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dragonlady7Feeling in a dark, gross, stressed-out mood. Spent Saturday morning with Farmkid, and there's this event run by one of the shops downtown in Troy, where all these other shops have agreed to have a little cardboard cutout figure of Waldo in them, so kids can go around and find Waldo and get the shop clerk to stamp their little "passport" thing, and once you've gone to 20 different shops you can turn in your "passport" and enter a drawing to win some Where's Waldo books.
This is, necessarily, quite labor-intensive, and has involved three or four different adults traipsing all over downtown Troy with Farmkid.
I went to three or four little shops with her on Saturday during the farmer's market, and she kept blithely shoving the piece of paper back at me to take care of. Which, fine, but I've got this supernatural ability to lose important pieces of paper, so I finally was like, listen, you have this little zippered wallet thingy on a string, I'm putting it in there and you hang onto it. Figuring, I could supervise that way more than I could handle the five different bags I had to be carrying, this being the farmer's market.
Predictably, Farmkid was cool with that for thirty seconds and then was like "no you carry it!" so I put it into a bag into a bag and in all the hustle and bustle...
when I left Sunday, it was still in a bag, in my car.
The deadline is Wednesday. Priority Mail will probably get it there by Thursday...
I found it in that bag in a bag in my car when I had been on the Thruway for about an hour on my way home yesterday, as a State Trooper pulled me over. I hadn't been going noticeably fast, and he insisted I had been, and took my license and went back and sat in his car with it for like eight years, and I sat there and looked at this stupid little child's wallet with this stupid creased piece of paper representing hours and hours and hours of work by numerous adults and wanted to cry.
He came back and had just given me a ticket for inadequate brake lights. "Your right rear taillight's out," he said. "I'm going easy on you." I was going like 73 miles an hour, by my speedometer-- but, it's the end of the month and along the 300-mile stretch of highway I traveled, I saw about seventeen dozen State Troopers, and I know they have quotas they have to meet, which is asinine and entirely contrary to the letter and spirit of the law.
I had that brake light replaced last Thursday, because it had gone dim and then gone out. I had the receipt; $19.80 to replace that brake light.
Sigh. They give you 24 hours to get the garage to sign off on a re-inspection, but at least they let you mail it in, so I wouldn't have to show up in person at the courthouse in Canajoharie, which is over 200 miles from home.
So I trooped down there this morning, and the guy was like ohhh, there's a factory recall on those brake lights, we can't do factory recalls, it's something in the electrical harness. I'm going to have to take it to the dealership, who I stopped patronizing because they wouldn't stop trying to upsell me on more expensive repairs. (seriously??? i bought the car from you, and maintenance is expensive anyway, why are you trying to sell me new tires a year early when I don't need them??? You have enough of my money and are going to get more, just be patient!)
But he replaced the bulb again (it was blown), for free, and signed off on the ticket the officer gave me, and I just went to mail it and looked and... he filled it out but didn't read it carefully so at the bottom where he's supposed to have affixed a stamp and a signature he left it blank.
If I mail this in, they're going to kick it back as inadequate, I bet, and then I really will have to come in to the courthouse in Canajoharie, and this is how I've ended up with my license suspended in the past because it gets too complicated and I don't understand what I have to do. (Listen I really got arrested. It was not ideal. I do not have the wherewithal at the moment to tell it like a funny story. They took my glasses away and I had to sit there blind.)
So maybe I'll sit here and cry. No, I'm at the stupid office job, I'm not going to cry here, I'll just sit here and sulk I guess. I'll have to go back and try again at the garage tomorrow, at least he put the date on of today so I technically fulfilled that thing.
I'm going to try to scan in and email the stupid Waldo passport to my sister, and hope the shop owner has mercy and lets her enter it, because it was so much work and Farmkid has her heart set on winning (she won last year, and honestly it would be really good for her not to win this year because she definitely 100% has the only child entitlement issue syndrome where she Just Expects Every Good Thing and that's fine, she's five, but she's also a brat, and like, it'd be fine if she lost fair and square but if I fuck it up for her and she gets disqualified she's absolutely not going to learn anything good from that and also I will be a villain and please I don't want to be a villain just this once, I'm so tired. *cries*).
Also I fucked up a line in the Good Omens fic I posted, and I'm sure my crosspost about that has come over since so I don't need to explain, and of course apologizing and fixing it is the only way forward, but now I'm doing really stupid rejection-sensitive dysphoria bullshit about it which is really my own problem entirely, but like, so many people read it and left comments and didn't point that out and then suddenly like three or four people in a row commented on the same line and pointed out (respectfully! nicely!) that it was bad, and I was like oh no I don't have Internet access to fix this, I need a minute to reread it and figure out what else to say there and someone doubled down and was like every moment you leave this up is hurting people so just delete the line and like... ... not... that... many people read my shit, and sometimes people aren't online 24/7, I don't have like, tech support, I need a minute to reread it, oh my word, this is a story and it's like a knitted thing, you can't just cut it, you need to like pick up dropped stitches and shit, I get that this isn't a masterpiece but it is a thing that I made and it involved some effort and I get that it's fucked up but I think I'm entitled to take a minute and pick up the dropped stitches, right?? and I'm not going to try to edit in the AO3 window in a browser on my phone, I need, like, a computer, to do this, and so I need like a couple more hours, oh my gosh. That was a lot. I edited it like 9pm which was the literal first instant I actually had time to sit down and look at a computer in a building with wifi so I could actually load the page, and I fixed it right away and pushed the edit, but of course, that was like, twelve more hours full of minutes of it out there just mauling unsuspecting readers. So now I'm feeling like the most horrible person ever, but there's nothing I can really do about that, and it's nobody's fault but mine, but...
Man, fuck writing fanfiction, it's hard to try to curl yourself around other people's worldbuilding, I'm tired, this is a hobby I'm not getting a whole lot out of, and I sometimes just don't like how the Internet is.
I'm not an important author. I haven't made it into any rec lists or posts or anything in this crowded fandom. I don't have that much traffic, and it's tapered off; I'm delighted, of course, in every person that read it, but of course now I'm just sick worrying about how many people read it and didn't comment on that gross line and so I didn't realize to fix it until basically everyone who was ever going to read that story already had. That's the worst part; if that line was hurting people every minute it stayed unedited, then it had done the vast majority of its damage before I even noticed that it did not say what I meant it to. And it took, probably, apparently, some people nerving themselves up in a side discussion to even work up the gumption to tell me about it, which I totally understand, but now I'm thinking about how many people were like well that writer's just an asshole and it's not worth saying anything, and closed the window and didn't look back.
grooooooossssssss I feel gross. It's fixed, but everyone who was gonna read it already has, and either didn't notice it or thinks I'm an irredeemable asshole, so I've achieved nothing. Bleargh. Nobody else is going to read that story, it did not capture the zeitgeist and made 0 reclists or roundups, I'll get the occasional kudos on it until the end of time but it's unlikely to get significant further engagement because I'm just not that popular and that's fine but it makes me feel gross that I spent my brief moment in the corner of the spotlight with my skirt tucked into my pantyhose, more or less, only grosser and more traumatizingly to the beholders.
(I did get one person who said the fix was an improvement, but that was almost worse because it was someone who hadn't commented on it in the first place, so like, oh boy, there was a vast audience of people who read it and didn't point it out and were just quietly like oh this person is gross. Great.)
OK, I'm done whining I guess.
Please, I don't need comments about how gross I am, I know, and i know I'm handling this badly but that is also something I'm aware of, I handle things badly, it's kind of like a fundamental feature of what I am. Believe me, I'm no more fond of it than anyone else is. I don't need to have my shittiness pointed out further, and I'm not even particularly fishing for sympathy, I'm just trying to write out why it is that I feel so unrelentingly crappy in the hopes that maybe writing it down will de-fang it.
Who knows!
Who knows.
Probably not.
I'm supposed to be working.
All I want is a day off to work on that original novel that's gnawing a hole in the back of my brain, and that I'm writing in distracted little dribs and drabs that mean I keep doing it wrong and I'm going to have to go back and rip out most of what I've made, and I won't finish it before I'm 40, that's been my goal for the last like six months and it's not going to happen, and I keep stealing time out of my stolen time to work on fanfic because I feel like it'll scratch the itch and honestly it's not! It's not. Ugh. I need to Stop.
This is, necessarily, quite labor-intensive, and has involved three or four different adults traipsing all over downtown Troy with Farmkid.
I went to three or four little shops with her on Saturday during the farmer's market, and she kept blithely shoving the piece of paper back at me to take care of. Which, fine, but I've got this supernatural ability to lose important pieces of paper, so I finally was like, listen, you have this little zippered wallet thingy on a string, I'm putting it in there and you hang onto it. Figuring, I could supervise that way more than I could handle the five different bags I had to be carrying, this being the farmer's market.
Predictably, Farmkid was cool with that for thirty seconds and then was like "no you carry it!" so I put it into a bag into a bag and in all the hustle and bustle...
when I left Sunday, it was still in a bag, in my car.
The deadline is Wednesday. Priority Mail will probably get it there by Thursday...
I found it in that bag in a bag in my car when I had been on the Thruway for about an hour on my way home yesterday, as a State Trooper pulled me over. I hadn't been going noticeably fast, and he insisted I had been, and took my license and went back and sat in his car with it for like eight years, and I sat there and looked at this stupid little child's wallet with this stupid creased piece of paper representing hours and hours and hours of work by numerous adults and wanted to cry.
He came back and had just given me a ticket for inadequate brake lights. "Your right rear taillight's out," he said. "I'm going easy on you." I was going like 73 miles an hour, by my speedometer-- but, it's the end of the month and along the 300-mile stretch of highway I traveled, I saw about seventeen dozen State Troopers, and I know they have quotas they have to meet, which is asinine and entirely contrary to the letter and spirit of the law.
I had that brake light replaced last Thursday, because it had gone dim and then gone out. I had the receipt; $19.80 to replace that brake light.
Sigh. They give you 24 hours to get the garage to sign off on a re-inspection, but at least they let you mail it in, so I wouldn't have to show up in person at the courthouse in Canajoharie, which is over 200 miles from home.
So I trooped down there this morning, and the guy was like ohhh, there's a factory recall on those brake lights, we can't do factory recalls, it's something in the electrical harness. I'm going to have to take it to the dealership, who I stopped patronizing because they wouldn't stop trying to upsell me on more expensive repairs. (seriously??? i bought the car from you, and maintenance is expensive anyway, why are you trying to sell me new tires a year early when I don't need them??? You have enough of my money and are going to get more, just be patient!)
But he replaced the bulb again (it was blown), for free, and signed off on the ticket the officer gave me, and I just went to mail it and looked and... he filled it out but didn't read it carefully so at the bottom where he's supposed to have affixed a stamp and a signature he left it blank.
If I mail this in, they're going to kick it back as inadequate, I bet, and then I really will have to come in to the courthouse in Canajoharie, and this is how I've ended up with my license suspended in the past because it gets too complicated and I don't understand what I have to do. (Listen I really got arrested. It was not ideal. I do not have the wherewithal at the moment to tell it like a funny story. They took my glasses away and I had to sit there blind.)
So maybe I'll sit here and cry. No, I'm at the stupid office job, I'm not going to cry here, I'll just sit here and sulk I guess. I'll have to go back and try again at the garage tomorrow, at least he put the date on of today so I technically fulfilled that thing.
I'm going to try to scan in and email the stupid Waldo passport to my sister, and hope the shop owner has mercy and lets her enter it, because it was so much work and Farmkid has her heart set on winning (she won last year, and honestly it would be really good for her not to win this year because she definitely 100% has the only child entitlement issue syndrome where she Just Expects Every Good Thing and that's fine, she's five, but she's also a brat, and like, it'd be fine if she lost fair and square but if I fuck it up for her and she gets disqualified she's absolutely not going to learn anything good from that and also I will be a villain and please I don't want to be a villain just this once, I'm so tired. *cries*).
Also I fucked up a line in the Good Omens fic I posted, and I'm sure my crosspost about that has come over since so I don't need to explain, and of course apologizing and fixing it is the only way forward, but now I'm doing really stupid rejection-sensitive dysphoria bullshit about it which is really my own problem entirely, but like, so many people read it and left comments and didn't point that out and then suddenly like three or four people in a row commented on the same line and pointed out (respectfully! nicely!) that it was bad, and I was like oh no I don't have Internet access to fix this, I need a minute to reread it and figure out what else to say there and someone doubled down and was like every moment you leave this up is hurting people so just delete the line and like... ... not... that... many people read my shit, and sometimes people aren't online 24/7, I don't have like, tech support, I need a minute to reread it, oh my word, this is a story and it's like a knitted thing, you can't just cut it, you need to like pick up dropped stitches and shit, I get that this isn't a masterpiece but it is a thing that I made and it involved some effort and I get that it's fucked up but I think I'm entitled to take a minute and pick up the dropped stitches, right?? and I'm not going to try to edit in the AO3 window in a browser on my phone, I need, like, a computer, to do this, and so I need like a couple more hours, oh my gosh. That was a lot. I edited it like 9pm which was the literal first instant I actually had time to sit down and look at a computer in a building with wifi so I could actually load the page, and I fixed it right away and pushed the edit, but of course, that was like, twelve more hours full of minutes of it out there just mauling unsuspecting readers. So now I'm feeling like the most horrible person ever, but there's nothing I can really do about that, and it's nobody's fault but mine, but...
Man, fuck writing fanfiction, it's hard to try to curl yourself around other people's worldbuilding, I'm tired, this is a hobby I'm not getting a whole lot out of, and I sometimes just don't like how the Internet is.
I'm not an important author. I haven't made it into any rec lists or posts or anything in this crowded fandom. I don't have that much traffic, and it's tapered off; I'm delighted, of course, in every person that read it, but of course now I'm just sick worrying about how many people read it and didn't comment on that gross line and so I didn't realize to fix it until basically everyone who was ever going to read that story already had. That's the worst part; if that line was hurting people every minute it stayed unedited, then it had done the vast majority of its damage before I even noticed that it did not say what I meant it to. And it took, probably, apparently, some people nerving themselves up in a side discussion to even work up the gumption to tell me about it, which I totally understand, but now I'm thinking about how many people were like well that writer's just an asshole and it's not worth saying anything, and closed the window and didn't look back.
grooooooossssssss I feel gross. It's fixed, but everyone who was gonna read it already has, and either didn't notice it or thinks I'm an irredeemable asshole, so I've achieved nothing. Bleargh. Nobody else is going to read that story, it did not capture the zeitgeist and made 0 reclists or roundups, I'll get the occasional kudos on it until the end of time but it's unlikely to get significant further engagement because I'm just not that popular and that's fine but it makes me feel gross that I spent my brief moment in the corner of the spotlight with my skirt tucked into my pantyhose, more or less, only grosser and more traumatizingly to the beholders.
(I did get one person who said the fix was an improvement, but that was almost worse because it was someone who hadn't commented on it in the first place, so like, oh boy, there was a vast audience of people who read it and didn't point it out and were just quietly like oh this person is gross. Great.)
OK, I'm done whining I guess.
Please, I don't need comments about how gross I am, I know, and i know I'm handling this badly but that is also something I'm aware of, I handle things badly, it's kind of like a fundamental feature of what I am. Believe me, I'm no more fond of it than anyone else is. I don't need to have my shittiness pointed out further, and I'm not even particularly fishing for sympathy, I'm just trying to write out why it is that I feel so unrelentingly crappy in the hopes that maybe writing it down will de-fang it.
Who knows!
Who knows.
Probably not.
I'm supposed to be working.
All I want is a day off to work on that original novel that's gnawing a hole in the back of my brain, and that I'm writing in distracted little dribs and drabs that mean I keep doing it wrong and I'm going to have to go back and rip out most of what I've made, and I won't finish it before I'm 40, that's been my goal for the last like six months and it's not going to happen, and I keep stealing time out of my stolen time to work on fanfic because I feel like it'll scratch the itch and honestly it's not! It's not. Ugh. I need to Stop.
