Dorienne's Log

**Sigh***
Finally! Back where I belong and everything’s falling into place. For the first time in months, my outlook does not look so bleak. I’m doing what I should be doing and at the end of this quarter, I’ll be taking a long-awaited and long-deserved break. Of course, I’ll still be working, but at least I won’t be working and in school at the same time for a week.

I feel like this over-bearing weight is every-so-lightly lifting off my shoulders day by day, and I really do think that everything will be all right. I attribute 90% of this to going to church this week and making it to Sunday School on time. Everyone was so surprised to see me there, not racing in just before consecration. I start teaching on my own this Sunday and I’m really excited about it. I hope it’s not boring for everybody. I suppose if it doesn’t work out, they’ll either move me somewhere else or fire me altogether, but I’m hoping I don’t let anyone down on this. There’s a Wednesday night service tomorrow and I really can’t wait. I’m half mad since I didn’t get to put my tithes in on Sunday because I completely forgot about it. Usually I just have Mother throw it in for me, but she was busy with her own things and wasn’t there. I’ll have to find someone I trust to put it in on days when she can’t be there.

The written word is in the air and it’s loving me! I’ve been writing everyday and I feel like the well of words just keeps flowing. I’ve never been this in tune with a piece before. I feel like since I’ve completely laid out the plot, writing the details is all the more exciting. I love looking back on my old work and see how I’ve progressed as a writer. I wish this book was 100% my original with all my own characters and such, but all I can keep saying to myself is that this is just my way of proving to myself that I can write; that I can create and stay on target. God Lord! The day I actually finish it, I’ll be singing from the rooftops. I sort of want to delve into some of my other works, but I know I mustn’t. I must stick to this and finish it out; must keep the ADHD at bay! It’s what always kills me in the end. I finally have an idea on what must be done with A Ten-Minute Speech and I’m so excited to start, really start, writing the Luka books, I could just burst into flame. It’s all I want to do and all I want to think about. Sometime last week I found myself daydreaming about my own characters. My characters! That never happens and I keep wondering what it really means. With this fanfic novel, I’ve finally conquered my PC-writing demons. For years, I haven’t been able to writing creatively on a computer, forcing me write everything longhand and spend the next year deciphering my longhand as I type the entire thing. It’s a good thing that I’ve learned this now, because I’ve realized I have the tendency to be quite verbose. I’ve only just finished the first chapter of Flight and the book’s 10,928 words and 20 M$ Word pages. I’m wondering just how long it’ll take me to break my goal of 100K. The first chapter’s just on one day and there’s nineteen days in the first part of the book. I doubt every day will be 11K long, but still…my writing just gets flowery and I while I try my hardest not to ramble, I can’t help but delve into the characters a bit more. I don’t want to just write an episode; I want to create something unique that reads like an actual book and could be taken seriously, were it not actually fanfiction.

So, Dreamgirls…Yay! Jennifer Hudson won her Oscar and I feel oddly proud of her. I guess I just love seeing black women win Oscars, but anyway I’m horribly addicted to the Dreamgirls’ soundtrack. Of course, I’m playing One Night Only to death, but honestly, it’s the reason I bought the darn CD and I’m going to play it until my iPod breaks. I’m also slowly beginning to fall for Beyonce’s Listen, which I really don’t think was worthy of the Oscar nod, but whatever. One Night Only (Hudson’s version, of course), was a far better song, but maybe that’s just me. I’m probably not the most objective person to consider the two songs since One Night Only is currently stuck in my head, but so on and so forth…Obsessions: just the writing and One Night Only. SVU’s even starting to subside, but I think it may have more to do with my not wanting to be unduly influenced by the show as I write. I still need like a crackhead, but I missed last week’s new episode and I haven’t had a break down…yet. Thank goodness for USA network. Keeping SVU fanatics in good health, around the globe.

Adventures in Vegetarianism #2
I’ve been a full-fledged vegetarian now for more than a week and the Wendy’s #6 Spicy Chicken cravings have subsided substantially. I spoke with another vegetarian in one of my classes and she told me I’d probably start feeling weak after a bit, but I’ll stick it out a bit longer before taking a multi-vitamin, especially after that nonsense on the BBC news about vitamins actually shaving off the years instead of adding to them. Oh well. I suppose we’ll all go when we do. But, I’m really enjoying this not-eating-meat thing. Tonight, I made a grilled cheese sandwich with olive oil instead of butter. I’m well on my way to becoming a vegan…except for the fact that I love cheese and yogurt and would sooner cut of my own foot and feed it to my enemies than give up cheese and yogurt. But, the point is, I’m not eating any meat. I wish I could say that I give a crap about cows and pigs and such, but I honestly can’t make myself really care about animals. I just don’t want to like the taste of them anymore and I want to just live healthier. I just can’t see any positives to eating meat, especially since I read something about average humans eating something like six times the amount of animal meat we need to survive. That just seems utterly crazy to me.
Anyway, I haven’t lost any weight to this vegetarian diet, but that’s probably due to the fact that I polished off this entire macaroni and cheese dish by myself as I practiced for the pot luck we’re having at work this Friday. It’ll be Dorienne’s time to shine! I also randomly made a bunch of cookies and frosted them myself. I don’t know where the crazy cravings come from, but they are bizarre. But, cheers to me for not even wanting to eat any meat! And a special cheers to me for at least trying to get back on eating like a normal person should…

The past week has been more than stressful for me. I missed church yesterday. I hadn’t meant to, and I was actually dressed, with Bible in hand and was heading out the door when I had the infinite intelligence to check the mail prior to leaving. The letter came today and while everything is not definite, it doesn’t look good. I was just so depressed that I just leaned against the wall below the stairs and cried for a good ten minutes. It was so terrible and I was simply depressed, but instead of just lying in a ball and crying for the rest of the day, I went to work. I needed to do about a million things, but only accomplished less than half, but the important thing was that I reset a lot of my priorities. I just wish I had done so without having to miss church. I feel like the rest of my week is going to feel like this and I feel like I’ve let down everyone in my life by missing for one day.

My father came to town yesterday and we had a nice talk. It wasn’t as stressful as I thought it was going to be and we actually had a conversation like a father and daughter should. I finally feel like that relationship is what it ought to be.

Training is still going and going and going. If the situation all works out, I’m still not sure what I’m going to do. I may have to go over the head of one of my professor’s….but honestly, it’s rather ridiculous to have just one section of a class that all majors would need. They could at least have the decency to hold the class at various times throughout the year. The school is supposed to be accommodating, but really it’s all crap.

I’m beginning Week Two of giving up TV.com forums in favor of more productive things. I also feel like this huge weight has been lifted off of me since now, I don’t feel like it’s imperative that watch House and SVU exactly when they come on so that I can comment on them later. I can now tape them and watch them at my leisure, like a normal human being.

Adventures in Vegetarianism #1
I have also decided that I am going to be a full-fledged vegetarian. I came to this idea this Saturday past and my last “meat” was a Wendy’s #6 Spicy Chicken sandwich, of which I have been having deep cravings ever since. It has been three days and I feel like I’m starting to crack, but I’m trying to remain diligent. The thing is, I’ve got to get this weight off of me. I can’t even say that it’s starting to get out of hand; it’s already out of hand, out of control, out of whatever. I normally try to cook and eat healthy, but eventually, I’ll get lazy and stop cooking and I end up hitting the vending machines at work or ordering 20-some wings from Donato’s or Wings Xtreme and devouring them all myself for dinner. But, what I have noticed is most of the things to which I turn when laziness begets poor eating habits are meats or foods with meat. Subs, wings, Skyline, Wendy’s #6…hmm, Wendy’s….they are all meat and I go to them time and time again. I figure if I just pull meat out of my diet altogether, I won’t even be able to go to those places. If I really face it, even though I hadn’t been eating red meat or pork for ages, I would always splurge when it came to subs and such. Even though I would adamantly say I refused to eat red meat, that buoyant voice always faded away as I sank my teeth in a Grinder. Taking all meat out of my diet means that if I slip and hit Skyline, it will have to be an active choice to eat meat, removing my ability to say, “well, this red meat’s okay, because I really can’t see it.” Either way, this is a big dietary change and although my mother reminded me that there are a lot of really fat vegetarians, I still think this has some potential.

Yes! Finally, I have my blog back!

It has been a harrowing few weeks since I decided to leave Acenet and realized that I had no idea how to begin changing my MySQL databases over to the new account at Lunarpages. I have just this instant figured it out and I am more than ecstatic. I have had so many things about which I just longed to write, but I had no venue in which to display these thoughts. I will transfer a blog post I created in my TV.com blog here since it was pretty significant.

The thing is, last Tuesday, I received a rude awakening. Upon realizing that a fanfic-novel I had been writing was about to become yesterday’s news, it finally occurred to me just how much time I waste on forums and the like. Time that would be better spent accomplishing my many projects. So, for the past few days, I have been away from the TV.com cold turkey. I do not expect that my absence will affect anyone, but still I do wonder. I have been focusing on my writing and today I decided I need to start seeing project through to the end instead of starting up new ones half way through the old and never finishing anything in the process. Some may call this behaviour textbook ADD and bipolar, but I can beat this myself sans label. I just have to focus.

I got a job! It is with Chase and we have yet to get into our actual work since we are still in training. I can’t help, but feel that I am the odd one out in the class, though I think that some of this has to do with the fact that I sit directly in the middle of the room and I do not share a desk with anyone in the training room. It maybe because I have been more or less isolated from people, church members notwithstanding, for quite some time, but I feel just odd in comparison to everyone else. I cannot really explain it, but everyone else seems so different from me that I feel that I almost struggle to relate to all the others. Maybe it’s because I keep finding all these errors in the training materials….I am having great difficulty in finding my niche, which just pains to no ends because, like all humans, I am ever-striving for acceptance and belonging. All in all, though, I just wish we could get through the material and get out on the floor. I fee like I am being robbed each day I spend in training because that is another day where I am working at close to a dollar and hour less than what I should be paid. What irks me the most is that I can’t help thinking that if I just had my degree, I could have applied for a position more suited my interests like the company’s IT department or anything else. I see myself truly testing the limits of the “you have to stay at your level for a year before moving elsewhere” idea. I already want to master this information on competitive spirit alone and there’s no telling how I will be once we are out of training.
The good thing to come out of this, however is that I may have my first web design job. It will probably be just a fifty-dollar job with a very small maintenance fee, but it is a job nonetheless. It excites me so much, I could just dance and sing. And speaking of sing, I had been stressing for several days about the fact that since I work on Saturdays, I will not be able to attend choir practices. Thankfully, most of the songs we do, I already know and our director gave us a CD of a bunch of songs that we will be singing in the coming months. Knowing those songs will be enough for when we are to sing. Today, I sang with the choir even though I was unable to practice with them this month and I think we did great. I was worried about our director for a bit, because I can tell that she is still sick and looked like she was about to pass out while she was directing us. In fact, I was very worried probably because I had dream last night, Saturday night, about one of our church members passing away suddenly and I woke up very upset. In my dream, I was crying over her and no one could understand why I was crying and was upset since she was saved and therefore we all knew where she was going. It was one of those sit straight up in the middle of the night dreams that stay with you for a while and I made sure to hug this person extra hard in church today.

Phew! I have managed to clean my room and catch up on my “correspondence” tonight all in efforts to procrastinate major items further. All this behaviour makes me think that I really am not ready to return to OSU after all. I don’t want to believe it, but here I am under the same stresses and I am struggle once more. I think I just need to press forward and just get my stuff done so I can have more time to write and do what I want to do.

….time to work…