Rosemary Kirstein

Yep, it’s that time.   Time to start going back to the Day Job.

Back when this whole cancer business started, I managed to stay on the job for the first two months, until the chemo side-effect got the better of me.

Coming out the other side, I’ll be doing about 15 hours a week at first, and we’ll see if I can work my way up to 32.   We have no particular time-line on this, and it’s going to take a while to build up my stamina.   My boss is fine with that.

I worked two days this week, five hours a day, and it pretty much knocked me flat.  But you know: radiation therapy is over, the burns are mostly healed, and need to work on getting stronger.  So, here I am, slowly clambering back into the workforce out there in Mundania.

The really depressing thing is that going back to the job reminds me that this was supposed to be the year I stepped away from it entirely!   I had it all planned out!  I was going to be writing full time!

Then: Boom.   Leaving the Day Job?  No longer an option.

And… here I am, back again.

Well.  As I often say, I’m still on the WIN side of the column.   Because: alive.

I’ll probably feel much better about dealing with this when I get my energy and strength back.   And my mental agility, as well.    Really looking forward to that part.

In aid of this, I’ve been walking almost every day, generally for an hour — and generally when the sun has gone down and this incredible humidity we’ve been having lets up a bit.

All I can say is: Thank goodness for iPods!   (Although, I broke down and got an iPhone, so all my iPod functions now reside on my phone, which is delightfully convenient.)  I generally listen to a bit of music, then some audiobook, then an episode of Welcome to Night Vale.  Although the last month or so, it’s been harder to focus on a good audiobook and harder to get myself moving (probably radiation fatigue), so I just listened to Night Vale for the whole time — it’s actually the only time I allow myself to listen to it.  Thus, my love of Night Vale kept me walking when my weary body and sometimes-fuzzy brain would prefer I just chilled out.

But alas, inevitably, I got to the point where I had heard each of the the fifty-plus available episodes multiple times, so I had to search for something else — and just as inevitably ended up with the Thrilling Adventure Hour.  They’re no comparison, of course, and  I’ll never love them as I love Welcome to Night Vale, but they’re quite jolly and diverting.   And there’s LOTS of back-episodes, as they’ve been doing the show for ten years.  I shouldn’t run out anytime soon.

So, at SOME point, all this walking is going to pay off.  Well, it’s probably paying off right now; I’d certainly be worse off if I hadn’t been doing it.

But meanwhile, yeah: Day Job.  I should be writing full time!  But, not yet.  Day Job.

Meanwhile, despite the heat, looks like Autumn is on its way.   The other day, I saw this:

Not too soon to plan your Thanksgiving Dinner.

Gosh,  I thought, right in the back yard!   I’d better get a photo of that!  No telling when I’ll get a chance like this again!

And then this:

I hear there’s a fox around, too, but I haven’t seen him.   I’m sure he’s got his sights on these characters….

Well, more later…  Switch now set to OFF.

PS: The latest episode of Welcome to Night Vale?  Wow.

I was wondering how they were going to handle the fact that the actor, Cecil Baldwin, was going to be away for the whole month of August, as part of the Neo-futurists acting troupe, performing their show Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.   How, I wondered, could they deal with the possibly limited availability of Cecil?

That’s how.  Brilliantly.