A Sorta Fairytale

Once upon a time, not very long ago . . . in fact happening right now, there lived a girl (okay, a woman of a certain age range that we will not address here) named Erin the Slothful.  

From Debt to Shining Debt: Adventures in American Healthcare

I had to make an evening visit to the hospital a few nights ago due to persistent symptoms of gaucheness.  Or to put it another way, I was clumsy and hurt myself.  I was making myself a salad and cutting up some green leaf lettuce with a fairly new knife.  I hadn’t had a new knife set in over a decade so sharp knives are still a bit new to me.  I was being a bit quick and careless and I hit my thumb.  I laughed at myself after it happened and just tried to get the bleeding to stop.  It hurt a little but it wasn’t the first time I’d done that (persistent symptoms of gaucheness) so I wasn’t too alarmed until my thumb didn’t stop bleeding about 20 minutes later.  I called my parents to see what the time limit is on when you should call it and just go get stitches – as it turns out the time limit is 20 minutes.

 

 

I Am Mine (Some of the Time)

The shirt from days long past.

I was in 7th grade and wearing a new Pearl Jam t-shirt (even though all I knew of Pearl Jam at the time was what I’d heard on MTV).  It had a little girl with paper and crayons on the front and on the back it said “9 out of 10 kids prefer crayons to guns.”  Super edgy and smart, right?  I was so excited to show off my alternativeness (hipsters didn’t have anything on 90’s grunge attitude).  No one anything to me about the shirt until I left math class later that morning.  We had just been dismissed and were flowing out of the room into a crowded hallway when I heard two guys laughing behind me.

Edge of Procrastination: Live, Stall, Repeat

Writing is hard – especially when you aren’t doing it.  I should have been writing this whole evening after I got home from work.  I had every intention to get some thoughts down, some outlines laid out, some stories started, etcetera, etcetera, Peter etCetera.  

Tangled Up in Blue

I got a new job.  I started last week.  It’s a manager position.  That’s something to get excited about.  So why have I come home every night and gone straight to bed to sleep off a headache, or grabbed so much food that I know I’ve eaten myself a little closer to death,  or tried desperately to avoid writing this (or anything)?  

Money and Happiness

 

http://worldink.org/2013/07/07/middle-class-revolt/

The old  adage “Money can’t buy happiness” repeats in my head quite often these days.  I’m on the search for a new job to do the same thing I was doing to keep making money to be secure to keep doing the same thing I was doing (rinse, repeat).  But what about happiness?  I used to think that adage was, quite frankly, bullshit.  Rich people can be unhappy.  But that’s because they caught up in rich people drama.  

Starting All Over Again

Hi. My name is Erin. And I have no idea what I’m doing with my life. How are you?  About a month ago, I lost my job. Although that doesn’t sound right. I know what happened to my job and where it went. It was eliminated altogether. So I didn’t so much lose it. It was more like I lost my direction and career focus. And my income. And my future livelihood.  And all the momentum I had built up in my career. Those things are gone and I’m not sure how to find them.  After almost 15 years of building up what my management determined was a somewhat useless skill set which only guided me firmly into lower level management or upper level peon status, I don’t know if I want to find them.