What doesn’t kill me will make me stronger, what doesn’t kill me will make me stronger, what doesn’t kill me will make me stronger… okay, enough of that.

You’ve just read what seems to be my motto for the fall. Those of you who read here with any regularity know that I had a horrible summer. Those who don’t, well, I had a horrible summer. Now everyone knows. Everything that could go wrong did. The stove going out, work, my grandmother passing… horrible… freaking… summer. Now that fall’s here, I’m trying hard not to have a horrible freaking fall, too, but I’m also feeling like by the time Christmas break comes, I’ll be ready for a break.

I started school and work on Monday, but that wasn’t where things began. I had orientations and meetings last Thursday, Friday and Sunday. Turn around from that and I was at the school bright and early Monday morning. So far, school’s okay, but as one would expect with graduate school, I have a lot of work already! Work is busy, busy, but will get busier next week when the labs start. Right now, I work every day in the writing center, observe basic writing two mornings a week, attend a weekly meeting but starting next week I’ll also teach two lab sections and work every other Wednesday evening in the library from 5-8 doing writing center stuff.

That’s not to say I’m not enjoying it, because so far, I am. I’m also exhausted and it’s only Thursday, but I’ve been assured that that will get easier. I’m looking forward to all of this becoming routine, because I need to lull into a sense of routine to keep my sanity. I have the feeling that it won’t be routine for a while yet, which is expected. With every job, and every semester, a period of adjustment is normal… right? Gah, I hope so, because if not, the exhaustion and subtle confusion are just me and I hate when things like this are just me.

Right now, my biggest concern is next weeks start of labs. I am petrified with fear over having to teach these labs. I know it’s nothing to be worried about, I know I know more than basic writers, but all the knowledge in the world isn’t putting to bed the fear that I’m going to screw up, or look like an idiot, or come off unprofessional. In all this fear, I do have moments of lucidity and sheer, unadulterated confidence that I can do this, but the other 23 hours and 59 minutes a day, I’m terrified. I’m hoping it’ll pass once it’s over, or at the very least ease as the semester progresses. We’ll see if my nerves can do that, or if I’m just a total basket case from here on out.

I have to say, though, I know that at least part of my problem is the realization that presentations are all around me and that I can’t escape them. I have to teach the labs as a part of the GA job, which I understood when I took the job, but I also have to do a presentation and a class discussion thing in my British Lit class and give presentations about the writing center as a part of my writing center duties. Fear of public speaking be damned, it’s something I have to do. Yay for being a grown-up, grad student with grown-up grad student responsibilities.

Two years, two years, two years… yeah, repetition because I learned in high school senior psych that you have to repeat things if you hope to commit them beyond your short term memory. Not that the fact that it’ll take two years needs be committed, I know it with every shred of my being. May 2012, it seems like forever but by the time I get working on everything that needs be worked on, I’m sure I’ll wonder where the hell the time went.

To top it all off, though it’s not really time yet, my thesis topic is floating around in my brain. I’m thinking about it all the time now, ways to spin it and make it as original and compelling, both for myself and any prospective audience, as I possibly can. We’ll see what I come up with. Nothing I can possibly share just yet.

Is it Friday afternoon yet? No? Damn!

I slept in late today and woke up thinking how grateful I am that this last week is over. Its been a long, hard week and though its meant being able to see my family, something for which I am always thankful, its also meant grieving. Grieving makes me tired, not just physically, but also emotionally, never mind the long drive to Plainview and back, only to turn around and have to go to Waco. All trips were fairly nice, as short trips go, and taken by themselves would have been fine, but all together made for a nightmare week. I actually feel bad feeling like that, though, since my folks left home last Saturday, drove all the way from California to Texas over the course of two days, stayed two days, and turned around to drive all the way back to California. They had a much more tiring week than me, I’m sure, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m tired.

Part of the problem, I think, is that its been such a terrible summer.  Matt and I have struggled these last three months more than we ever have before.  The weekend after I decided not to go to school over the summer, which meant for the first time in 5 years we wouldn’t have summer financial aid money, our range/stove died.  I should have taken it for a sign of horrible things to come, but as pissed as I was and as little as I could ignore the irony that literally days after I decided not to go to summer school for the first time in years something bad happens, I still went ahead with the plan to work all summer and skip on classes. Classes I didn’t at all need, mind you, as I’ll already be well over the number of hours required for my MA by the time I graduate.  No point in paying for something I’m not going to need anyway.

It’s not even just the stove, it’s the fact that my glasses have been going out of prescription for nearly three months but I’ve not really had the time, or money, to go to the eye doctor.  Work has been jerking me around, school financial aid has been being uncooperative, and my tooth got so infected that I had to bite the bullet and go to the doctor only to find out that I need a root canal, which are very freaking expensive!  My grandmother’s been very sick, which meant taking trips to Plainview.  Those trips were actually one of the higher, and lower, points of the summer because I got to see my Grandparents, my folks, my sister and my aunt, but the circumstances sucked.

School’s finally back in on August 30th and I’ve never been so happy to see a semester coming, especially one where I’m going to be taking 9 hours and working as a grad assistant.  I’m going to be busier than I’ve ever been before, but maybe that’s what I need.  What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger… right?  So maybe running the summer gauntlet has prepared me for what’s to come?  Yeah, okay, I don’t really believe that saying, I also don’t think this summer prepared me for anything but being thankful that it’s nearly over!

I’m taking this next week off work, I need the time to recoup from the summer from hell before school’s back in.  Instead, I’m going to do the laundry, clean the house, and go through the dresser and get rid of old clothes I don’t wear to make room for the clothes I do.  It isn’t like I’m going to be sitting around all week doing nothing, I’m just not going to be sitting in front of the computer all week.  Maybe I’ll also work on my novel some.  I might write a little bit, I need to get an article submitted for Blissfully Domestic so I can stay active with them, and I might write a bit for demand, but only when I feel like it. That way, it’s less of a job and more of a hobby… ah, the things I tell myself to get by.

Wow have I ever failed at blogging this summer!  There are things going on, but every time I sit down to try to write about them my whole person recoils in rebellion.  I think writing for work is killing my writing spirit.  I’m finding that while I like working from home, I don’t know that I particluarly like the primary client I’m working for — it’s just so inane sometimes and I find myself thinking “if I have to write one more article about [enter stupid topic no one cares about], I’m going to scream!”  It’s not a good sign.  I’m thinking that I might need to find another gig, or a few other gigs, that pay as well as this one does.  That’s the trick right there, this one pays pretty good as freelance web content markets go.

Part of my problem has to be the changes they’ve made recently.  It’s killing my grove. Since starting with the client I’m working for, I’ve written primarily home and garden titles. A few other things have slipped in there, but that’s been my primary focus.  I enjoyed writing home and garden titles because that’s where my interest lies.  It goes back to my childhood when I wanted to be an interior decorator when I grew up.  Since then, I’ve planted my feet firmly on the ground, where the only people who grow up and become interior decorators are people who can afford to be whimsical. I can’t afford whimsy, but I like to indulge my imagination with titles about decorating.  That was, until the home and garden titles started drying up.  The system went from having several tens of thousands of titles, to almost nothing… over night.  So where did they go?  I, like many others, started to freak out.  This was my livelihood they were (are?) messing with!  Turns out they opened a new division by invitation only and put the home and garden titles in that division. The rest of us could apply, but they’re only accepting a small number of the applicants.

The problem comes where I applied to write for this new division and they rejected my application after making me wait for nearly three weeks.  They said they were sorry, thanked me for applying, but that they couldn’t accept my application because I didn’t have the necessary experience. Okay, frankly, that’s bullshit!  I’ve been writing home and garden titles for them for months and suddenly I don’t have the experience.  What makes it worse is that a quick look at the forums have taught me that other people with absolutely no home and garden writing experience have gotten on without even having to ask for an invite.  One woman was so happy she got invited, saying she had never written a single home and garden title, but that she was going to give it a try.  Other people are getting accepted with less experience than I  have, less time working for the client, etc.  There’re no freaking standards and it’s infuriating!

It’s also affecting my ability to work.  Not just because I can’t find titles, but because I’m feeling discouraged. I can’t do anything that requires even a scrap of creativity when I’m discouraged.  While this job is fairly technical, as in, do the job and follow the rules and churn out 400-500 words per piece, it also requires the part of my creative brain that houses my internal thesaurus. I have to creatively come up with synonyms so I don’t say the same things over and over, but they also don’t allow us to use words like “popular” that are subjective and opinion based.  It can be such a pain in the ass sometimes. Yes, I’m upset and I don’t see that changing any time soon.

So, needless to say, my “let’s see if I can make it as a freelance writer experiment” for the summer hasn’t gone according to plans.  I did get on at Blissfully Domestic, which has made my summer so much better and I’m still writing for Suite101, which I love, but otherwise it’s not gone great. I want to say it did, but I can’t.  I want to say I’ll do this for a living, and I hope it’s true, but I can’t say that.  I want to blame my lack of productivity on the fact that I’m having to work in the damn living room, but that’s not the whole problem.  So many things are to blame and while some of them are my fault, others are simply not.

School will be back in on August 30th and I’m looking forward to going back.  For me, right now, that says a lot… especially to those who I’ve been talking to about school.  I’m ready to go back now, honestly, but I have to wait until the summers out… Boo!!