My brain has been on autopilot all day. Today is not a good day for autopilot buni, because there are things at work demanding attention. None of it explicitly involves me, but all of it involves my department and the fact that one of the applications we're supporting doesn't work the way it's supposed to work, or even the way we were told it would work. This is a lot of shit rolling past my desk, and right now I'm just glad that it's not stopping on top of me on the way.

Part of the problem I'm having is that I slept very poorly last night. I had a dream about Aly... the first one I remember, in fact. We were in a house I don't recognize, but it reminded me of my friend Carmen's parents' house when I was little. I was talking with someone, and then all of a sudden Aly was just there, wearing a blue-jean jacket and a tan ankle-length skirt with boots. She looked post-transition to my brain, though there wasn't
really anything changed about her other than her attire. I remember feeling extremely embarrassed about having given away or sold all of her belongings, and I mumbled something about this. She smiled and made a dismissive wave of her hand—human—and said she didn't care. I asked if she was back, and she said, "forever," and then walked out of the room. I waited for a few seconds, unsure if I had just seen what I thought I had, and then I
ran after her, but she had vanished.

I remember later in the same dream trying to talk to someone about the experience, that she had visualized to me and then disappeared, and the general opinion I remember getting back was something on the order of "yeah, that happens sometimes," but nobody would explain or tell me anything more. In fact, I don't remember anything beyond this, but it was still a very unsettling experience.

The alarm clock dragged me painfully out of bed after that. I snoozed three or four times, I think, dragging myself vertical around 07h40 and throwing myself together in a hurry after that. I still made it out the door on time, but I have got to do something to figure out why I'm waking up so hard. In this case, it's probably because the alarm dragged me out of REM sleep, which is always hard on me. I need a better alarm clock.

Before that, though, I need money. Because of a budgetary screwup and a broken washing machine, I'm out two-hundred on my last paycheck that I hadn't planned on spending. I could theoretically recoup that by telling my roommates I was hitting them up for forty each—not fifty because I count Jessie as a separate live body living under the roof, even if we are married—but I feel somewhat scummy about such things. Generally, I don't like passing on bills to people unless they agree to pay them, which in this case means oil, electricity, water/sewer/trash, and rent. Everything else is out of my pocket, because that's the agreement and I don't
intend to change it. At any rate, my money ran out early this paycheck, so my account's currently in the red while I wait for my paycheck to clear tomorrow morning.

I've managed to get both of the companies sitting in adverse status on my credit report to tell me verbally that they'll change their reporting to say that I'm in good standing, but so far neither has done so. MBNA should be
changing over on the seventh. Chase could be any time between now and June. All I can really do is wait until July 1 and hope that when I order my credit report with score it comes with the corrected information on it. Until then I can't really do anything. At that time, I have to decide whether I want to screw over my credit for seven years by applying for a debt consolidation program and cut the amount I owe people, or whether I want to tough it out and risk more adverse statuses by getting a new balance transfer card and doing another money shuffle to lower my monthly interest rates. Either way, I'm stuck paying six-hundred dollars per month in finance charges between my two credit cards for probably the next three months.

I've looked into debt consolidation loans, but my credit score is too low to support any program that will give me enough money to actually be worthwhile and pay for my back debts.

Ah well. This next paycheck is going to pay mortgage and a bit is going onto one of the cards, the more demanding of the two. Everything else is going into a bucket not to be touched except for emergencies, the start of my financial cushion in case something happens. That doesn't hit the bank account until tomorrow, though, and I've got other bills to pay as soon as possible. Hopefully I'm getting money from my other roommates soon for rent and such, but this really isn't about them. They're fine, really.

Ultimately, it boils down to a feeling of Sisyphean debt. I've dug myself far enough into the hole that there doesn't feel like a good way out for years and years and years, and events are conspiring to shovel in on top of me as
fast as I try to dig out. I'm making more money now than I ever have in the past, I have two people actively paying rent to me and increasing my funds, but somehow I'm still coming up at the end of every pay period short because of past financial obligations and continuing crises, but if I finally admit to the world that I can't carry all of this debt and I go to a credit counsellor, I screw my credit rating for the next seven years.

So... even years, or potentially a lifetime? There's no good answer to this.

If this is what you ask of me, then let me be proud to give it.