How Charming (sarcasm) in Book Five: Working Through the Maze 2018

The world never ceases to disappoint.

Getting the obvious out of the way first, the bosses have not arrived to the office and it is 9:30. A good hour after they require their staff to be present. The only thing on their morning schedule that could have possibly prevented them from arriving? Pay mortgage. Now, I’ll admit, I haven’t got a mortgage but is such an activity truly so labor intensive? Bah.

Today will likely be another day of emptiness, frustration, and impatience.
Emptiness in that my bosses have taken to mostly entirely ignoring that I exist in the basement office.
Frustration in that, if they remember, they often ask me to do something of such inane ridiculousness as to border on offensive. Either that or they mention that they know we need to work on transitioning me out of the firm and we’ll talk about it “at some point.”
Impatience could just as easily been mixed with frustration. I cannot control other people. It sounds simple but this is a psychological element that has taken me a long time to come to terms with. Therefore, after I’ve done what I can… if the other person/people don’t do as they should, I can’t be blamed (by a rational adult-like person). SO… what things have I done what I could and require waiting?
(1) According to the Iowa Court Filing Master List, I still have 9 cases that I am responsible for. However, I filed my withdrawal on all of them and the court has processed that withdrawal. What is now required is a judicial stamp saying, “The current attorney is absolved of all responsibilities from this day forward.
(2) Attorney return matters. Again with Texas and New York. All I can do there is continuously and repeatedly call these individuals until I am considered an aggravating nuisance. And then the really fun thing? If they try to call me back next week when I won’t be working for this law firm.
(3) The State Public Defender’s Office is required to pay those private attorneys who voluntarily become “substitute counsel for the Public Defender’s Office” (attorneys who take cases when the PD is too busy or has a conflict). I presently am waiting to be paid for almost $5,000 worth of work from them. My oldest billing that they have not approved is March 20, my most recent is yesterday. They have THREE PEOPLE to do the billing audits FOR THE ENTIRE STATE OF IOWA. So… I’m not exactly flabbergasted that they haven’t approved those bills yet. However, Chinese Boss (who has never worked with SPDO before) is on my ass every once in a while because they haven’t paid us yet. Yeah. That’s what happens when you have literally thousands of attorneys submitting billing and only 3 people looking them over. When White Boss and I bitch about the Judicial Budget being cut; this is part of that.

Now to add to the waiting game… I have attempted to investigate a potential refugee site for us Open Diary rejects who have now been spat from the welcoming womb of Prosebox. However, to access the site, I must provide an e-mail address. Having several E-Mail addresses strictly to separate out the various elements of my life (Work Place, Professional Career, Family, and Other) I gave them my oldest e-mail address, referenced in the parenthetical as “Other.” As this is my oldest e-mail address, I’m not likely to forget the proper spelling as I’ve had this e-mail address for approximately 17 years. I gave this website my e-mail address and their servers said “We’ve just sent you a verification e-mail”. I have checked my e-mail thoroughly and it is not present (in Filtered, Other, Main, nor Junk). Thinking, unlikely as it was, that perhaps I spelled the E-Mail incorrectly, I attempted to submit the e-mail again. This time being very careful of letter placement and capitalization. Again, the server popped an auto-message saying “We’ve already sent a verification to this e-mail address. We only do this once per day.”

Frankly, if thousands of Prosebox Refugees are all trying to go to this website at once… problems responding/performing/etcetera are to be expected. But it also makes me worry about a repeat of the repeated event. Open Diary closed down. So Prosebox was suddenly swarmed with many many more users. Prosebox is closing down. Thus, this website may suddenly be swarmed with many many more users. If they can’t handle the extra population, they too may shut down. I know nothing of web building or maintaining a server but I promise… if I do find a suitable home to continue writing… and THAT home shuts down as well? I’ll use whatever wealth I may have accumulated and whatever connections and influence may still remain to build a site that can do its damned job.

Even without being able to access the bloody website, though, I have already discovered that the inclusion of pictures is reserved strictly for those that pay donations. So I suppose my Facebook will have to make do for a Health and Wellness visual diary. And gone will be jokes like

or

I’ve looked into a few more places. I realize that eventually wherever I end up, I’ll grow to become comfortable and accepting of just as I did here. But honestly… if I can’t do the “multiple books” thing so I can have (1) Personal Current (2) Intellectual Debate (3) Personal Archive (4) Sexy Stories (5) Creative Endeavors… I’ll be sad. It was really nice having delineation like that.
The idea of just… writing entry after entry all on one page in one book… it feels too messy.

I have now tried 2 sites. Goodnight Journal and My-Diary.org. Goodnight Journal feels a bit too basic for me. Much more like the Old School Blog posts of a MySpace than a fully formed or complete Journal space. However, at least Goodnight Journal worked. I sent a verification item to My-Diary.org at the beginning of the morning. It has still not done anything. I wrote to the Web Host explaining that in the days to come, she/he would be seeing many more visitors all trying to test pages to find the right home. PLEASE fix your verification process.

Hell. If I do have to use something that feels like an Old School MySpace page? I may just create an abundance of identities instead. Like an individual suffering from prolonged Multiple Personalities and wanting each personality to have their own private space. So… yes, I suppose. What I am saying is… I grew to absolutely love and adore the layout for this website. It was built perfectly for my needs. Knowing it is going away fills me with sadness, anger, and confusion.

Out of desperation, I checked Open Diary again. Can’t do it. Honestly. You can’t have a subscription service that people are going to trust after already having a paid service where you screwed paying customers. An allegory:
Many people used a bank. The bank, in order to stay profitable, asked their customers if the bank could use the customer’s money in order to fund repairs and business for the bank. Some people refused, it was their money and they wanted to maintain strict control over it. Some, however, realized that the bank needed funds to survive and agreed. However, the bank could not stay afloat and announced it was going to close down. The people who had refused took all of their money out of the bank. But the people who had agreed were not allowed to retrieve their money. It was all spent. Several months later, the Bank re-opened and sent letters to their former customers. “Don’t worry,” the Bank said, “For those who still had money with us, that money is still there. However, if anyone wishes to use our bank, they will be required to agree that we can use their funds.”

That is what happened in my eye. OD asked for money, got the money, screwed people anyway. They came back, demanded money… and expect people to think that they won’t be screwed?

It looks like from April 2nd to April 6th, I’ll be finishing all of my sexy stories and other entries that live in my Drafts Folder. Then from 7th to 14th, I’ll be downloading and trying to keep properly sorted. Maybe I’ll just have to write “for myself.” Damn, I’m going to miss feedback though. I’m going to miss reading about other people. I’m going to miss all of you.

It is funny. One of the things I was going to write today if the announcement hadn’t gone up? “I’ve been reading but not noting much. My own shit is a bit too heavy at present to feel like a good note-giver. But I’ve always wondered what the best etiquette was. Is it better to leave notes with no substance, the empty note with just the user name, to let the person know you’re reading? Or is that silly?”