The Bloody Doors Off

I need to remember this phrase. I have to put more effort into just writing, or rewriting the play. Stop focusing so hard on finding the gemstones. Dig out the coal first, then compress it with enough weight until it becomes a diamond.

Same thing with this blog. I’ve been holding back.

Too bad it doesn’t end tonight. I just don’t have anything to say.

I was supposed to be a five hour shift. Last week was an anomaly they said. Eight and a half hours later, I went home.

Don’t get me wrong, the hours are needed. The money is needed. I just wish I could figure out how this job works. Remember how I said I hate Pagemaker? I would kill it with a shovel if I could. Make one mistake and you have to start over, it’s that bad. And the hyphenation issue still isn’t resolved. One of the bosses brought me into the office and pretty much assured me that we’re going over to InDesign asap. God I hope so.

These hours are gonna trip me up if they don’t ease off a bit. I can’t do late nights any longer. I put in my time for a decade, and one of the things it cost me was a relationship. I won’t lose my sanity over this.

Andy Warhol was right. Now if we can just make sure our Mayor’s time is up.

Yup, that’s all I have tonight. Blame it on the cold.

The good? No anxiety attacks today.

The bad? My cold has gotten a lot worse. Nearly lost my voice for a good portion of the day.

The good? I slept until 2pm because I needed the rest.

The bad? I slept until 2pm because my body wouldn’t let me get up.

The good? I got just over 50% in the Oscar pool.

The bad? Carey West kicked my ass. PLUS, I couldn’t go to KAZ’s Oscar party.

It was a good day. A very good day.

Lazy morning/afternoon, dinner with Kevin and my dad. Somehow Kevin had managed an in to bringing up the topic of my brothers coming to my last psychiatric appointment. Right, he was thinking about having a hamburger because we were going to grab burgers on Monday after the appointment but the Hero shop at Fairview Mall didn’t have any tables. You’ve never seen a conversation detour so fast. Which yeah, I had a feeling would happen. And 10 minutes later I’d stepped out to use the loo and apparently my dad then brought up the subject to which Kevin then said, “you know it’s open to anyone”. And my father pretty much shivered in a “never gonna happen” way.

Still a good day.

Went to Subspace, ran door from 8-10. Good crowd, not too packed. Awesome nibbles as always, scenes that… there’s an expression. “Your kink is not my kink, and that’s okay”. To which I’d have to add… “And pretty hot to watch.”

Still a good day.

I get off shift, grab a bottle of water. Settle in with my e-cig. Have conversations.

And then I feel it. It’s a slow build, almost like it’s ramping up at half-speed. I can get in front of it. I know what’s going on.

I take my Lorazepam.

My tongue is so dry it won’t dissolve under it.

And the attack.

Comes.

It’s wave after wave. I escape into the lobby. Well, it’s called a lobby even though the place is in an industrial complex and while there’s a table and couches, the outside is separated by a garage door. It cool. Quiet.

I breathe. Inhale. Exhale.

Calm returns. I continue breathing.

And I make the choice to head home. It’s hard to forget what just happened when you’re trying to start a new conversation.

I’m told I’m shaking. I guess I was. I bundle up, put my mp3 player on. Trudge out into the new fallen snow. Hop on the Dufferin bus. At King Street, it’s getting full. By Queen Street, I can’t breathe.

The attack wasn’t over. That’s just Round 1. Here comes the tsunami.

Out at College Street. Take the streetcar through the city, east to home. Listen to the music. Lean against the window. Close my eyes.

Twenty minutes later, I’m myself again.

And after that, I’m home.

I am both inside my head and outside my body. I can feel the anxiety attack approaching like a tidal wave; can rationalize that it is nothing but a chemical imbalance and holds no sway over who I truly am. I can, and did, take lorazepam to counteract the assault before it even begins.

And yet. Despite this knowledge, the preventative measures. I feel powerless. A battered flag, flapping in 100 mph winds. Untethered.

Rereading a scene I wrote with my friend Kate, back in 2010. Damn, we’re good.

The plague could be worse. If I was smoking I’m sure the cough would be 10x worse. Not that it can’t/won’t get worse. But man. Add to that this feels like (and probably is) the coldest winter in the past 5-6 years. I still got myself out to pay the month-end bills and get cold meds, and while it was sunny, but the wind was like pinpricks on my face.

I’m staying in Friday, if I can help it.

Left another message for the recruiter. I hope he calls back. I want/need the extra work.

I’m going to say this A LOT in the coming weeks.

I really, really fucking hate Pagemaker. It’s an outdated software that should be expunged from computers everywhere. I spent almost 5 hours today working on dummy pages (which in retrospect was a good thing) trying to make my layouts look the same as Walter’s. Turns out, the bloody print driver wasn’t applied. You know how, with any software that you can print from, you usually have a default printer set? Yeah, Pagemaker doesn’t do that. And sure enough, once applied the whole kit and kaboodle went to hell. Yes, a part of me should’ve checked the preferences. But when I’d go to print a page, the driver was recognized. So, fuck you for wasting my time today, Pagemaker.

Oh right, I nearly forgot to mention: the program was also not properly installed on the computer I’m using. It won’t automatically hyphenate, and has no dictionary installed. It’d only allow manual hyphenation and if you changed the leading AT ALL (which apparently you have to constantly do per article), you can’t rely on this.

I don’t like charging the client when shit like this happens. If I was working on proper pages? I wouldn’t.

And oh yes, in 30 minutes I was able to import all 20 pages of templates into InDesign and set up the style guides, even have the styles be there when the program boots up. I fucking OWN that software. But I don’t know when they’re gonna switch over. If I had hair (don’t touch the van dyke!), it’d be pulled out tonight.

At one point, I just sat there spinning in my chair, metaphorically. It was crunch time and Walter had to get the pages out, so he couldn’t offer any advice. And I don’t know the upload procedure to the FTP and the printer yet. Let’s hope he doesn’t get laid out with the same virus that hit me this week, ‘cuz I’ll be fucking useless at the end.

Or How I Spent My First Day at a New Job.

Okay, turns out, not a job. A contract. They want me to invoice them every 2 weeks. Hours on the honor system. Not what I was expecting. I kind of wanted the surety of having taxes paid, money dropped in my account. Not waiting for a cheque to arrive in the mail, waiting for it to clear.

And I spent my entire time creating the same damned pages as the senior layout artist, just as yes, another test.

I didn’t ask too many questions; they liked that. I am more familiar with the product; they liked that. I have a basic sense of the layout; they liked that. But I didn’t learn much about the tweaking that needs to be done, and can’t understand why I didn’t get to work on a few pages, have the editor mark it up, and then for me to fix it. I just feel like it was a … wasted opportunity.

Maybe it’s jitters. But when I get a new client (which I’m starting to think of them as), I don’t get jitters. I get the damned job done. So I’m already having a perspective shift on this. and I’m thinking, yeah, I wanna talk with that recruiter about opportunities he mentioned in the voice mail on Monday.

I was listening to this song on my iPod tonight on the ride home. It doesn’t hold any immediate significance in my life right now, but it did hit me.