Upside down on the zip zip zipper

They say that job hunting is an emotional process. As someone who is unlikely to master the Vulcan arts any time soon, I am not immune. What I do find difficult are the amounts of time my emotional highs and lows have been known to take up in my day.

When I am emotionally low, productivity is almost non-existent. Even though there are seemingly endless tasks I can pursue towards finding employment, why bother seems to be the phrase that runs through my head. You're just not as good as all the other candidates out there. It's just going to be too hard.

When I am emotionally high, I'm churning out work. I am reading, getting things done. I am cramming a weeks worth of work into two hours. I am obsessive, intent, and focused. What I am doing is burning myself out at both ends.

I recently changed my desktop photo from the Clay's generic landscape photo supplied by Gateway to a stern and snarling Henry Rollins in concert. Nobody quite embodies the phrase "suck it up, cupcake" like a determined Henry Rollins. I imagine that is direct stare is the closest thing our world has to Ghost Rider's penance stare.

I've struggled finding a good base of operations from which to work, and I think I've settled on the kitchen. I have an office, but it tends to get the hottest, and shares a room with the litter box. I tried to work on the couch, but the allure of 40 plus hours of saved DVR programming, despite my best intentions, just wasn't conducive to professional work.

I also attempted to move downstairs into the pool table room, using the pool table as a desk. Unfortunately, there are reasons pool tables don't double as desks. They aren't constructed for that type of operation. While it had the distinct advantages of being cooler in my non-air conditioned house, it was the most isolated part of the house, and a little dark and lonely.

The kitchen is the most heavily trafficked part of the house which keeps my spirits up. The table and chairs are good height for doing work. We rarely eat there anyway so I'm not disrupting too much operations. The breeze is good. I can see the garden. The cats come by frequently to eat, meow, and sit on my literature. It's well lit, and thus far, been my favorite setup.

There's almost no long term endeavor that benefits from a stutter stop approach or emotions that wax and wane like the moon. Hopefully I'll be able to keep a better lid on this in the future and stay productive.