This just in: I’ve been really depressed.

Probably not a surprising headline at this point, but you know how depression goes: you don’t usually see it coming, and only figure out you’re there once you’re soaking in it.

It’s primarily work-related, which is some of why I’ve been reluctant to talk about it, because getting into the specifics of why the work I do is hard, and why parts of it aren’t working for me always feels precarious and uncomfortably like money-grubbing, not to mention, is likely not all that interesting for anyone else. Hell, it’s not interesting to me.

But I’ve no doubt my radio silence is a bit odd, and since I’ve been doing what I do, pretty much out there for all to see here for eight odd years now, I may as well just come out with it. It’s not like I don’t have other readers who run their own businesses or work as activists, after all. At least the lot of you can share a sigh with me. I apologize in advance for going on at great length: there’s no making this brief.

As I often find myself — and have, running independent businesses and working the causes for the whole of my adult life — I’m in a finanical and existential pickle, and looking further down the road, I’m seeing the vinegar turn.

A lot of how I’m feeling I described to Mark as this: I spend my time doing what I think is building something higher and higher, but right now, I feel like maybe I was unknowingly upside down, and what looked like upward construction was, perhaps instead, me digging an incredibly deep hole for myself. It’s not a hole for anyone else, for anyone utilizing what I do and have done, but for me, personally, it really does look like that.

Many years ago (so crazy that it really is many) when I first starting shifting from classroom teaching to working full-time in sexuality — in erotica, but also in education — my pro-bono lawyer at the time told me to consider what I was doing very carefully, because if I made that choice, and got any kind of notice in making it — or even none at al - I may well never be able to go back to classroom teaching, especially not in this country, where the ethos are so insanely bizarre when it comes to fear and panic about children and adults having any sort of overt sexuality or doing anything even remotely considered sex work. I didn’t blow that concern off, by any means. I did consider it pretty carefully, and it just seemed like what I was aiming to start doing was important enough that I could live with that.

But what I didn’t really consider as well as i should have, however, was if this other work could actually sustain me. Some of why is because I was making so little and working so hard teaching that it was hard to imagine being even less financially stable. I’d also grown up poor enough, and continued to live poor enough, that at the time, it felt like if that stayed that way forever, I wouldn’t be elated, but I’d deal. Of course, having always lived scrap-to-scrap, it’s not like I’m exactly the best financial planner ever.

Throughout the now almost-ten years I’ve been working online in this arena, getting by has been incredibly difficult, because in every aspect of my work, I have been really dedicated to doing it in such a way that I did not sell out: did not misrepresent anything in order to make a buck, did not ally myself with anyone or anything that I wasn’t comfortable supporting (or felt effectively would cancel out the good I was doing with my work), did not do things in such a way that were driven by profit, rather than by the integrity and aim of the work.

It’s no news flash that when you’re working in any aspect of sex and sexuality, that is more than a minor challenge.

Now, there were a couple good years in there. Certainly, not good by a lot of people’s standards: I live pretty lean — I don’t have a car, I cook at home more than go out, I rent, I don’t own, I don’t do credit cards — but I’d be living primarily that way even if I was rolling in it, most likely. But by my own standards, there have been times when I’ve done alright. Being in at the gate before the web boom, this site here did pretty well for a handful of years before alt-porn was on the map, and when there did seem to be a market for erotic work that wasn’t porn, or wasn’t marketed as porn. When Scarlet Letters was in its heyday, and people really thought there could be a real market for women’s sexuality content (oh, you laugh now…), we had a few paying advertisers that we liked a lot (Good Vibes, Babeland: good folks who don’t exploit anyone or objectify women’s sexuality — when SuicideGirls first started, we accepted them as an advertiser, but when it started seeming — in pretty short order — like that wasn’t the great woman-run thing they said it was, we stopped working with them). Back before the dot-bomb, Scarleteen was on Chickclick’s network for a couple years, which meant that we were able to run good avertising, paying an apporpriate CPM, and working with really nice people who really supported what we did very bravely — even to the point of refusing to take us off the network when their biggest network advertiser, one of the major American personal product companies, blew a gasket about having ads run on a network which included a teen sex education site and demanded they did or else they’d pull their millions.

(Chriesta, I sound like someone’s grandma. Back in MY day….)

Scarlet Letters hasn’t been updated or shifted to something else since 2004 because for the life of me, I cannot figure out how on earth to do it in a way where it pays its own bills — without putting things on it neither I nor our readers would want — how on earth to make the time to do it, and because I don’t have the heart to sell the domain (even though it’s got some worth), because I know full well the buyer would likely use it for something noxious. I update the artwork and work here less and less often because at this point, making the work costs more per time and money than I get back for it, and flatly, the better my work gets in my eyes, the less saleable it seems to become. Plus, the move to Seattle hasn’t been good when it’s come to opportunities for photography work: I did far, far better in Minneapolis, and that’s the understatement of the century. To the point that I have sat down and looked at if it is fiscally feasible for me to just fly out there every few months to do that work, because that is still where I get the most people inquiring about having work done.

And Scarleteen. Oh, Scarleteen.

A wonderful thing Scarleteen is, I know, from a public service perspective, and from a maybe-if-I-stopped-liking-the-sex-so-much-I’d-get-sainted-for-this viewpoint, but want to know about an insanely stupid business model? Come on, I know you do.

An insanely stupid business model is choosing to serve the population LEAST willing, likely and able to support that service financially. Seriously, that’s beyond dumb. And when your second rung of support for that service is the adults responsible for that population, it’d SEEM doable, unless you consider the fact that the majority of them obviously don’t care overmuch about that service being provided for their kids, or else the kids probably wouldn’t be coming to you for that service in the first place. Tack on that the service you provide is viewed as provocative at best, and downright evil at worst (especially coming from a bent, wanton harlot like me OR from a man-hating, anti-sex hag, depending on who’s making the judgment that day), and you see just how financially suicidal that is.

Scarleteen, for most of its history, has been sustained — and me with it, especially as it’s turned into my full-time job — by donations. And yet, with every year that passes, those donations become less and less frequent. Used to be that a bad month for us per donations was when we only made $50. Anymore, if we net $50 in donations over a couple months, it’s a freaking miracle. The longer we stick around and keep up the good work, the greater our reach becomes — just over the last few months, it’s elevated over 100% — which just costs us more money and requires more time spent serving everyone, and doesn’t result in any more donations to offset that. I have one private grant — thank christ — but that’s not guaranteed to be permanent, and it is arranged to decrease over time. We’re working on 501c3 status, but a) that costs money and time, too and b) that may or may not be of a lot of help given the cultural climate right now, and it looking like it won’t change very much for quite some time.

So, when it’s looking like this, I look back to advertising, preferably as a stop-gap, not a permanent solution, for all the obvious reasons (well, obvious to me as an anti-capitalist and as someone whose work often involves correcting and fending off the effects of the media and acqusitional culture, anyway). I’ve just finally put Google AdSense on Scarleteen, and I’m not at all happy about it, but it’s certainly a lesser of other evils and it’s also something we CAN do right now to net a little income and try and hang in there until something better comes along. Beyond that running at a really skimpy CPM and so helping, but not much, and looking like arse, even with me filtering the things showing up on it like a maniac, I’m unhappy with what’s being run there overall and what I have to race to filter in the first place. Vaginoplasty ads, sexual performance “enhancers,” really gross dating services — and yep, found an abstinece-only program ad on a page — aren’t things I want on a site where I am trying to help young folks build up esteem and come to sexuality in a healthy way.

But as of right now, I’m nearly out of other options. About once a year, I’ve gone on a kick for a few weeks where I try to persuade what SHOULD be considered appropriate advertisers for us — condom companies, birth control manufacturers, books and magazines, independent media, record labels, indie designers, etc. — and every single time, it’s the same song and dance. Pretty much everyone is outright terrified as to what it would say about them and their business to be on a site “endorsing” teen sexuality and telling teens that they are still okay if they decide to be sexually active. That bit that happened with the Chickclick advertiser I mentioned up there? That was about a CEO coming home to discover that his 17-year-old daughter was reading about masturbation — and how it’s totally okay — at Scarleteen. Oh, the horror! And at the tender age of 17, no less! Having interest in her own genitals! Is there no end to my great corruption of America’s youth?

Apparently not. This week, I’ve spent time on the phone with a couple of the larger ‘net ad agencies, because our traffic and reach (and the number of pages we have) is such that most DIY ad revenue sources just aren’t feasible for me. Plus, I hate shilling for money, and don’t have the time in my day (or the heart: it’s hard not to take personally) to spend every waking minute trying to persuade advertisers that I really, truly, am not trying to turn teenagers into depraved, sex-addicted beasts, and that I’d really just like to sustain what we do for them — which they ask us to do for them — while at the same time helping them find their way to thinks like books to read and decent condoms to use, which seems like a pretty decent arrangement, no?

Not to advertisers or ad agencies it doesn’t. Never has, apparently still never will. I have one more left to talk to, but since all the others gave the usual “No, we can’t, even as great a site as I personally think it is, our higher-ups don’t want to lose ad clients, and our content needs to stay ‘clean’,” I’m not feeling particularly hopeful. This, for the record, is also what’s happening with coverage of the book so far, even in terns of getting promotional venues. Note: it WOULD be okay — and “clean” — to support my site if it was all about appearance, bikini-waxing, getting skinny, if it was a lad mag or a site full of sexist jokes and videos. But talking about birth control or clitorises or noncompulsory bisexuality to teenagers? Filth!

So, here I sit. Well, more like, here I slump and skulk. I have a seriously challenging and emotionally demanding job which requires I work more than full-time, but which pretty much never pays me for all that time, and which I sometimes even find myself in the position of having to pay for the great privilege of doing. I’m in the hole due to time I had to take to re-edit the book, costs of promoting the book, the costs and labor of the site upgarde, an upgrade I was hoping would pump up book sales and donations — as well as make it easier and more efficient for me to do the work — but instead has only increased reach and thus, cost. My usual avenues of freelance work to offset Scarleten-debt — as well as to help pay for my own personal expenses, rent, food, healthcare, the perpetually never-paid student loans, etc. — appear to be closed to me right now.

And my lawyer was right about going back to teaching. Right now, if I wanted to go back to teaching in a classroom full-time, the only way I’d get hired would be to outright lie about how I’ve been spending my time (I publish with my first and middle name only, so while given my visibility, it’s likely a lie I’d get caught in eventually, I likely wouldn’t right off the bat), which I am beyond not okay with for so many reasons. Alternately, I could invest some time in making much of my work disappear (though the book pretty much makes that impossible) so that you had to dig a lot harder for it and it wasn’t in any way active. Even thinking about effectively throwing away so many years of hard work is beyond heartbreak, and knowing that I can’t do both — this is why I left in the first place, it’s not that I was tired of teaching, I loved teaching — which means some things would just have to get shut down…ugh, it’s just too much to even bear thinking about right now. I try to make myself think that way to be practical, and I wind up weeping.

Sometimes, I get really irate about people doing any kind of work like the work I have done or do under secrecy or big pseudonyms. Often, that’s because I really do think it’s important not to do that to take the shame out of sex, even though (obviously) I fully understand the price that requires at this time (though if everyone took that risk, I think in pretty short order, things would be very different in that regard). But sometimes, it’s simple jealousy. I envy the fact that most people working in sexuality don’t find themselves in this sort of position: came from a place where it felt/feels okay to be invisible as who they are in their “other lives,” and aren’t limited in the way that I’ve set myself up to be, even though, for me, I don’t see how I could have accomplished what I have without doing it this way, very visibly.

Beyond….well, being broke, which is crappy as it is, but especially tiresome when you spend close to forty years being that way, the even harder emotional hit for me lately is that not being able to even sustain myself and my businesses in the most basic ways, despite working so damned hard, and doing something for so long, with so much dedication and in such a way that even at my low points, I don’t often doubt the value of, makes me feel valueless.

I don’t like that feeling for a lot of reasons. I don’t like it because it stands in pretty sharp conflict with my knowing full well that money and wealth, while it does PUT a value of things, does not accurately DETERMINE the value of things, and I resent my believing, even for a minute, that it does. (Plus, I hear my father lecturing me about it inside the recesses of my head, and if you think I, can go on and on for an age, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. I’m like this for a reason, you know.) I don’t like feeling that way because even on the days when the work is harder than hell, and not a single person I help remembers to say thank you, even when I’m at a low point and so self-pitying I feel like nothing I’ve done is worth anything, it’s really important to me to be able to shake that stuff the hell off and get real, knowing that it’s psychological suicide to rely on anyone or anything else to acknowledge the value of what I do. I’ve done a ton of work in my life for absolutely no money, or very, very little, because it was of real value and I was able to do what needed to be done: money shouldn’t determine a value.

But I’m having a harder and harder time believing that of late, and the more time goes on. I can see 40 from where I’m sitting, and I really don’t want things to be like this when I get there. When I see the things people hurl money at and fiscally support, it makes me more and more bitter and less and less optimistic. Some woman wants new boobs — not because she had breast cancer, even, but because she just wants new boobs — and she makes that about all the big, wonderful men helping her achieve that “goal,” and she can raise money for that, but I can’t often for the life of me get fiscal support to help prevent rape or help someone heal from one, to help someone avoid an unwanted pregnancy, or let some girl know her boobs are just flippin’ fine so she can achieve productive goals, actual acheivements, and NOT wind up the woman grubbing for cash by flashing skin to get fake boobs in a vain attempt to feel better about herself, who will most likely ultimately come back to just needing someone to tell her she’s just fine as she is TO feel better. I could go on for an age with these examples, but I’m not going to, because it’s just too pathetic and I just get pissier and pissier the longer I go on about them. Plus, y’all know the stuff I’m talking about.

A week or so ago, I had someone write me back in reponse to trying to arrange a promotional event who actually felt the need to explain to me — as if I had no idea, and you know, haven’t been doing what i do for as long as I have — the demographics and general needs and practices of people who blog about sexuality. I don’t have diva moments often (which is a big part of why i stopped studying opera in high school), but as I read the missive over here, an audible gasp issued from my mouth (which made me sick of myself quite instantly), and I just couldn’t even make myself respond back. I mean, there’s no way to say, “Umm, do you know who I AM?” that doesn’t sound prissy, pissy and banal. Regardless, and even knowing the stupidity of the way I felt at that moment, feeling valueless comes up again: you do something for a long time, starting before anyone else even does it, and sometimes, when you’re recognized in no way for it — it just makes you feel like shite.

Know what else? When people DO sell out, there is SO much noise about it. But when you really don’t, even over loads of time? When you bust your arse NOT to, and take the hard hits for not doing so? Ain’t a peep. And you know what? That freaking blows.

Usually, I’m pretty good at being positive in light of all of this kind of stuff and the daily crap I slug through. I’m no dummy, I know and understand why what I do is so often so unsupported, even though I don’t agree or — obviously — like it. But when you’re staring down at a stack of bills, looking at rent due a couple months away and not sure where it’s going to come from, needing some real healthcare and having no idea when you’ll be able to get it, eating peanut butter and jam too often for lunch, having a book you worked on for six years to promote but no cash to promote it with, piling stuff you love off to pawn, and envying the hell out of people who can go somewhere and take a real vacation while you’re harboring the heartbreak counseling yet one more sexual abuse survivor you really — however much of a shit you feel like for feeling this way — wish someone else was taking care of, it’s pretty easy to not only cease being positive, but to get pretty damn negative.

My new thing lately is to be out to dinner or drinks and if I’m with someone I feel even remotely close to, I just burst into tears for no reason, in public. That’s a winner. I’ve been avoiding seeing friends because I’m such a drag lately, and I kind of don’t feel like having to try NOT to be a drag: faking it just feels even worse, and when I talk about this stuff, I usually wind up with a) a bunch of earnest trying-to-help that are usually all ideas I’ve had and pursued, so I have to recount my failures, or b) a total silence, likely because no one knows what to say, which is understandable, especially since it’s pretty unusual for me to have my spirit so broken. Poor Mark has effectively been living with Sybil — if I’m feeling better, I try and just avoid this topic altogether, but if I’m low, or something brings it up, I just lose it and turn into a weepy pile of mush, on top of being critical with him about every damn little thing lately, because my threshold for anything else going wrong or getting messed up is so low, and because he’s one of the only people I feel even remotely comfortable losing it in front of. Lucky him! (Course, he just had his own personal breakdown in front of me last week, so it is a pretty mutual exchange.)

BAH!

I just wish I knew what the right thing to do was to get on the right track with all of this, instead of feeling so lost and so torn and so out of options. I wish I could magically change my attitude about it all, to boot, because I know that cannot possibly be helping the matter. Some days lately, I just wish I could say to hell with the whole lot of everything, pack up my dog, my cat and my piano, get our arses to Mexico or some nice farm land somewhere — and convince Mr. Price to join us — change my name and grow tomatoes until I kicked it: it’s a fantasy I entertain often, and quite enjoy entertaining. If I share that fantasy with others, the typical response was that I’d get bored in no time, feel useless and need to go do some activist work. While I think that would have been true about me at one point, I’m not so sure it is anymore: in fact, I’m becoming pretty certain that it isn’t, to the point that I almost resent the implication that I simply MUST do The Big Work. I’m tired, man, I’m world-weary, and if I’m going to scrape by on so little so much of the time, it’d sure be nice to do that without having to work so hard and juggle so much of everyone’s heaviest stuff.

(It felt very liberating to write that out loud just now, actually. That’s a load off.)

I’m not asking anything of anyone here (save your ever-wearying eyeballs due to this entry, and for that I apologize). In fact, right now, it’s pretty critical that I sort my own shit out without a lot of interference. Obviously, if anyone has any super-brilliant ideas they’re pretty sure I haven’t thought of, I’m all ears, so long as it’s understood that I may not reply back, especially if the super-brilliance is a road I’ve already gone down, or something that I just know won’t be workable (in which case my lack of reply isn’t about not being thankful for help or concern, but about not wanting to rehash nonoptions, because doing so bums me out more).

I just wanted to get this stuff on the table, both because I needed to for myself, and because I do expect to be a bit distracted with all of this until I come up with some solutions, so it may be quieter around here than usual. Plus, it felt pretty essential to just keepin’ it real around here. I will be fine — I will, even at those moments when I’m sure I won’t — lord knows, I’ve lived through worse than this and managed to be fine, and I do have some good supports. I’ll cry a lot, and — thank heaven for working alone during the day — raise my fists and yell at the air a lot, spend late nights singing sad songs on the piano a lot, hit my bag, make a lot of lists, and hopefully, I’ll think of and find something to put me and my work in a better position to sustain ourselves soon, in a way that I don’t have to compromise myself and which also isn’t temporary, but has some longevity so I don’t have to keep ending up back in this sort of a jam and this sort of malaise.

What I would be up for, though, if you’re of a mind to feel you ought to offer something when a girl is down, are really good stories about people fixing seemingly impossible problems. I’d prefer you not just make up a fiction, but I won’t say no to a fiction right now outright, either (plus, I won’t likely know the difference). Too, I am up for anyone who is able to connect me directly with a good (and brave) ‘net ad rep who can really serve it up for larger sites: given my numbers, that really does look like the best solution right now, and it shouldn’t interfere with 501c3 filing, either.

And I’d also not say no to anyone who felt the strong, pervasive need to ship me a bottle of silver Patron, a whole lot of non-dairy chocolate, the new Patti Smith CD (she just makes being depressed and pissed off seem so much more glamorous and cool), one-way tickets to Chiapas or Oaxaca and a good kick in the pants. Just sayin’.

posted in rantapalooza, online life | permalink | comments (34) »

Sorry, more questions, still no answers!

(I’ll get back to actual entries any time now, really, I promise, including the magic carpet ride my dental hygenist in Minneapolis sent me on. But until then…)

• When I was in Minneapolis, doing my event for the GLBT youth center, I got a handful of questions about sexuality pertaining to infibulated women. This isn’t a shocker: Minneapolis has, for some time, had a substantial Somali and Ethiopian refugee program, resulting in a substantial Somali and Ethipian population there. I did know the basic answers to the questions, but I’d very much like to do an FAQ piece for Scarleteen answering questions not about the issue of FGM, but specifically address practical issues (orgasm and sexual response, healing from genital trauma, ways to respond to long-term health problems, etc.) for women and partners of women who have been genitally mutilated. However, I don’t feel right as a white woman who not only has not survived FGM, but who doesn’t live in/come from a culture or community in which FGM is prevalent. Might any of you know a woman who might be up to collaborating on this with me who does come from one of those perspectives?

• Over the last few years, I’ve noticed at Scarleteen that an awful lot of the worst (as if there were anything less than worst, but you get me) of our incest and friend-of-family rape cases arise from Austrailia and New Zealand. Are any of you better versed than I — and know decent sources I could look at — in terms of incest and friend-of-family rapes in those countries? More specifically, I’d like to have more than the basics I do on the justice system and incest, et al, on how social services generally responds (and what victim rights are), on basic cultural dynamics in terms of social and familial attitudes around incest and rape. (Stephen? Beppie? Kat?)

• Book events! I need to do them! Much to my dismay, I’ve started to discover that Seattleites are big, stuffy prudes, unless you’re approaching sex in a way that’s funny-ha-ha, all about the surfacey bullshit, or are a pro-domme. One big bookstore here even had the stones to tell my publicist that they “didn’t have an area private enough” to do an event with me. Did they think I was going to take my pants off and SHOW everyone sexual anatomy? I mean, I can see that Ann Rule has an event there (who, by the way, I’ve been known to read for a guilty pleasure; I’m a criminiology geek when I have three seconds of free time to read something besides work books, so I’m not dissing Ms. Rule). Is she going to be reading? Does she not need a more private arena to read about serial killing? Aren’t they worried she might give a demonstration? Ugh. So, save one event I got started cultivating yetsterday with a local book store (gods bless Ballard), I’m up empty. Suffice it to say, most of the rest of the world is pretty closed-mouthed, too. We knew full well from the start — it was glaringly obvious during the years of publisher-hunting — that a lot of people would be bloody terrified of this book, but it’s no fun to have it hammered home these days.

I’ll be taking some time over the next week to get this stuff together in a more formalized way, but really, I can be creative about this. For instance, if you’re in WA, Portland, Victoria or Vancouver, it’s easy for me to get to: want to link up a group of parents informally for some gabbing on how to deal with parenting and approaching sexuality with kids and teens? Want to have a sex educator over for a group of teen girls in your community to have an accurate gab-session? Heck, have a table for sex Q&A at your next office party? I’ll do it, man, just give me a shout. Very little is too weird for this gal, as is likely obvious by now.

• I also know I asked this before around a year ago or so, but I only got a response from one person, who never connected with me via email. I really, really, REALLY need to get connected with at least a couple other people who have to rape or abuse counsel, and do the sort of highly emotionally difficult work every day I do — it’s not every single day that things are so loaded, thank christ, but it’s close. And it’s getting more so: Scarleteen and myself have been around solidly long enough, and have established a certain feeling of safety for users long enough, that over the last few years, I wind up dealing with rape and abuse more and more often. Certainly, I’ll do it — I always move first to get survivors to seek out good hotlines and in-person counseling, but they usually stick around for support with me and our volunteers — it’s needed, but it also certainly isn’t what I’d choose to do or what I was prepared to do so much of. Some days, it completely wrecks me emotionally: it’s always particularly tough with hotline or ‘net hotline work because there’s only so much you can do.

(Over the last two months, we’ve also had a couple of abusers post, looking for sympathy. Poor them, they didn’t KNOW their silent, prone, half-asleep girlfriend didn’t want sex or poor them, their girlfriend DESERVES to be hit in the face, so it isn’t really abuse, you see. Don’t even get me started on what it was like to be around me on those days, and how frustrating it is that an IP address and email isn’t enough to file a report on these assholes.)

So, readers: do you do any work like this? Do you know anyone else who does who could also use an extra person to sit and unload it with? I don’t need the connection to be one way, or all about MY stress, I just need some like-minded (or rather, like-worked, if that’s even a real phrase, and I suspect it is not) people to chat with about this stuff.

And those’d be my shout-outs for right now: my apologies for them being so all about me. Also in the all-about-me category, beyond really great reviews in Bust and Bitch, there have been some really nice blog mentions/reviews of the book this week. C.K. made my day, and then a day later, Laurie Toby Edison made it even better, especially since she and Debbie paired my review with a review of one of my best friend’s books — a real perk, since Hanne and I miss working together (though each of us had a lot of back-and-forth while we were each working on these books, and each star in our dedications and acknowledgments), so it’s uber-cool when our stuff gets put in the same pile so we can kinda feel like we are again.

(P.S. thanks to my eBay tutorial volunteers: I’ll be pinging you today.)

posted in Heather Corinna, bookish bits, Scarleteen, activism, surviving abuse, seattle, apropos of nothing | permalink | comments (11) »

This is not only not one of the many highly entertaining or enlightening journal entries you, reader, truly deserve, it’s a seriously boring request. My apologies.

But who I’m fishing for is someone well-versed in eBaying, because this girl has got to raise some cash this month, big time, and not coincidentally, has some stuff it’s really time to let go of which is of likely value to others holding the cash I so need. In short, I’m looking for someone available to give me a decent tutorial in relatively short order, and for this, I will gladly exchange either a fair commission or some other gift-in-kind of said person’s choosing.

And yes, I’m aware I’m a smart cookie who could probably figure it out for herself, but I’ve just no room to make some foolish mistake, and really need to hop on this pronto, with — preferably — a minimum of extra stress. I need an eBay Yoda, in a word, I do.

Any volunteers?

posted in Heather Corinna, apropos of nothing | permalink | comments (5) »

You know you’re a workaholic when it’s NOT working that has become an achievement.

But I am still in the midst of taking some real time off. Sure, I haven’t been able to quit working cold turkey. The first few “days off” I basically worked the same number of hours a non-self-employed person does. But for each day after, I’ve done work-work less and less: yesterday I only did about two hours of work, at a maximum, which is no mean feat for me, and today, I fielded just a couple Scarleteen questions and but one press inquiry.

What exciting, exhilirating things have I been doing?

Cleaning my house.

I know, I know, I know: a couple of friends have also mentioned that that doesn’t exactly sound like a luxury vacaction. Thing is, I can’t have a luxury vacation, period. Beyond that, this house has been VILE, victimized by both mark and I myself being riddled with deadlines over the last year, deadlines overlapping deadlines, leaving a wake of dirt, dust, pet hair and piles of paper behind us as we leap from one frenzied project to the next. I couldn’t relax in here lately if I wanted to, and I really, really want to right now.

My father, too, was — well, utterly mortified by the fact that this is what I’m doing with my time off. Now, in part, this is because my slobbery was learned behaviour from that man, a rather schizoid rearing, no less, since my mother — from what I can gather — is largely drawn to work in infectious disease to justify her extreme germophobia, and growing up in her household was like living inside a Q-tip box doused in Lysol (if I never smell amonia again, it’ll be too soon). This confusing polarization may well explain why it is that I cannot manage clutter to save my life (and make more than my share), but will find great delight in scrubbing room from floor to ceiling like a Marine until I can let out a well-deserved and blissful, “So SHINY.”

(There does, however, have to be zero pressure to do so. If I feel pressured to clean, I tend to react defensively — often unaware I’m doing so — by only making a bigger mess. I also grew up having to wipe up more male urine than I should ever have had to, being not-male myself, so when there’s a man in the house, much as I love a shiny bathroom, when I tend to scrub them, I often uncover a world of hidden resentment that wouldn’t have been there otherwise. That’s my latest rationaliztion for avoiding it, anyway, and I think it’s a winner.)

At this point, I’ve tackled both bathrooms, the kitchen, the living room and the dining room. At the moment, I’m procrastinating doing the office because the office is SCARY. Generally, I can deal with clutter, so long as it’s clean underneath it, but the office is both cluttered and completely filthy, to the point that I consider anything closer than twenty feet to it a distance unsafe for anyone.

Once upon a time, I had one of those hyper-realistic dreams, that may well have been more oracle than dream, in which I was a very old woman, living in a dusty house with too many pets, where the entrire floor was covered in books and papers. The piles went to the roof, and I had clearly constructed them around myself, as trails went through them. The only unrealistic part of my subconscious projection involved me racing — dirty bare feet fumbling, skirts flying, pencils stuck in my white hair, but those bits are perfectly realistic — across the house to grab someone a book, and knowing exactly where to find that book amidst all the piles. That doesn’t happen now and I’m quite sure it won’t ever.

But that, dear friends, is the state of my office (and my hair) at the moment — plus piles of laundry, piles of bills, a trail of coffee cups, an unpacked bag from Minneapolis, photo equipment, hula hoops: you name it, it’s in a pile in there. (Have you lost something recently? It’s probably in my office.) And fuck all if I know where a given book is, or even where the books in the office ARE right now.

I need to at least give a try in finding out, though, because I have got to make some headway with this puppy today before I head out to meet Ben, my much-beloved ACLU lawyer, who is in town on business and greatly in need of a Ballard drink-a-thon, which I am more than glad to do my level best to provide. I’m a sweetie like that, enabling alcoholics everywhere, to the point that I’ve moved into what is perhaps one of the booziest neighborhoods in the entire country.

But no more talk of booze until I can at least find the floor to crash on afterwards if need be.

posted in Heather Corinna, home, Ballard, apropos of nothing | permalink | comments (7) »

It’s a… well. Hmm.

Not a girl. Not a boy. I guess it’s just a website, even though it feels like I just gave a breech birth to a velociraptor.

But it’s freaking well done.

In case it’s not beyond obvious? Upgrading a site built many years ago, and trafficked by millions of people really kind of sucks. Thank christ that the boards only needed to be spruced, not gone through page by page, redesigned and rebuilt from the backend, like we had to do with the 250+ pages of the main site, because having to do what we did — which has taken months of many no-break, 14 hour + workdays from two of us — with an extra 51,000 pages (no, I’m not kidding, and I’ve read nearly every one of those pages over the years, and answered or contributed to over 25,000 of those questions myself, in case you wonder where all these greys and wrinkles are coming from)?

That would have flat out broken this chick. As it is, I am toast. If I have to do this anytime again within the next five years — especially when I can’t even pause from doing everything else I already do — I will sell my hair, limbs and anything else anyone’ll pay me a dollar for so I can just pay someone else to do all of this, because if I so much have to think about another upgrade of this size, I can guarantee I’ll wind up wearing one of those fancy white garments with the arm restraints for the rest of my natural born life.

(Which — natrual-born — is a phrase I’m not even sure I can validly use, given I was induced so we could get the hell out of dodge before my Dad got sent to jail. Again with the hmm.)

We went live last night pretty much all of five whole minutes before we had to run over to SIFF for Mark’s debut as a director of a festival film (which was all proud-making, and all the better because one of The Brothers Price flew in from Cincy to be here), stayed out late, then I woke up on the early this morning to fix a ton of little buggies. I have been a complete crabass for weeks, I only dimly recall what the outside world even looks like, sex is a dusty — albeit pleasant — memory, and I am beyond burnout.

So, I’m taking a week off from big work. Starting right now, as I lace my coffee with Wild Turkey and try to remember where I left my life last.

posted in Heather Corinna, Scarleteen, Happy!, apropos of nothing | permalink | comments (5) »