Yet again the universe is thematically constructed. This time the thing (person) appearing everywhere is Ted Hughes, whose incredible translation of the Oresteia I just finished last night. Last night I also went ahead and got a subscription to The Threepenny Review, because a very good essay which had originally been published in it showed up in an anthology I was reading and I read the editor's autobiography back in December and really liked it. So today I am websurfing on all the other magazines mentioned in this anthology, seeing what I think of them, and discover that Ted Hughes was Sylvia Plath's husband, and much-reviled (perhaps unfairly, I wouldn't know) by many for destroying some of her work. What's the theme? I'm not sure. Literary figures and circles, maybe. There's definitely a theme in here somewhere, though, I'm sure of that much. My brain is in a very nice thinking space. Maybe I'll actually read some Plath. Probably not her poetry, though; more likely journals or letters. I'm addicted to those sorts of things anyway.

The soundtrack to FaceOff is playing right now, pretty satisfying but a tiny bit annoying because the volume changes so much in the first track I can't get good even cover of the background noise caused by the guys in nearby cubes playing Classical Indian Opera (or whatever) at high volumes. Still, nice music. I was thinking of getting rid of the CD, having not listened to it once in the three years since I bought it, but so far I'm liking it enough to keep it.

I have a short story I want to write, and I think I've figured out how to do so -- but just like any sort of creative activity it would take concentration and time, and I am so lazy when it comes to spending concentration and time on things. I don't know why. I think part of it was fear, but some of the fear is gone now; I can spend fragments of time & concentration on things. Just not enough. This would be a reason to go to Clarion, yes? Focus. But I couldn't even apply until I've done something, and I don't care enough right now to want to leave my house & Jim & the cats for six weeks. Security is dreadfully addictive.

(She says, after just moving and while looking for a job. Hmn. Maybe it's situational.)

I've swapped music now, to Tangerine Dream. Nice, soothing, not too demanding on the brain. Nice beat. Nice floaty angel-voice bits in the background on the track just finishing. I just finished catching up on six or eight months of Ceej's journal (who, me, obsessive? loving completion? uh, yah.), which is filled with talk about music. I end up wanting to listen to more and different things.

The signs right now tell me I am miserable. I know this because my shoulders right by my neck have turned into little knots of tension, and because I feel like I am about to cry with no corresponding emotional state. Boredom just sucks. I hate having nothing to do. I hate going home at 4pm (as I'm about to) because I am not willing to pretend to have work to do. And I hate that I don't have any interviews yet; I know it's too early in the process to be at an interview stage, but I want out of here RIGHT NOW please. And to do that people need to interview me and like me and offer me jobs. I will gently bug Mike at gaming tonight, I think, about that opportunity I am so psyched about. And maybe if my recruiters don't come up with anything soon I will throw caution to the winds and post my resume on dice.

But now me and my stress and my boredom and my headache are going to go home and hug Jim and play SMAC, which is about ten times more addictive than I feared. And oh, yes, I should mention that I had a nice lunch with Czr, and Jim is working from home today because his car was in the shop, and that I not only successfully got my car smogged, but the place I was doing it was right next door to Thai City, so I walked down to Future Fantasy and bought the not-so-new Kay book (Sailing to Sarantium) and the newish book by Anne Kellehar Bush, an author I like who hadn't produced anything since 1996 or so until this one appeared. See? Reviewing my triumphs I'm calmer already. Time to go.

Oh, fine, one more note, because it occured to me just now; I never used to write my emotions because I was scared of them, scared of myself, but now I know that even if every entry says I'm about to cry, there is real true honest solid happiness elsewhere in my life, and acknowledging the sadness and stress becomes safer because that is not all there is. Living in the real world, which is beautiful. Hard sometimes, but beautiful.