Burlap Soul

Tomorrow I am heading out to Cleveland bright and early for work. I will be in a rented car with a company hotel room and an expense report that will reimburse me for meals and gas. I will have a suitcase on wheels and talk on a cell phone while I carry a briefcase and a continental breakfast donut.

I have become one of those people.

Not only is this incredibly and extremely odd, but I am feeling slightly clueless and vastly underqualified.

Wish me luck. Tell me where to eat in Cleveland. If I have time, I hope to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Perhaps I'll find a way to wave to Lake Erie and remember that there is a life outside of these corporate barriers.

Okay, so here's the deal. I just got back from four days in Cleveland and came home to over 1400 spam comments and trackbacks. Spammers have also used my email for their nastiness so much that I am now banned from sending any further emails from my stazATburlapsoulDOTorg address. To say I'm pissed would be an understatement. I've always liked MT 2.66, but Blacklist can suck it lately as far as I'm concerned. The spammers have become so insane that it's now useless. Of course, I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't already know.

I love my blog. I love my outlet. I just wish it wasn't such a goddamned ordeal to check my comments anymore. That's half the reason I'm not writing so much lately and most of the reason that my wrist now hurts constantly. Not to mention the fact that my job keeps me so insanely busy that when I do have a few spare minutes to sit down and check blogs at night, it's all forgotten once I delete so much damn spam.

I want to update my blog, my computer, everything. Now I know I'm going to have to do what I did last time and just pay for someone to install the whole shebang, as I don't know jack about anything technical. (I was lucky enough to figure out how to do my incredibly simplistic blog layouts.) Either way, I'm fine with this. My question is: what do I use? Do I go with the newest version of MT? Do I just switch over to Expression Engine? I like having multiple blogs but I don't want to have to pay out the nose for it. I like being able to change my design whenever I need to without having to have a damn PhD to do it. I like simple, easy to-the-point blogging and not a lot of insane gadgetry with endless plugins. I like having the options of a possible password-protected photoblog but I don't want to have to throw something across the room in frustration because I can't possibly understand it. But mostly? I want to end the fucking spam comments/trackbacks. No more. I'm done with it.

But I'm keeping my domain name. I like it. It still fits me. I still want to have my own website - not a livejournal or a blogspot or anything else of that nature. I'm still being hosted by Blogomania and I want to keep it that way. I just want to find some type of new updated look that will A) still let me keep my archives and B) let me blog without being a technical know-it-all and C) let me crush these goddamned spammers under my feet.

Please give me some ideas and/or feedback. I'm seriously about ready to chuck everything if this can't be fixed and I really don't want to do that.

I'm currently sitting here with an icepack on my lower back. Yet another injury, yet more ice. The seasons change, the sky is blue, Staz has another wound... yadda, yadda.

Remember the tailbone injury? (I certainly do and I'll easily tell you how much it still freakin' hurts.) Well, when I landed on my tailbone on those Steps From Hell, my lower back hit the step above me hard. Over time, that and the tailbone pain subsided and I assumed I was getting better. I kept toughing my way through it, thinking it was no big deal - just bruising. Then when we drove ten hours to Mackinac, I nearly died. The pain was so bad that I would just roll onto my side in the car and cry, wishing we had flown instead of driven. (Naturally when we came back, we broke up the trip into two days.) But yet again, after our vacation, the pain subsided again.

These past two weeks, it decided it would be ignored no longer and I've been trying to maneuver around the hot knife in my back ever since. I swear, I must be the only person on the planet that waits years to get a sit-down job only to end up with an injury that's aggravated by sitting. So while driving to and from Cleveland with said knife in my back last week, I decided that it was time to see a specialist. Luckily, my doctor referred me to a very nice chiropractor.

Last night I went for my first x-rays and then today there were yet more x-rays and finally my first adjustment. Today I went to work, sat all day and only experienced intermittent dull stabs of pain. No more constant knife. Nice.

Who knew that a man laying on top of you and throwing his weight all over you could feel so great? Wait. That didn't come out right. *ahem*

I guess we'll see if it works or not. Apparently my back is so bad that I am now scheduled to see him every night this week. Honestly, J. is getting a little jealous. ;-)

The Chiropractor is going wonderfully. Slow and steady, but so far my back pain is only intermittent and when I've strained it or pushed it too far. We have discovered that I have the beginning stages of arthritis in my neck from a car accident when I was four. I love the fact that I can now say after 25 years of having migraines and neck stiffness that I am "working on it." I love the fact that I can now say that I am taking care of myself. That I am seeing my doctors regularly.

If only I didn't have to maintain the incredibly stressful and tiring job in order to keep things that way. There's always so much more to say on that topic, but it's already time to go to bed and begin again. As much as I hate to admit it, I think it might not be a bad idea to start looking again. I did this just to remind myself what I am doing all of this work for. I cannot wait for our wedding. Once we're married, I am free.

I played hooky from work today. That's the third time I've called in sick in less than six months. Yesterday was our big company shindig and add that to the fact that I have been going in on Sundays lately and also spent a week in Cleveland for these people and there you have it - burnout. So I said "fuck it," wore sweats and slept on the couch all day, except for the few minutes when I went to the chiropractor and walked my dog in the rain. Those were nice minutes too. But really, the sleeping? The sleeping was the best.

It's getting to the point that I dread going everyday. Yes, I know that that's not good, but at the same time, I know that I work with some very nice people and that I am very lucky to have the work environment that I have sometimes. I just wish I didn't have to feel so damned guilty for having a life and not wanting to sign my soul over to the corporate machine like everyone else does. I'm seriously looking at other career options. There isn't a day that goes by when I don't wish I'd gone the extra year for my photo degree or tried harder to get into grad school instead of just settling for a B.A. in psychology. In real life as in college, I don't do so well with burnout.

Every day is spent dreading the next, but I honestly feel trapped until the wedding. We've signed too many contracts, we've told too many people, we've written too many checks, we can't elope at this point. I just wish it had happened in August like I had planned so that we could be done and moving on and I could be living a life I enjoy instead of the one that am tied to until June 22nd. I don't dread my wedding day. I just wish it would get here a whole hell of a lot quicker. We've already agreed that once we have a wedding and a house, I can quit. Everyone knows that I am a much happier person and whole lot easier to live with if I am not forced to do an 8-5 job everyday. Especially a job that cuts out any artistic side of me and makes me cry from the stress and exhaustion.

Now if I had a photography job? Or a job with animals? You'd never hear me complain. It's the corporate life that I can't stand. I'm not made for this shit. Sitting at a desk working on spreadsheets and playing the Passive Aggressive Office Politics game makes me fucking insane and I hate who I have to be in order get a point across or be heard. But hey, I made a promise. I'd help pay for the wedding. I'd help us build a home together. Then I'd find my way and do what I really want to do, no matter what that might happen to be. Everyone would be happy.

I know I must sound like a broken record and I know many of you are just saying, "If you hate it so much, why don't you quit?" But it's not that easy, it never is. It's just something that I'm going through, something that's making my life extra hard and painful lately. So this is what I do, where I go. I write about it, I lay it out, I type it through. I go to bed, get up and read it two days later and finally understand it. Eventually I will come to a conclusion on this, it will just take time. Strange predicament I'm in - because of the very issue that I need to think about, time is just something I don't seem to have. Vicious cycles, they just seem to go round and round.

We've suddenly found ourselves with a free weekend. What the hell is this and what do we do with it?
Don't worry, we've already decided that it won't go to waste. Maybe biking, I really want some pictures of fall foliage, we'd like to see a florist for the wedding, maybe pick out rings. Who knows? We could do anything!

And that's exactly how we like it. :-)

So how is yours going?

Tomorrow I'm taking a half day at work because I have too much to do and I hate my job enough to just stop working and go do other stuff instead. First, I'm off to an acquaintance's house to help rescue a stray kitten. Then I'm going to meet J. downtown and we're going to pick out our wedding rings. Then we're on our way out of town to see family in Eastern Kentucky. Somewhere in there I suppose I'll eat or smile or breathe. Probably all three.

So far, the chiropractor visits are doing really well. The pain in my back was so bad when I started that I couldn't sit, stand, walk or drive. I've been going at least three times a week for three weeks now and I don't even hurt much anymore. The first week I had to go every night for a week and I was truly amazed at just how much my back was screwed up. Apparently, the old neck injury that I've had since I was four is something he's really worried about. I'm 29 and I already have beginning arthritis in my neck. Nice. [Note to young self-absorbed parents that like to party too much - take your damn kids to the doctor. Be parents. Don't be schmucks. Ahem.]

Another fun thing is being able to send in over $300 in co-pays and receipts and have it all magically reappear in your bank account days later. I love FSAs. The job, I could take or leave. But the FSA and the benefits - those are becoming my newest addictions. It's fun to finally be able to take care of yourself after twenty-some odd years of being neglected and/or too broke to do anything about your illnesses. Monday, I have my first dentist appointment in almost ten years. I love the fact that it will only cost me twenty dollars. I told J. today that I would work for free if I could create my own hours and always have good benefits and an FSA. Seriously, that's how much I value healthcare. I used to listen to people gripe about their co-pays and their coverage and I wanted to just choke the shit out of them and scream, "You don't know how lucky you are to have insurance, you assholes. What are you griping about?"

It was the oddest irony at that time to be working as a pharmacy technician exposed to the world of Medicaid, Medicare and the lush life of medical coverage while I was still going without benefits because I worked for a shitty chain store that treated its employees like dirt.

You don't value your health until you don't have it anymore. Worse yet, you really miss it when you have to live in pain and rate your ailments based on the price it will cost you at the hospital. Bleeding out the ears? Hmmmm, I wonder if they will bill me or make me pay hundreds just for the exam. He wants to run tests? Oh shit. How do I get out of here?

Yeah, this whole benefits thing has been a long time coming. J. and I just look at each other and say in awe, "I'm going to the chiropractor." We giggle as we write on the dry erase calendar with gusto "Dentist Appt!!!" and surround it with smiley faces. Medical staff look at me frightened when they ask for my insurance card and I pull it out of my wallet and slam it down with a big proud grin on my face and say, "Why of course!"

People always say it's the little things. But when you've lived for so long with nothing, those little things become unbelievably big.