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This month is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The challenge is to write 50,000 words during the month of Nov. I dove in immediately after the World Fantasy Convention. The great people I met at the convention must have inspired me because I've been on fire since then. I'm writing at a record-breaking speed for me. Yesterday was my most productive day at 3,700 words. That's a long way from the 1,000 word glass ceiling I used to live under.
I'm off to LA tomorrow for a filmmaking seminar so I needed to meet my 25,000 word goal for Sunday by today. Good thing I'm deadline driven. I'm now at 25,349 words. Yay!
Now if I can just keep myself from being distracted by my lust for a new netbook, I'll have a very rough draft of a novel to work with by mid-Dec. I'm keeping my fingers crosssed.
Happy Halloween, everyone! Hope you enjoy the festivity of giddy little ghosts, dragons and fairies at your door. Be sweet and give them a treat.
Here's a treat for you!
"Brother and sister", 15" x 14 1/16", watercolor, India ink and pastel, 140 lb paper.
I am tired of character deffects.
Tired of lugging them around like a recovery badge of honor.
Can't I just be human? Human with faults, in acceptance of them.
Not trying to remove them all.
Not asking anyone or anyTHING to take them from me.
Just saying, "Guess what? I'm not perfect, but I'm fabulous."
Maybe I don't need to down myself as part of the game.
Maybe the game is to love myself.
And to love you. Even if you do stupid shit.
Even if you say you're not good enough,
not ready,
not capable.
I think you are. We ALL are.
We are ALL worthy of love,
able to be in relationships,
and free to make mistakes.
Who am I to say that I know nothing?
I know something:
Love is free.
Love is here, right now.
Love is beautiful.
And so are you.
So, here I am...single.
I can't recall ever being single before. I think I came out the womb with a ring on. When I was two and on vacation with the fam in Hawaii, I met a boy on the beach and latched onto to him like calf to teet. Back in Seattle, my best friend was the male half of fraternal twins, Sean and Laura. I spent a few years in between childhood and teen years wandering around lost with various girlfriends, always feeling like an outsider, until high school where I met Jon, my best bud for several years.
I "dated" a little (Dating = a bean burrito from Taco Bell and a case of Schimdt Ice for dessert - then sex in the back of your Chevy Nova) but nothing really stuck until I turned 17. Then I met Dan # 1 (aka, Dan, Dan, The Leather Man - need I say more?) After Dan I moved on to Larry - the dreadlocked rock-god who was WAY out of my league and galaxy. After Larry, I did a 180 and ended up out on the streets with an ex-con tweeker named "Evil". He put my ass in a domestic violence shelter after punching me in the face three times and giving me a word-slurring concussion. I came home with my tail between my legs and ended up with Brendan - the manipulative genious. After Brendan, I met Dan # 2, the gay alcoholic. After two years of sloppy sex and baby-speak, I needed a REAL man, so I married Rocco, the drug-dealing pot-head with a minivan. Well, that didn't last, so I left him for Aaron. The man I still love, yet had to let go.
And that brings me to today.
So, as I said, after a (so far) lifetime, of attachment, I am finally ALONE. I can do anything I want - as long as it doesn't involve another bloody fucking man.
I'm going to go back to writing, take a trapeze class, sing in a band, and any other thing I wasn't "allowed" to do under the thumb of various exes. I am as free as the public school system (i.e., under-funded, liberal, and prepared to strike at any moment).
Is it possible to be efficient as both a local and global creator? Virtual vocations create an opportunity for international collaboration that is unparalleled -- have we learned to work efficiently together across boundaries?
I’m really wondering why I bought refilled cartridges from Cartridge World after wasting a lot of paper.
I like the idea of using refills and finally took a couple of empties in, and swapped them for two refills at NZ$60. I save around NZ$30 as the new ones are quite pricey here.
I thought I was helping the environment.
I had excellent service from a gentleman with a wonderful sense of humour, and at the time of purchase, really wanted to shop with him again.
I earned AA Rewards’ points.
These are all pluses but the ink flow has varied between zero (blank sheets come out) and OK. These two extremes are fine, but it’s the so-so pages in between that have me worried.
Just tonight I wasted two sheets of letterhead—the expensive stuff that we had printed many years ago on very nice stock—and the one I am sending off has only tolerable quality.
The particular type of letterhead cost me NZ$1 per sheet due to the cost of plates and printing at the time. So that’s $2 down the toilet.
So if this happens each time I print one page—as in, I use three sheets to get one good one—I may as well pay the extra money for the new cartridges and save myself a lot of headaches.
I recycle the plastic from the empty cartridges anyway. And as for the trashed letterheads, the backs still get used, but they are no better than the usual A4s we have lying about the place. However, trashing paper unnecessarily is also bad for the environment.
I’m not even counting the time I waste sending head-cleaning commands to the ink-jet I use in this office. In the two days alone I estimate losing an hour to printing problems.
PS.: Cartridge World does offer a guarantee on all its cartridges. However, I’m not confident enough that the replacements will be OK.
Why must I feel like I have to have a plan? What happened to "one day at a time"? Now that I am single, I want to figure out what my entire future is going to be. I guess I have a lot of fear. When I was with Aaron, I had a plan. I wasn't crazy about all of it, but most of it was good, and damn, it was a plan. Now I feel like I have so many choices that I have no idea where to start.
I made an appointment to see a career counselor, and, guess what? The next available appointment is over a month from now. Is that God telling me to slow down or what? I wonder why I'm so dead set on figuring everything out right this second.
The fact is, I am in school right now and only a few weeks into the quarter. I have a decent job, albeit only part-time, I have a safe, comfortable place to live with all the amenities, I have a great sponsor and I chair an AA meeting every Tuesday, which I love to do. I just feel like this isn't where I'm supposed to be...I know, I know, it's EXACTLY where I'm supposed to be. But it's not where I want to be.
I don't know where I want to be, or what I want to be doing. I have ideas, but I don't know if they're right. It seems likes everything is so far away from me. Grad school costs so much, plus I'd have to study for the GRE, get something (or more) published, and learn a foreign language, etc.
I wonder, is Office Management really right for me? I know it's practical, but I'm bored. Should I be bored already? I don't know.
I have so many unanswered questions, I just want to figure out some kind of plan, some path to head down. I am scared. I don't want to look back at my life and regret that I didn't do something amazing.
This Flash Foreward of YOUR LIFE will freak you out! Very cool app. Try it.
http://ping.fm/mE5iX
Not right now, but one day, it will be OK. One day I will actually enjoy being single, I will know what to do with my freedom. Maybe I'll even make some friends, finally. My sponsor said I come across as aloof. Normally, this would hurt me, but I've heard it before, and I have even said in the past that I repel people. It is definitely something to figure out. So, I appear aloof...but I can't see it. I don't know what I'm doing, and if I did, I would stop. I want to be approachable and I'd love to have some friends. They just have to be intelligent and hysterically funny and like to go shopping and drink lots of coffee. And they have to think that I am hysterically funny, too.
It would also help if they liked dogs, and were interested in writing, or might want to be in band with me, or needed a roommate. And it would be great if they were vegan socialists with no TV's. But I won't be TOO picky.
Anyway, if I could ever turn off my own damn TV, I might be able to get closer to becoming the person that I want to be. A hysterically funny, intellectual, vegan socialist with a Pit Bull and no TV.
One day I'll have my yurt and my windmill, my organic garden, my Pit Bull, and my writing career. All while maintaining a flawless figure and unbelievably soft skin for someone of my (at this future time) maturity.
Maybe I should reconsider taking a writing class.
Who knows. I just know that one day it won't hurt like this and I'll be able to think rationally and be the woman that I have always dreamed of being. I never imagined myself as ending up alone, but maybe once I get used to it, it won't be so bad.
