my recently-laying-me-off employer has called me to ask me to come back to work for them.

this is silly, yes? everyone told me when I was let go that it was all a numbers game, that none of it was personal, that my work was great and I was an amazing help.

so much so, apparently, that they're asking for me back?

I'm not quite sure what to do. The pay's the same, the work'll be slightly more hectic, but the conditions will change. (I had drinks with my coworkers and found out so.) I'll probably get my own cube now, a computer with a CD-burner in it at my desk (though I don't know how much of a point there is to that, now that Napster's gone up the flue), maybe sit by Mo, as long as she'll be there.

No guarantee of employment, just as before. No real apologies, except from the people close to me, for what happened. No job security.

And honestly, if I didn't need the job and saw how much my coworkers and friends there wanted me back, I'd tell the Porky Pig-looking VP to sit on something sharp.

But if i didn't go back, it'd be for pride's sake. And pride won't pay for me going to San Diego, give me paid vacation time, or otherwise make my life easier than it would be if I were working three jobs, each paying a third of what I'd make at my uncertain dotcom place.

so I'm going back, because it works...for now.

(they're all SO concerned that I was going to get a new job and bail on them after two weeks if I came back. um, maybe they should've noticed all of the late hours I put in while I was there?)

enough.

after finishing our pitch, I was exhausted. I went out last night after seeing the work crew (Giles has really been a stand-up guy, not only working to get me back in there, but also being very real with me. that matters.) for drinks, had coffee with Tabi, and ended up getting caught in a helluva lot of rain. I picked up a pretty nice (read: expensive) dinner of salmon and shrimp in pink sauce over black fettuccine and ate while toying on the Web before falling asleep.

I'm drained. Working on C&D has been one of the more taxing projects of my life, though I think all of my writing has left me this way. Bradbury talks about writing because you can't not do it, and I think that's pretty true. You only don't write because you can't focus, can't direct that energy out, and that's why non-writing writers go insane. You can't vent; and when you do, you're spent. It's like one of the most intense orgasms and one of the most painful separations you've ever had, all at the same time. You're peeling off a layer of your soul, then setting it on the auction block, hoping it'll sell.

I'm going to finish at least one shimmer story this weekend, probably "the high plains." I want to copyright the bastards and get them online...maybe I'll go buy some art supplies today and go sit somewhere with my barely-touched sketchbook and play with charcoals. I've never done that, really.

I want to finish the stories that are mostly done (rough sketches, really, waiting to be inked, given definition), then get back to work on One Tear. I'm only imposing this order on myself, as the shorts are pretty intense, but also uniquely me, more than anything else I've written...so hopefully they'll be good for refocusing after working with Dan so hard for so long.

once settled into sleep

you have watched on repeat

the story of your life across the ceiling

once you had a dream

of oceans and sunken cities

memories of things you've never known

and you have left alone

So strange to work with what I do. I feel like what I'm writing...little child G-d with so many building blocks that are liquid and shift and mesh and meld into each other, forming little worlds that I can change the physical laws of. we take the deeps of the sea, push them up into the daylight and let the peoples of the street talk with them, see what they can learn from each other. color waveforms tickle the brains of three-dimensional lifeforms, all to see why they've buried huge aspects of who they are in a lump of pink flesh.

maybe I think too much. maybe I don't think enough.

I think I want to go see Berlin. rus-K told me about the techno/house scene there, how the beats are crazy, how the dancing just doesn't stop.

I need that, somewhere where people aren't so concerned with being social climbers or career builders, but are just living. Mom had the right sentiment when she told me NYC might not be the right place for me, but she hadn't a clue why she was right.

Our instincts are the purest form of who we are. And we've spent centuries figuring out ways to ignore them. Is it any wonder we're fucked up as a race?

I need to follow mine. The more I learn about everyday life in Japan, the more I realize I don't want to live there for years, unless I'm there as a writer, working for people in America, and do a homestay situation for a few months, ride the trains and see the countrysides. I'd like to see Hiroshima. I'd like to walk rural towns in Okinawa. I'd like to talk to an old priest and ask him why we ignore so much of who we really are.

I wonder what an instinctual spacecraft would be like, an extension of non-intellectual humankind.

I want breakfast.