Saturday, May 15, 2010

Was that bad?

I added more advertisements to my websites. I feel a little dirty about it. I don't get that many hits but I feel like I should attempt to get whatever I can from what I have. Some people happen to come to this site, and more to AoC Design, and I try to get something off of their visits. I'm sure that at some point someone will accidentally purchase something through my referrer links and I'll get a commission. I'm sure that I will be shocked when it happens.

And I do complain a lot about not having money on this blog so why not try to make a buck or two off of it. It would of course help if I wrote more entries on it or wrote about things that I could create links to. When I complain about lack of money I don't have any obvious items to link to, that's why a couple of posts have links to nonsense.

I suppose I could just add links to whatever I happen to be reading or listening to, but that won't make sense in most posts.
-X

Moonshine (Cal Leandros, Book 2)(Just started along with a dozen other books I'm reading right now.)
Hot Mess(Sadly, I'm a nice guy. Sometimes I wish I wasn't.)

Friday, May 14, 2010

Caught up in academics

Once again I'm caught up in looking at academics. My grades aren't quite good enough for grad school, about 2.7, you really want 3.0. Of course for every year of experience you can consider you GPA to be a .1 higher. Sadly I have no extra experience.

So when I say this is academic I'm really meaning it. I browse over the colleges near where I want to live to see if they have programs I might be interested in. Not many do, most are vague on what they are looking for and what they teach, or they claim to be generic and appear to lean a bit towards performance.

I look over them and really really want to start doing the things they describe, no matter how vague they are. I haven't done anything remotely theatre related for the last year. I haven't drawn, I haven't built, I haven't painted. I haven't had a problem that needed solving that I could just go an fix. I feel more than a little bit helpless right now.

I made a list and on it is drawing. I really want to draw, and I hate to sound trite, but I don't have inspiration here. I've lived here for twenty-two years, it all seems very dull after twenty-two years.

I feel like I shouldn't post deary crap, but as long as I keep in mind that I'm unhappy here, maybe I'll be able to leave.
-X

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Questionable time usage.

I spent the better part of the last three days reading Questionable Content and before that I was reading Sorcery 101. There are so many things I should have been doing instead.

I have a list on my desktop now. It's very distracting if I ever close the internet browser. Actually I'm really annoyed at myself because I made the list three days ago and I had to put really stupid stuff on it to be able to check things off. As it is I'm not putting "Read shit-ton of books you brought" because I'll do that without being reminded, though they are taking up a lot of space around my bed.

Yeah, I've been lazy.

My list mostly has real things on it, like "Look for a job" implying local retail type deal, but as I check I have flashbacks to a couple of months ago when I was testing the waters - it sucked then too. I thought I was in a little unemployment bubble that I created myself, little did I know that it really is this bad of a job market. Maybe a year ago I could have found some part-time thing, but today I'm suddenly not very sure. Not that I've tried very hard.

Just thinking about it makes me realize that what I've feared has come true. I'm comfortable. You would fucking laugh you you saw my room and heard my say that I'm comfortable.

Actually I'm very uncomfortable. I'm stuck in the worst situation you can imagine. Trapped without money or anyway to escape my parent's house. I haven't even had twelve hours truly alone for the last ten months. I was updating the countdowns on my other site and saw that it only four and a half months until my birthday. First I was like "cool, it's almost my birthday," then I was like "Shit I just wasted an entire fucking year!"

I'm stuck in a rut and I feel like well meaning people have let me sink deeper. I feel like part of it is my fault, but I'm getting less sure of myself as the days go by.
-X

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Bad anniversary

One year ago yesterday I graduated. I'm still unemployed and living at home. To say that I'm not comfortable with this situation is an understatement. I've not lost significant weight, though I have started exercising and my wrist is as fixed as it's going to get.

I'm trying to not get depressed.

I have a plan prepared for this eventuality even though I don't like it. In fact I hate it. Go back to retail.

When I think of going back to retail I think of a friend of mine that I worked with a few summers ago. She graduated in December, when theatre are not really hiring. She couldn't go to the theatre conventions because she didn't have the money, so she ended up waitressing for a year and a half after getting her degree. She was comfortable and was making decent money after working that long.

I've said it before, I don't want that. But even as I say that I have gotten comfortable, especially during the winter when no one wants to go outside. My life for the past year has been easy, too easy. I run through books like nobodies business, I go to movies often, I eat free food. I travel to several places for free (none of the places I'd like to go and look for jobs, god forbid I get to go there!), but in the end there is guilt. I'm not giving back to society and I looks at my long term goals and I find myself lagging far behind.

I look back now and think that I should have gotten a job months ago, but it's looking back. I call it optimism. I refused to believe that I was going to be unemployed after looking for three months. I refused to believe that I would still be living in my parent's house for more than three months. I keep hoping that the resume I sent out last week will be the one that lands me a job. I couldn't commit to another job, because another job, closer to my dream job might be out there. I think my parent's are more understanding now then they were, but the one thing that really cheers me up is when I talk to someone my age having the same trouble. I don't have any friends, it stopped hurting to say that years ago, so I don't have someone to talk to about this, or even someone I can talk to. I hid in my room for days because I can't take the conversations my parent's have. I written some of them before, same conversation a dozen times to people who have already heard it.

I cheer myself up though. There are things that I've done that I couldn't have done if I had been working. Last November I wrote the first draft of a novel. It needs heavy editing, but I wrote over 50,000 words. Did I mention that I failed high school writing? I wrote a second one, a longer one, the beginning of this year and in April I wrote a screenplay. I want to write another and I want to edit my first. I never thought I would actually want to edit my first novel, it's just so bad at points.

It proved to me that I can do things that I set my mind to and I've set my mind to something and I will get it. I still believe that my parents are being over protective of me. I debate talking about it to them, but will they answer differently now?
-X

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

May

During April and November I don't think of NaNoWriMo or Script Frenzy as taking up a lot of time, but in both cases there were significant decreases in my blogging. I do this mostly when I'm bored and don't have to sleep for work. Luckily, I still am without a job. Fingers still crossed, sometime this week. Affirmations for me.

Anyway, my nephew was born two days early so we flew out to see him. He's doing what newborns do. Sleep, eat, poop. Something I noticed was that he got cuter after a couple of days, as he was able to grow into his skin. the first pictures he looked like kind of squashy. Three days old, he looked like a baby. A really big one, 8lb 15oz, or as the nurse told my sister-in-law, "you can say he was nine pounds,".

We drove. It sucked. We drove because it's insanely expensive to fly last minute and we would need a car when we got there. At least we wouldn't in an Escalade (or was it a Expedition?) this time. It was a gigantic vehicle that my father rented "just in case we needed to transport people". We didn't.

So, we drove and I had to sit in the back seat of a Tacoma for eight hours. My brother got to be there too because he wimped out on driving himself. We get annoyed with my parents on these trips because at some point they are frozen by a decision. 'Where are we going to eat?', 'What are we going to do for the next couple of hours?'. The eating one always pisses me off because they then get mad at me for stating that we should go to place 'A' or 'B'. We only went to 'the Diner' once this time after I pointed out that we ate there five times the last trip. Meanwhile my mother started to come up with a dozen different interesting restaurants yet she would have happy eating at the 'Diner' multiple times again. She fell in love with the place last year when they were open at midnight, but I think I get sick off of their food (which is why I don't name them).

Where was I going with this anyway? Oh right. I discovered that my abs don't like being squashed. My knees in the Tacoma are about my belly button if I sit straight. Instead I have to tilt out both of my legs, for HOURS. It's like getting into an uncomfortable position for a couple of minutes, for like a picture or something and having to maintain it forever. Whenever we stopped, getting out didn't just feel good, it felt like my legs were getting blood again. They only seat in that car is my father's and he doesn't understand the pain the rest of us go through.

Now I wrote this on Tuesday and completely forgot about it to post so let's hit it now.
-X

How to Cook Everything (Completely Revised 10th Anniversary Edition), Completely Revised 10th Anniversary Edition: 2,000 Simple Recipes for Great Food
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