It is Finished

I'm done. I finished in the wee hours of Sunday morning and celebrated by watching the sun rise and writing a letter to a friend. If not for the love and support of friends and family (and by family, I mean my mother) I would not have seen this through. Definitely. I was so ready to throw in the towel a million points along the way. Every time I felt angry or frustrated or cheated (which was like, all the time).

And towards the end I worked in a vacuum, with no reply for the stuff I sent, no acknowledgement, nothing.

Note to self: Working in vacuum is hard.

But I did it. There was not one point in the journey when I felt everything coalesce, come together. Before this, no matter what I've done, what I've finished, at some point, things coalesced. Here, it was just more misery, one weary foot in front of the other, wading through mud.

But I finished. Every night, I worked till six or seven in the morning. Till my eyes were scratchy and my neck and shoulders ached. Till the whole bloody world dissolved into a single flaming cursor on the screen. Until I could have thrown my laptop across the room and screamed until I passed out.

When I sent the final profiles, I said in the email that I would be stopping at the office to drop off all the material that had been clogging my room these past four months. Of course, it wasn't acknowledged and I had no idea of my reception. Shouldn't have worried. Mr Nothing If Not Fake (or we call it civil), met me with every appearance of friendliness, helped me carry all the stuff from my car into his office, asked me to send him the interview transcripts and then said he would get my cheque ready and if I didn't want to come collect it (if I wasn't back from my road trip) he would bank it in. So I sent him the transcripts and my bank details and as usual, he acknowledged nothing.

I do think I'm going to be paid. There's no reason to drag out this unfortunate connection any further. The question is when.

On another note, have finished Moll Flanders and moved on to Catch 22. Hmmm...Moll seems to have been very adept at lying. She was a survivor who told everyone what they most wanted to hear. And never got at anything directly.

Frankly I think the book is brilliant. I never quite take to Moll (I don't like prevaricators but then they seem to get through life a whole lot better than I do), but I think the way she sums everyone up, the way she manipulates everyone, the way she always ends up coming out on top no matter what her crime...well, she's a true survivor.

Maybe my problem is that I've never had to live by my wits.