New in the World of Me

Actually, not too much is new in the world of me, at the moment. Still working at the pizza place, still in the tiny room in the house in the middle of nowhere, still happy and content to a fault.

It's really sunny and beautiful out and really, I should be outside enjoying it - or at the very least, I should be putting the laundry in the washing machine now so that it can be be dry by tomorrow.

We went to Bournemouth the day before yesterday and had a grand time there. Other than being slightly less touristy, it doesn't really seem to be different from Brighton in any significant way. But it was a good day, spent with friends, and full of moments of quiet squee.

In other news, I designed another new T shirt (see the Jeff Goldblum dinosaur to the right). Have to say, I'm pretty pleased with it (Hehe, pretty pleased).

There was one other thing I was going to mention, but now I can't remember what it was. I hate when that happens, but it happens so frequently now that I'm pretty much used to it. Need more B12, I guess.

Additional: I remembered what it was. I was going to say that I'm quite pleased that Blogger finally introduced separate pages - but thinking about it, finally might be stretching it a bit; a few years ago, I looked into it and there was no way to have more than one page, and it never occured to me to check to see if that had changed until I visited this blog either last week or the week before and found that the author had set up multiple pages.

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.

The Other Shop

I forget how I found Skreened.com. Something I read on Twitter, I think. The FU, BP design was something I came up with while looking for components for a design Rhiannon had come up with and as soon as I thought of it, I had to try to sell it. So far, I've sold two, which considered my limited marketing, I think is pretty good.

Apparently, the guy on Twitter who started BPGlobalPR is donating the profits from his BP Cares shirt to clean up efforts (this is what I've heard, I don't want to put words in his mouth). You'd think that the world in general would be making more noise about the BP SNAFU, but it seems like an angry (albeit hillarious and informative) Twitter account and a few BP-hating tee shirts are about it for the Anti-BP movement.

That's all I have about that for right now. In a couple of days, my big brother and Clayton will be taking off for parts unknown (well, unknown to some people. I know where they're going). They're hitch hiking there, which makes me nervous, but they're going to be together which makes me considerably less nervous. Also in a couple of days, my little sister and her boyfriend get their first apartment (FINALLY). Also, my older sister is the maid of honour in an upcoming wedding and my youngest brother's elementary school graduation is in 8 days, so it seems like everyone has crazy fun stuff going on for the next little while. I'm tired from the activity going on around me and wishing I had fun stuff like this to look forward to at the moment.

On the other hand, Spoy and I have plans that end with us in Vancouver for a chunk of the fall, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much... of course, our plans are contingent on getting in to some medical studies (hooray for human guinea pigs!), but what can you do?

Ok, I think that's really it. Funny how most of this post has nothing to do with the other shop.

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.

MY WEBSITE HAS FINALLY BEEN LAUNCHED!

After a lot of years of agonizing over various things pertaining to my website (design, content, etc.), it's finally all finished, and, if I say so myself, it looks AMAZING. Lincoln did an amazing job helping me improve my designs then converting them into working code I am very, very pleased.

Now, of course, it's on to other things: getting A/G out there to the public, designing other websites, sitting down and writing 200 Pages and the other one. For right now, though, I'm seriously tempted just to kick my feet up and declare all done and refuse to do anything productive for the next month at least. Alas, that's not quite how it works. I'm going to do some quick PR, then it's back to the grindstone for me.

Motivational Ruffles, and All That's In Between

'Evening, Blogees.

I came into the office today to work on the identity guide for my cousin's business (I'm on my laptop, as my work station still has no Internet). Since I last mentioned said business, the logo has been redesigned by the website guy, aka, the bane of my existence. He's not really the bane of my existence; he's just a guy who went to college and assumes that this means he knows more about everything than us sad, uneducated people, who got our experience by designing magazine ads. At my cousin's request, I emailed him with what I have done so far for the identity guide (which he insists is absolutely vital), and asked if there was anything I needed to add before converting my svgs into one pdf. He responded with a fairly rude email, saying I had disregarded his instructions, and that a whole bunch of things I had included didn't need to be in there (these are things that every other visual identity guide in the world seems to have), and not to finalize anything until everyone had had a chance to look at it. I replied (and copied the reply to my cousin) as politely as I could, and asked a bunch of questions - basically, if I'm not supposed to do X, then what should I be doing instead? My cousin just wrote me back and told me she would let me get pointers from him. UGH. Whatever. I'm not dealing with it until tomorrow.

My mum and I walked to the store, got a bag of chips (I usually don't eat chips. God knows what we were thinking), and came back to the office to eat them. On the back of the bag, there was a story that started with:

At the age of 10, I lived with my family in the Fisher Housing Projects in Detroit, Michigan. By today's standards, we were considered poor.

It goes on for four paragraphs about this random kid stealing peaches from someone's backyard, then another two paragraphs about how he learned his lesson, and why self-control is great, and things to remember to help you demonstrate self control in everyday life. I feel like I'm in the twilight zone or something.

Last night, my mum and I watched the first three episodes of Dollhouse. She's completely addicted, just like I knew she would be.

A few months ago, at my brother's request, I brought V for Vendetta home from the office (I keep my movies at the office, to prevent the exact thing that ended up happening). He didn't watch it that night, but my mum and I and one of my other brothers did. The next night, that brother and the youngest one asked if they could borrow it, and I said yes, if they put it back on my shelf when they were done. Because I'm an idiot, I didn't check to see that they had put it back until last night, when my youngest brother asked if he could watch Once Upon a Time in Mexico. He insists that since both of them watched V, it isn't his fault that it didn't get put back. The other one insists that he watched the movie with my mother and I, after the youngest one watched it, so it's my fault if it didn't get put back. This is especially annoying, because this is the second copy of that movie that I've loaned out, only to have it disappear on me. My first copy is currently residing on my friend's uncle's shelf - unless, of course, he decided to lend it to someone else.

Tonight, I'm going to the casino with my mummy. I have $10 that I can spend, which I'll split into two $5 bills. Hopefully, if I go with my mum, the guard won't feel the need to ask me my middle name and have me spell it, while glaring at me and making it obvious that he thinks my ID is either fake or not my own. I should probably go work out now, since afterward, I have to heat my bathwater, clean up and get changed. Thank God it's not hair-wash day.

I didn't work out yesterday because I didn't feel like it. That's a dangerous habit to get into, especially because that makes it the third day in four weeks that I've missed, and this time, there was no good reason for it. I should work twice as hard, but I probably won't.

I think that's everything. I think. Oh, 5:55, time to make a wish. Alright. That's done with.

I missed one thing. I've started working on the final chapter of Aigaion Girl. As happy as I am to have nearly completed my... fourth book (likely the first one that will ever be published), it's a little bittersweet - and I feel an inordinate amount of pressure to get the ending perfect. I've been looking forward to writing this ending, but now I'm terrified that my readers are going to hate it. Eeek.

Okay, I really do think that's it. And I really do have to go work out. Right.

I.N. Out.

Logo Designs

Today, my cousin and I got together over Skype and designed the logo for hew new business. She is very pleased with it and I am very pleased with it, which makes me, oddly enough, very pleased.

I'd love to know why everyone can't work like this. Now, it could be because we grew up together and are therefore on the same wave-length, but I think it's more likely that we were both just raised well by are parents, and so manage to be honest, thoughtful and courteous, without being hurtful or being push-overs. If everyone who needed stuff designed could just sit down for a few hours (it took us just under three), even online, and say "yeah, I don't like that font" or "this is good, but could you make the green look a little less like pea soup?", or whatever was on their mind, my life (and their's) would be a lot easier.

Anyway, it's been a fairly productive day, so I'm feeling pretty good. Once everything is in place, and I have permission, I'll put a copy of said logo up (actually, there's a good chance I'll link to her site, because her business is really cool) for your viewing pleasure.

I think that's it for now... a long rant about Facebook is likely to follow.