silentauroriamthereal:It’s been another wretchedly busy week, but things are FINALLY starting to...

silentauroriamthereal:

It’s been another wretchedly busy week, but things are FINALLY starting to lighten up a little! I had a slice of writing time at last, too! Fic’s at 53,700 words and still going strong! 

Ahhh, you guys are so amazing!! Thanks for your replies, @bigblueboxat221b, @prideandprejudiceandcheese, @swissmissing, @barbsiebabe, and @anyway-kindness! So yes: it’s a good busy, it’s just been a LOT. Here’s what’s been going on lately: 

1. I’ve been working at a museum, in the ticketing office, since mid-October. It’s a part-time position with no assigned hours. The most I ever had in one week was maybe 27 hours. The least was literally one 3-hour shift. It was brutal. Not the work or the people or the place, just the hours. 

2. Starting in early September, I’ve been teaching voice lessons at a local conservatory. This is obviously also part-time work, Tuesday evenings and Saturdays. Between the part-time museum work and this much-better-paying job of teaching music, I was kind of almost making ends meet. 

3. In good news, I applied for and got a temporary 4-month full-time position as a gallery host at the museum, which goes from May to September. When it ends, if nothing else comes up in the meantime (say, a permanent full-time position doing what I’m currently doing!), then I go back to being a part-time box office scrub. I LOVE this position so much more - the work, the people, and still the same place that I already liked working at, so this is great! It’s just that I’m also still teaching voice lessons until the end of June - in fact, more than ever, because all of the missed lessons throughout the year are getting scheduled in now, so I’m currently working a full-time job AND a part-time job. 

4. I used to be an opera singer and I still do the occasional concert. Sometimes it’s a concert series that hires me to sing in an event that they plan and do all the work for. Sometimes I just put one on by myself - you know, find a venue, plan a program, hire a pianist, plan a reception, do publicity (posters, social media, other advertising, etc etc), get a dress, get a hair appointment on the day, etc, and then also do the whole thing of performing a full-length solo concert. Last Sunday I had one of the second kind. I slept for four hours, then went back to the museum for another full day of work. 

5. I’ve also become a work-out nut, which means that I get up even earlier than I used to (this has been going on since February) to work out. There’s a gym in my building and my rent is already so grossly high and there are so many problems with this place (see point 6, coming up) that I figure I might as well eke out every bit of the good parts of it that I possibly can, right? But the downside is that I’m really, really a night person and night is when I do the bulk of my writing, and these days I’m really having to go to bed a bit earlier than I used to, just to accommodate the fact that I now get up at 6;15am everyday, which I didn’t have to do when I was only part-time at the museum. 

6. My building is problematic. Sorry, make that Problematic. I could go on and on, but I won’t bore you. My lease is up on September 1st, and in this province, I need to give notice by July 1st, which means that I’m also in the process of trying to decide whether or not I want to move, which means constantly looking at housing ads and going to see apartments.

In short, between working Monday-Friday, teaching on Saturdays and sometimes Sundays and multiple evenings per week, I basically have something every single day and almost every single evening and I’m so much busier than I want to be right now! The upside is that it’s all good stuff, and by July, at least, I should have made a decision and finished most of my damned lessons, and then only (!!) have to work full-time. Lol. So that’s what’s been going on and why I’ve been on here so sparsely of late, but I promise I’m still working on, thinking about, mentally living in this current story, and there IS a light at the end of the tunnel!! The concert also went really well, so I can breathe now. The conservatory had its two year-end recitals this past week and all of my students comported themselves well, so I can breathe in that respect, too! :P This coming week should already be significantly lighter, and after that it should just be easier and easier, so things are looking up. 

Anyway! Sorry for the long update, but that’s what’s been going on with me! :)