The sun's probably just closer. That's probaby what it is.

Folks, it's January 4th, and the high today is going to be 50. And that general trend of high forties, low fifties is supposed to continue into next week. Did I mention that I live in Chicago? I live in Chicago. This is crazy.

It hasn't been a tremendously productive year for me, so far. I had a sort of strange conversation with my boss at the end of last year, during the annual review thing, wherein I made it clear that I felt the company was becoming complacent, that people were being lazy, and that the company was stagnating. I also told him that I felt I had reached the top of my performance track for my position, and there was nowhere to go career-wise. I also told him that I could pretty much do my whole job in half a day, and spent most of my time screwing around. He knew that, obviously, because everyone here spends most of their time screwing around on the internet. But still.

What prompted this conversation was three years of bad raises. Three years ago, no raise. Last year, a tiny raise that was wiped out by a change in insurance premiums. My take home pay actually went down. This year, a tiny raise that probably doesn't cover inflation. It might, but whatever. And every year it's been "We love you, we think you're great, we have nothing negative to say about your performance. However, we have no money." And the company has no money because, as I've mentioned, nobody here actually works.

Anyway. I expressed an interest in expanding my responsibilities. I feel like I'm carrying a lot of dead weight here, but whatever. I can't sit around half a day staring at my screen. It's boring. It's soul destroying. And if I improve my skill set sufficiently, I might be able to find a real job in a real company. Who knows. So ever since that conversation I've literally been doing my job in half a day. More than that, really, I've been doing a whole week's work in your average day. Just to make my fucking point.

My writing has been nothing, though. I realized that the basic love I feel for words is fading on the current work. When I sit down to write it, I just don't enjoy the process. This was especially clear to me when I took a break to work on other stuff, and found out how much fun it was to write something I actually enjoy writing. Remembered how much fun it was, I suppose. Since I have the whole plot outline done, and I'm managing to stick to it so far, I think I'm going to try writing non-sequentially. You know, pick out the scenes that interest me, the ones that I can really see in my head, and just write those for now. And maybe writing those will inform the dull little scenes in between. Or maybe not, and I'll have to bite the bullet and write boring filler text for those parts. But for now? Fun stuff.

So. How's your New Year been? Realizing the potentialities of your possibilities yet? Actualizing your higher plateau? Still hungover?