So, I start the new job tomorrow. Yay! This should be fun. Even if I do have to get up insanely early tomorrow morning to get there and get oriented and do the paperwork.

I did manage to work myself into a brief anxiety attack on Thursday about my ability to do the job. So, I sat down, and had a cup of coffee and worked my way right back out of the anxiety attack. The freelancing and internship projects that I've done recently have been good for my confidence in this regard: I know that I can jump into a project, learn what I need to know, and produce something pretty quickly.

Besides, after I finished my coffee, I went down to the Berkeley Public Library, and John Crowley's The Translator was sitting right there on the fiction shelf. I immediately identified this as a good omen, and cheered up instantly. (Also checked out the book.)

In cognitive therapy, turning things into omens is one of the classic examples of negative thinking that people sabotage themselves with. But its turning things into bad omens that's the problem - people take perfectly ordinary little setbacks and turn them into signs of worse to come.

What's funny is that I often seem to do the reverse: interpreting all of life's many tiny serendipities as signs of better to come. In terms of its relationship to reality, this is still screwed up thinking. But it's infinitely preferable in terms of its effect on one's mood.

Speaking of effects on one's mood, I spent some time playing Final Fantasy X this weekend, and have come to the following conclusion: Religion is not the opiate of the masses. The Playstation 2 is the opiate of the masses.

Really, I killed most of Friday afternoon playing Final Fantasy X, but it was so worth it. Afterwards, I felt like I'd had a vacation, because the whole time I was playing, I felt like I was somewhere else.

A good computer game will do that to me. I was just a bit surprised that this particular game was that effective for me. Like Final Fantasy VII, it's occasionally excessively linear and non-interactive (there are times when minutes pass without the player doing much more than pushing a button to trigger the next cut scene), and the combat sequences can get a little repetitive (fighting your twenty-sixth lightning elemental is not nearly as exciting as fighting your first). But the graphics are incredibly gorgeous, and the game has real characters and story. Maybe not brilliant writing, but I've watched movies that were much dumber.

Fun game. I recommend.

But now I have to stay the hell away from it for a while, because I really don't have time to get all caught up playing computer games this week. I've got a new day job to handle, and a bit of freelance rewriting to do, and maybe even some fiction to write.

Fiction writing has suffered a bit this past week. Too much on my mind. Once I get settled in on the job, I'm going to get myself into a routine of writing either before or right after work. I think I'll need the routine if I'm going to keep my output up while doing a pretty demanding day job. (I had a pretty solid routine worked out by the later part of my time in grad school, but after I graduated it kind of went by the wayside.)

I went to a good meeting with my writers' group today, though, and those always get me fired up to write.

Anyway, I'm hoping to post at least a few quick updates in the coming week about how things are going, but I really have no idea how much time and energy I'll have. Don't worry about me too much if I disappear for a while.