Flarg. Guh. Meh.

I didn't get enough sleep last night. I was up late preparing to post the pictures from Sin City this past Saturday (rotating, cropping, adjusting levels, etc.). Now I am tired and more disinclined to be at work than usual. I'm feeling almost desperate to get some self-promotion done and to get out of this full-time day-job nonsense. I can't afford to reduce my hours, though, because I'm still only making a web-monkey's wage here. The re-evaluation of my job is caught up in union bureaucracy. I'd leave now if the carrot of roughly a thousand hours of back-pay on a raise that should be between seven and fifteen dollars an hour wasn't hanging out there. But the carrot is getting old — and so am I. I'll be 39 this July 31^st. The idea of emigrating will become much harder in just one short year since my "value" as an immigrant diminishes at 40. This situation has three weeks to sort itself out. The cats have their chips and shots, and I have enough credit to fund a move.

My website sorely needs updating to better display the volume of photographic work I am producing without losing my painting and drawing and to allow for the purchase of prints. I don't want to upload high-quality work to deviantART, nor do I want to screw Canadian customers by selling though a U.S. based site so I'm not to keen on CaféPress either. I need to get a show together - and, sorry, I'm not interesting in showing in galleries where the only people with good hair and empty pockets show up - which means getting slides together, filling out submissions forms, having my press-kit/marketing-twaddle tickety-boo (which follows on having the website up to snuff) and other things that require pulling time or money out of my ass. I feel like I'm watching this pile of things I need to do grow in front of me while I sell my life for a web-monkey's wage.

It wouldn't be so bad if I was making a decent wage - then I could pay someone to do the things I don't have the time for.

Half-assed solutions don't appeal to me. This is a fundamental part of my personality. Really fundamental. I didn't speak until I was nearly three because I consciously waited until I was able to use complete sentences. I never drew "tadpole people". Taking this job seven months ago was a half-assed solution to getting away from Tolko. I can't stand the half-assèdness of it anymore.