H-a-double-l-o-w-double-e-n

I've been walking around campus all day with purple-ish hair, vellum hair ornaments, and a painted face. I went simple on the clothing, wearing all black. Lynne said it's all very Cirque du Soleil. It's funny how many people have avoided looking at me. Their eyes taken me in, then skitter away. They instinctively think I'm a weird person, I'm not safe to look at.

It's been a while since the eye-skittering has happened to me. Back in college when I would wear medieval garb I would get a fair amount of skittering, but also a lot of unabashed interest.

Sad news on the career front. The instructional design job has been posted, but the starting salary is much lower than anticipated. I really wanted to apply, but my mortgage alone is $1200 a month, so trying to live on $2300 a month before taxes would be difficult. I could take a 30% cut, but 50% is a little too little.

I guess I'm going to teach next semester. (sigh) I was looking forward to a break. I wanted to ditch my coordination responsibilities. I wanted an excuse to quit dealing with the difficult and painful people I've managed to surround myself with. I wanted to have some fun, and create things for a change instead of pushing paper all day.

So my next step is to cut back on my campus responsibilities, and come up with a new plan for rejuvenation. What can I do to make myself more creative and happier?

Do I even know what makes me happy any longer?