Salary.com

According to Salary.com, I'm getting paid about $10,000 a year less than the national average for the job position I hold.

Oh, gee, yay.

Why does this not surprise me?

Clawing Up From Depression, Or: Getting it All Together

Jenn and I lolled around in bed yesterday talking until nearly 2:30 in the afternoon - she's been busy running psych studies and analyzing data until 10pm, and I spend two days a week in Indianapolis, so we needed the catch-up time.

Today, I reorganized my room so it's more work-condusive - put a bunch of bins full of old novels and stories into K's old room, which we're using for storage (that's where my 30 years of National Geographics ended up). I love my new room set-up. I have the smallest room in the house, which meant that for nearly a year I've had a desk where I can't pull out the chair all the way because it kept hitting the bed.

Cleaned up my balcony garden today as well, putting all the lemon balm with the lemon balm and the basil with the basil. I'm proudest of my pot of morning glories, which look like they're boiling over the pot and getting ready to burst. I love gardening. It's incredibly relaxing watching little seeds grow up into these lush, vibrant garden that takes over the entire outdoor table.

I was walking up and down the stairs today, doing laundry (the washer and dryer are in the basement), and thinking about how much easier it was to get up the stairs, to think about doing this mundane task, and I realized again how depressed I'd been for so long, how stressed, and subsequently, how sick. After much thought, pain, irritation, and many PP visits, I've also finally decided to get my IUD removed.

I hate this idea, and put off the decision to remove it for nearly a year - but the infections and irritation aren't going away, and I only have about 7 days a month where I can have sex comfortably. When I only saw my partner once a month, I could work around this. I could justify all the pain and the stress from walking around in a constant state of discomfort. I just can't justify it anymore. I'm not looking forward to another painful, bloody visit, but once it's done, it's done. How I'll negotiate contraception in the future, I don't know, but for now, I'll take a normally functioning vagina that I don't want to claw out two weeks in every four. I can't do pain and itching anymore. It's not worth it. Jenn and I plan to part when she graduates and I get a job elsewhere next year (it's not likely we'll find good jobs in the same cities), so what I'll do after that, well, that's a time away yet.

For now, I'm just tired of hurting and bleeding all the time.

In the meantime, things are looking up. The IUD is out in 18 days, tDW is out to readers, and I'm contemplating what's going wrong in the last 40 pages of God's War that's keeping me from pushing through. As my buddy Patrick's pointed out, it's also time to start getting my application materials ready for Gaming Company, so I'm looking through short stories and getting back into video game playing (ah, research).

I'm also starting to make notes for Over Burning Cities, the next book in the fantasy saga, and going over several of the early chapters and cleaning them up.

My buddies Stephanie and Ian should be heading down here around the 4th of July, and Patrick and his family are coming down the week before Wiscon; it's going to be great to have people in the house. I'm looking forward to it.

In the meantime, Jenn and I are going to finish up another episode of Babylon 5, eat some macoroni, and then I'm packing things up for another couple work days in Indy...

Send Somebody to Clarion

When I got accepted to Clarion, I wrote letters to every single friend and relative I had and begged for money.

Yes. I did. I begged for money.

I do not regret it.

I got to Clarion, and had plenty of pocket money besides. Clarion is the SF/F workshop. You get about 2 years of writing experience in 6 weeks. You beg, borrow, and steal to get there. It can change your life. You meet amazing people, amazing writers.

And it'd be a shame to miss out on the experience for purely financial reasons.

Be a dear and help get somebody else there. All he needs is $20 from 125 people.

I put in $20.

I don't think you'll regret it.