Jenna's House of Idiosyncrasies Version 10.0 [Focus.]

My joke about my life now is the kind that is funny because it is painful. Right about the time I was going to graduate from high school, lo these many years ago, there were two things I was certain of: I hadn't chosen a career yet, but I knew there was no way it would involve websites. I also knew that no matter what, once I moved out of Winder, I would never, ever move back.

This, Internet, should teach you a small but important lesson about hubris.

Not only have I been building an entire business out of websites for almost three years, but about 8 weeks ago, experiencing financial hardship, I moved back to Winder. I now split my time between my parents' home and a housesitting gig for a family friend. I actually commute to my gym in Athens to work out with my trainer once a week, so great is my commitment to my muscles. Outside of that, however, the move has proved to be fairly isolating. I was pretty much decimated fiscally when I decided to make the move back, so at the present I have no money to buy gas or go get a beer with my friends, and worse, I have no cell phone.

This is the longest I have been without a phone since I was 17, and while I understand that there was a world before cell phones, I have to tell you that these days, the world is set up for mobile but connected people. So great is my longing for a new phone that I have dreamed of the one I am saving up for multiple times. Editorially I have always vowed to stay far away from gadgetry as a topic of my writing, but Internet, that should simply highlight how important this has become.

Pretty much all of my internal dialog is consumed by financial planning now, trying to figure out which bill to pay off when and how does that effect when and what I eat — and eventually, when I'll be able to move home to Athens — and while it is important to me, it hardly makes for compelling prose, so until I get obsessed with a man again, or get really depressed, or have some great news to announce, I have a feeling I am going to be quite humdrum for awhile. I hope, Internet, that you'll stick with me all the same.

So, Internet, it's been a pretty okay summer. I've been working hard, in more ways than one, and it is starting to pay off in small, incremental ways, although it is a hard road to hoe, not to mention slow going.

The business is coming up, even if it is at a sluggish pace. I finally feel fully confident in my skills, and my ability to sell those skills to just about anybody. I haven't gotten any aghast reactions to my rates in a while, which means I'm selling to the correct market, at last. Now I just have to find the time to seek out more of that market.

I joined a gym a few months ago. I pour lots of time into walking briskly on a treadmill, and once a week I see a personal trainer who kicks my ass. My first week, I had personal training sessions on both Monday and Wednesday, and on Friday morning I was slowly waking up when I asked my half-awake self, Was I in a car accident?

Nope, I realized. I'm just that sore. Read More »

It is pretty bold of me, I know, to assume you were deliberately seeking me out. However, considering the search engines haven't even found this at once very old and very new site, I can be pretty confident that's why you're here. Because you were looking.

Or you asked me in person where all my writing went. Either way.

I moved this site off of jennatollerson.com and made that page a stark, simple, one page directory of the things I want people to see first. I have often gone off on long, oratorical screeds about how there is no point hiding anything, how it is best to be your own publicist and make public the dirt before someone else does.1 However, having a dot-com that bears my name meant no matter what I did to push it down, it always appeared at the top of search results. And no, I'm not uptight, and I don't care if people read the sometimes dark, sometimes funny, sometimes melodramatic rants and raves I've put down here for the last seven years.

I just don't want it to be the first thing they read.

I was explaining to someone the other day that practically my entire business is built on the sheer force of my personality. Its about building trust, letting people see that you are easy to talk to, and a pleasure to work with, and responsible, and available. And its a lot easier to get people to accept how nutty you truly are after you have proved those things first.

This site is not a secret. Its just no longer the centerpiece of my online presence. Which is just as well. I have gotten terrible about keeping it updated.

1. 1. I'm not the only one who feels this way.

I drove away, looking up at the Cheshire Cat moon smiling down at me, wondering if I would see him again.

This is the thought I had, word for word, driving down the road on Sunday night. This writing thing is sort of a gift and a curse, because you often find yourself narrating your real life as it happens in bombastic and high-handed prose. Even the phrase “bombastic and high-handed” is fairly bombastic and high-handed. That whole sentence was like a snake swallowing its own tail.

The point is, I pretty much spend my whole day doing this, relaying this ongoing commentary back to myself, seeing the words appear before me like a close-up shot of a old fashioned type writer in action. I've been doing this my whole life, and while it has tapered back significantly in the past few years, it still happens a lot. Lately all I've been getting are turns of phrase like this one, barely fit for a bargain bin first novel.

However there is nothing of substance to write about lately. I'm working a ton, and I must admit it is a blast. At least once a day I'm typing or uploading or dragging-and-dropping and it just hits me like a freight train: I love what I do. There was a time when I thought I'd mostly be out of the web business by this age, but apparently I'm just getting started, and the extra cool thing is I'm really fucking good at it.

When I'm not working my brain spins overtime parsing this “he–loves–me / he–loves–me–not” drama, which is like something we've all seen on some network comedy somewhere, young career woman in city, focused on work but looking for love, with generous layers of sexual tension between her and the male lead. Except not as funny as that show you saw, and, unbelievably, more pathetic. They don't ultimately get together because he doesn't love her, and without the Ross and Rachael/Carrie and Mr. Big/Buffy and Angel on–again–off–again mess, the whole thing loses steam.

I'm trying to get that show canceled so I can move something else into that time. Maybe something educational. That would be good.

Each year, we at the house take an intimate look at the last 12 months, in a frighteningly frank way. This is to keep things honest, despite anything else that may have been written. This year it seems more important that ever, because we haven't been checking in as much.

As always, if you think you may be offended by cursing, graphic sexuality, talk about death, destructive relationships, or substance abuse, among other topics, turn away now. Have some kittens.

In addition, if you feel that such talk might ruin your holiday, save the read until after the new year.

And now, on with the show. Read More »

Work is keeping me extremely busy. These days I'm mostly working 10-14 hour days, followed by going to bed early and then getting up to do it all over again. Making calls, responding to emails, doing research, and then some coding. Due to some rather sudden, unprecedented success, I'm having a rather difficult time striking a reasonable work-life balance, and the craziest thing I have done this week so far is singing while making shampoo mohawks in the shower.

Watch out world, I'm unpredictable.

The other fun side effect to having completely overbooked myself is one morning this week, I had an intense anxiety attack, complete with a rapid heartbeat, dizziness, and an entirely overwhelming feeling of despair. I was immediately convinced that I had gone into the wrong line of work, that I was never going to get everything done, that all my clients would end up angry with me, and that I would be sued out of existence. Not that my business would be sued out of existence, but my very person — that I would slowly disintegrate as each wronged party took their pound of flesh.

As you can imagine, this was terrifying. I immediately called my father so he could talk some sense into me. When he didn't pick up on the first try I started crying as if I was trapped in a room with some kind of psychotic killer and no one was answering my call for help.

Thankfully Dad did pick up on the second try, and listened to me rant about my general panic for about 45 minutes. Then I felt mostly okay, and got back to work. The only part that really sucks is that wasn't the first time that happened, and it probably won't be the last.

But hey! At least I'm not running out of work anytime soon.

Me, earlier: “You know you are like the third person this week who has told me that they're working up to a point where they'll want me to work for them exclusively?”

New, souped-up gmail with an inbox at zero (down from at least 200). Today has been a good day.

When you spend your entire work life in your email, this is something worth celebrating.

I'm not feeling all that great, Internet. The past few weeks I've been focused on my own broken heart, and I've been working in an unenthusiastic way, not concentrating as easily or finishing as fast as I have in the past. I also think I was probably due for a little bit of burn out, considering the pace I've been keeping and the stress that never goes away. So I slept a lot (I told some people whose calls I didn't answer that I “took a coma”), I stared at the TV a lot, I smoked a lot.

This week, however, I was ready to pull myself back up and pour myself into my work once more. I got a pep talk from my mentor, who has been through all the same things. Yesterday afternoon, after hitting the proverbial wall trying to make progress on an overdue project for weeks, the universe gave me a break and I was able to start moving forward. I was so excited to be back on track.

Then, the setback. Yesterday evening I had a sore throat and some sneezing, today it has turned into a full blown cold, the kind with dizziness and lightheadedness and permanently chapped lips. I have a headache, I can't breathe, and most devastating, I can't think clearly at all. Right now my mind is a big marshmallow when it comes to tackling the hard techie stuff.

There is something horribly unjust about getting a cold in the dead middle of the summer. On the one hand, it does prove what I was always trying to tell my mother when I was a teenager — that leaving the house with wet hair in the winter is not what makes you sick. On the other hand, why now? When the weather is perfect and people are having parties and my professional queue has been backed up for weeks? Why not in the giant holes of time I had last November or February? In the winter, when it makes sense? That's all I ask.

I know I'm not eloquent today. I'm just grumpy.

My business has been featured in D-Web Magazine, which as I understand it is based in New York. Fancy. The article about me (which is really just a simple Q&A) is here, and my logo is on the front page twice. All at least marginally exciting, one must admit.