My department is such a soap opera. We have a new director who started on March 2o, and people are just going bonkers! My boss' boss is already spreading rumors about the poor guy and how bad he is, and worse yet, he found out that she is spreading the rumors.

I am really disgusted, seriously! I would be mortified if my boss found out I was spreading rumors about her. It's willfull and so evil, and it's kind of thing I thought only existed in movies. But no! It's happening right in my department. What a zoo this place is!

I am doing a little geographical escape myself and moving to a better cube. If you can't switch jobs, just move cubes. Nothing like a little location change.

Every time I look at the woman, my boss' boss who is spreading malicious rumors about her boss, I just see a really evil person. I can't help it. S thinks it's because my boss' boss is so scared that the new director guy is going to make changes that she is desperately doing this evil, evil thing. I nearly jumped out of my skin this afternoon when she came to my cube to ask me something.

I'm like, I wonder what rumors she's been spreading about me. M-Square was dead-on when he told me chances for career advancement were less than zero because I so do not get along with my boss' boss. The woman practically hates me because she was supposed to be the best writer in the group until I came along. A producer friend from LA said I should get used it, because if I ever become a paid writer I will generate a ton of hate from unpublished writers who think they can write better than me. Whatever!

God, I hope I don't ever get that desperate and scared at a job that I have to resort to spreading evil and false rumors about my boss. This company, any company I think, is way too small to be doing that kind of thing. And I'm like how did the new director guy find out? She must have told someone who she thought wouldn't rat on her. You so cannot trust anybody at work, can you?

My friend S from work came over to visit, and we had dinner at the vegan kosher chinese restaurant near my place called Shangri La. They have probably the best vegan dinner for $22 for 2 people. They serve spring rolls, soup, two dishes with purple/brown rice and fried banana for desert. It is such a deal!

S and I have so much in common. We both love blue and white dishes and London. She used to live in Penzance England, although she grew up in Montreal and all her family is in NYC. She's a long time meditator like me, and I think she was a fairy girl in one of her previous lives.

It's nice to make a new friend that you have so much in common with. Plus she's into this thing called Human Design, which is kind of astrology but totally different. She and I and projectors. She is very sensitive and very psychic.

I've only known here since December, but when we get together it's like we've know each other for years. She is writing a novel that I think will be a bestseller when she gets it published. She told me tonight about an idea for another novel she wants to write based on a woman she met and cared for who was Austrian and survivor of Auschwitz.

It was so weird to meet someone else who is as interested in Holocaust history as I am. We both think we were killed/gased during the Holocaust in a preveious life. She laughed because I say the word "Auschwitz" with a perfect german accent. I wonder if I died there. One of these days, I would like to travel to visit all the Holocaust camps to see if I have any dejavu experience at one of them. I know when I do, it will mean that I died at that particular death camp.

When I told her I thought I was flapper girl in NYC, she giggled and said she had a psychic vision of my previous life. I love music from that era, always have, even though I did not have exposure to it until I read my first F. Scott Fitzgerald short story. I used to really be into F. Scott!

I decided today that I never gave myself permission to not have a career other than a writing career, and until I give myself permission to not do well at the way I make money to pay my rent I will always hate my job. And I've hated my jobs since I decided I wanted to be an author of books and screenplays, but I never knew why.

I didn't hate the job I was between 2000 and 2004. Back then I was just happy to have a job because it was the dot-com bust, and everyone I practically knew was unemployed and looking for work. Now I have another job and every day I hate it and every day think about leaving still. It's not the job, it's me! Even if I were to get another job, I would still hate it because it wouldn't be the dream job of being an author that I long to have.

I have to do alot of inner work this week to have it be okay for me not be in a job that I'm never going to be fulfilled at, that I'll never get more than a Meets on a yearly review, and that I'll never be promoted. I don't want these types of career things anymore, I want different things. But I have to come to terms with my decision and give myself permission to be a mediocre corporate worker, so I can be a good author of books and screenplays. Maybe I've always been a mediocre corporate slave and just never knew it. I don't know.

I'm just blown away by this insight I had about myself this morning. I had no idea I was still holding on to being promoted at my job, being assigned important projects, and getting noticed and seen around the company. These are things I used to crave in my jobs and since I'm not getting them anymore, it's been freaking me out big time.

I'm so incoherent right now, I know. I'm just blown away by what should have been a simple thing to do for myself and I should have done for myself six years ago and I'm mad at myself because I didn't do this six years ago. I can't help asking myself how far would my writing have progressed had I given permission to myself to not do well at my job six years ago.

I haven't been sleeping well and now I am run down and getting sick. Not sure if it's allergies or if it's the rain, but my nose is all runny and I feel crummy. I got at 4:30 am, left home at 6 am to drive to a division meeting two hours away in Sacramento. On the drive back it started raining, and it took me 3 hours to get home. Thank god there weren't any accidents on the freeways, otherwise it would have taken longer.

I am just happy to have gotten home accident free. I know how to drive in rain, but it is still nerve racking to drive in rush hour rainy traffic. I was so proud of myself driving in rush hour traffic. I used to do it regularly, but I haven't had to drive to work in two years and I was beginning to think I was losing my commuting driving skills.

Having learnt to drive on a small island with a two-lane road, I was deathly afraid of driving in San Francisco for a long time. Five lane freeways used to just scare the heck out of me until I had to drive down the Peninsula to work every day for two years at the height of the dot com boom, when the traffic between San Francisco to the South Bay was manic and intense. Now I'm a decent commute driver, and on a rainy day like today I was glad I had that experience.

A friend is picking me up at 6 am tomorrow to drive down to Monterey for an all day seminar, so I have another long day and drive ahead of me tomorrow. Thank god I'm not driving! I am exhausted!