Sunday, November 30, 2008

Anybody Still Need Holiday Cards?

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Home for the Holidays

This weekend has a surreal length. Having achieved Thanksgiving, I'm not quite sure what to do with myself. Well, besides write and catch up on video games, but my wrists are starting to hurt. Tomorrow I get to help put up Christmas decorations. Meaning, tomorrow I get to be a part of a logistical nightmare lightly glazed with holiday cheer.

I watched Fight Club with my sister last night; she'd never seen it. I didn't realize that movie came out in 1999. Some of it is downright eerie in light of 9/11. But watching it again helped me clarify where exactly the generation gap is between me and some of the people I'm working with (who aren't really old enough for there to be a legit gap). September of 2001, I was a freshman in high school. The nineties were my childhood, and a thick ashy line marks the changeover to being a teen. I had plenty to worry about, as a teenager, plenty of issues to grapple with. I didn't have to create my own. Plus, the men of Fight Club didn't have Youtube and Myspace, where those 15 seconds of fame are closer and the middle ground between true celebrity and complete oblivion has been explosively expanded.

I think this may be a disadvantage for me. I've met some people who are genuinely angry about the state of the world today, and I am fascinated. Not coffee-wise angry, but that pissed off feeling you get when somebody trashes your stuff. These people take the world personally. I am intrigued.

Of course, the age difference could be a false correspondence, and it could something else entirely. We'll see.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Sami, come get your hot chocolate damn you! PS This is a cold ass way to get to florida

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Snow in November

So it was in the twenties all day and snowing all afternoon. My face was almost as pink as my hat from wind burn; we're excavating in the middle of an open field. But I'm working again, and it's snowing in November, so I can't help but smile. Ohio is so darn gray in November. It's our fifth season, cold and wet and monochrome, no blaze of autumn, no sparkle of winter, just dull plain old November. Except for rare days like today.

Dustin Kensrue of Thrice has a Christmas album out. I particularly like "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen." It's almost polka, except it's all acoustic guitar and something that might be a bassoon and this weird haunting near-melody that shows up around 1:40 and makes you think that the wind is whistling past your window and singing along because it's so subtle and insistent. The man is an artist. It sounds like something you'd hear from a traveling musician in a pub a few hundred years ago in a place where the locals still leave milk out for the fairies.

I should write today.

I heart my hippie neighbors.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Hypocrasy and Writer's Block

So I was reading about coffee and I came across this sentence: "Writers are another example: it is common to sit around for days or weeks waiting for inspiration to hit ('writer's block')."

My gut reaction is to sneer. I place myself firmly in the bum-glue tradition of writing- write everyday, even if it's crap, because the Muse requires a courtship. You don't lie around hoping she notices you. (This metaphor is starting to slide into a rant about "nice guys" so I'll stop now.) In any case, I reacted to this particular sentence with my normal mixture of annoyance and superiority before it occurred to me that I am completely full of it.

Not often, but every once in a while, I get too busy to write. Things interfere- like the rent- and I find myself working like a sled dog for a month or two. And looking back, I see that this just happens to correspond with sticky parts in my stories. I'll find myself horribly overworked and then I return to my chair after a bit, relieved and determined and write on like nothing happened. Like I couldn't have done it weeks ago if I'd stopped bull-shitting myself and spent that half-hour doing yoga working on my book instead.

Oops.

Monday, November 17, 2008

The Novel

I've been writing since I turned thirteen. And now, just like then, it calms me down. It bleeds me out, all the messy emotions drained onto paper for someone's amusement. I don't mean that in a bad way; the chance to tell a good story drives a lot of my decisions. I have a fear of being boring. Or bored. They're pretty much the same.

What's funny is that writing is about the most dull activity imaginable. You sit in front of your computer until the screen starts to wiggle, and hopefully you've written something by then because if you keep going you'll ruin your eyes and you can't afford glasses. But the stuff in your head (hopefully) isn't boring, and that's what it was all about.

I'd love to make a living as a writer, but the average for published novelists nowadays is only $15k a year. It's a hell of a supplemental income, but hardly enough to go it alone on. If I can manage to get published, and keep writing while doing CRM, I could be sitting pretty. Heck, I could even afford glasses!

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Limbo

Ick. Well I'm done, early even, and all that makes me feel is nervous about not having another job lined up. Yay car payments. Plus it's getting close to Thanksgiving, and my expectation is that people will try to avoid sending people out over the holiday. Which limits my immediate choices a bit.

Yelch. I feel like that girl in high school, waiting for a boy to call after the second date. I say 'that girl' because I was a compulsive overachiever and barely had time to sleep, let alone wait by the phone, back then. At least, until I discovered cell phones- take the nerves with you!

At least I got a lot done today- bought some eggs, played at rifle with my color guard friends and... well, shit. That's it. Oh, and finish this post.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Almost Done

Almost done with my first Phase I! I should probably be home by Wednesday. I'm currently at the local McDonalds, since our hotel, the Potato City Country Inn, doesn't have the internets... or any cellphone service to speak of. Yuck.

It's snowing :)

Not a Point

Fresh from mother nature's factory... Wtf!

Friday, November 7, 2008

Test Post

Mic check.

 
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