Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Good news, bad news

The good news is I've been accepted to Graduate School, finally. I applied two months ago and received an email today stating I'd been accepted. It feels good to finally know. I'd sent numerous emails and called and barely received any word back. Three weeks, I've been waiting to hear any word back. Well, now I know. I'm excited but not as nervous as I expected. I'm ready for what comes, ready to learn, ready to be back in the classroom as a student, for a little while, ready to become more than a paraprofessional. Feels like I'm finally taking a step forward, no longer stuck in a perpetual limbo of not knowing how to proceed. I guess, sometimes, when you don't know what to do, you just have to do something. Just do it. Stop thinking about so many things and just make a decision already. Do something. You'll learn something, you will gain something out of it, you just need to take a step and go for it, whatever it may be.

The bad news is I might have inadvertently broken our television, which my girlfriend paid for, with the christmas present I gave her...It sucks. My whole idea was to get a blu-ray player and blu-ray movies because we had a bunch of dvd's we could no longer play after my xbox stopped working. We'd lamented the fact that we couldn't play anything on our tv. She especially likes owning a copy of movies she really loves, and the fact was there was no point in buying any more movies or tv shows since we wouldn't be able to watch them. So, I thought a blu-ray player would be perfect. I was looking at Samsung because our tv was samsung and we generally liked the company, I suppose. I hemmed and hawed, having a couple on my amazon cart, never pulling the trigger, still wondering if this was a good gift idea, when I saw a bluray player for a good deal on another site. I thought of it as a sign, and ordered it.

We had our christmas and tried to watch a movie. An hour in, the tv turned itself off, then back on. THen it did it after five minutes, then after 60 seconds, etc. We disconnected the player, but the tv continued to have problems, turning off randomly. So far, we've tried everything we could think of and anything we could find online and nothing's worked. The choice is to have service done, which because the tv is out of order, could cost hundreds, or purchase a new tv, which would cost 7-900$.

It absolutely sucks.

Something I purchased to give someone happiness has now become a sinkhole for hundreds of dollars. It fucking blows. The past couple of days have not gone as I'd hoped. I wanted to be able to watch our movies on our tv, and now we can't watch anything on it. And it's essentially because of me.

What's worse? She got me something awesome, a google chromebook that I absolutely love. I guess she totally wins in the gift-giving department. She gave me an amazing laptop for writing, I spent money and broke her television. Woohoo.

But, you roll with the punches, right? When life gives you lemon, you make lemonade. When life breaks your tv, you....read, I guess? I don't know. Keep on keeping on.

Shit happens, though, and you just have to deal with it. That's life, that's the way things are.  Just gotta do something and move on.

Take the bad with the good, I suppose. That's all, for now.


Monday, December 2, 2013

NaNoWriMo - The End

I lost Nanowrimo. I only wrote 43,000 words.

I WON NANOWRIMO! I WROTE 43,000 WORDS!!! WOOHOOO!!!


It's silly to talk about 'losing' nanowrimo. It's an activity, it's an event. It's based on honesty. It has no true verifying system. The goal of 50,000 words is simply there because it's a good number. 50,000 words is a pretty short novel, anyways. It's not really about winning, or writing a certain amount, ITS JUST ABOUT WRITING ITSELF. It's to get you to write. To do something you probably wouldn't otherwise. The only motivation it truly adds is a website word-tracker. You have to put the number in. You have to put in the effort to go to write-ins and meet others if you wish to. Essentially, nanowrimo motivates YOU to motivate YOURSELF. Which is a good thing. Which means you can't lose, not really, not if you wrote even one freaking word. Winning doesn't mean anything, writing does. And I wrote. 43,000 words. It felt good.

The truth is that the only way to win, for me, is to keep writing. To keep myself honest by writing a certain amount of words every other day or so. And if I don't write, I need to edit my shit. And if I'm not editing, I need to be shopping my shit to magazines or learning more about author(self)-publishing. The idea is to continue writing or doing something that involves me writing and getting it out there, somehow, someway, hopefully getting value of some sort in return, even if it's only the value of having others read my work and enjoy it.

Did I want to write 50k? Of course. I wanted to write more. I wanted to cross the finish line, there were three or four days in the last week where I wrote 2500 words a day. Those were wild days, where I put on the music and zoned out for an hour and two and just wrote. Didn't really know I could just do that. It's good to know, makes me think maybe I can make this a regular thing, instead of a once or twice a year thing. I need to get in the habit, which means writing more blog posts as well. I really had fun writing one per day for a week before Nanowrimo, but that's too hurried a pace. One every other day is much more manageable, and something I'll be attempting once I get over the post-nanowrimo blues/hangover. Forcing myself to come up with new blog post ideas was a creative exercise, a good old workout for my brain-pan, my mind-noggin, my thinkin' blob.

I'm also planning on shopping some things over at JukePop Serial. It's a website for readers and writers full of serial fiction. As a reader, you find stories you like and put them on your bookshelf, getting notified whenever the writer adds a new chapter, you also vote on the chapters you like, which help the authors get paid, and you can even pay the authors directly, sort of like a tip after you read a chapter or something. As an author, you submit a first chapter, and if they accept it, you're good to go. They pay for the first chapter but after that it's up to you and the readers you gather. It sounds very cool, and a good way to gain a following. We'll see when I edit my shit and actually send them something. I'm also trying to figure out grad school so free time is going to fly by, for me.

So those are my thoughts on this years nanowrimo, and plans for the future. Look for more in a week or so.