Vampires

I’m exorcising my vampires this week. I find that I have to do a vampire purge every couple of years or so, they tend to sneak into my friend circles and linger there, draining the life out of everyone.

Mostly, for me, this means eliminating all non-reciprocal relationships.

The friends that always seem to have a favor to ask, or those that you willingly help out again and again and then the one time you need something from them, they are too busy.

The people you always suggest get-together times or things to do and they can never find time to hang out.

The ones YOU always have to call and email and never the other way around.

The people who can only return your calls when they are in the car, like you are some kind of human solitaire game.

Basically any relationship where you put in the lion’s share of effort and the other person does what’s “convenient” for them (as in they have no one else to go drinking with and bitch to after their break-up when they ignored you for six months for the new boyfriend). Consider it my early new year’s resolution.

Add any relationship with someone who makes you feel insignificant and unimportant. Or any relationship where the interactions repeatedly leave you feeling angry, disappointed or hurt. GOOD-BYE! Oh, like the person who is ALWAYS 30 minutes late, leaving you standing in the cold, sitting in restaurants alone or missing the movie, again because they are selfish, disorganized control freaks.

So in addition to mentally erasing these people from my to-do list, I also unsubscribed from 14 blogs yesterday and 22 Twitter people.

I know I’m a hardliner. There’s only so much I can take before I’m just done. In some cases, it might take a few months; in others, 36 years.

Of course, I’m pissed off for other reasons too. Not the least of which is that two magazines have paid me with worthless paper checks this month amounting to $1000 in funds that I cannot access. It’s been a constant struggle trying to find a way to cash these checks or get paid in a meaningful way – and meanwhile, Alaska Air canceled a charge for my most recent ticket and then billed my account twice, overdrawing me by $300 (because I keep an exact amount of money in my account that will be used for each transaction I make). Another company used a telephone number for address verification so when I put in the wrong phone number, it declined my transaction and quadruple billed my account for four charges of $65.00. Does anyone know of a good, online global bank??? For crying out loud.

I’m at my wits end. Add this to the fact that in the afternoon there is some sort of serious surge in network traffic, making Skype almost unusable because of a huge delay between speaking and hearing. This means I have to spend money and hours of time calling these companies and being disconnected and calling back, and not being heard only to call back, or breaking up and being hung up on, just to try to sort out one of the issues. Yeah, I’m living the dream life people, but it’s not without it’s special challenges.

Did I mention I have four days until I need to turn in the book? FOUR days? I still have so, so, so much to do.

When I was at the last eco-resort, I was talking to the yogi who told me about this tribe down in the rainforests of Chile that do a healing ritual where you take this drug like peyote. “It basically stops you from thinking for four days,” he said. I’ve got to get me some of that because I would really, really like to not think for four days (obviously not THESE four days, but perhaps the four after).