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Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Mental Exhaustion

Writing has been less than a trickle here at the Turtle household. I've set aside the becoming-more-ridiculously-complicated-every-time-I-look-at it Price of Justice for the moment, and geared up the simpler (I hope) and funnier (I hope) Dangling Participles, which shall be henceforth renamed - something else. Can't remember at the moment, but it has to do with "justice."

See, that's where my brain is. Mush. Can't remember words. Can't remember yesterday. Why is that?

When I wrote Star of Justice, and Daughter of Anasca, for that matter, I worked at Florists' Review as the customer service representative. I answered phones, took orders, opened mail, handled the deposits: standard administrative stuff. I loved doing it, too, but the brain power necessary was, shall we say, less than that required by a monkey opening a banana. I could come home and devote two or more hours to heavy thinking because I hadn't done any during the day.

I switched jobs in 2011. I was File Clerk #6 and I handled all the new business entity filings for the State of Kansas. As far as types of business entities, if they were sold at Walmart, you could buy them all at the express checkout without guilt, but the Big Six were the most common filings: LLCs, corps, not for profit corps, and their foreign counterparts. "Foreign" in this context is any entity not born in Kansas.

That brain rearrange took a little time, and my writing suffered. Can't plan new worlds and snappy dialogue while reviewing the LLC statute to determine who can and can't be listed in the "member" line on the form. At least, I can't.

Just as new filings were becoming second nature and a tiny bit boring, I switched jobs again. Yes, I'm a dumbass, but the pay was better and theoretically the work was more interesting. I'm now the Audit Administrator for the state (although I'm lobbying for "Graveyard Investigator") and the brain power required has increased exponentially.

Not only am I learning statutes about how to do my job, I'm reviewing and creating new ways to track cemetery income and outflow for permanent maintenance funds and merchandise trusts. If those phrases mean nothing to you, welcome to the Dumbass Club. They meant nothing to me last September, either.

I'm getting a handle on the newness of it all, and I suspect one day the job will be boring as Ivory soap, but at this moment in time, I don't have a brain cell to spare for being creative in the written world. I spent Monday staring at a spreadsheet trying to work out how to track 20 year payment plans of $5 a month on multiple pieces of merchandise whose costs are refigured at least once a year to maintain 50% of retail value. If that sentence means nothing to you, yeah, welcome to my world. I collapsed when I got home and stared at the ceiling for an hour before falling asleep for the night. Thankfully, I did not dream of spreadsheets.

The old File Clerk #6 position looked pretty comfy Monday. 

The simple truth is I need to stop feeling guilty for having no brain left when I come home. I wanted this job, I like the money and I intend to do it well. By October, I'll have been through every cemetery on my books at least once and I'll have (God, please let it be so) developed some kind of tracking mechanism for all of them. After that, my brain can relax a bit and start mulling other things, like lawsuits for all those cemeteries doing it wrong.

Just kidding. Except I'm not.

Happy Wednesday, dear readers. Remember to put the trash out.

2 comments:

  1. How are you going with all that driving?

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  2. "All the driving" has so far been nonexistent. Due to unforeseen circumstances, I have changed jobs slightly and the job I was hired to do (involving all the driving) will be done by someone else. I'll assist her as needed, but it should cut down considerably on my "away time."

    I am pleased with the development.

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