I try really hard not to write about my frustrations (though I know I write about them occasionally), because I realize some of them are so stupid and petty, and they make me feel stupid and petty.  And so many people, instead of telling me what I need to hear (Suck it up, Buttercup!), either try to explain it to me, or tell me why I’m right for being frustrated, or look down on M for His decisions/actions/orders/rules/whatever.

I think that last is what keeps me from discussing my frustrations more than any of the others.  I mean, yeah… M’s got some frivolous, silly rules, and a few quirks that drive me nuts.  But honestly, I think everyone does.  And He could be so much more of a bastard if He wanted to.  I gave Him that right.

By the time this posts, I probably won’t even be able to remember what I was frustrated about today.  Hell, I’m having trouble remembering everything I was thinking about before I started writing this.  Writing has always been cathartic for me.  And I have no exact direction, so I’m just gonna ramble. 

First and foremost, my new schedule is driving me insane.  Though I am capable of just sitting down and writing when I’m scheduled to, my muse doesn’t really work like that.  So, I could spend an entire morning just staring at a blank screen wishing I had something to write about, even if I don’t have any other distractions.  Like Twitter, or IM.  Which is one of the reasons I’ve been using a lot of prompts.  I’m hoping it’ll help me reset my muse, if you will, and get my creative juices to flow when I want them to.

And besides that, I don’t really get to work/write for eight hours.  We get up at exactly 8am, which is when my “shift” starts, and for the first twenty minutes or more, depending on what I’m making, I’m cooking breakfast.

Over the course of the next four hours or so, I’m up and down for coffee, drinks, maybe a snack, and a shower.  Though I’ll be honest, here, and tell you that lately, He’s been getting a lot of His own refills, and occasionally, His own snacks.  However, He doesn’t know how He takes His coffee.  He wasn’t a huge coffee drinker till He met me (Don’t expect too much from me until I’ve had my coffee.), and I learned how He likes His by trial and error.

After that is lunch, and our walk, when we take it, which, lately, is almost never.  I could probably fit those into a standard “lunch hour”, if it weren’t for the fact that I also have to get ready because He keeps me naked, and I have to prepare lunch because damn near everything we eat requires at least a few minutes of prep, if not some cooking.

And He rarely waits till 5pm to tell me to start dinner.  And even if He does, because I do my dishes while I’m cooking dinner, I often have to wash a few things before I can cook, so I usually have to at least start the dishes before 5pm because He likes to eat before 6pm.  Course, that’s my fault.  I was always whining about going to bed on a full stomach, and He got used to eating earlier.

M being home all the time is a huge distraction.

Because my “job” only pays in sex toys, ads and affiliate money, and I don’t really have a “boss” per se, and I can set my own schedule, He doesn’t really view it as a “real job”.  So, He’s gotten in the habit of trying to strike up a conversation with me while He’s waiting for a process (for His “real job”) to finish, or start a household project, rather than read the news or play a game like He used to.  And since, as far as He’s concerned, I don’t have a “real job”, He doesn’t think twice about ordering me to stop whatever I’m doing, and help Him with His random household project, or make Him a snack, or pour Him a drink, or… whatever.  (Case in point: Though I’ve told Him repeatedly over the past three days that yesterday and today I’m busting my ass to get the work I need done for Wed-Mon morning finished so that I can take time off when He does, He just asked me if I wanted to buzz His hair now.  It needs to be cut, and He wants me to do it before He goes into the office to pick up His check tomorrow, but I’ve got so. much. to do.  Heh.)

I know… I know I’m the slave, and taking care of M is my “real job”.  And I’m not saying I don’t like it, or I have a problem with it, or I even want Him to stop doing it.  (And therein lies my biggest frustration.  I don’t want Him to be less dependent on me during the day, and I don’t want to lengthen my work day, and decrease the time I have to spend with Him, either.  So there’s no real resolution without giving up something we both want.  Although, I suppose I could get up an hour earlier than Him, and make lunch and put it in the fridge.  But He likes waking up with me in bed next to Him.  See?!) I’m just saying it’s a distraction.  And it’s really difficult to maintain my train of thought, or finish a writing project, or maintain whatever attitude/voice I started with in whatever article/review/blog post I’m working on when I’m constantly having to stop right in the middle, and go do something for/with Him.

I think He thinks that working for myself (for lack of a better description) is pressureless because there’s no one to bitch if I screw up.  He doesn’t seem to get that my fake job stresses me out, too.  That even though there’s no one threatening to fire me, and no danger of us not being able to support ourselves if we closed up Insatiable Desire (not that that is, or ever will be, a consideration… I’m just rambling here), I still freak out if I can’t finish whatever I wanted to get finished, or if I miss a day of blogging, or if my stats drop even a tenth of a point, or… whatever.  I damn near fell apart when M checked Google Analytics one morning, and realized our code was broken due to some update we did, and we’d gone an entire day without recording any stats.  I didn’t realize it was because something was broken, and honestly thought everyone had just stopped reading.  This is my baby.  I’ve been at it since 2003.  And the idea of it failing, for whatever reason, freaks me out to the point that I have nightmares about it.

This laptop.  This laptop is a HUGE fucking frustration.  I’m ready to throw it against the wall.  But I think I’ve punished this thing enough, what with the full glass of whiskey lemonade I poured into it by mistake the other day.  And the two or three times I’ve knocked it on the floor.  But! It’s older than our relationship.  And that’s old in computer years.  So, the fact that it’s a piece of shit is only partially my fault.  Most of the things that drive me nuts about it (It’s so slow that I often have to wait at least two minutes for the backspace to finish backspacing and start typing again.  It’s set to ignore accidental touch-mouse touches while typing, but doesn’t, and regularly just randomly deletes whole paragraphs.  There’s a keyboard shortcut that closes all open programs that’s located directly under where the heel of my hand rests, and requires only touching a couple buttons, and fuck if I can figure out what it is, or how to shut it off.  And quite a few touch-mouse shortcuts that I’ll never figure out, but I manage to accidentally perform them all the time.) are things it was doing before I poured an entire glass of whiskey lemonade in the keyboard and dropped it two or three times.

We’re always broke.  There’s always some debtor with their hand out, or some forgotten expense (usually domain renewal) that needs taken care of, or some emergency that crops up, when we manage to take care of all our responsibilities and find ourselves with a few extra bucks.  Always.  And while I realize that’s life, and it’s mostly our fault, and eventually it might slow down a little once we’re more caught up, I still sit here going, “Jesus, M’s almost forty, and I’m thirty, and the only vacations we’ve been on have been because someone died, or someone paid for most of it for us.  We don’t own a house.  We don’t have a car.  And there’s very little in our house that has sentimental value other than we worked hard to pay for it.”

And let me tell ya… The child support and bill situations are pissing me off.  I overpay my light bill every month to pay off the back bill my ex helped me accumulate, and the back bill is actually increasing, not decreasing, which makes not a lick of sense to me.  And M was forced to start paying on the child support He doesn’t owe, or face the very real threat of jail time, and they’re not taking any money off what He doesn’t really owe, either.

Our life has become rather monotonous.  Our schedule goes as follows: Wake up at 8am, make breakfast, write, make lunch at 12pm-ish, write, clean, cook dinner, watch TV, go to bed.  Rinse, repeat.  Once or twice a week, there are a couple sexual encounters in there.  Once or twice a month (sometimes less) there’s a kink encounter in there. And we walk around the college campus once or twice a week.

I can’t honestly say it’s the added cost of travel that keeps us from doing things outside the home, because that’s not true.  It’s really only more than we’d have spent if we still had the Durango if we take a cab both ways instead of the bus.

The real issue is the length of time it takes to get where we’re going, and how much hassle public transportation is in this city.  The most busy bus routes only run every half hour.  And even then, you’re lucky if they’re on time.  Lately, they’ve been flying by before the site’s trip planner says to leave your house.  And getting a cab almost always takes half an hour, if not longer, no matter the time of day, because all of the cab companies are small, and very few people in this town have a car, and a lot of drug dealers use cabs for transportation to avoid getting stopped.  (Which begs the question, why don’t the cops stop more cabs? I mean, they’ve gotta know what’s going on.)

And we could stop procrastinating, and start trying to save money for a car once we’re completely back on track, but the child support office that lost all that money also suspended M’s license, and I haven’t had a license since I was 19.  And since they still maintain that He owes that money, even though we’ve proven He doesn’t, they’re refusing to lift the suspension.  So, not only will we be adding the expense of insurance and gas, but we’ll have to pay for me to get my license, or a lawyer to get M’s suspension lifted (not to mention do a lot of legwork to see what courses of action we have against child support, cause we can’t sue them for their refusal to fix the discrepancies on M’s account thanks to NYS law).  I’m not so sure I want to just jump back on the road without some practice time first, seeing as how it’s been eleven years since I was behind the wheel of a car, and we don’t know anyone with a car, so me getting my license isn’t the most practical option, right now, either.

Which brings me to my biggest frustration, which is that there is no quick fix –or, in some cases, no fix at all– for my frustrations.  And eight years ago, before I met M, I would have just thrown in the towel.  I mean, not on our relationship, because our relationship isn’t the cause of my frustration, but on life in general.  I’d start succumbing to the panic attacks, and frustration, and allowing myself to wallow in self-pity, and self-loathing, and spend days in the dark ignoring the world before I swallowed a couple hundred pills, or cut myself.

But today? Today, I want to be stronger than that.  More grown-up than that.  And I’m just frustrated.

I want to throw things, and scream, and cry, and… Blame someone! Make someone else fix it! Have someone else swoop in and save us from life in general.

But since that’s not gonna happen, I’m just… frustrated.

I’ll be less frustrated tomorrow, I’m sure.

<3