Yesterday was CRUMMY. It was crummy due to a combination of several unrelated things that went to crap in succession, with the “high” point being my midmorning sobbing meltdown in my cubicle. Thankfully I have wonderful coworkers who did exactly what I needed: they left me alone until I could pull my shit together and fix my makeup. I had one call come in for me and the secretary very smoothly told the caller that I was busy and would call them back. Another coworker quietly took care of an Issue for me. Ten minutes later I was… well, “fine” isn’t the right word, but “okay enough to come out my cubicle” is probably close enough. After work I dealt with a couple of other Issues and made my displeasure known to the responsible party, and the responsible party was appropriately contrite.

So, today does seem to be shaping up to be better. I had a second talk with Responsible Party and emphasized a couple of points that had not been clear earlier, and I think that Issue is far more resolved. And even if it’s not fully resolved, at least it’s out in the open now which will make it easier to deal with in the future. Also, I received a phone call from the party who had been the straw that broke the camel’s back which sent me sobbing to my cubicle, with said caller checking on me to make sure everything was all right and that I was all right and reminding me that caller was there for me if I needed anything.

It’s a reminder to me that shitty things are sometimes good for you. Yesterday and today reinforced to me how much I appreciate my present work environment. It also gave me the opening to deal with the Issue that I had been quietly steaming over for far too long.

Kinda like Katrina. Okay, first off I am NOT going to deny that Katrina was hideous and tragic and that it was several weeks of hell that I never ever want to go through again. But some of the aspects of the aftermath ended up being very good for me and especially my writing. The storm gave me the chance to really sit down and look at what I wanted out of my experience as a writer, and made me face the incredibly obvious fact that if I wanted to be a novelist I needed to stop dicking around with distractions and write a novel! (Okay, I’ve written a couple of novels, but I needed to write a good one!)

Now I have a novel written, and I think it’s a pretty good one with a ton of market potential. (Yes, I’m biased.) I’m full steam into the next and I’ve developed a good rhythm. And I think that if not for the kick-in-the-ass that was Katrina, I wouldn’t have taken that deep breath and gone in the mystery-paranormal direction–which is turning out to be a hell of a lot of fun.

***

In other news, I’m sure that both of my loyal readers have noticed that I’ve redesigned the site. Cool thing about Wordpress: all I had to do was find a new theme and click “change theme.” Gotta love a redesign that only takes a few minutes!