, and effort into my education so I could take a just-above-minimum-wage job and be mistaken for the exact stage of life I was in when I worked there for a single summer almost eight years ago. It was my first job and I was terrified and unprepared and miserable, and my head got bad enough that’s still when I date the beginning of my struggle with depression (which I didn’t realize at the time but I mean, probably your head’s not great when you’re regularly hiding in the bathroom to cry because you’re having a breakdown over the entire point of living). I’m not that person anymore. I’m better than that, stronger than that, infinitely more experienced and infinitely more mentally healthy. Maybe being taken for that person shouldn’t feel like a threat to who I’ve fought (with varying levels of success) to become, but it does, and I can’t be that person again. I don’t even want to come close.

…granted this is partly me trying to rationalize away my guilt at turning down a more permanent floral-clerk position, because obviously a little money is better than none, but…it would be eight bucks an hour, part time, and even if all the other stuff weren’t such an issue, I would still really, really, really hate retail. And I mean…I have a hard enough time thinking I’m worth much. After everything I’ve done, don’t I deserve a little better?

Anonymous asked: How is you are 20 and a graduate student? Where are you in school now and where did you get your undergrad? How old were you when you started undergrad?

No no, I’m 25—I think my profile says 20-something; I got tired of changing all my profiles every year because I’m just that lazy. I should actually update it anyway, because it’s not really accurate—I finally got everything finished and officially earned my degree this fall, so now I have a bachelor’s and a master’s in English. Plus I’m…not that busy right now because I’m unemployed at the moment. >_< So I’m no prodigy, just a pretty normal student—I got both degrees at the University of Alaska Anchorage since it’s where I live and resident tuition is cheap, and I started right out of high school at…18, I guess? 2005, anyway. Managed to get my bachelor’s in four years and then went right into my master’s because I somehow didn’t realize how burnt out I already was.

An actual update…

…which, yes, means I finally wrote an update email to family, so I’m going to paste it in here (now edited somewhat because long. I mean, it’s still long, but now it’s…less long?).

Stuff has happened but not actually that much, especially in regard to my ability to drive or lack thereof. Attempting to make a long story short…the neurologist said Alaska law is you can’t drive for six months after a seizure, period, so I found the actual law and thought from the wording that maybe that wasn’t always true, and I talked to the neurologist again and then the DMV and then got transferred to the DMV in Juneau and then the licensing department and it was this whole complicated thing, the upshot of which was that if I could have my regular doctor send the DMV a letter saying I didn’t have a history of a condition that causes seizures, I could drive, except she wasn’t comfortable with doing that, so I went ahead and got an MRI hoping that would be enough to get the neurologist to write said letter…and then there was a ridiculous amount of delay, and then she left town, and I jumped through some more hoops and found out from my regular doctor that no, what the DMV told me…was wrong. Called myself, had it confirmed. Upshot is that no, there aren’t any loopholes in Alaska law, and I can’t drive until May.

This is all especially great since I’ve been low on money since losing my temp job anyway, and this stupid seizure’s turned into the gift that keeps on giving, draining most of what I had in savings. At the moment I have almost nothing in savings and $3,000+ on credit cards just for medical expenses, about half of which is from the seizure—the ER visit was $960, the MRI was at least $450, the doctor who actually saw me in the ER charged another $200, I still haven’t been billed for the MRI reading so I don’t know how much it’ll be but expect at least another few hundred dollars, and that’s all after insurance. And then there’s the $1500 still sitting on my CareCredit card for my crown (didn’t have to have a root canal, so that was nice, but the crown was expensive enough), of which insurance only paid about $600—and at least three other cavities that still need filling, which I haven’t done yet because I don’t want to pile even more on that card when at the moment I can’t afford to pay it off. CareCredit doesn’t charge interest if you get it paid off within six months, which is great if…you have income and can make payments. Basically I’ve got almost no money and I’m freaking out.

I mean, yeah, I can bus and I can get rides; I’ve been doing a lot of that. It’s still a problem, though. Lots of jobs—especially, I think, the retail-drone jobs that would be easy to get—specifically require that you have your own transportation, for one thing, and if I knew for sure, at least I could figure out ways to work with that (now, anyway; my immediate reaction to the no-driving-for-six-months thing back in November was a bad depressive episode that spiraled from “I’m already nearly broke, now I can’t work for six months, I can’t afford to go see my friends at Comic-Con this summer” to “nothing is ever going to get better, I’m always going to struggle, I’ll never get a good job” and basically ended with “I’m going to die alone and unloved,” which sounds like an absurd place to end up (at least not with the sincerity and frequency that I get there) if you’ve never lived with depression. Quick rabbit-trail: this is probably the worst and most dangerous aspect of my depression, the absolute loss of perspective that is key to all my really bad episodes, because when things are bad, it’s not just that I don’t think that things can possibly get better or less impossibly hard; it’s that I can’t. And getting to that point is…not very difficult. So far, one way or another, I’ve always managed to remember and believe that things aren’t hopeless. What I’m afraid of is getting in a position where I’m finally, entirely convinced that I will always struggle for no good reason and things will never be better, which is the main reason I’m so scared of getting stuck in a grindingly exhausting, pointless, depressing job and a crappy little apartment I can barely afford, struggling alone (that part is…also fairly important) with rent, bills, medical issues, all that fun stuff. Or of perceiving myself to be that stuck, which for my brain would be essentially the same, because again: total loss of perspective—and that’s bad because if I do finally reach that point, I don’t know what I’ll do. I say this not to freak anyone out but because I’m tired of dancing around it and hinting, tired of mental illness being this stigmatized thing people don’t really talk about, and because I want my family to know what I mean when I say that things are really bad or that I’m terrified of the future. It means that when things get difficult—even things that shouldn’t be a big deal, like a late paper, but it’s never the thing in itself, it’s all the reminders of guilt and inadequacies that go with it—one of the first things that comes to mind, completely unbidden, is “This would be so much easier if I were dead.” I have never been actively suicidal, and when there are things I want to do (I made myself make a list, at one point, to remind myself that yes, there are good things, big and small) I know that I don’t want to die, but the passive desire to be dead is bad enough. And it’s not like it’s a constant thing! The inside of my head has been reasonably okay lately, I think partly because I just started on a new medication. It’s just that—this is what I mean when I say depression is a potentially terminal illness: a lot of people with it kill themselves and I don’t want to—but that’s because right now I’ve got a decent amount of perspective working for me, and when that goes away it’s nearly impossible to get it back under my own power because to me the possibility of “better” doesn’t even exist to be chased after. There are other things I’m afraid of in that depressing possible-future, like the struggle itself, but ultimately, this is what I mean. It’s also why Comic-Con (which itself will be fun, but seeing long-distance friends there is the crucial part) is so important to me for mental-health reasons—I need this significant thing to look forward to so if I do lose perspective again I can say, “No, self, look, you are doing this awesome thing in just a few months and you already have the tickets, you know you can get there,” and things will get a little better inside my head. But it’s also, when you get all the way down to it, why I’m terrified of the future.

…anyway. That was not where I meant to go with this but now that I’ve written it I don’t want to delete it, because…see above re: wanting the people who love me to understand, and all. Anyway, the news about the not-driving didn’t send me into the bad depressive episode it did the first time, back in November, because it wasn’t as bad and it wasn’t a shock, and in this case I was really grateful to my doctor for caring enough to look into this, but…obviously it’s not great news, especially since it’s been two and a half months already and I’ve been in limbo the whole time, trying to find out whether I could do something about this and getting different information from everyone. Soooo basically I spent a bunch of money on an MRI that did nothing but tell me what I was already pretty certain of, that nothing but the Wellbutrin caused the seizure, and it…didn’t let me drive again. And now I really, really need a job because I’m basically out of money, and finding one will be harder than ever. I can’t drive to interviews, after all, and I can bus but that means scheduling about three times as much time to get somewhere as I’d have to normally, and it also means walking about a mile to the nearest bus stop…which would be fine in nicer weather but we’ve been holding pretty steady with subzero temperatures and some wind for the past few weeks. I’ve already got my resume on file with a couple employment agencies, too, but they also have a specific question on their applications about having your own transportation, and not having my own probably lowers my chances. The timing of this is ridiculous, honestly—if it had happened before I had a car at all, or when I was still going to school and all my jobs were also at school and I was able to coordinate my schedule with friends’ regularly for rides, or when I spent the semester in England and couldn’t drive because duh, I didn’t have a car over there, or even when I already had some kind of job and could restructure my life around that instead of suddenly having a much harder time getting a job at all…it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. So of course it had to happen when I was jobless, we’re in the teeth of winter, and my future is more uncertain than ever. Oh, and awesomely, having your own transportation is a question you have to answer when you file for unemployment, which I’ve gotten once so far, so of course now I’m worried that not driving will screw that up too—I imagine their thinking is that if you can’t drive, you’re a lot less able to accept any offered employment, which means you’re much less immediately eligible for employment, which means…maybe you’re not eligible for unemployment either. Which would be bad. It’s only $70 a week (I thought? Maybe it’s $70 every two weeks) but that’s a lot better than nothing.

Well, and actually I sort of have a job at the moment—I got an extremely temporary seasonal job as a floral clerk at Carrs, but it’s only for Valentine’s, and I don’t start until Tuesday; even then it’s part-time and just for a couple weeks. Carrs is within walking distance, but even that’s about a mile away and did I mention it’s been insanely cold? (Edit: bizarrely, after a long time of really cold temperatures, it shot up above freezing just in the last couple days, and now everything’s all drippy. No idea if it’ll last.)

I do have one piece of unalloyed good news that I don’t think I’ve mentioned—I finally, finally got that final late paper finished and turned in, and like with the other incomplete class I took way longer to finish than I was supposed to, I ended up with a B over all…making those my only Bs in my entire graduate career. Considering I was just hoping to pass so I wouldn’t have to retake them, though, I was pretty pleased with that, and even more pleased of course with the fact that it meant I could finally graduate and finally have an official degree. Which I now do and I even have my diploma. So there’s that.

Um, but yeah, things are kind of so-so, and I’m trying to find a job but so far no luck, and in the meantime I need to sell stuff on eBay and edit this guy’s book that I agreed to do a while ago, and…if any of you have leads on legit work that can be done from home (I’m thinking like…mostly editing stuff), please let me know. So yeah. This is already far too long and far too detailed and I kind of…don’t want to send it because I’m not used to being this honest about my depression with anyone but my doctor and sometimes not even then? But…again. It’s important. Prayers for job-hunting and general financial things are very appreciated. Well, prayers in general, but especially that.

I will admit to feeling a little bad that this went to family first, because while I’ve tried for a long time to be pretty open about my depression with everyone, I’ve always been more honest about it with you guys than with family because they’re less likely to get it, so I feel like I should have posted this stuff online somewhere first…but the email kind of happened by accident, I was doing update stuff and then went “Screw it, they need to understand why this is important,” and there it was. And now I want other people who are more likely to understand (I actually did get a few very nice, supportive responses from my aunt and cousins) to know too. So yeah.

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: awake, showered, & dressed before noon on a Saturday

I haven’t had breakfast yet though, I’m not some miracle worker

the-night-and-the-storm asked: Concerning the work thing, I think my dad told me just to write something involving: Challenging, learning new things, and fun, even if that isn't necessarily true. I wrote that on my last job's evaluation thing even though it was deathly boring... although you hate mornings so saying something about that might get you a job where you don't have to come in early, I dunno. You can also talk about how you work fine on your own if that is something you'd prefer. Good luck!

Also good advice. I have two lines so I need to figure out a concise way to say everything. Also accurate, because I sort of…don’t want a challenging job? Even if I feel like I should want one? idek.

plenilune answered your question: trying to fill out an application for an employment agency…

Eurgh, I wish I had helpful advice. Maybe stress that you are an efficient worker who gets things done best in solitude, w/out distractions?

Which is also true, because uh, give me a computer with internet access and very little supervision, and I will spend large amounts of time screwing around online. I mean, I’ll get my work done eventually, but…yeah. It’s not good. I do get work done, I just, uh, need to work on staying focused. I…should not be saying this in public but I don’t think there’s much connecting my Tumblr with anything a potential employer is likely to find? Crap, I should really check on that. >_<

trying to fill out an application for an employment agency…

They only have a few questions that require more than copying stuff off my resume, fortunately, but of course I’m sticking on them: “describe your ideal Job Title and Industry” (the Random Capitalization makes me think I should be picking a job code off a list or something, but there isn’t one), and “Other than salary, what is the most important aspect of accepting a position?”

I can probably come up with something for the first. Maybe. I don’t know. The second is like…uh, what’s the balance between honesty and, y’know, discretion? Because a job that doesn’t actively worsen my existing health issues (mental and physical) would be awfully nice, but I’m wary of putting that right on there for fear of limiting whatever opportunities, and I’m not sure how else to say it. Like…I really, really don’t want a high-stress job. I don’t even particularly want a fast-paced job. I want something where I can work at my own pace with minimal supervision unless I need it and as long as I get my work done it’s not a big deal if I take long bathroom breaks and then eat at my desk and snack all day. And I don’t want a whole lot of dealing with people because hi, introvert, people get exhausting and sometimes I just don’t have the mental/emotional spoons for it but when your job requires you to be “on” for extended periods of time, you’re pretty much screwed (this is a big part of why I’m so glad I’m not teaching anymore). Of course I’d also really like something that doesn’t require me to get up early in the morning. And I really want a space of my own, even if it’s just a desk. So I don’t know, maybe that’s sort what I should say, but I feel like even that might decrease my chances, and that there are other things that I should consider more important—like being able to use my education, or having a meaningful job, or whatever—and not saying those things will sound like I’m just a kid wanting a job that pays decently without demanding much effort rather than someone who wants to be Part Of A Team and Help the Company and all that crap (my cynicism toward everything, let me show you it). Which, uh, is kind of true, but for obvious reasons that’s far from the impression I want to give. 

tl;dr I DON’T KNOW HOW TO ADULT, SOMEONE HELP. Seriously, is there a way to say this that doesn’t immediately translate to “this person is basically unhireable”?