Love or Something Like It

Well, we survived Monday, didn’t we? How absolutely lovely. This is the first full week of work after two weeks interrupted by holidays; the rest of the week yawns like an open maw, waiting to suck me down to the very depths of hell. But I shall persevere, I will survive, and I am also going to get some goddamned writing done if it kills me this week.

And…it just might.

I didn’t sleep well Sunday night so was very tired by the end of my over-long shift yesterday; Paul and I started talking about Carnival and parade season and how difficult it’s going to be for me to get to work and home around the parades. Last year I took parade days off as vacation time; I don’t have enough vacation time to do that again this year so I am going to have to be incredibly careful about how I plan my work weeks and my work time, else I am going to wind up in trouble. I think I am going to have to take off Friday and Lundi Gras from going into the office as vacation days; I am going to have to go in early on Nyx Wednesday and Muses Thursday, and leave early as well so I can get home in time to find a place to park in the general vicinity of my house. I also need to take off those two days I mentioned earlier so I can manage to do whatever errands I need to do–groceries and so forth–because it will be impossible on the weekend. Ah, the joys of living inside the box during Carnival. It means lots of prep work and careful planning.

However, I did sleep well last night–always a plus–so well that I am having difficulty waking up completely this morning. Never a plus, particularly on my second long day of the week, I was very tired by the end of my shift last night–and once I was home I pretty much retreated to my easy chair, too tired to read or do much of anything other than scroll through social media, still monitoring the crash and burn of RWA. We’re about to go into week three of this mess; remembering it all began on Christmas Eve Eve, and yet here we are, as the organization continues to burn to the ground and they just keep throwing more gasoline on it. Yesterday they published their newsletter, with an incredibly offensive cover design and an article inside that, while probably well-intentioned (I am bending way over backwards here, for the record, in giving the benefit of the doubt with this) was horribly offensive and pretty much centered white women while laying all the blame for slurs and offensive behavior against minorities pretty much on the minorities. The irony that the writer of the offensive piece was named Karen put an almost funny, “of course her name is Karen” spin on the whole thing. I did see that the recall election was going to take place after all; but as I said from the very beginning, the rot is there in the staff. None of this could have happened without the, at the very least, complicity of the paid staff; the paid staff probably even colluded, and may have even initiated the entire thing.

The self-induced immolation that I’ve been watching since December 23rd of the RWA doesn’t make me happy to witness; like many others, I was under the impression that RWA had made great strides in eradicating its issues with systemic racism, as well as the pervasive, insidious racism of its membership. Instead, the rattlesnake simply had coiled, waiting for its opportunity to strike a blow for white supremacy; rather emblematic of the country as a whole, frankly. I remain hopeful that RWA will straighten out this mess, despite the fact that they’ve done such a piss-poor job of handling the crisis once it arose. It does appear as though the recall election is going to happen after all; and an outside auditor has been brought in to conduct said election. I hate seeing a vital organization that provided such a strong voice for its author/members in such disarray to the point that it might collapse; authors have such few voices arguing in our behalf that the loss of another isn’t ideal.

But if it wasn’t advocating and fighting for its minority members…well, into the dustbin of history with you if you can’t fix it.

I didn’t get any writing done yesterday, primarily because I was so fucking tired last night when I got home from the office. I slept better last night, so here’s hoping that tonight I can get another chapter revised.

And on that note, tis off to the spice mines with me.