Howdy, Stranger

Seven plus months in at the new job, and it feels like home. A home filled with book-loving, liberal Whedonites. Really, you can't beat that. And today, due to Sandy, a home in which there's not much to do. So, I've returned. I have a back-log of lost words to post in the hopefully near future, but in the meantime, I wanted to post a small update. I feel more "me" here than I can recall feeling anywhere else, and it's been...therapeutic, I guess I'd say. It's been that, more than any of the past (recent or far) traumas, that's gotten the not-diet on the right track, a fact I find most interesting.

I'm still looking at too-expensive apartments in Ithaca, and occasionally giving myself a mental whack upside the head for wanting to increase my expenses exponentially just because it will *gasp* make me happy. I mean, really. The nerve. Who does such a thing? Still, given my plans for less than two years from now, it doesn't seem necessarily prudent. I'm trying to focus on getting the house into decent enough shape that I can rent or sell it, depending on what I'm permitted. It's a bit overwhelming, and I'm honestly a bit puzzled as to what the big hooplah is over home ownership. It's kind of a (major) pain in the ass, especially when you're gone twelve hours a day, five days a week and need work done on it. One thing at a time becomes...no thing at a time. Oh, and please don't look at my lawn, it's embarrassing. Thanks evah so much. Yep, I just mis-spelled on purpose. It's that kind of day. 

Let's see, what else...I'm back to research mode on the book, now that the second draft is mostly done. I think there's a lot of work ahead to bring it from pretty decent to really good, so I'm hunkering down for the long haul and reading everything I can get my hands on. I consider it a sign of progress or maturation or something that I'm finally willing to actually read books on writing, actually.

And now some work has freed up, so I shall get back to it. I'll try to post more frequently now that I feel a bit more settled in and accustomed to getting up at 5:30am as opposed to going to sleep then. I still maintain it's not natural, though. 

Stay shiny, my friends.

Giddy-up

I love my job. I really do. It's perfect - I get to play with books all day. Some of them are really cool books, too. Big books, small books, cool new books, really cool really old books...it's awesome. I'm still trying to weigh seven days of my life commuting a year vs. $6,000 or so more rent per year, but I'm not worrying about it. I'm just looking, and when the right place comes along, I'll be ready.

Is this really all it takes? A good job, a great therapist and letting go? Who knew?

Listening to: The Eels

Reading: The Selected Letters of William Faulkner (sorry, Billy, but they're interesting) 

WOOOOO!!!

I got the job! Cornell University Olin Library! A library! With a coffee shop in it!!! Livin' da dream, biyatches!

Another Step Backwards

I hate deleting pages - really, really hate it. It's more than just the loss of progress. It's the admission that what I wrote sucks. Because of my supreme reluctance to get rid of what's obviously not working, I have a tendency to pause. And then pause some more. I wind up spending weeks (or sometimes months) staring at the offending paragraph or chapter or sometimes even word, trying to think of a way in which these offending letters can be rearranged in a more pleasing manner. Then, finally, I click the button. I feel guilty. I shuffle the words off to my discarded ideas folder and apologize for removing them from their home. I'm so sorry, Garden State School of Arts & Sciences - I'm going public school after all. Better luck next time. 

Finally

It's been weeks since I've worked on the book. I think I needed distance from it. I needed to be able to look at the first fifty or so pages with fresh eyes before I could move on to the rest of the third draft. I don't have much hope of being able to finish the book by the end of the year, but I'm still going to try. At any rate, things seem to be going well today and as I have five hours and thirty-seven minutes left before I can leave and avoid having to pay for parking, there's plenty of time to get work done. 

Listening to: Pandora's Indie Singer/Songwriter station

Re-reading: Harry Potter series (yeah, I know...)

Shiny

I had an interview today for a job at one of Cornell University's thousand or so libraries. It's a long shot - they're interviewing an official crapload of people, so I'm not expecting anything. It's pretty much my ideal job, long commute aside. Books, a coffee shop IN the library...can't beat that. 

There was a funny moment during the interview though, when we were talking about my language skills. One of the interviewers asked me why I'd started studying Chinese and I stammered for a second before admitting it was for a kind of dorky reason and then said the one, magic word: Firefly. Lucky for me, two of the interviewers were fellow Browncoats, and we all had a chuckle. Moments like those definitely put a smile on my face. I still don't really have a feel for how it went, but I'm slightly hopeful despite the large number of applicants. 

Anyhoo...I'm off. 

I Swear I'm Not Paranoid, Part One

I've watched too many movies and television shows, I know. At some point a few weeks or months ago, a frightening thought occurred to me: what if instead of a nuclear attack, the next great (possibly apocalyptic) event is instead an EMP weapon? Think of what would happen to our country without electricity. Millions would die. We live in a world in which we are becoming increasingly dependent upon technology for just about everything. We don't read map - we have GPS. We don't write letters - we have cell phones, email, texts and just about every method you could think of to make communication less and less personal. I hope I'm not the only one that finds it frightening. 

Even before this thought occurred to me, I've always been a person who appreciated doing things by hand. I love hand-made furniture. I own a 60 year-old camera. I used to milk goats. I like the thought that if I had to, I could survive in a technology-less world. I still have my phone/laptop/tv, but I'm not particularly attached to them. I like reading actual books. With paper. You remember those, right? I like to write letters - I just don't have anybody to whom I can write them. I'd grow my own vegetables if plants didn't wither if I even came near them. 

I can't get out of my head the video that made the rounds recently of a one year-old girl who kept trying to turn the pages of a magazine like an ipad and didn't seem to get why it wasn't working. That's about the saddest commentary on our society that I can imagine, and it doesn't seem safe to not be teaching our children how to survive in a tech-free world. What's so wrong with a card catalogue? With riding a bike? With reading a map? With actual face-to-face conversations? 

And don't worry, the irony of typing this on my laptop to be posted online is not lost on me...

Procrastination Party

It's a nice day, and while I managed to drag myself up to Ithaca, I'm sitting here sifting through that probably mostly fake auto-correct site and laughing so hard I'm annoying the woman with the ugly shoes sitting next to me. (Yeah, see, that's what you get for shooting me dirty looks, you sartorially challenged meany.)

I thought before about changing the direction of this blog to one that will focus more on the process of writing a novel, but since that will apparently take five years...Plus, I like writing down my weird dreams and my occasionally snarky musings. 

If anybody had told me that it would take this long to write a book, though, I might have been deterred. Well, probably not, but I would have thought twice about it. While drinking coffee. And playing Sims. Yeah, that could be a reason. I just don't know how to plow through a section when I know it needs a LOT of work, or skip through a section for a time when I can't figure out how to begin. So, it's taken me a scary amount of time, but I'm finally at 200 pages. Booyah. I'm still telling myself I'm 2/3 of the way there since my original goal was to write 300 pages, but the reality is the book will probably be closer to 400. Anyhoo...those auto-corrects won't read themselves. 

Lightning (Bug) - In which the first paragraph is inexplicably centered...

As I am nearing the 200 page mark in my book, I find myself both befuddled that I have made it this far and nervously excited about the next step. It is rare that I show anybody my work before it is finished (probably why I never show my work - it's never finished,) and moving from that to foisting my work off on anybody I can get to read it and offer (kindly phrased) constructive criticism is somewhat (i.e., extremely) nerve-wracking.

That wasn't why I came back here today, though. It's been months, and a lot has changed - although on the surface it seems like things are pretty much the same. I remain in my house, and while I am growing to like the home itself, I am steadfast on my position regarding its location. However, the realization that renting the house as opposed to my original desire to sell it would bring in more income over the long haul and thus free me from the guilt of moving as soon as humanly possible has engendered a certain amount of contentment regarding my situation. 

So, I am writing more, which makes me feel more like my creative self as well as reading and listening to classical music, which makes me feel more like my intellectual self. I continue to study Spanish and Chinese, although not as often as I'd like. I think the guilt resulting from my feelings regarding the house it put me into a funk for a few months, from which I've very gratefully emerged. I have narrowed down my geographical relocation to either D.C. or San Francisco and areas of California north of it (as opposed to towards the LA region, which I have no desire to even visit, really.) The house will be fixed in the spring, and hopefully I can continue my work with K. over the phone if I do relocate to the west coast. 

So why am I here? Maybe in part I miss sending my thoughts out into the world now that I am proudly Facebook free. I've also been reading articles about employers moving from traditional resumes to looking at potential employees web/social media presence, so I'm looking into moving the blog to the domain name I purchased years ago and trying to transform it into a "real" writing-oriented website. I'm cataloging my progress and holding onto it as a talisman against Elmiraitis. And now, back to work. At least a hundred pages to go. May the force be with you. 

"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter - it's the diff. between the lightning bug and the lightning." - Mark Twain

Listening to: Gotye, "Somebody That I Used to Know"

Reading: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

The Intellectual Reclamation Project, Entry 1

Read: Anton Chekhov, Ward No. 6

Ok, technically it's a "story," but it's a start.

Listening to: Rimsky-Korsakov, Scheherazade Suite