…better.

• They’re in Albion Park Rail! This means I can drive there in 25 minutes. BIG DEAL, since my last job had me catching a train for 90-100 minutes, then hiking to Glebe from Central station.
• They sell tangible products! Not NLP which I find highly dubious.
• I get to be part of a team, instead of having everything IT resting on my shoulders so I feel like I’m constantly under massive amounts of pressure.
• I’m treated with respect. That’s a key thing that seemed to be lacking before.
• I’m making about the same as before, only I don’t have to spend $57 a week on a train ticket. It’s closer to $25 a week in petrol. Oh and I get more perks because I’m an employee instead of a contractor… and they’re already deducting tax, so I won’t have a nasty surprise at the end of this financial year!

OK, so what else do I have to report? Well, what don’t I?

God knows how many goals I’ve achieved. I’ll have to do a full rundown in another post as this one will get too long.

I’ve done tons of drawing with my Wacom Cintiq (have I blogged about that yet??). It’s made it SO EASY to make cool looking drawings. I love it to bits. Look in the sidebar on the right to see a few links to images I’ve created with it.

A couple of days ago I registered the domain www.atherandearth.com. This is where my comic will live. I am still working on it, but I’m confident I’ll be able to start getting things done with it once NaNoWriMo this year is over.

Speaking of NaNoWriMo, I will be participating again in one month’s time. It will be AWESOME. I already have a fully developed plot!

Site Flight Web Design is over. I just never could get the hang of running a business. Don’t worry though, I’m not sad about it. It’s just me, I’m not cut out to be self-employed. Not enough motivation for things like that. It’s a problem I’ve had since I was about 10. Started out as a distaste for homework. Now it’s a distaste for doing things for other people while I’m at home. It feels like my personal space is being crushed, I guess. I’m happy to work while at a workplace, but I just can’t take that work home with me. Hence why I couldn’t handle working from home.

So it’s been a funny old ride, this year. It started out with me as enormously cashed up, buying cameras and expensive graphics tablets, leaving my Woolworths job, moving house, working in Sydney, ending each day feeling more drained of my sanity than the day before… then, I was unemployed, enjoying all the sudden free time but feeling lazy and sluggish and kind of doing that thing that George Costanza in Seinfeld did during the “Summer of George” – spending all my time “decompressing” by sitting idly. It got to the point where my sister tried making me do things by giving me lists because she was so upset that I seemed to be doing nothing. But I found my way.

I applied for a fateful job in late August, I got an interview, and the following Wednesday I was offered the job. I was nervous on my first day, and a bit spooked by the whole ordeal in the first few hours, where I had a whole lot of tasks bounced off me, and I was left worried about what I’d got myself into. But now that I’ve settled in, I’ve learnt that these things are doable and it seems like I’m appreciated in that workplace.

Because of my unemployment coinciding with my car needing a bunch done to it, I’m still in a bit of debt, but my job will take care of that within this month, and that’ll be a big weight off my shoulders.

Thanks to working close by, I will be able to not only join the gym next to my workplace and work out every day, but also work on my comic AND do NaNoWriMo without any problems.

This is it! This is the point in my life where everything works for me!

So I’m going to be going up to Sydney today and staying Xmas Eve at my eldest sister Kelly’s place, with my two nephews Jake and Luke, and new niece Meah. Since my nephews demand a lot of time, and I will probably spend a lot of time playing their Wii. I probably won’t get time to do much, if any, writing. Not that I did any yesterday. Holy crap.

So like, don’t expect an update on here for the next couple of days. If I do get a post in, it’ll be a miracle.

I certainly hope to finish the first draft of my novel in the next few days, if I can work on it.

So, I’ll see you round. I don’t expect many people to actually be reading this, though. I only am aware of three people that even are aware of this blog’s existence. If you are not one of those people, leave me a comment (though it may not get approved until after I’m back). Heh. Anyway, bye.

Natalie out.

Late November, I was blessed with a broken fifth metatarsal.

“Blessed?” you ask? Well, okay, so that’s a slight exaggeration. What I mean is that it gave me something of a “free pass” through the holiday period. For the first time in six years, I do not have to face the horrors of working in the service industry on Christmas Eve. Thank you, little bone, thank you so very much.

But wait! There’s more!

Being so inactive, though I’m sure it’s bad for my health, also allowed my creativity to flow, and it’s what caused so many project ideas to form. I was already working on my novel for NaNoWriMo, but most other things surfaced during my idle time.  It really pays to take a time out once in a while. I’ve finally figured out how my motivation works, or at least I think so.

Anyway, I think this has put things into perspective for me. I’ve had a great three weeks of crutch-wielding, arse-sitting and sounding like something out of a haunted house as I walk (clank, bonk, phwoosh, clank…), as Mum put it the other day.

It has also brought to the forefront other medical concerns that I have been putting off. Might talk about that in a future blog.

I procrastinated SO HARD, I actually spent most of my time marking every spam page in the AVENwiki. Then I played the Spicks and Specks board game with Allyson for a long while.

Ended up only writing about 800 words on my novel (I started AFTER MIDNIGHT, mind you), and nothing else on any other projects.

I hope to do far more today.