2006: Year of ChangeI said at the end of last year that I thought 2006 was going to be a year of change. Which didn't necessarily mean that it would all be easy or fun or even always good, but that things would generally be changing in a positive direction.
And I think that so far I've been right. If only I'd truly comprehended my own caveat of "not easy or fun or even always good."
My job is keeping me busy. I like my job, and I think that someday I'll honestly be able to say that I love my job -- when I feel like I've finally got a handle on things, and am not constantly scrambling to reach a basic level of competency. (I am smart, and though I may not know much about IT, I know how to put together a good compound sentence, dammit. However, I absolutely refuse to like jazz. Can't make me.) This week has been calmer at the office, as we rest in a lull between proposal flurries, and hear good news about proposals that we've won. (Winning is good. As is the income that follows a win.) At any rate, it's clearly far better for me than working for the Career Centre ever was, and generally quite enjoyable.
I'm still trying to figure out how to balance everything, though -- the needs of Karina the IT Consultant with the growing requirements of Stellar Magpie (at least no one ever told me that running a business was easy) and ever-present Writer Karina, not mention just plain me, the one who has to clean the house and do the dishes and has a strange and inexplicable craving for donuts.
I think it's telling that I don't want to lose any of those things -- no, not even the craving for donuts. (... Mmm, donuts ...) I think I'm heading in the right direction, somehow, even if I'm doing so with my usual flair for dekeing and getting ridiculously lost along the way.
And there are health-related things that are going on right now with me, with my family and with certain friends -- and I just wrote a very long entry about it all, which I find I don't have the courage to post. In no small measure, I think, because talking about it takes me away from the only way that I feel I have of dealing with such things right now: avoidance. Let me curl up in this corner with a book and the bad things will go away. Let me make sparkly things until my hands ache and then fall into bed, oblivious. Let me sleep and sleep and sleep until my alarm goes (far too early, always too early), and do it all again.
All of which means if you're not in a position to run into me in person, you probably haven't heard from me much, if at all. I'm sorry. Truly, and I can't say how much. At times when I desperately just need to talk, I somehow still can't face the open email window. Or maybe it's not that I need to talk, but rather just to listen -- which would be why, when a friend called, I kept her on the phone for over five hours, telling me story after story so I wouldn't feel alone.
(Hmm, perhaps I should rename this entry. "Karina is Confused: Please Tell Her a Story" seems a good replacement.)
Ah, well, in the long run I think it's better than being bored, even if I do long for the quiet joy that was the summer of unemployment. And there are many things that have been making me happy. Going to the bead show with Sarah this weekend and buying many wonderful, sparkly things. Going with my dad to the car show, critiquing paint colours and pretending that I could possibly drive lovely things like Minis and convertible hardtop Volvos and the like. Reviews that say my writing doesn't suck. Unexpected surprises in the mail. Donuts.
Anyway, lots of things coming up in the near future including the launch of Mythspring, Ad Astra (including a second launch for Mythspring, plenty of panels, and an appearance for Stellar Magpie in the art show), a reading/signing at Forster's Book Garden in Bolton, a probably-meeting with another possible jewelry seller, and ... the increasingly pressing need to buy a calendar.
Plus, I'm slowly building my
new website, filling in content bit by bit, and honestly planning to help Sarah a little more with the
Stellar Magpie site (which now has its own domain!). Really. You know, sometime.
2006, year of change. I just wish these years came with crash helmets.
