Who Needs to Sing When Life is an Opera?

I very rarely have disruptive physical health problems (my migraines stopped after menopause) but last night I kept waking up and tossing and turning and had mammoth sinus drainage and a headache.  I hadn't used my neti pot yesterday because I hadn't felt the need, and I have been, perhaps, eating too much Greek yoghurt (I still haven't decided whether or not the connection between dairy and mucus is a myth or not), and also, I found myself in the middle of a little online drama.

For whatever reason, I seem to be a magnet for opinionated managerial women, the way some of my female friends and acquaintances have said they are a magnet for creepy guys.  I have no idea why.  Do I seem like I need mothering?  (What I do need, is a little "fathering" as in having someone rich, strong, and physically protective in my life, whatever their biological gender!)

The good news is, that all this tossing and turning led to my having a huge insight (although what I'm going to do with it is anyone's guess).  I realized that my love of all the interpersonal drama that, as a matter of course, happens in groups that are stuck together in any setting, e.g., an office, masked how utterly meaningless I found what I actually was doing for a living.  Now that I am stuck with that and only that, it is frustratingly clear.  Actually this happened before I began working at home.  The last few years at my last job, which I had initially loved because I was supervising between 15 and 20 people and spent a lot of time hiring, training, and evaluating them, became Hell (the only time I ever seriously wanted to kill myself was my last few years there) when the lower level staff was replaced with an outsourcing service and my interaction with lower level staff was replaced with hours spent scanning Excel spreadsheets looking for error patterns.

I love group dynamics and interpersonal drama.  That's why I love opera.  That's why I was happy at 12 step meetings when I went regularly and knew everyone, and why I was happy at the LGBT counseling center.  I stopped going to the caregiving group because I was tired of the dysfunctional people and the lesbian bi-phobia, but even there there was something I could sink my teeth into. That's why I was happy in the writing class and at the Moon Circles. (I got to go to one Monday night and actually have fun in the rain!)

Now it's only me and some misplaced modifiers, more or less.

Quite frankly, if I have free time and money, the last thing I want to do with it is go somewhere to "network".  On the other hand, I may be missing something.  When I think of "freelance editorial work" I think of what I, personally, do for a living: read technical articles and clean them up, which occasionally (particularly if it's a social science publication) has the fringe benefit that I learn something about the world that might be of use to me in it.  But there's all kinds of freelance work.  Maybe I might meet someone who edits steamy romance novels.  If I could get a toe into that world maybe I would feel less dreary.  Or maybe someone would be interested in my writing.

So, OK.  I spent an hour last night on drama, and several hours tossing and turning and brooding.

Now it's back to work.  I used my Neti pot and took a migraine pill for good measure, and was pleasantly surprised at how the latter seemed to clear up my sinus headache.

My reward can be doing some work on Carmen.  That B in the "Seguidilla" is getting better and better, whether I decide to sing it in the public performance or not.