Today is Wednesday. For some reason, it feels like a Monday, though. I wake up at the normal time around 5:30 AM. My alarm goes off at 6:50. Usually, I’m out of bed before the alarm. Not today. I do not want to face the day, again. I set my intentions for the day. I’ve got three products to make. Ugh… I hate making product. I’m going to try to write something that will help someone. I’m not feeling that right now. Maybe it’ll come to me later. And I’m going to try to be nice to Tywana. I know it’s going to be tough, I can feel the anger and frustration rising in me and sometimes that spills out on whoever is closest.
I force myself out of the warm, dark bed where all my troubles fade into blissful blackness. I get dressed in the dark, ready to start my day with my five miles. I manage to get out of the door at 7:35 so I can be back home by 8:45 ready to get some stuff done.
I get back home and it’s time to make the products. But, before I do that, I call my developer who has been dragging his feet for the last year on my store migration. I have paid him a deposit. Every time I talk to him, it’s “next month” that we’ll be finally ready to move over from Yahoo to BigCommerce. When I started this migration, it was just to make some improvements. Yahoo has gotten steadily worse as their technology has fallen farther and farther behind and their support is so terrible, I refuse to call them anymore. This is now costing me money. Joel has told me he would be ready to make the final push after Thanksgiving. I’m trying to be patient, but it’s the Wednesday after Thanksgiving and I haven’t heard from him yet. I ping him and tell him I want this done by the end of the year.
I look over some bills. Here’s another bill from the IRS. Penalties and interest for underpaying my taxes last year, due to an error by my accountant. I am so over this guy. I email a copy of the bill to him. “Do I really have to pay this?” His reply is “Yes.”. So, yet another check going out to the IRS. The marketing company that I re-signed with in September promised me a rebate my second month of the the contract which was November. I look over the statement for that. No rebate. So, I have to contact my rep and ask him to take care of that. Everybody I work with is incompetent.
Finally, I can start to make the products. I start with my least favorite to make. I get it made and ready to put into the jars. Now, to find the jars in this maze of a basement. I finally locate them and realize we are almost out. I pump the product into the jars, as many as I can anyway. I run out of jars. I have to throw away some of the product because it won’t be any good by the time the new jars get here, the ones I will have to order later today.
Onto product number two. I make it. I don’t have time to package it today. I’ll leave that to tomorrow. I make product number three. I look for its containers. I find the bottles and the lids. Great. We have plenty of both. But, when I locate the seals for the bottles, we are just about out of those. I’ll have to leave some of this product unpackaged also while we wait for the seals to come in.
As I’m making the products I’m just hating my life. Susanne Wilson told me in my medium reading in March that things would get better in the second half of this year. Well, it’s December tomorrow. I’m still waiting. I’m sitting here in this cold, dark basement making product, frustrated with all of the people I’m trying to get to helpe me get the business back on its feet, making product and I’ve got nothing to put it in. Tywana is out having lunch with her friends and doing Christmas shopping. I’m conscious of the anger rising up in me and telling myself to not take it out on her when she gets home.
As I’m making product, I listen to some Pink Floyd. First, Dark Side of the Moon, one of the most brilliant albums ever made. The themes of the journey of life, time and what we do with the time we have while we are here are just as relevant today as they were over four decades ago when the album was made. Then, I listend to Meddle. There’s a 20-minute song on Meddle, a whole album side, for those of us old enough to remember albums. Echoes isn’t just a song, it’s a journey. There’s a part of the song, several minutes in, where it kind of goes off of the rails. The music becomes dissonant and devolves into just noise. When I was younger, that part of the record confused and irritated me. As I’m listening to it today, I reflect on how that is my life right now. I’m in that part of the song. As the song goes on, the dissonance resolves and we’re back into music.
Evening rolls around. It’s just after 5, but I feel like it’s time to start dinner. It’s been a long day. I literally have not left the house other than for my walk. I’ve nowhere to go many days. And, anything I can think of doing costs money. So, days like today, I just don’t leave the house. It’s just about dark. Today is Mom’s actual birthday. I want to give her a call. I’m in a funk, but this isn’t about me. So, I put on my happy voice and call her to see how her day’s gone.
Tywana and I end up the day watching some TV. Ten o’clock, it’s been dark for hours, time to head upstairs to do some reading. I fall asleep reading the wisdom of Silver Birch trying to convince myself that days like to today have some deeper purpose and meaning I simply can’t see right now. I survived another one. I fall back into the bliss I woke from 17 hours ago. I drift off into the blackness.
