Updates, good and bad.

Left off here on a rather ominous note, I suppose. It’s been a busy few weeks.

No sugar coating it: my manager is trying to fire me. Claims he’s not, but that’s shit. I was a good employee with a stable record until I landed on his team, and within 24 hours I was on a PSP (Performance “Success” Plan–what they do to under-performing employees) and my trajectory never recovered. There’s no statute of limitations with this man. Every mistake you make is with you forever, and then they’re looked at in aggregate to make a “pattern of under-performance.” He’s trying to fire me, and I don’t care what pretty lies the senior management spins to cover his ass. I wrote a letter to HR about what was going on, and a few days later I saw him returning to his desk from the front office with a sick look on his face. It was better for a while after that, but I think it just made him craftier. I’m on two separate final written warnings at the same time. Didn’t even know that was possible. I’m looking for another job as fast as I can. Hope to find one soon. I’ll leave if I have to, but I don’t want to be fired. I hate this feeling of helplessness, of not knowing when the ax will fall. I need to save up enough money to be able to move back down to the Bay and be with my sister.

(Oh, by the way, I have a sister now. She’s wonderful. The queer tradition of a chosen family didn’t make sense to me until we decided to be siblings.)

On a brighter note, I have been awarded a scholarship to attend the Cascade Writer’s workshop this year. I’m very excited. My main fear is that my situation up here will fall apart and force me to flee to California again before I have a chance to attend. There will be other writers there, serious, committed artists. I haven’t had a group like that since college.  I can’t wait. There will also be professionals from the publishing world. I look forward to learning a lot from them. I have to say, as well, that it is immensely rewarding to have been awarded a scholarship. It was in part based on need, but a part of the application was based on a 1000-word sample I submitted. Someone I’ve never met who has no reason to care about me decided that, among those who submitted applications, I was the one they wanted to support. It gives me hope.

I’ve been submitting my application to agents. Nothing but rejections and silence so far. This is to be expected. No serious writer gets through life without  a thick sheaf of rejections. Still, having something, anything, break my way is very nice.

My cousin seems to be having trouble. It would be quite dramatic to say that madness is the family curse, but no. We live in a more civilized age, where mental health is more sterile, and better classified. We’re not mad. Simply depressed and scared. No matter. I’m pulling for you, cousin. I wish you all the best.

The Shittiest Fucking Day

My mattress decided that it was going to be lumpy and my back was going to pain me all night, so I showed up at work on maybe four and a half hours sleep. I’m short on antidepressants so I’m at 2/3rds dose until my pharmacy can unfuck themselves and get a new script in.

First thing I learn about at work is Boston. I try to ignore it and do my job, but everyone there has an internet terminal and is passing around rumors. It’s difficult to put on a sunny, cheerful face at the best of times.

Go to a “town hall” meeting. It’s an annual company-wide briefing. No useful information, but plenty of “we’ll get back to you” during Q&A. There’s a lot of uncertainty about a big change we’re making at work, and they don’t ever have answers for us. The meeting goes for an hour and forty minutes, and a senior team manager pauses the presentation to give me the stink eye when I have to take a bio break.

Get back to my desk after the desk. It’s up to 100 wounded now.

My depression takes its chance and I consider buying a gun so that next time this happens I can get it over with fast. My dissatisfaction with my transition is at the crux of it today. I express my problems on twitter, because that’s one place where I go so that my friends know I’m in trouble and can help me. It’s one a few survival strategies I’ve developed because I have to. Because I can’t take it for granted anymore that I won’t murder myself. Somebody who I thought cared about me takes this as an opportunity to shit all over me because *she* never had these problems so obviously I shouldn’t either.

My manager fails me on a call coaching because I made a reasonable inference from the data available and got right into executing $client’s policy on the matter, rather than wasting everyone’s time with probing questions to determine something I already know. Doesn’t even know enough to say “yeah, I know it’s stupid but for this issue we’ve got to be explicit,” but just acts like I’m incompetent for not doing it his way. This brings to a boil some long standing tensions between us, chiefly that I can’t trust him. Being on his team is like being in the Soviet Union. Everyone knows that sometimes things happen at work that are arbitrary, nonsensical, and unfair, and we’ve just got to deal with it, but Lenin help you if you ever say so out loud. I’m so ground down at this point I can’t do the grin and nod routine, and tell him I don’t trust him. I don’t, but holy fuck Jesus you’re not supposed to say that. But now I have.

Get home. Still getting bitched at over twitter.

But hey, at least I’ve got whiskey. Maybe there’s something nifty at the bottom of this glass.

Sometimes I have fun with my customers.

We’re making small talk waiting for some equipment to power cycle.

“Do you like your job?” – customer

“It a job. Beats what I was doing before.” – me

“What was that?”

“Being homeless.”

“…I’m sorry, what?”

The Definition of Insanity

More and more, I find my mind returning to the possibility of graduate school. It’s foolish. It’s hopeless. My time there is done.

But what if I could figure out a way to apply Power Transition Theory to domestic political violence? What if I could get funding? What if I could enroll in a program that fit me better?

No. It’s absurd. It will never work. Shouldn’t waste time thing about it.

But what if…?

My Suicide and Me

I can outrun her all day, but at night she catches up to me. She lays a soft hand on my shoulder.

Hello, says my Suicide. You’re running awfully fast. Doesn’t that tire you out?

My Suicide and I lay in bed together. It’s not going to get better, she says. She’s slower than life, but faster than sleep. How long do you think you can hold on?

There’s a bathtub in the next room, says my Suicide. If you heat the water to body temperature, you’ll barely even feel it. The clouds will flow in from the side, and you’ll just…drift…

She wraps her arms around me, and traces featherkisses down my neck.

I hate to see you suffer.

2012

2012 was the first year in which I was not homeless at any point since 2010. I have mostly recovered, I think. The random fits of rage, which at the time made so much sense, have passed me by. In hindsight, I can’t believe I didn’t get fired. Everything I thought I knew about how the world worked proved to be disastrously wrong, and I’ve had to rebuild myself from the ground up. It was not very fun. Some of those marks won’t leave me, but I don’t think I’d want them to. If nothing else, they remind me how tough I am.

I wrote a book. It turned out completely different than I’d anticipated, and I am eager to see what happens when I unleash it upon the world. (To those of you who have early drafts: burn them.) I’ll probably be publishing under a pen name. I don’t want my professional life and my [posted to the Internet for all to see] private life to mix. Most of the people I’ve shown it to have been very enthusiastic. There are, as always, notable exceptions, but learning to accept that some people just won’t like my books is a good lesson to take early.

I had a falling out with a dear friend; that bridge is still smoldering. It turns out that I’m really, really not okay with people calling me a pussy for struggling with the most dangerous symptom of my depression.

Speaking of which, I had a pretty serious relapse of my depression complete with a night on the suicide hotline, and I have finally accepted it as a disability. It’s something I have to structure my life around. Need to take my pills, see my doctors, avoid certain kinds of media or topics of conversation. It has totally destroyed my one-time ambition to do work for the Federal government that requires a top secret security clearance. They don’t hand those out to people with mental health problems. I really wanted to serve my country, but it seems I won’t be able to.

I made some progress on my transition, but not as much as I’d like. The hormones and the antidepressants have put a lot of weight on me, and that hides a lot of the changes I’d see otherwise. I’m taking a lot of care with my diet now, and one of these days I’ll hit the gym. I have breasts enough that I can wear a bra and it makes sense to, but not so large that I have to. My face, when I clean up, looks pretty feminine. My voice, sadly, remains strictly male. Sometimes the disphoria hits pretty bad, and other times it feels like I’m resigned to being a boy. Not super fun, but I think things will get better as I start working out. I’ve already got diet down, so how hard can exercise be, #she said, as Fate chuckled darkly.)

I’m looking forward to 2013. I might get a better job, or I might continue with my current one, but I know that I will be making real, serious progress towards getting published no matter what happens and that is hugely exciting.

And that was my year. How was yours?

Relapse

Haven’t written here in a while. There’s not much new or interesting to say about my depression other than I have had a serious relapse, including a full on panic attack and evening with the nice ladies at the suicide hotline, and that in the weeks that followed I have gotten serious about treating this as a disability that is not going to go away. I’m back on antidepressants, and trying to take it easy.

I have finished the first draft of my book. I’m waiting for my beta readers to give me feedback for improvement. I’m quite excited to get it polished up to the point where I can start sending it to agents. The publishing industry is in utter turmoil, and as a career choice being a fiction writer is probably a foolish dream, but I can’t stand the idea of getting old without trying. I like my book. All the people who have read my book have liked it. The problem is that they’re all my friends, so who is to say if it’s actually good or not? And even if it is good, I have no idea if it is capable of being a commercial success.

I keep my eyes firmly fixed upon my “career” in publishing, because to look down at the reality of my life is asking for another night on the hotline.

And on it goes.