Regina Noctis

I’ve spent much of yesterday and today trying to beat my inner miser into submission.

I was talking to my mom yesterday about an art project that has been floating in the back of my mind, and has been for several weeks. It’s something that would require that I draw the same characters consistently and with more control than I generally achieve with a mouse. The project was something that I planned to back-burner until I could earn some money toward a decent Wacom Intuos3 pad, or something similar. When I told her about the project and the difficulties involved with mousing my way through it, she told me to just go buy the pad on her account and consider it an early birthday present.

I know that it would not just be a toy, but something that would greatly help with projects in school, and later with work in either of the fields I have my eye on. But my inner miser is screaming about the pricetag, even with my student discount. For an inner miser that has a hard time spending even $20 on one thing, $258 and change is too much to deal with.

It made me think of a conversation I had with about setting up a website to ask for donations. For him, it’d be to help with living expenses. For me, it’d be about getting the pad and some of the software that I’ve been wanting that would all go toward my schoolwork and my eventual career. I have a hard time with the idea of begging for money, though. On about the same par as I have with spending money or having anyone spend money on me. It’s unlikely that I’d ever manage to convince myself to ask for donations.

The closest I have been able to come to anything like that is setting up an online store to sell prints of some of my art and photography. It’s set up, and has a few things in it (not much, maybe ten items total) but even that is something I haven’t pushed anywhere. Sure, I’d make at least a small commission on the things sold in it, and people would actually get something for it instead of the nothing they’d get for donating money to a po’ graphic arts student. Consequently, I’ve never even mentioned that I have this thing set up, let alone tried to push it anywhere or advertise it even here on this LJ. I’m dumb like that.

Well, back to battle again. I’m working on a different project than the one that inspired the offer on my mom’s part. One that I can manage to do with a mouse, but would be easier with a graphics pad. I’m hoping the frustration will shut my inner miser up long enough to make the purchase.

This is my week for jury duty. When I called in over the weekend, I wasn’t told to come in Monday, but to call again Monday night to see if I’d have to come in for the next court session.

This, at least, is an improvement over the way jury duty worked last time I got stuck with it. In NJ, you went in every day for the week, and sat in a windowless basement cubicle with such dim light you couldn’t even read, no other way to entertain yourself, and just stared at cinderblock walls until you got called to the courtroom. They seemed to consider potential jurors as just one small step above any defendents that might have trials starting during that week, and made you sit in basement purgatory as your punishment.

Anyway, I was told when I called in on Monday night that I have to report Wednesday morning. I have to be in the juror room by 8:15 in the morning. The parking lot fills up and it’s difficult to find parking by 8. I’ll need to get there around 7:30 AM. It’s about 45 minutes to an hour to drive from here to there, depending on traffic. All of which means that I’ll have to get up to get ready and make the drive so early that it will be before I normally am able to fall asleep around my sleep disorders. I’m going to be the crankiest potential juror they’ve ever had.

The last time, in NJ, the entire state was so conservative and so unused to seeing Goths that I was the terror of the lawyers. My number came up and I then got declined twice for no reason. Based on the worried stares I got during the periodic breaks allowed for us to leave the basement and have a smoke or something, I must have been too much of an unknown quantity. The lawyers were often out there smoking when I was, and they’d stare with a slight hint of deer-in-the-headlights in their eyes. It doesn’t surprise me. I was the only Goth in Hunterdon county at the time.

Kern is one of the very few conservative counties you’ll find in California. And they’re not real used to the oddly-dressed here either. You’re more likely to see cowboy hats, western shirts with jeans, and cowboy boots here than a freak dressed in solid black with multicolored dreadlocks. I intend to scare some lawyers this time around, too.

And when the Zombie Army arrives upon the completion of the breeding program in the midwest, and I’m the dictator of California, I’ve decided that one of the major changes will be that everything will be open at night and closed during the day. Let all you day people see what it’s like to experience years of constant sleep deprivation in order to go to school, work, shop, and perform things like jury duty during the time your body’s natural rhythms say you’re supposed to be asleep, only to wake up at the time you’re supposed to be sleeping. Should cut down on the number of people who consider it “lazy” that people like me “sleep in” until noon (which equates to six hours of sleep for me) or 2 PM (the full eight hours of sleep). No more of those people who inform me that it’s okay for them to call me at 10 in the morning because they’ve let me “sleep in” long enough, despite the fact that four hours into my natural sleep cycle is not “sleeping in”, and then get pissy that I’m cranky because I’ve been woken up after only four hours of sleep. Eliminate those people who dismiss constant sleep deprivation as something someone like me is “used to” because they’ve had to deal with it for years. It doesn’t feel less crappy for someone with sleep disorders than it does for anyone else. We’ve just learned how to be more functional on less sleep because it’s the only way to get things done in a daycentric world.

“Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

Well, suck on this:

Late to bed and late to rise will keep me from GOUGING OUT YOUR FUCKING EYES.

</bitter insomniac>