A Minor Variation

I avoid talking about politics on my LJ, but now that we have reached this point...

I'm excited. A little scared still, too, because it's not as though everything that's been wrong in the USA has just magically been fixed, but I have a lot of hope now, and I really am excited. This is the first time I've ever been able to say that about the results of a Presidential election.

It's a great feeling.

Good job, America.

Meme stolen wholesale from infinitepryde: go here and refresh until you've found at least five quotes which resonate with you somehow (ten if you're feeling ambitious). Post them to your LJ.

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)

One reason I don't drink is that I want to know when I am having a good time.
Nancy Astor (1879 - 1964)

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.
Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words.
Anna Sewell (1820 - 1878), Black Beauty, 1877

It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.
Judith Martin, (Miss Manners)

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
George Orwell (1903 - 1950), "Politics and the English Language", 1946

I don't post things really relevant to my life as much as I'd really like to. Mostly I just don't think of it, or don't get around to it.

But with 2004 drawing to a close, like pretty much everyone else I am taking stock. And like most everyone else, I imagine, it's a mixed bag.

I have a full-time job now, and despite some snags I've managed to keep it for most of the year - since about March, when I was first hired. I've gotten hours added and one raise and I'm doing okay, I guess. I like my job all right, but I need to get better at dealing with customers, especially the ones who are upset about something our company has or hasn't done. I need to get better at not letting on when I'm exasperated - I don't think I do it to customers much if at all, but I need to work on it when I'm speaking to co-workers, too. Since I nearly got fired this past August/September, I'm a little paranoid about the areas in which I'm probably not quite making the grade. I need to get better at this. I need to make myself indispensible.

At the same time, though, I'm worried about my long-term prospects. I don't think I want to sell insurance, so I'm not sure where I can go from here. If nothing else, though, at least holding this job shows that I am employable, so I'm in a much better position than I was this time last year.

I'd like to start looking for an apartment, though I don't know if I'm making enough per month that I could realistically afford rent. It's dissatisfying to be 24 and still living with my mother, even if she doesn't seem to mind the arrangement. For the time being, I'm saving money - not as much as I should, maybe, but I am accumulating savings, and I'll be much less able to splurge on DVDs and things when I am paying all my own rent, so I might as well take advantage of the opportunity while I have it.

Creatively, I think I'm in a slump. I need to try to motivate myself to write more, and to work with original ideas rather than just fanfic and RP stuff. Though that's fun too. Artistically I am resigned to being a dabbler, so I'm not really concerned with whether or not I try to draw with anything approaching regularity, but I'd like to actually write an original story - a whole original story, not just the start of one that never goes anywhere, a bad habit of mine - and try to get it on the market somehow. More and more lately, though, I've had the feeling that I'm equipped not to create but only to appreciate the creations of others. Which isn't such a bad thing, I guess - I'd love to edit fiction for a living - but it's kind of disappointing.

That'll probably be my resolution for the new year - to finish a piece of original fiction.

All in all, I have a pretty cushy life, so I really can't complain. I'd like to have more money, but wouldn't everyone?

I was worried earlier this month that I'd done something to my shoulder - for those of you who recall my complaining, the aches in my shoulder and back wound up lasting a good two weeks or so, to varyinf extents. It turns out, though, that it was caused by the chair I'd been sitting in at my home PC for... well, months at least, since the chair I had used - and am currently using - broke. The replacement chair was a rocking chair with arms, not ideal but the only chair in the house that didn't sit far too high, and I didn't realize how weirdly I had to sit in it to reach the mouse until I started hurting from it. Even then, it took me far too long to figure it out, but I got my grandfather to fix my old chair and, between that and an Icy-Hot patch or two, I'm back to normal. Another bullet dodged, but I'm more mindful of my posture now. As much time as I spend at computers, it's probably not the last time it'll be an issue. Along similar lines, trying to cut down on sodas. 8-ounce cans are handy for that, but I wouldn't say I'm necessarily making a lot of progress there.

I guess with 25 around the corner I'm becoming a little more aware than I'd like that staying healthy and more or less in shape is only going to get harder here on out. I'm getting old! Wah.

In a roundabout way, this brings me to the more immeciate subject of the cookies that, yes, I'm still making. Working on the raisin ones now. I tried taffy last night, but it was a bust; never set up. I think, on retrospect, that I actually undercooked it, so I'm going to get a candy thermometer and try again with a more reliable method of gauging temperature than dribbling blobs of syrup into cold water and trying to interpret the shapes they make.

Haven't set the kitchen on fire again. Yet. I'll keep you all posted on that.

My introspection appears to have run its course for the moment, so I'll stop rambling. There may be another bout of this later. Who knows?