Lost Dreams

I've had a pretty typical but annoying last 48 hours.

Two days in a row, I was late to work. Yesterday, I just plain woke up late. I kept on wanting to stay in the dream in which my cat got resurrected. I even took the car and got to work fifteen minutes late.

This morning, I woke up at a relatively good time. I just had to shave and using the funky new between teeth brush takes a little work. With some elbow grease, though, it doesn't a great bang up job cleaning up and making my mouth healthier.

Not much happening at work. I've spent the last couple weeks mostly doing ad hoc tasks prompted by callers and walk-ins, following up on tasks that take, at the most, an hour or two, cleaning up my Internet e-mail and cleaning up and associating my database e-mail. None of it really has to do with productivity, but it's a slow time of year and will free me up when things get a little more hectic.

Next on the task list includes: filing and organizing a bunch of miscellaneous paperwork that my mom gave me, offering my services to a co-worker or two who have gotten backed up on their work then if nothing comes up by then, I'll ask my mom if she can come up with some work for me.

I'll be the first to admit that my days don't really have much excitement to them.

The last 24 hours gave me a little distress, though. Last night, I started doing some work on the volunteer copy writing project that I've taken on for ClimateSAVE. It got me frustrated because the design for their Website feels inefficient and their copy doesn't do a great job explaining their product.

I guess another person's bad copy gives me a good opportunity to make good copy.

Last night, I didn't get too much work on that project done, one reason being that I had to put some effort, in addition to the work from about a month ago, into figuring out the idea behind their product and the vehicle that it takes. I will hopefully come up with good copy that will explain these two factors, even though I feel like I'll have to go up against some industry and company entrenchment on this one.

You'll probably hear more about this one later.

I mainly didn't get work done last night because I go hyperfocused on this wooden cube puzzle. You take it apart. It has magnets in different parts of it. The goal is to put it back together without any magnets facing out and all the magnets attached to another magnet.

I thought I would just take a break from the job search and projects, but I ended up staying up to midnight or one working on the thing. I worked on it for three hours, dang it! And I wanted to get to bed at a good time.

Getting so focused on the puzzle and staying up so late infuriated me, combined with all the other distractions in which I have indulged over the last few months when I hsould have been doing other things. I ranted, I raved, I felt frustrated with myself and wondered how I could get myself to do all this stuff. In Biblical times, I probably would have ripped my clothes off.

I woke up, still frustrated, so when I got to work, I looked up Procrastination on Wikipedia.

The fiancee and I also had a good rant at each other through text messaging, e-mail and in person. It provided some good catharsis and helped us to address some emotional issues with our projects, future plans and the meaning of things to us. I regret the feelings that I got her to feel, but I'm happy that we could communicate a couple things that we had under the radar.

We had a fun little spontaneous date. Picked up a couple more puzzles for her collection then had some Thai food at Duk Boa in Brookline. For you Boston people out there, if you haven't eaten there yet, go. It's on Harvard St., between the intersection of Harvard and Comm in Allston and Coolidge Corner in Brookline, across from Buddha's Delight, a pretty good vegan restaurant.

Then we came home, and I did some good job search work. I kept up some communication with a guy who has become something of a copy writing mentor for me, I e-mailed a thank you memo to the Web designer at ClimateSAVE then did some research on McGraw-Hill. The fiancee found an editorial assistant job posting for McGraw-Hill.

Tomorrow, I'll do a little more research on McGraw-Hill then send off a resume. I'll also try to work on some of the ClimateSAVE copy. Hopefully I'll remember and have time to read some job searching books.

Then off to the border of Massachusetts and New Hampshire to hang out with the old crew that has stayed loyal to the undefined cause before one of us heads back to LA. Bastard. . ..

Now, though, I will romance the fiancee and get some Zzzzzz's.