Climbing the Third Stair

This has not been a good week for me, writing-wise. Since Sunday I've gotten maybe 500 words on my NaNoWriMo novel, and I'm afraid of doing the math on how far behind that puts me. Numbers never lie. Work is still stressing me, my RPG campaign is in the final stages of falling apart (and we were so close to the conclusion! so close!), and I'm pretty convinced that even if I could write something novel-length it wouldn't be worth reading. I'm not an amazing stylist, I have no great message to impart, I don't do conspiracies involving the Vatican, vampires, or sex scenes. Totally unmarketable. (And while I'm on that topic, I'm still dithering over from where to get another rejection slip for my story. It's been a few weeks, I should be sending it out again.)

Part of me still wants to continue writing on my novel. For one thing, I bought three beautiful XF nibs to go with the narrow-ruled comp book I'm using, and though they were cheap compared to buying new pens that's still real money down the drain. For another, on Sunday I realized that something I wrote as a throw-way piece of background on Saturday could actually be the key to the external conflict I needed for the climax of the book. I am unreasonably excited about the idea of trying to create the scenes and dialog needed to pull this off.

I can't even manage to give up right.

So my life is kind of not good right now.

I had a very bad day at work yesterday, and then I came home to discover that my internet had been shut off by my provider because of an accounting error on their part. This made me unhappy, more so because the customer service person I was dealing with was very unhelpful--I had to dig for information on how to get the problem fixed, instead of them just telling me what I needed to know. Why was this so hard? I was clearly upset about having my account shut off, why not tell me what I needed to know to get it back on? I hope I'm never that bad at customer service at work, but I admit it's possible.

So there I was with a heart full of bad feelings and no way to unload it. With no internet I couldn't communicate with anyone, and stabbing myself repeatedly or consuming large amount of ice cream or gin, as attractive as those options were, really weren't options. The first is never really a good idea, and the next two are good things that I prefer to keep as good things. I finally settled on praying the rosary (Friday is the traditional day for praying the Sorrowful Mysteries, which I found deeply appropriate), fixing myself a tasty dinner, and spending the rest of the night rewatching Devil May Cry anime episodes. By the time I went to bed I was feeling much better. (I have friends who look down on my taste in entertainment, but as far as I'm concerned you can't go wrong with a mix of heartfelt human emotions and good choreography.)

My internet is back on this morning (obviously), but the things that were problems at work are still going to exist when I go back into work. I don't know how to fix this. It's tempting to spend the weekend rewatching every bit of DMC I own, with Advent Children for a chaser, but I have to write an L5R fiction this weekend, not to mention do large amounts of housework.

I know that by most measures I have a pretty good life, but objective facts like this are of no help when one's problems are non-objective.