Tick, Tick, Tick.

I haven't heard anything regarding my primary job target in the past two weeks. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I am a little miffed that my efforts to find out more have, thus far, been unsuccessful. But I still haven't received a little envelope in the mail that says, "Hey, thanks for coming out, but no dice,*" so I remain hopeful.

*I'm paraphrasing here, but maybe they'll actually use those words.

I had my interview with Foreign Affairs on Monday, and I'd say it went quite well. Better than last year, at least. I doubt that I have the patience to make a go at it for another year, but perhaps I won't have to. But, speaking of waiting, they won't let me know anything until, oh, December or so. So, yeah. I'm not exactly holding my breath.

I wish I could say that unemployment is horrible and that I can't wait to get back to work, but then I would be lying. I certainly wouldn't turn down a good job, but I'm prepared to wait as long as it takes until a decent job comes around before I take on something that is less than ideal.

The part time work that I do have has been pretty decent so far, and it looks as though I may be able to get back in for a few days each month to do the same work as I was doing before. The pay won't exactly be lavish, but I'll have enough to make ends meet until December rolls around. December marks my self-imposed deadline to decide between graduate school and my other options.

In the mean time, I've been enjoying the down time. Today, I put on some Red Hot Chilli Peppers, made myself a big mug of tea, smoked a freshly packed pipe, and stared at the lake. I think it'll take a few weeks before I get tired of that.

I want to start writing again. Seriously writing. The kind of writing I did in high school, when I could dash out ten to fifteen pages of fiction in an evening, stopping only when I realized that I was looking at less than six hours of sleep before school started. I miss those nights. I had more premises for short stories and novels than I had time to dash them down.

Since those glorious nights, I think almost all of my work has been spurned by some external factor. Deadlines. Bosses. Courses. My problem, writing-wise, is motivation. When I can learn to motivate myself again - that is, when I learn to love writing for writing's sake - that'll be when those nights return.