Well, it’s Saturday night, I’m blogging, I got food on the way, I got the fan pointed at my fever’d brow, and all is right in the world.

More or less.

Tonight’s title refers to experience I just had dealing with my own compulsions.

See, I was all set to get my beloved Lamb Rogan Josh from the Tandoori King Cafe when I got to the end of the process and saw that ordering $15 worth of food was going to cost me $27.

Talk about sticker shock. And yet, I ordered the exact same dish at the exact same price before and had no problem with it.

So what changed?

Me, basically. See I have been ordering exclusively from places that offer free delivery on orders over $20 lately, and that has radically rearranged my since of how much I expect to get for my money.

So what was a perfectly acceptable price before is now too much.

Ahhhh, now it makes sense. Do you like my guru-style trickery?

So I ordered my usual from the Kingswood Pub instead. That consists of their beef dip sandwich (so good), with fries and gravy, plus their pita and vegetable platter.

It adds up to just over $20 and thus qualifies me for free delivery. Then I do my little bit of mathemagic to make it come out to $25 even, and a very nice meal is on its way.

The website said. “We received your order, but it’s going to take a litle more time than usual ” as usual.

Fine. I pretty much expect to wait $45 for whatever I order. It’s no big deal, I mean, I am busy blogging anyhow.

Just gives me more time to finish my blogging before the food comes.

I like to turn it into a little race, just for fun.

On the career front, I officially launched myself on Writer’s Work today. Unlikely anything will come of it – all it turned out to be was some kind of “Hello” message that goes… um. somewhere… and not the rebirthing/decloaking ceremony I had hoped for.

Now, I have the job listings open in another tab and I am in the process of building up the nerve (or gall, or wherewithal, or whatever) to dive in and start looking for work.

It’s harder than it sounds. I have to climb over a lot of rocky outcroppings of self-loathing , lack of confidence in myself, and the strong urge to flee in order to do it.

Every depressive fights a silent war every moment of every day. It might seem like we’re doing nothing, or wasting our lives playing video games (ahem), or whatever, but that’s only because our inner struggles take up so much of our energy and time that we have little left for such frivolities as actually dealing with the world outside our skulls.

It’s so much more than feeling sad.

So I know going into it that I will have to struggle to get past all the jobs that intimidate me and make me feel small and weak and pathetic because they are way beyond my capacities, and stay in the game long enough to find the kind of creative writing for which I am actually qualified and can actually do.

I am feeling fluttery and nervous just thinking about it.

But it WILL be done. I am determined to make that happen, and I am one stubborn motherfucker, so it will take much more than my usual psychological horrors to stop me.

I’m getting tired of their act anyhow. I know they are full of shit. They know they are full of shit. Their antics have grown stale and uninspired and I am more than ready to just leave the theater and get the fuck on with my life.

I just have to crawl over their corpses to do it. Fine by me.

Look, not all of my metaphors are cute.

Somewhere on that site, there is a job with my name on it. Something I can grab and run with and knock people’s socks off with how creative and fresh and inspired my approach to the task is and how delightful reading me can be.

Because I am an amazing writer. It’s (literally) crazy how often I have to remind myself of that. Many people over the years have told me how goddamned funny my writing is, and that has to be something you can take to the bank.

Speaking of which.

Get this : so I cashed my $520 check yesterday, and deposited $450 onto my reloadable visa for future spending online.

Fast forward to last night, where, on a whim, I decided I wanted to see that nice fat balance on my card, so I go to check it online.

Only to see there is only $10 on the card. Um, WTF???

Once the panic dulled down, I checked my checking account, and thank goodness, it shows the check cashing and the paying of the “bill” that is the $450 going to my reloadable visa card.

So I know that it didn’t disappear into a black hole or anything. There is a “paper trail” to follow. It’s just that for some reason, the money is hung up somewhere between my bank and my reloadable visa.

I suspect the weekend is part of it. As insane and inane as it sounds in this day and age, there are still banking transactions that, despite being entirely electronic. still can’t happen on the weekend.

So I am not freaking out. Not yet. I expect that this will all resolve itself on Monday.

But if it doesn’t, there better be a pretty damned good explanation or I am going to rain calm, polite Canadian hell on people till I get my goddamned money.

I don’t care whose fault it is. I don’t care that the reloadble visa is actually run by someone other than Vancity. I don’t care if my case is not someone’s job or if that is not their department. I don’t care if someone is having a bad day or “just can’t” right now.

I will lean on whoever I can get hold of and refuse to let up until they send me to someone who can actually help.

Because while I am not a materialistic person per se, I am a Taurus, and we have very strong deep feelings about our money.

And God, the Devil, and Vishnu’s older sister can’t save whoever thinks to deny it to us.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.