Just a little bit crazy

November 18, 2014

Night time epiphany

So I have returned from the most fantastic two weeks in London and I feel I have returned a different man. I can’t quite put my finger on it but I feel unlike the boy that had gone. Maybe it’s because while I was there I got another year older or possibly I just changed.

For the first time in a long while I feel that I have once again come to my path of destiny. It is calling me and I must heed it’s song. When I say this I mean my want and desire to be a published writer. During the course of my trip I took a sojourn to the grave site of my hero and since then I feel that I have gained something very significant. Again, I don’t quite know what it is yet but I can feel it in my heart.

I am not meant for this town. I am not meant for this mundane existence of work. I know that I have something far greater waiting in the wings. The only thing is I have to seize it. Just saying these things will not achieve them. I have to work for them. I have to be confident in myself and what I can do.

By this time next year I will be done with my book. I know I will.

November 4, 2014

Cemetery Birthday Bash

This is the last birthday of my twenties. In just one more year and it’s all down hill. To get the ball rolling the common theme of this years trip to London has bee death and the after life. For instance I went on a ghost walking tour of London and that was exciting and today I went tromping through a grave yard in the pitch of night, but let me explain.

The man I claim for my want and desire to be a writer is C. S. Lewis. After I read “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” in the third grade I’ve wanted to be an author. Since then I’ve read all of the Chronicles of Narnia and some of his religious studies but… Those are not my cup of tea considering I’m an atheist. (Haven’t always been.) Regardless of my dogmatic views I value the man more than anything. So for my birthday I wanted to take a day trip to Oxford. It’s where Lewis studied, taught, and lived. We went on a bus tour which was lovely up until it began to rain. To escape the wet weather I forced my husband into the shelter of Blackwells book shop where I bought a journal he swears will sit unused and two autobiographies I can’t get in the states. I had intended to buy another copy of “the lion…” But my husband asked “how many copies would that make?” “4.” Yes that’s excessive but it was purchased in Oxford! Whatever.

Finally I ate dinner at the pub he, Tolkien, and others of the Inklings met every Tuesday to discuss their literary works. And serendipitously it just so happens to be Tuesday. And to top it a off, the table I chose at random was 12, which holds no significant meaning to Lewis as it does to me. (It’s my lucky number.) After our meal I was ready to go. It was getting dark and my plan to visit his grave seemed like a pipe dream. So, I accepted the pub visit to be it, but my husband attempting to make my birthday special offered to walk to the cemetery where he had been buried. I warned him that it would be a long trip but he assured me that it’d be fine.

Before we had gotten even a quarter of the way there it was night, since it gets dark at 4:30 in the United Kingdom. Fun. And hoofing it at our quickest speed wasn’t cutting it so luckily we caught a cabby and he took us to the Holy Trinity churchyard. He dropped us off and backed out the long single lane drive.

Using the light of my phone we searched the cemetery reading every headstone. After going to every single market it wound up being the final one. Isn’t that typical? I said a few silent words thanking the man for giving me a dream and held back the tears. There’s nothing more than my husband loves than to see me cry. He’s a freak. (Says the guy who wanted to spend his birthday in a cemetery searching for the grave of a man he never met.)

At the end of it we are both exhausted, but it was fantastic and a trip I won’t soon forget.

March 25, 2014

Thoughts are buzzards and my brain a carcass

Obsession fuels my every thought.  Any and all action I do comes from the constant nagging at the back of my mind about some topic.  For instance, recently, I have been obsessed on the decision of whether to ditch my iPhone and get the Nokia 1520.  After some repetitive thoughts and madness I have finally concluded that I will move on to the Nokia.  I’ve had the iPhone for so long and I just want a change. 

I used to be a nokia only man.  I had the 3300 back in the day.  You know, the big grey bar thing with the green lit screen?  Yeah, that one.  Fucking loved the thing.  The first time I ever ventured out of the nokia realm was to attempt a go at the Pink Motorolla phone and that lasted about a day before I ditched it altogether.  I may be proud of my gay agenda but I do draw a line.  Plus it didn’t really fit me.  So I returned the phone and back into the arms of my Finish company.  I thought they made a good product.  It wasn’t until the iPhone came along that I dropped nokia and went over to apple.  And I was happy.  Still am as a matter of fact. I don’t see anything wrong with the iPhone.  It does what it’s meant to do. Well.

Besides annoying myself with my own obsessive thoughts I’ve dragged my husband into them also.  He doesn’t quite understand where this obsession stems from, other than the fact that I invested in Microsoft stock and since have been hitching my horse to their wagon; besides that I have come to the conclusion that if I happen to have the Nokia 1520, that comes with office preinstalled, I will have no more excuses to why my novel isn’t finished or even being worked on.  The hubby doesn’t seem to buy it and doesn’t think I’ll use it for that at all.  And he may be right, but then again he may be wrong. 

Speaking of writing, I don’t know if I blogged it here or not (I have so many different sites for expression) but I came up with a new plan of attack for my novel.  Because as I thought of my inactivity and fear I worked backward to see where they stemmed from and discovered it could just be due to the fact that I am overwhelmed with the size of the project.  It’s a huge undertaking.  As of right now my manuscript (untouched of course) stands at a little over 60,000 words.  That’s a lot.  And when I sit to begin editing I think of how huge the document is and panic.  Then I have a nervous breakdown and stop working on it completely.  (No me gusta.)  So I have resolved to work on a single chapter at a time.  I’m not going to worry about what comes after, or what follows in the next 20 chapters.  Oh no.  I am going to work on one at a time to reignite the fire.  And the beauty of my plan is that I have attempted to work on it from the start multiple times and have gotten to the point that the first few chapters are rather smooth going.  (It’ll just be a pain in the later scenes.)

Even though I discovered that brilliant plan it has, of course, languished.  I don’t know what it is but the moment I get home I am EXHAUSTED.  I have next to no motivation (despite my burning desire to be published) and instead watch television or something equally as dumb. So I looked at the problem and attempted to fix it.  My next plan, to benefit the first, is to return to the days of when I spent my lunch hour working on my novel.  I would sit at some corner of the Carl’s Jr. around the corner off my office and perfect my writing.  It was nice to be out of an area that doesn’t offer wi-fi thus decreasing my chances of distractions. Plus, the fast food joint is no real hot-bed of activity so no one goes there.  It works for me and says so much of my personality.  Everyone does the coffee house.  And I find that they’re even more distracting.  The grinding of the coffee, people constantly coming in and out, or the loud conversation.  How anyone writes in a Starbucks or it’s equivalent is beyond me. 

SO! Tomorrow I will be getting up early, to get to work on time, so that I can take a lunch and work on my novel.  I will do this.  I can do this. The only one holding me back is me.   And if that doesn’t work I have my upgrade to the Nokia 1520 to look forward to at the end of April.  And maybe then I’ll stop talking about it and do it.

P.S. how is it that wordpress has an effing blackberry app but not a windows phone app?  I mean… talk about a waste of time… No one uses a blackberry anymore.  Get on it WordPress!

March 3, 2014

From the Ashes

When I was in the 10th grade we were required to do this assignment in English class called the “Sophomore Project.”  It was meant to be a way to highlight who we were and who we wanted to be in that space of time.  Basically teaching us that nothing is certain and we all grow into new people.  Plus, it’s always fun to look back and see our own growth.  The times I’ve perused mine, I  see a few things that concern me.  The first, which hasn’t changed, I am one lazy bitch.  I half-assed that project to death.  I shouldn’t have even gotten a C.  That was my teacher being generous.  Truly.  Most of my pieces were on notebook paper that I inserted, the night before, into a binder that I had just glued on a piece of paper, to the front, that said “My Sophomore Project” in bold Arial type. For being as imaginative as I was it lacked all qualities of creativity.  My mind was on other things, I guess.

The second thing that sticks out is how as jaded as I am now I am not nearly as angry as I was then.  Jesus, I was one cranky son of a bitch.  I have come to the conclusion it was due to my overwhelming sense of self loathing.  At the time I was very, VERY, religious and I was battling my sexual identity.  I was also a pimply faced, greasy haired, fat, kid.  No one liked me and I didn’t like myself.  So I became bitter.  I was, shall we say, jaded. It was then that I turned into writing.  I took my observations of my surroundings and angst and turned it into words and pumped out a piece of writing I am, to this day, very proud to call my own.  It was filled with so much personality that I still canot quite capture.  I was on fire.  And it was a beautiful thing artistically.

The final thing, and this is the one that worries me the most, was how completely unrealistic I was with planning my life goals and the expectations and my limitations.  I had no clue how the outside world worked or how what I wanted out of life (getting a manuscript published or acting in film) was 10% talent 90% luck and just being in the right place at the right time.  So for a list of the ten items of “where I saw myself in ten years” one of them was to have finished 10 novels.  Bitch, I haven’t even finished-finished half of that, let alone one.  Sure I have written one novel length work of fiction but that’s just from sitting down at a keyboard and banging out whatever popped into my head to move the story forward.  And even that was a journey.  It’s strange how I could, in one hand, hold so much optimism for my future but in the other so much hatred and cynicsm.  One obviously cancels the other out, or one could say that they actually balance each other out.

Dreaming is what keeps us going.  Giving ourselves something to wish and hope for gives us a goal.  We need a rainbow to keep chasing to make life bearable, even if it is unrealistic.  In the moment it is exactly what we need.  And as I age, the reality of life starts taking those dreams away, but it does not seem to take the same amount of angst.  In fact it seems to take one out of one into the other, throwing me off balance.  To be brutally honest, throwing me into crazy spirals.  In fact I have gone into two.  Being out of them I can look at them objectively.  I am absolutely embarrassed by them because they were so public, as all crazy spirals are.  I made such broad statements by quitting my job and wanting to go to school to study biology to become a C.S.I. technician.  Or… becoming a geologist.  I mean… These were 100% out of left field.  In the moment they seemed to fit.  They made perfect sense.  Now… Well, I see the truth in my insanity.  Which is why my newest thoughts have me leery.

As I sit poised at the cliff, looking down into the jagged canyon of my 30’s, I contemplate going back to school.  I had attempted it once back when I was just out of high school but I lacked any real motivation and didn’t quite grasp the “I’m here by choice” concept that comes with going to college.  Like many that failed to grasp that, I failed and didn’t attempt it again.  Although, I want to return and get a BA in Journalism.  But unlike before (when I wanted to be a CSI) I’m not quitting my job.  In fact, I’m doubling down and taking further education to get my trainee license for real estate appraisal. (Just in case my enthusiasm somehow peters out, you know?) This would be in the mean time while I wait for the summer semester to begin.  Then upon that time I will register for two classes and continue with that pattern every semester until spring of 2017 where I HOPE to graduate with an AA and then move to Long Beach to continue my education for my BA.  This is all tentative.

My biggest fears are as follows: 1) that my enthusiasm will lessen or extinguish before I can register for the summer semester or 2)this is just another moment of crazy.  The only piece of evidence against number two is that my doctor just put me on mood stabilizers and coupled with the anti-depressants I am currently taking that should put me in a clearer head space. (Shouldn’t it?)

This is the start of a new life.  I can feel it in my core.