All the wrong emotions

Well, thank heaven for small mercies.

I think I managed to hold it together for the duration of my chat with my new editor. Alas, the one detail that escaped me about my fabulous, new, first ever paid writing job is that the magazine I'm writing for is an annual i.e. it has just one issue per year. So, not only will the $500 or so that I'll get for the five articles I write be delayed until October of this year when the issue hits the streets, it'll be the only income I get from this commission until this time next year.

Shit.

How the mighty are fallen.

I did my best to emphasise with her that, should one of her writers get squished by a bus or let her down in some way, she could call on me. Even if at short notice. But, with only two other magazines in the stable and a full compliment of existing staff writers, it's not something I should keep my fingers crossed about. What more can I do? I'll send the other story ideas I had anyway just to curry favour, but the fact is that from the end of next week I won't have a single ongoing job to my name. Again.

So thanks to that and my failed online romance/stitch-up job my anger has subsided into sorrow. Once again I feel like I'm barely clinging on to solvency, and splitting my time between being a bum and a head-case. Relationship-wise I feel rejected, humiliated, unloved, and incapable of loving. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone - it's not a great place be or an enviable way to feel. Everywhere I look I seem to see happy families - cute couples and cuter kids. Ironically a palm-reader told me during the last fortnight that I'd have my first kid within the next two years. It doesn't seem likely though, unless I maintain my penchant for splitting condoms mid-coitus. Hopefully the famed Trojan 'Magnum' will put an end to that. Right now though I don't even have the impetus to use one, unless for secreting heroin about my person for travel through an airport somewhere. There doesn't seem to be many other uses for condoms aside from the obvious. Maybe I can blow a few up, sculpt them, and sell them as art indicative of a barren lovelife.

I long for security. I want it, crave it, despair that it seems so unattainable. Security in a job where I have a boss who's available enough to maintain a good working relationship with. Security in a tangible, physical, mature, inspiring relationship where I'm never given cause to wonder whether my love is unrequited or not. Where being me is a plus, not a minus. Where I don't have to be on my best behaviour all the time and, in fact, impromptu, romantic, gleeful mischief is actively provoked and encouraged.

It all seems so far away though. I can barely muster the effort to put on a cheerful 'mask' at the moment. The thought of a job interview doesn't fill me with hope, only terror. In terms of romance, I can barely be bothered to maintain conversation. It's not laziness, but reluctance in its purest form.

It would be nice, once, to have something good to write about. It would be nice to be able to compose something that leaves any unfortunate reader with a feeling of well-being. Of hope. Of enthusiasm. Just once it would be good to have something to be grateful for that wasn't charity or the sun. One day, maybe.

But not today it would seem.