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16 April 2009

Lots of News

Okay, in order of when it will happen:
The UU Arts Fair is this weekend, Saturday evening and Sunday morning (starting 6:30pm Saturday until 1:00pm Sunday), at the First Unitarian Church, which is 600 S 1300 E. I will have photography there, and I'm very excited about it. I encourage all my friends to show up! (Pretty please? It will make me happy!)

Choir Sunday is happening next weekend, also a UU thing. It's kind of a big deal for the choir, which I am in, so, if you'd like to hear lots of lovely music, then you should come. (Or, you know, if you just want to support me as your friend, then you should come ... ) UU Church, 9am or 11am.

The third major thing is: I'm applying to the Peace Corps!
I have barely started the application process, and thus have not submitted the application yet, but I'm doing it. I will keep you all updated as I know things.
I'm really hoping to go to Africa. I've wanted to go to Africa for a very long time, and also, I learned French, and I believe that I can remember it fairly easily if I try (I'm going to be brushing up on my French as soon as the month is over, plus they do offer language training.), and they speak French all over Africa. So, hopefully ...
The website says the application process takes nine months, so I'm not even going to know if I can go for quite some time, but I'm really excited about it! Wish me luck!

Ummm ... in other news ... I made it to 50 pages by the 10th, and then slowed down considerably. I now have 64 pages. I'm hosting a Saturday write-in downtown (for the next two Saturdays), where people in the Frenzy can all get together and write. It'll be fun, and hopefully will help keep up my word count.
At the moment, I am just trying to write a little everyday, even if I don't manage to write as many pages as I was planning on.
My photography has suffered somewhat this month, but my writing started to suffer the last couple days as I'm trying to pull together the photography for the Arts Fair. (Actually, my photography suffered a bit, too: I completely forgot to take a picture yesterday, because of sorting through pictures, etc. However, I took a ton of awesome pictures on Monday, which I will post someday.)

And in further news, it seems that I have met someone, which I had so thoroughly rejected as even a possibility that when I drew the Two of Cups the other day (which refers to relationships, a meeting of hearts, etc.), I had no idea what the cards were trying to tell me!
But anyway, without going into too many details, I went on a date, and it was good, and he lives far enough away that I don't have to worry about him sucking up all my time and energy, which is also good.
Because I have found that while I need companionship (like I need food and water and light and heat), it's not something I want to spend all my time and energy focused on. (I likewise do not wish to spend all my time thinking about food.) I want time and energy to focus on writing and photography and the possibility of going to Africa.
Screnzy would have been impossible if I had still been dating Andy, he took up way too much time.

So, life is pretty good right now, all in all.
The major thing I need to do is to find a decent-paying job: in an ideal world, I would like to clear up my debts before heading to Africa, but hopefully I can at least pay back the little things (like I owe my dad and my sister a few hundred dollars), and put a major dent in the bigger things, and maybe even save up some money so that when I come back, I have a little saved and gathering interest.
But this requires me to make more than I am making now.
And it could even be something I hated, because I would only be doing it for a few months.

But anyway. This post has gone on long enough. I need to eat something and finish my critiques (for writing group), etc. Love you all!!

07 April 2009

Screnzy! 30 pages!

Re: my previous post
Thanks to everyone for their comments, but it's really okay. I was kind of confused that night and whatever, but I'm honestly not interested in wasting anymore time/energy on it.

So, on to what I am willing to spend time and energy on:
I'm at 30 pages in my script, which means that I am ahead! (I would love to say that I'm WAY ahead, because it feels like it, because I was so very behind about this time during NaNo, but, alas, others are so much more ahead than me.)
I'm not only ahead of the "where you should be if you're writing the same amount (3.33 pages) every day" page count goal, because I expected to be ahead of that. I'm also ahead of my own calendar, which takes into account the fact that I can't write much on Sundays, and on Sundays when the choir sings (April 12 & 26), not at all, etc. I am, in fact, a full day ahead of schedule: tomorrow I was supposed to hit 30 pages. Instead, tomorrow I will blaze through that 1/3rd goal marker like nobody's business!
Plus, I don't have to work Friday, so even if I sleep in ridiculously late (as has been par for the course for me for the past few months), I at least won't have to go anywhere in the evening (unlike every other evening so far this month), which means I will have ample writing time.
At some point in time, I am going to need to keep working on my story (the one I'm adapting for a screenplay), because I find that if I have to make up what I need to write that day (like scenes involving someone other than my MC (main character), as the story is in first-person), then that really slows me down. Which sucks.

Anyway, I've been getting ideas not only for next NaNo, but also for next Screnzy. For next Screnzy, I'm going to write the script for a comic. I'm really excited about that, as the comic idea has been in my head for a while. And unlike last NaNo, I am going to heavily outline both projects before starting: the Office of Letters and Light discourages it, as you're supposed to write fast and not worry about being bad, and thus, if you've already spent so much time on the project, you might worry too much and that would ruin the whole point of it.
However, I obviously write MUCH faster when I know what I'm doing, so therefore, I'm going to outline. It's also only a suggestion, rather than a rule, so ...
And for next Screnzy, I want to be writing 450 pages in a month (2 script pages per comic page, roughly, and I want to write nine issues of a comic, at roughly 25 pages each) ... so I'll need to write REALLY fast. (lol--I doubt I can do it, but I would like to write maybe three of the issues, which is 150 pages.)
So, as soon as Screnzy is over, I'm going to start working on both those projects, in addition to all my other projects out there: finishing/fixing my 2008 NaNo, the novel/stories my Screnzy's based on, probably finishing/fixing my Screnzy, and that's just writing projects. I also have Project 365 (which is suffering this month), and (according to my Big Fun Scary List) I have to sew a wardrobe, learn fancy knitting (which I think by now requires me to do something big, like a sweater or something. I am making up a pattern right now, and I'll show you when it's done.), and a bunch of other things that are just embarrassing, like practicing my violin, just because it's been so long since I've done it. However, finding a job is also on that list, so ...
I think my next BFS List won't be so long. However, I did say that I didn't expect to do them all this year, so that's really okay ...

So, anyway, this is kinda long now, and I have heard that Hulu finally updated the new episode of Dollhouse, and since I told myself I couldn't watch it until I had 1/3 of my script completed, I need to go and do writing of a different kind ...

01 April 2009

Rejected

Ow.

Today was a day.
First, my roommate tells me I'll have to move out by mid-July--which gives me a good long time to find a new job and a new place to live--I'll need the new job to support the new place to live, because I doubt I'll find another place to live that's as cheap as where I live now--but, still. I understand, he's having financial problems (who isn't?), and wants to rent to someone who will actually pay him money (which I would do if I made enough money to live by, but ... ).
But anyway. It kind of sucked.
So, Universe (and anyone else who reads this), I need a new job. I need to make actual living wages.

Then, I was on the phone with my boyfriend, and we talked about how our relationship isn't working out, and he ... he said lots of things, and I don't know if they're true, or if I'm telling myself they aren't true so as to keep up that shield of self-preservation.
I mean, I know I'm self-centered/arrogant. I know that, and I try really hard to counter that by not talking about myself so much, or by asking questions. The asking questions part is really difficult, because I'm introverted by nature, so I have to work hard to realize, Oh, I should ask this question now!
I do try. But the question is, do I try hard enough? He said I wasn't supportive (I thought I was), that I was judgmental (I didn't think so) and that everything was about me. I know at least some of that is his perspective on things, but how much? How do you know what's true?
I'm a firm believer in multiple truths, but I just don't know about this situation: his truth is that I am completely self-centered, arrogant, unsupportive, that I judge him and think he's stupid because he didn't go to college, that I wasn't open enough, etc. My truth is that I was being as supportive as I could, that I was trying very hard to bury my self-centeredness, that I thought he communicated poorly at times (but never that he was stupid!), and that I refrained from talking about myself too much (not being open enough) to try to counter-act my natural self-interest.
Oh, and he also thought I was a slut. Because I was honest with him (I was being open!) in the beginning about the fact that monogamy doesn't come naturally to me, and that I was trying hard to make monogamy work for me. Here's the funny thing: he's the first boyfriend I *haven't* cheated on, or nearly. But he'd also heard (through the grapevine at work) that I'd spent the night at this guy's house (before he and I were dating), and so he "didn't want to believe" that I was sleeping around.

I don't know. Sorry, I just got off the phone with him, and needed to vent.
But anyway, towards the end, he just kept saying that he needed to not be in a relationship, and so it was more a thing about him than that I was this awful, horrible person.
I don't know.

Anyway, all in all, not the best day.

On a slightly better note, the Frenzy has started, and I've written a little over a page of my script.
woot.