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| Saturday, October 31st, 2009 | | 3:22 pm |
My job at the tea shop is actually kind of fun. That's their website, which it's my job to manage, and if you look at it briefly you may notice that it's, well, hilariously amateurish. And this is after I've started fixing it up a bit, I couldn't bring myself to write this post until I'd done a few things to it. It used to be dark gray, like, entirely, and there was stuff that wasn't lining up right in the frames, it was ridiculous. I'm going to have to do a real makeover at some point, but I'm going to do things like spellcheck all the content first. No point in a pretty outside when the content still looks like its apostrophes were applied with a shotgun. There's also a tea blog, which my boss is more excited about, although I'm not sure how much he knows about blogging. He keeps trying to give me advice, and he certainly knows a lot more about selling things than I do, but I kind of want to pat him on the head and tell him to go off to play when he starts talking about more web-focused stuff. I think I'm the only person who works for the teashop who can routinely recognize html. There's a web designer who's kind of affiliated with the shop, but he doesn't work for it, and I don't have his contact info. I don't think I need it, though, I can figure everything out. If half a dozen people with only basic computer skills and no time to spend on the web end of the business have been running this for three years, I think I can take care of things. I hope my boss finds another new project to distract him soon. He gets in my way a little. But the job itself is so much fun I almost feel bad about taking money for it (seriously, they're paying me to fix their mistakes on their site and blog about tea, I'd do that for fun if there weren't so much fanfic I need to get to first), so I suppose I can think of it as being payed for listening to him blather about people's attention spans on the internet or whatever for half an hour every shift. | | Thursday, October 15th, 2009 | | 1:04 am |
I just got a job. A real job, for money and everything, with this little tea shop that I love a lot. They're going to pay me to write a blog about tea and hang out in their lovely little shop that smells like tea and cardamom two afternoons a week. I feel so weird, though, maybe I've done too much this week. Overstimulated, overexposed. I don't think people who have broken down and gotten a prozac prescription should feel like this, like my brain's all sharp angles that aren't put together right and don't fit into my head. Sometimes I feel like all my problems are totally normal, everyone feels like this sometimes because life is hard, but there are ways to work on it and make a happy enough life and mind and everything. But sometimes, I feel like there's something fucking broken in here, and I'm really crazy, I just control it well. Why can't I feel good for the whole day after I acquire a job I like? I think I'll feel better in the morning. And when I start working on their/our/my tea blog and website I will link you guys to it and you will say nice things and I'll love you all and love my job and feel happy. And for now I'll go to bed and maybe have nice dreams. | | Sunday, September 6th, 2009 | | 6:22 pm |
I'm going to get a tattoo! I went to this studio today and talked to the guys there, and handed my little sketch over to a guy who probably has more skin inked than un-inked and who promised to make it look nice and artistic. It's based on tattoos that characters in the book I'm going to write are going to get, and I'm really excited. Different things freak me out about this than I thought would. Turns out I can walk into a tattoo studio and ask a couple of strangers to permanently scar me in a way that will involve me stripping to the waist without the slightest flutter of nervousness, but when people say "what is this design supposed to be" I'm mortified. It seems so personal. This design, these characters, they've been in my head for like a decade now, these people were my friends when I had absolutely no real friends, this fairly simple design took me years to come up with and I just handed it over to a stranger who is going to redraw it to look nicer. And he will, too, we stood around in the shop for twenty minutes and talked about it and he came up with at least one suggestion that was a)a brilliant improvement on my design and b)totally obvious. I feel like I'm peeling my skin off in front of people. And every person I have to explain the tattoo to I have to explain my book to as well, and fantasy novels sound so, so much sillier when you're briefly outlining the plot to a non-fantasy reader than they do in your head. I'm peeling off my skin and revealing Star Wars footie pjs underneath. Oh, and I mentioned what I was doing this afternoon to my father, and I think I actually physically transformed into a sullen fifteen year old for a few minutes there. My parents would never tell me not to do something, but they can exude "you're a lunatic" in a way that makes my fucking teeth hurt. There's a little voice in the back of my head that wants me to get a full sleeve just for him saying "well, she's an adult now, she can do what she wants" in that tone of voice. Parents. Jesus Christ. But overall, excited! I need this tattoo, it feels like. I want to draw it on in ballpoint pen every day until I can get it done. And even if it's scary as hell to tell people about the book and related things, it also feels, honest, kind of? Like I've been hiding the part of myself that meant the most to me for years, and now it'll be marked on the outside of me, a physical manifestation, so this isn't just in my head. I hope they aren't busy at the studio. | | Sunday, August 30th, 2009 | | 11:02 pm |
I'm in a holding pattern right now, I know that. Moving back in with your parents is like going into limbo, sometimes you're not even sure you quite exist. The phrase "get a life" actually means something for once. I feel like I'm observing the world from a distance, thinking about how I could fit into it, dipping a toe in occasionally, but not going for it. I can't stay here, spending too long not being real can't be healthy, but it's hard to step out. I feel like I'm waiting for something. I don't know what, though. A decision, maybe? I think I've made one though. Faith in my decision, then. It's so easy here. I'm reading some of the books in my To Read pile. I'm getting my drinking under control, again. I'm sorting through my thoughts at my own lethargic speed, processing information about the world that I've had for a long time but never managed to make sense of before, prevented by immaturity or stress or just not having had enough time yet. Some timer in my head is ticking down, though. The twitch in my eyelid is coming back. That's a sign of stress, even though there aren't exactly a lot of stressors in limbo. I think it's my body or my subconscious telling me to get moving, get a life. A daunting thought. It isn't optional, though. I have to do it, one of these days. If it wasn't hard, it wouldn't be worth doing. I feel like a little kid jumping off the high diving board. I never got used to the high dive. | | Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 | | 6:11 pm |
Placebo just postponed their North American tour, by which I mean cancelled until further notice, because the singer's sick! Really sick, he fainted dead away on stage last week. I was hoping that not hearing anything more since that happened meant he'd gotten better, but I guess not. He has to take six weeks off, by doctor's orders, and that means the show I'd been so excited to go to for the past month is cancelled. And someone I like is really sick. This sucks. I have to stop getting attached to real people. | | Saturday, August 15th, 2009 | | 10:12 pm |
Watching Lost with friends was kind of fun. Watching Lost again, listening to my family argue, is less fun. Less fun to the point that I am going to freak out and start screaming at them. Then I would insist on switching to a show that a)I haven't already seen, or at least b)that isn't full of characters that are even more infuriating than family members. Why are these people so stupid? Jack supposedly went through medical school. How did he make it when he has all the sense of a five year old with a head injury? And why doesn't the plot ever advance in the first season? | | Monday, July 20th, 2009 | | 11:35 pm |
Stephen Colbert/Jon Stewart is totally my OTP, but it's taking a real beating from Brian Williams/Jon Stewart. Oh, the tension! | | Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 | | 11:04 pm |
Things That Make Me Happy: paperback sci fi/fantasy books written in the last ten years two to three drinks exactly the right song reading good fanfic writing fanfic getting comments on my fanfic friends fandom* *in related news, I am in love with Dave Lister. LOVE. YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND OUR BOND. Tragically, this means that Rimmer will surely be paying ninjas to kill me any day now. *runs off to indulge in delusions of grandeur* | | Monday, July 6th, 2009 | | 2:15 pm |
Life has been spinning around me like a hurricane for, roughly, ever, but I woke up today and it's gone still. After I decided to skip yoga class, of course. Why do they have it so early in the morning? By which I mean, before noon at all. I do not approve. I'm not applying to any more master's programs. I'm not going to be getting into anything in this economy, and a terminal master's program was always an odd idea in my field. So, now what? Start improving my app materials for the next round of doctorate program applications. God, I don't want to do that. I don't think I could open the file with my writing sample in it without hammering back a few shots. Maybe if I give it some time I'll be more comfortable working on that stuff. I have time, now. I have months and months until the deadlines come up. And many more months after that before a program starts, if I even get into one. I could come up with enough work to do to improve my apps/ general grad school prospects to fill up that time, probably. I never put in the raw library time I should have. I don't know if I have the will power to walk into a library and start reading through it. It's somehow stressful, somehow terrifying. I tell myself to get up and walk over to the pile of books just sitting in the corner of my bedroom and my legs don't do it, I just keep staring at the wall. I wonder if I even should. When I ask professors how I go about getting their job, they ask me if I'm sure I want it. If I've tried anything else. I hate that. I picked a career, I want to zoom full speed ahead for it, doubt-free. I am anything but doubt-free, of course. There are other things I'd like to do. I want to front a band, be a full time professional paperback fantasy writer. But I can't write music, and while I can write fantasy, novel length publishable material is damn hard to come up with. The longest thing I've ever written was a hundred pages, and it was bandslash. No, I cannot do find and replace on the names. It's healthily based in the canon, which is several wealthy people who live in a country with strong libel laws. And when I sit down to write my own personal novel I stare at the blank screen, hating every idea I come up with. I should get a real job. Living in my parents' house waiting for my life to start again makes me such a loser I can't decide whether to laugh or cry. Not to mention, they've spent enough money putting me through school, it's time for me to pay my own credit card bills. So, barista job, then? My resume is built for classics programs, by classics programs. Not to mention, the odds of me upending a hot cup of coffee over an innocent passerby within a week are uncomfortably high. So many choices of what to do with my time. Read or write, study or work, hell, I have about a million hours of TV to watch and so many books in my To Read box that they don't fit in the box. But I'm sitting here and not starting anything. It all seems horrible. I don't want to do anything. I've always had too much inertia. You'd think I'd have learned how to handle it by now. | | Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 | | 9:54 pm |
No matter how long I spend on the east coast, I'm never quite used to it. Or maybe, not as used to it as I am to Seattle. I come back here and I'm like, o hai, way the world is supposed to be. Little things, people speaking Vietnamese in the grocery store, visible mountains at least half the time, rain. I miss the rain, I swear. When I go anywhere else I feel like a plant that's drying out. Makes it awfully tricky, since most of my friends are on the east coast. OK guys, here's the plan: all of you move the Pacific Northwest. Yeah? Yeah? | | Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 | | 4:49 pm |
Interesting fact of the day: there are muscles in your outer ear. They are quite vestigial and can't move human ears like dogs perking their ears up, but they are there. I can personally attest to this, because I appear to have developed a tic in one of them. It feels SO weird. Sometimes it goes off at the same time as the one in my eyelid, and I probably look like a lunatic smacking myself in the face to try and get them to stop. Further research on Wikipedia suggests they technically aren't tics, but "fasciculations." Man, I'm learning all kinds of cool medical facts today, NONE OF WHICH STOP MY EAR FROM TWITCHING. Why to these things happen? | | Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 | | 9:04 pm |
I love May Day so much, you guys. Perhaps more accurately, I love seeing my friends. I had not seen some of these people in forever, and it was so cool to see them! Oh, Bryn Mawr. My beautiful old campus, with the lovely trees and buildings and people. People came from so far away to show up at May Day! People I was so happy to see! Kate Devine is apparently a liberal now, excuse me while I move to Florida to become her mistress. There were all kinds of people, and it was pouring down rain so we all stuffed ourselves into the campus center (ETA: apparently my typing fingers have a life of their own) and played board games and caught up on everything that had happened in the multiple years since we've seen each other. I'm not sure I can move away from the east coast. Leave all my people? The downside of seeing all these people is that I kind of forgot I missed some of them, and now that I've seen them again it kills me that I have no I idea when I'll next see them. I possibly should have stayed for step sing, so I could cry all over their shoulders at midnight. I believe that's what I did last time I was at a step sing, and I still saw most of them regularly then. If I did not see you, I missed you. Love you guys! | | Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 | | 4:04 pm |
I hate resume writing. Partially this is from my hatred of all application-related things, but also, I feel like I have nothing to put on the damn thing. I have plenty of accomplishments, just not resume type ones. So I sit there staring at a screen (blank, because amongst the many important things I failed to back up was my resume) and wonder what the hell I've been doing with my time. Nothing I want to write down. Why don't prospective schools and employers want to hear about the hundreds of hours I've devoted to watching anime? I've collected fifty GBs of music, that's impressive, right? I've written fanfiction that has brought people to tears, and not from hilarity of grammar flaws! But nooooooo, all they care about is whether I've ever had any substantive employment or relevant formal education. You know, I wouldn't be so well qualified to be an academic if I hadn't read every single book Terry Pratchett has ever written. He's very educational! | | Thursday, April 16th, 2009 | | 7:45 pm |
Freud makes a lot more sense when you stop viewing his writing as psychology and start viewing it as some sort of inadvertent art. It's excellent, highly effective art! | | Monday, March 30th, 2009 | | 5:05 pm |
Annnnnnnnd that's a wrap. The last grad school I applied to rejected me. Nose back to the application grindstone, then. | | Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 | | 12:20 am |
This whole article about Bill O'Reilly's awful thriller novel, and the audio version which is read by the author himself, is very funny. But by far the best bit is wayyyyyyy down at the end of the article, in which one of the audio clips from the book that's posted is Bill O'Reilly, Papa Bear himself, saying "I wish I were a lesbian." Everyone break into song! | | Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 | | 1:49 pm |
And a no from Stanford. I liked Stanford. I'm so fucked. ETA: And UWashington. I can't get into UW? I read stuff from one of their faculty for my thesis! There are two Mawrtyrs in their faculty! My parents personally know people in their faculty! This cannot be happening to me. | | Saturday, February 21st, 2009 | | 1:13 am |
| | Sunday, February 15th, 2009 | | 4:20 pm |
UPenn turned me down. Guess I'm not coming back here next year. | | Thursday, February 5th, 2009 | | 9:12 pm |
You know what I love? I love auditing a class. I love auditing literary theory, in particular. I get to show up for the fun discussions, but if I haven't finished the reading, who the hell can tell? It's lit theory. And since I'm auditing, I don't have to turn in papers, I don't have to admit on my transcript that I needed an honestly rather basic lit theory class at this stage, and I don't have to pay for it! Suddenly not having to write a paper puts me in the BEST mood. It wasn't even a hard paper, but I much prefer drinking and laughing at the foolish undergrads who are taking this class for credit to, you know, thinking and writing. Well, that's not entirely true. I think I'll write fic based on my thoughts on Aristotle's Poetics. Arthur and Merlin sleeping together as climactic plot action, with recognitions about how they want each other's hot, hot bodies, versus the anti-Aristotelian Arthur and Merlin sleeping together as a character study, with lots of introspective, the same character traits that make Arthur totally OK with getting topped will make him a good king someday stuff. This is such an illuminating class! |
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