I am not doing terribly well right now. I'm not eating very well, or very consistently. It's getting harder and harder to wake up to my alarm, and to get myself out of bed when I do. I'm spending more time pretending to be reasonably okay so that people will not bombard me with attention than I'm spending being actually reasonably okay.

The computer is still broken, and although it's probably a fifty-cent part that's failed, getting it fixed would cost so much that it's more worthwhile to just buy another indestructible Toshiba, that I can fix my goddamn self in the future when it breaks. In my so far unsuccessful efforts to scrape together the money to do this, I've cut back on things like going out to shows or dinners. It turns out that these occasions are apparently what I use to develop some sense of time passing. Without them, one week just blurs into the next, and I lose track of everything. Boss Lady has been making the rounds of conferences this month, thus canceling a lot of my normal office days, and the dance studio threw my normal M-F rehearsal schedule off by being closed for Memorial Day. The PMRC show technically has Monday night rehearsals, but my role is so small I don't even have a call until halfway through June.

There aren't a whole lot of things I can get up to without spending any money, other than wander around the city on foot, stare at the internet, and sleep for twelve hours at a time.

Before anyone opens a PayPal tab, because inevitably that's what happens when I post about not being able to afford things, you need to understand that throwing money at me will not solve this problem. Sufficient donations will resolve the issue of the broken computer, yes, but that's not actually the part that's wrecking me. The issue that is slowly making me grind to a halt is that I can't do it myself -- yet again, I can't seem to pay my own way in the world. I cannot get far enough ahead to keep myself out of trouble. I am a failure at being a responsible adult.

Free-floating stress like that creates extra problems for me. I don't know if it does this for other people, but once enough danger alarms start going off in the back of my head, all of the damn things begin going off at random, just to add to the cacophony. It spills over into everything. I start having nightmares, usually along the general theme of 'something is horribly wrong and we're all going to die but no one will listen to my warnings'. I wake up to the clang-thump noise whenever the two smaller rats gang up in order to push the particularly fat one out of the hammock. I begin to check myself for house keys on my way out, even though I've just looked and seen them in my bag. I start getting so neurotic about money that I buy the bare minimum of groceries, and keep the bare minimum of train fare on my T card, so that on top of worrying about what I actually spend I also get to worry about whether I'm going to get stranded, or open up the cabinets at 2am when the store is closed and discover I don't actually own any dinner. Not that I'd eat it.

To give you some idea of the magnitude, after about three days of watching me slowly disintegrate, one of my friends told me just to come over to his house and he would goddamn make me dinner. And I went. It took me until college to even say 'yes' when someone asked a flu-ridden me if I would like them to bring me soup and Tylenol, so this is kind of a significant thing. When I got there I promptly decompensated from what were essentially PTSD flashbacks, because he is a he and has a girlfriend who is not me. It had absolutely nothing to do with either of them or anything they did -- they both don't get jealousy the same way I don't get jealousy -- but I've committed the heinous crime of 'soliciting help while female' in the past, and the last time I did it was part of a debacle so horrible that I moved across the fucking country rather than try to put my life back together in the tiny shitty town where I was. It's not the only thing that went into that disaster, and moving to Boston was ultimately one of the better decisions I've made, but I could have done without the year of near-catatonic depression, panic attacks, ER visits, and borderline agoraphobia.

I feel guilty for not updating my blog more, but I can't think of anything to put here that doesn't start to look incredibly stupid whenever I type it out. I would just post pictures of rats, but I'm not any good at that, either. I have no idea how other people manage to take adorably clear pictures of their rats in a spotless habitat. Rodents aren't good at tidiness. They like to upend their food bowl, bulldoze all the boxes around with their hard little heads, throw their bedding out through the bars, and pee on everything. I clean their cage, I deliver them home, and five minutes later, it's right back to looking like rats live in it.

Comments

  1. I am sorry you are miserable and I hope it dissipates sooner rather than later?

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  2. Do you know which part of the computer is broken? That is, is the stuck-point a lack of diagnosis, lack of part, or lack of skill/tools?

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    Replies
    1. I know exactly what's wrong with it. The power jack is cracked off the edge of the motherboard. There's no way to jam the AC adapter cord into it at such an angle as to keep the thing charging/running off the wall power while I use it. Fixing this requires replacing the motherboard, a $200 part, plus labor -- for a computer that only cost me $300 to begin with.

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    2. I checked with a friend who's done hardware repairs, and they said that is likely repairable, either by soldering the parts you have or -- if the jack itself is damaged -- by getting a replacement jack in the $1-3 range and soldering that on.

      You're acquainted with lots of people, and a lot of them seem to be technically inclined. Maybe if you make note of the model number and ask around, someone can do it for you at friend rates?

      This still counts as being a Responsible Adult. No one can do everything themself; everyone copes by trading favors.

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    3. I am aware that the jack costs diddly. That is unfortunately not how computer repair shops work, emphasis on *shops*. Problem with jack on the motherboard = replace the motherboard. You can try soldering it back on, but the repair is not guaranteed, and there's also no way for them to tell if the stress that broke the jack also strained traces on the motherboard nearby that will result in me bringing the damn thing back in two weeks when it breaks again, and make them fix it right for no extra charge because the repair "didn't work" the first time. This is standard for hardware support. They don't care how much it costs me -- they care about how long it'll take them to fix it and how big a pain in the ass I'm liable to be about it later. If I mailed it all the way back to ASUS they would do exactly the same thing.

      I have in fact asked someone if they'd solder the thing back together for me. He said he had to borrow the proper soldering iron, and promptly fucked off and I have heard exactly nothing from him since. I don't own a soldering iron and I don't know how to use it, at least not to the extent I'd get one anywhere near a motherboard I wasn't planning on junking.

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