Focusing on the Good Stuff

I'm blogging early again. This means that my negative attitude was merely a sign of foresight. For, indeed, my new cubicle is as wide open as the prairies of yore with no privacy at all.

Don't get me wrong; my new cubicle is quite lovely. At least it is according to all the nice people who came through to puruse our new workspace. Of course, they all have nice, private offices so forgive me if I feel just a teensy bit bitter towards their niceties.

Truth-be-told, our new office building is definitely a spiffy building. It's an expensive building, one that has taken time, money and effort to turn from a dull, generic office building into a state-of-the-art little company. It's nice. I can't complain except for the fact that I have absolutely no privacy.

I'm finding that the problem is really that one of the only reasons I was able to go to work and do my mind-numbingly dull job before was because I had little outlets. I could surf the web, take a cell-phone break to talk to a friend, talk to my coworker across my cubicles. Unfortunately, now I'm in Cubicle City, none of these things are permitted. I'm terrified. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to continue to go to work and not feel like I'm climbing the walls of my cubicle because my job is just not that exciting. In fact, even when I try to do the job I'm supposed to do, the job I'm nagged at daily because I haven't had chance to complete it, I'm told by my boss that it's unimportant and I 'need more projects'. Since I have, in fact, now sat in his office twice and told him this same thing, you'd think more projects would finally be on the table. Sadly, they're not...there's just the talk of them.

Nevertheless, talk of them is better than nothing. Thus, rather than beat my head repeatedly against the walls of my cubicle, I shall try to embrace change. At the very least, I shall embrace the paycheck and try not to complain for fear of being fired.

It does help, however, that my job is not my life. In fact, aside from the job, life has actually been rather nice lately.

I'm pleased to report that I did manage to 'win' the National Novel Writing Month Project. This merely means I have a certificate to print out that states I did, in fact, write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. Given that November has been a busy month, I'm actually surprised I made the deadline but I'm also rather pleased that I did. The novel I wrote, The Reluctant Demon, has been one of the most fun things I've ever written. It's of absolutely no literary significance whatsoever other than that it's meant to entertain. It does, however, have far more significance to me because, at long last, I'm over my stupid writing wall that sprung up after a series of too many harsh rejections in too little time.

Thus, I have to salute National Novel Writing Month or NaNaWriMo as it calls itself. It's managed to pick me up, dust me off and make me start all over again and every bit of it has been fun. I confess, while I completed the NaNaWriMo challenge, I still haven't quite finished the novel. There are still a few chapters left to finish up how my demon faces his job hatred just as my heroine comes to terms with the fact that she's a little more attracted to her demon than she should be.

As I said, it's silly. Yet...it's fun in the way that books are meant to be fun. I want my readers to have been pleasantly diverted while they read it, to be glad they spent the time with my demon and my heroine. I want them to laugh while they're reading it. When they're done, I just want them to look on the book with fondness but not take it seriously. That's it. I don't think that's too much to ask.

But the best part of the whole thing is that I feel this tremendous sense of triumph. I managed to assist a friend on a thesis, stay current with TV, go out on a few dates and write a novel all in a 30 day period. I also managed to go to work and not run away screaming. I think, for a month's work, that's not bad going.

Now we're onto December. My Christmas tree is up already, I have gingerbread ready to bake in the fridge and a stack of Christmas movies to watch. This is my favourite time of the year. We're even supposed to have snow this week. These are all some of my favourite things. I think if I focus on that, it won't seem so bad at work.

After all...it's just a job, right?

Happy Tuesday!