I Know...

So, I've been away for a while.  Not really away, just away from blogging.  Busy and stuff.

I got a job.  It's a good job and I like it, even if it's not the kind of job I ever imagined myself doing.  The perks are excellent and the people are wonderful.  Our department's Christmas party was Friday.  I had my first (and second (and come to that, possibly 3rd, though I can't remember for sure)) Jagerbomb, 2 G&Ts and a glass of champagne.  With the exception of the second G&T, which a coworker bought for me, these drinks were all free, paid for by the company.  It was great to see everyone let loose, even if some of them let a little looser than they should.

I sadly did not finish my NaNoWriMo story, Quicksand in November.  I made it to about 21,000 words and couldn't manage any more.  This whole working full time thing has gotten harder since I was doing it last.  I honestly think that's just the weather, though, because I work until 6:00 and right now that means I'm there until after dark.

I sold enough shirts to get the Reactionary Motors one for my Dad for Christmas.  My dreams of having the Bitch, Please one for myself have been put on hold, but such is life.

I was just about to write about our plans to visit Slovakia over Christmas, and I realize now that I've totally neglected to say anything at all about Prague, which was wonderful and will get a whole blog post shortly.

Also, somewhere in the confusion of November and December, our flatmate, whose Internet we used and paid toward, left and the Internet was disconnected (we'd recently given him £30 to it - not impressed)

My Slovak is not improving as quickly as I'd hoped.  Need to get working on that.

I think that's all for now.  I'll post about Prague soon, and try to keep a little bit more updatey in the meantime.

NaNoWriMo 2011

So I've started working on the outline and character sketches for NaNoWriMo 2011. It is going to be one incredibly effed up story, but hopefully a little amazing as well.

I've also been trying to update devereaux court a lot this month because I think it needs to be updated at least three times a week if we ever want it to get serious readership.

I think that's about it. There's work stuff in there, somewhere, but it's a nice day and I want to go to the beach and not think about jobs and boring crap like that.

The end, for now.

THIS STORY IS EATING MY BRAIN

Ok, that's a little melodramatic, maybe, but really, it's giving me some serious grief. Enough that I just used giving grief as an actual phrase, where people can read it. I don't know what it is. The ideas are there, the emotions are there, even the carefully detailed outline of what should happen next is there. What's missing is the words. They just. won't. flow.

I'm over 7000 words behind where I should be, and in two hours, I'm going to bed. Usually, a preset bedtime during NaNoWriMo would be a completely ludicrous concept, but I only slept for four hours this morning (not at all last night), and I'd like to get up nice and early for chattiness (♥).

So two hours to write at least 1053 words (this will bring me to 35,000), and I'm blogging... and I'm not even blogging about what I want to be blogging about, because I would much rather be making this post a series of little hearts and overly-girly expressions of happiness and excitement.

1 hour and 45 minutes, now. This isn't helping. Terrible as it is to say, I wish I'd gone to the liquor store while I was out today. I think a shot of anything would get this proplem sorted in a jiffy.

Happy in the Club with a Bottle of Red Wine

So I redid my budget again tonight. This time, instead of trying to figure out what I can afford to put aside from each paycheque, then working out how many weeks it will take me to reach my desired amount, I did it backwards. I worked out how much money I need and when I want to have it by, and figured out how much I need to save per cheque to make that happen. And honestly, even though I'll be putting aside nearly twice as much from each paycheque, I'm way happier with these numbers. Why? Because these numbers mean that I can do what I want to do. They represent one part of a plan on its way to completion. Also, if I don`t find a second job, I`m still going to be okay. That`s a huge load off my mind.

There is no way I can put what I am feeling right now into words, so I won`t try. Suffice it to say that it`s a combination of more emotional states than I can count, the strongest two being extreme happiness and severe impatience.

So, on to smaller issues. 6 days left of NaNoWriMo and I am a lot of words behind. A lot. I think probably close to 10,000. I have two days off coming up, though, and I plan to spend them novelling the hell out of myself. That sounds kind of dirty... yeah, there is definitely something not right there. Anywho.

eleven eleven wish, which was supposed to be kind of cute and cuddly and bubblegumish, is becoming anything but. While I was waiting for my laundry today, I wrote a scene where [SPOILER] someone gets shot in the head at point-blank range. So, yeah. Add to that suicide attempts, drinking problems, pedophiles and life-destroying accusations and my feel-good novel of fun has turned into something quite sinister. Not that I mind. I think it will be a lot more meaningful this way, and I`m doing my best to keep all the cute&fluffy that I had originally planned, even if it is getting a little overwhelmed by the other stuff.

Ok, back to the grindstone. None of my budgeting is going to do me much good if I get fired for not doing my job.

I = :) x ∞

There are two things I could be doing right now. I should either be working on my NaNoWriMo story, which I'm nearly 2,000 words behind on, or I should be doing my paperwork for the night audit. Instead I'm drinking a can of tooth-disolving black cherry pop which has never even seen a cherry and eating a sandwhich. And thinking.

Mostly I'm thinking about how I'd love for a big pile of money to magically fall into my lap, so that I could avoid the upcoming months of waiting and skip right to the bit where I'm where I want to be (and, of course, with whom :)

Unrealted: Road to Nowhere just came on the radio. Seriously, never
changing this station. PS, does this song remind anyone else of the
starting sequence of the Beetlejuice cartoon, or is that just me?

I'm also thinking about how ridiculously lucky I am and praying that my karma is good enough that I'll keep being this lucky. I'm not usually one for praying, because I don`t know what I`m praying to, but for this, anything I can do is worth it. Besides, something clearly has my back :)

I finally did my budget... erm, either today, yesterday or the day before. Days get a little messed when you work nights. For example, it`s already tomorrow. Anyway, I did my budget for Xmas and the foreseeable months. It doesn`t look bad, but it doesn`t look as good as I`d like. I`m hoping I can find a second job soon. It`s so stupid, though; when I was looking for a full-time job, all I could find was part-time. Now I`m looking for something part time and everyone wants forty hours a week (everyone being the five places in town that are actually hiring). I`ll find something, I`m sure. Plus, now that I have Modo (new computer), I can start trolling Craigslist for design and layout work. Must be something there.

Ok, seriously, I need to work on this book and work on my work. It`s hard, though, when my mind is already thousands of miles away, months into the future. Ugh. Focus, Athena. Focus.

Oop. ooOoop.

Ok, so time for another post.



My tooth still bloody hurts. I think it's getting better, but I'm not going to be able to put off going to the dentist until January, when my benefits kick in. To give you an idea how much this hurts: I went to a doctor for the first time in twelve years to get it looked at. I honestly woke up one morning (feeling vomity and feverish) thinking I might die. So yeah, in pain.



I'm working PM at the moment. Back to night audit tomorrow and for the rest of the week (?) and then I think they're switching me back to days. I honestly woudln't mind, except that if I go back on days that renders my night audit training kind of useless, which I also wouldn't care about, if it hadn't happened at a time when I had a way better way to be spending my nights. I don't care how I spend my nights now, since I don't have anything going on and I can't seem to sleep anyway, but it would have been nice if I could have spent the past few weeks with my nights free. Oh well. My own damn fault.



I'm at 16,000+ words for NaNoWriMo, which I'm pretty pleased about. I've mostly been writing at night, while I'm at work, but I also got a bunch done today, while I was waiting for my laundry.



I'm sitting here, watching the snow, and going a little spacey. Kevin Spacey? you might ask. Well, no. Just buggy, like I can't quite decide what my emotions are, but I could definitely use some more pain killers and maybe a shot of something to help me sleep. Don't worry, I understand that these things don't go together. And since I have to take the antibiotics and the pain killers, the booze will have to be forgone.

Also, I have a tag sninpo. I have no idea what that means, but I'm using it, to see if I can find out. Yeah. Spacey. I'm cutting this off here.

(honey) Bunches of Stuff (oats?)

My tooth is effing killing me. I'm going to the hospital tomorrow to beg them to do something about it. Pull it. Give me morphine. Anything. I've swallowed a ton of this oragel stuff, and it's starting to give me cramps. Plus, I'm pretty sure my kidneys are going to shut down if I take any more Tylenol. I've been waking up with a fever the past few days... I had hoped it was because of flu or something, but now I just think my tooth is infected.

What else? It's ten to four, so I should probably actually start working on the night audit. I've been writing. I'm at 11212 words for NaNoWriMo now, which is pretty good, considering that it's only the third and it's not even four am. I'm past the neccessary word count for day six. :) This story is turning out to be a lot darker, a lot less happy-go-lucky fluffy, than I originally planned. Also, if anyone's wondering, when you're sick, in pain, missing someone more than you thought humanly possible and your job doesn't let you see the sun, researching actual suicide notes online then going home and listening to Leona Lewis is a really, really dumb idea. Just sayin'.

I cleaned my room today. It took a lot of hours and my kitchen and the other room in my apartment (I picked the lock because the temp. control is in there and I was melting) are still piled with clothes and random junk, but I'm slowly sorting through it. My room looks pretty good, actually. A random fun fact: I have a really nice queen bed with lots of fluffy blankets and a synthetic down comforter and three pillows. I actually made my bed today - and I am sleeping on my smelly, second (third, fourth?)-hand love seat, with the Freddy Krugar blanket (just a blanket that someone hacked up for reasons unknown). Gah. My bed is just too big, now that I've taken the piles of clothes away.

OK. Actual work time. Maybe. In a minute.

NaNoWriMo Starts in 3...2... Learn to Count, Athena

So, I came into work today (dressed as a sexy witch), all excited and thinking happily to myself that as of midnight, I could start work on eleven eleven wish. Because, as of midnight, it would officially be November 1.

Yeah, apparently not. At least now that it's after midnight, it actually is Halloween, so my sexy witchness isn't entirely without merit. The orange hair is serving me well tonight, let me tell you.... except I have to blame my inability to know what day it is on the fact that I'm working nights and have no sense of time, because I can no longer use the blonde cop out.

I had an interesting debate with our security guy about witches and witchcraft... still trying to figure out why he has no problem with water witches, but thinks that reading Tarot is bad. Whatever, I always enjoy messing with him, just a little bit.

I didn't do the zombie walk. I could have, but I had no one to go with, and when I walked past the group, I was kind of glad I skipped it - their costumes were a lot more elaborate than I could have bothered myself with right now. I'm staving off depression, forcing myself to go out and do things, to see the sun, etc., but that's about all I can manage right now. Sexy witch was a stretch for me, solidified by the fact that I would have had to wash my uniform in order to wear it.

So, less than 24 hours to NaNoWriMo 2010. So when I come to work "tomorrow", with all the stuff I had brought for tonight (notebook, 5 pages of outline, a pen), I can really get to work. Until then, I'll have to content myself with my frozen dinner and Halloween cupcakes.

Oh, and of course the fact that I have a chat date, which makes me incredibly happy.

:)

NaNoWriMo '10

So NaNoWriMo starts in 2 days. Er, one day. Sorry; working nights effs with your brain's ability to know what day it is.

I won't have a computer until the end of next week at the earliest (probably a little later), so it looks like I'm going to be writing by hand for the first little while. This will likely slow me down a lot (since I write way slower than I type and I have no way of playing the music I need while I'm writing), but I think it should be ok. I already have the notebook I'm going to use and a 5-page step-by-step outline. I don't know what person or tense I'm going to be writing in yet, but I guess that will come to me.

(unrelated) My God, am I hungry.

When I get my new computer, the keyboard is going to be smaller than I'm used to, so that might slow me down... but, I was reading things on the NaNo site today and it seems like a lot of people write their daily quota (1667 words) in two or three hours of solid writing daily. It would be great if I could do that because now that I'm working nights, it won't be a problem for me to put that kind of time in while I'm at work. I'll be able to type some here and write some out long hand, and it will be brilliant. NaNo is going to rock this year - I can feel it.

(unrealted) My tooth is killing me.

I also have the cover art pretty well worked out in my head. (Somewhat) Unfortunately, I'll actually need to take a photo for this one, which means I'll need to acquire/borrow a good camera, then go out and buy the materials for a mini studio (wax paper, bristol board, display board, duct tape) and take it, then load it onto my new netbook and use Inkscape to finish it off. So, time consuming, but it will look awesome.

A Question

I was looking online at pictures of lockets because I have a coin I'd like to put in one, and was looking for one of the appropriate age/size/style, etc. Through my browsing, a question formed in my brain, one I can't quite shake: Why the hell am I working in a hotel when I should be out designing jewellery and writing books? Worded another way: What the fuck am I doing with my life?

Don't get me wrong, my job is great. I mean, I've been here for an hour and I've spent half of that looking at pretty things online. In a few minutes, I'll do about ten minutes of work, then I'm free for another couple of hours - so I don't mean to make it sound like things are bad... but really, what am I doing? What are any of us doing? Why do we reach adulthood and discard that mantra of you can do whatever you want in favour of doing what's responsible or expected, or, hell, let's just call a spade a spade, whatever will make us the most money. I'm a capitalist to the core, but doesn't capitalism give us the inherent right to be poor - to try doing what we want to do, and to fail if we must?

Me, I've been poor my whole life. I'm sure that most of my childhood (and certainly all of my adulthood to date) were spent well below the poverty line. But that's the thing: poor is relative. If you took me and my living situation and dropped us in the backwater of some third world country, it would blow the people there away. What? Clean drinking water? Heat (usually)? Hot water (most days)? Electricity? A TV that works if you smack it really hard (or sometimes sit on top of it)? Sounds like Heaven. So I've been poor, but life hasn't been hard, not really. So why is being poor taboo? Why is there this stigma, like, Oh, you're poor? You must be kind of stupid and lazy and suffer from an inferior education? I'd love to know where that comes from. Actually, I'm not stupid, thanks. I've made some poor choices in my life, sure, but I'm not stupid. Lazy? In my day-to-day life, sure, but since that day-to-day has included working full time since I was 15, in an overall sense, by Canadian standards, I'm pretty badass - and yeah, my education wasn't great. I dropped out of university three years in. Why? Because I wanted to write. If I had to do it over, I don't know that I would do the same thing, but I stand by my decision. One book in four years isn't terribly impressive, I guess, but when I think of all the people who never finish that first novel, who are so hung up on writing a best-seller that they never write anything, I think that maybe I've done pretty well for myself, busted-ass TV and all.

I guess it's all about expectations - our own, our friends' and families' and society's. Unfortunately, I think too many people (myself included) let society's expectations shape their own. Society expects that I will fail if I don't make a plan of some kind, a template for how my life is supposed to play out - and in our little cookie-cutter land of lifetime blueprints, my life, all our lives should have gone something like this: Elementary school, high school, university, crap job, slightly better job, Kids, marginally OK job aaaaaand, plateau. Retirement. Death. Somewhere in there, if we can, if it's convenient and responsible, it wouldn't hurt for one or two of us to go backpacking in Europe, so the rest of us can live vicariously through them. This is the kind of life we're supposed to content ourselves with, be happy with even.

I don't mean this as a rant against The Man. I'm actually more angry with myself right now than with the retardedness that is our society. I don't understand how I keep convincing myself that I can be happy with a mediocre life. I can't. Maybe I can't be happy with any kind of life, who knows? But I do know that this daily grind, working week, make-ends-meet kind of bullshit isn't for me. I want out.

So rather than ranting, in an attempt to be proactive (and, unfortunately, a little bit responsible), a list of things to get, in order, with the money from the job that I won't be quitting until I have something better to go to:

1. A Netbook for writing. Should have it by the end of the first week of November.
2. A decent point-and-shoot; good SLR to follow.
3. Supplies for jewellery (specifically: damaged or incomplete antiques from EBay, pliers, various types of wire, glass beads, strong glue, lacquer, a sketchbook just for my designs, some books about various techniques for manufacturing jewellery)
4. Supplies to build a desk (I may have do do this after the netbook and before the camera; we'll see how my back holds up during NaNoWriMo.

And actually, for right now, I think that's it. Four things, and I think I'm on my way to a happier me.

Whell.

It's 6:15 in the morning and I'm just killing time now, until my shift is over. They put me on night audit after just two training shifts. I hope I didn't eff anything up. The night audit thing was a stupid move on my point. I never think before I talk and it always gets me into a world of trouble.

Anywhom, life right now is pretty good. It's been wonderful, really, this past month, and if it weren't for the fact that I can see the end of the road, when the wonderfulness will disappear, I would still be spending all day every day wearing a huge, dorky grin on my face. But I can see it, and it's been a challange to stop myself from breaking down and/or having an anxiety attack every time I breathe or notice that they sky's blue or something like that.

Enough about that; I'm at work and can't afford a breakdown. Good stuff: right now, the offspring is playing on the radio and it's not being censored, and this channel is one of the ones on the official list of designated radio stations we're allowed to listen to at this time, so if guests come in and complain about the swearing, my hands are clean.

Also good, NaNoWriMo is coming up again and I've to decided to participate this year. I'm going to be completely rewriting a story I've been writing little bits of for... I think a year or more now. Don't worry; it's not cheating. Why? Because I'm going to start from scratch and literally rewrite every single word. NaNo is going to let me survive November. It's going to stop me from breaking down - and at the end of it, I'll have a story so emotional and depressing that publishing houses will be beating down my door. That's my plan, anyway. Obviously, there's nothing up there yet, but if you want to check out my story, Eleven Eleven Wish come November 1, you'll be able to find it here, as well as, probably, FictionPress.net.

I think that's it. I have way too many blogs, and I should probably update some of them.

OK, Yes, I Should Be in Bed, But...

I've been working on the story with the rock in, just on the notes (if I can hold off writing actual content, I may work on 200 Pages until November and use this as my NaNo). So far, I've managed to come up with:

• A detailed plot for probably the first 8th of the book and a very rough plot for the entire first half.
• The names and descriptions of six characters who I didn't even know were in the book until this evening.
• A name for the overall series (because this book is already convoluted enough that it's going to end up as a series).
• A rough explanation for why the evil thing acts the way it does (other than that it's just evil)

I think that's it. Still, that's pretty good for one evening's work.

In other news, my Gran had her grand opening today for her tea shop. Everything went very well; the place was jam-packed for the entire four hours of the event. Lincoln and I worked on her website in between serving tea (I'm still uber sick, btw). It was a good day.

Afterwards, the family went out for dinner, and after that, I went to Wal Mart with my mum, Vicky and her boyfriend and bought myself some very snazzy children's shoes, because my feet are abnormally small and it's cheaper for me to buy kids shoes (also, because they don't make ones with rainbow stars that sparkle for adults).

We watched Surrogates tonight, which I think I'm going to have to add to the long list of books and movies that I need to review. I might get to some of those tomorrow; I plan on making it a *very* lazy day.

50,000 words!

I made it to 50,000 words!!!!!! Of course, I didn't do it in a month, like you're supposed to for NaNoWriMo, but I did it. 50,000. Eat it, naysayers.

Goals

So my February goal of getting more readers on FictionPress each day than I had on the one previous didn't work out so well. Don't get me wrong - I'm still very pleased with my February numbers, but I could have done better.

My March goal, which I hadn't got around to posting yet, was to get over a hundred hits in a single day, which, apparently, I did on Wednesday, so go me.

Also, I'm kind of wondering why I have more readers in Singapore, the UK and Norway than I do in Canada. I'm not complaining, I just find it a little odd. Also, it's 5:30 in the morning and I already have one hit for today. It just makes me so happy ♥~♥

I also put up a new chapter of Aigaion Girl today, which makes me happy. I'd been having trouble getting motivated for that one, so it's nice to finally have it done, and I'm pleased with the way it turned out.

Unless they have an IQ, women should write Bodice Rippers

So, I came up with my new story - or at least a character from it. I decided I wanted it to be a mystery, so, as a true product of the 20th century, I typed how to write a mystery novel into a Google search. One of the first things that came up was this:

Well, an offshoot of it. This guy (the site uses a lot of "we"s, but I highly doubt there is more than one person running this thing) is an unprofessional tool, who probably (here's hoping) hasn't been published in anything, ever. The page I actually came to is a guide for aspiring mystery novelists, and it stopped me in my tracks. It starts like this:

Want to make a million fast? Write a mystery thriller and but in order be able to do that, first, study the work of the best writers. Take you a week or two. NOTE: Women don't need to read this article unless you have an IQ of 180 like Sue Grafton.

Honestly, I don't know why things like this bother me; you don't need an IQ of 180 to realize that the man writing this article is a moron who nobody in their right mind would take seriously. But really, come on.

The article goes on to say that "unless they have an IQ, women should write Bodice Rippers or Historical novels from a woman's P.O.V." Um, it could just be me (I am only a woman after all), but I was under the impression that all people have an IQ. Even Mr. Chauvinist "Writer" has an IQ, although I would be very surprised to learn that it was within even twenty points of mine.

Anywhom, that's my angry rant for today. I feel like I should say more, but really, what else is there? The guy is an idiot, but barely worth the words I've already wasted on him. Here's hoping he steps on a rusty nail and gets tetanus.