On a Round-Up of My Day

I had a migraine today. Lodged, as they do, right about the left eye.

The thing that made this migraine particularly nasty? I was sure my vision was dimming, if I were going completely blind, in that left eye. No, I’d close my right eyelids and I could still see out of the left eye, but with the pain in the left frontal lobe it felt like the vision was going.

So, about once an hour I’d pop more Advil and hope for the best.

Something occurred to me at work today. When did The Nightmare Before Christmas become a fucking lifestyle choice? I spent an hour and a half on solicits for Jack Skellington products, and I have to say–there’s only so many ways you can describe Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King of Halloweentown and his faithful undead canine companion Zero. (For those playing at home? Some variation of the previous sentence, with or without additional adjectives, was the order of the moment.) I mean, fuck. The movie was good, and I liked it, and the songs are catchy, and I liked it, but fuck! Jack Skellington isn’t the be-all and end-all of life! I mean, fuck!. As a friend said to me once, though, Nightmare has become trendy for the goth high schoolers, and there’s no one more conformist than a teenaged goth, and Jack Skellington is their lord and master.

I probably mangled that. Probably.

Fortunately, in the afternoon I switched gears and worked on other products. Products that had nothing to do with Jack Skellington, Pumpkin King, and Zero, his faithful canine.

I bought new headphones for work. I’d been using earbuds because I thought they looked cool, but I discovered quickly that the cartilige in my ears simply weren’t made for earbuds, and I’d somehow torn something somewhere, prompting both bleeding and scabbing. So, while at Big Lots yesterday I bought soft, foam headphones, and they served me well today.

Among today’s listening while I worked? Paul McCartney’s new album. Embrace’s Out of Nothing. The Tom Petty Anthology. And Green Day’s American Idiot. The migraine had passed, largely, by late afternoon, my vision wasn’t impaired and I could see, and I needed to get the adrenaline flowing for that late afternoon activity burst. Hence, Green Day.

I discovered today that there was a song after “Homecoming” on American Idiot. See, the song sounds like the last song, so I’ll usually change my listening material, and I’d somehow completely overlooked this song “Whatsername.” I found it very catchy, from the lyrics to the guitar riff. Maybe my mind’s got its own perception filter, because the lyrics so described the emotional journey I’ve been on these three months past. Three months. And my mind just filtered them out whenever I’d listen to American Idiot. But today, because it is three months today, it sank in. And I sat there, in the cubicle, cranked up the volume, held the headphones to the ears, pressed them in tight, and listened to this song that just hadn’t registered with me before a few times over.

But a pile of papers called out to me, and I turned my attention back to the solicits. It’s funny–the pile seemed so big at first, not even coming with a folder, but by six o’clock I’d knocked it down to maybe ten publishers left to work through. Steady, steady gets the job done. 😉

And then the day was done. I’m not sure if we’re ahead or behind or right on track. I don’t have the right perspective yet. In time I will. I feel like we’re slightly ahead, but maybe that’s just my optimism speaking.

The migraine’s still slightly bothering me, though. :/