american fuzzy lops

I am a dork. I admit this freely. I spend most of my time on the internet where I can nerd out over things like Harry Potter and LotR and Hunger Games, and whatever other fandom has caught my attention for the moment. But my dorkiness extends beyond the internet. Really, it started at an early age, and it hasn't seemed to have gone away. It's probably only gotten worse.

There is this thing, that a lot of people do, but that the great wide world seems completely ignorant about. That thing is rabbits. Yes, rabbits. People raise them and show them, and love them like they're little dogs. They are so cute and each has its own personality that either makes you love them or hate them. I've had rabbits that were the sweetest things ever, and then there was the one who decided he hated me for no reason (he didn't last long in our barn to say the least).

This hobby, though (and believe me, it's a hobby. You can't make real money breeding rabbits, maybe enough to break even if you're lucky and have amazing stock), it's weirdly isolating outside of it's own bubble. Rabbit people are awesome, but they're the only ones who will ever understand what you're talking about or why you love it as much as they do. None of my friends get it, and they just think it's this weird, cute personality habit of mine or something.

At the moment, I have no rabbits. I haven't had any since I was a senior in high school. We had to sell out when my parents moved and I went to college. Selling Eclipse, my baby, the only fuzzy lop I'd had since the day he was born, was hard. I'm sure he's dead now, but I still miss him.

Eclipse is the broken chestnut (on the far left). This picture was taken when they were about 3 weeks old. The other two are a broken black and a seal (which is not a recognized color in the ARBA)

It's hard not to have rabbits anymore. I mean, American Fuzzy Lops do take more work than other rabbits since you have to groom them twice a week generally, but they're so sweet. Eclipse would always come right up to me whenever I went out to see him.

This is probably all just coming up because there's a rabbit show this weekend and I want to go, but I also don't have any real reason to since at shows, you either show or you shop, and I can't have a rabbit right now, so it'd just be torture looking at all these things I can't buy. Ugh. I suppose I should focus on something else, but I can't help thinking about it anyway.

Counting Your Eggs

Well, hello there. It's been a while. You've grown. But this blog sure hasn't, and okay, I was pretty bad... I even deleted it a few months ago but it's back (mostly because I had to retrieve an entry from it, but here we are).

I wouldn't say my life has drastically changed in the past few months. I still work at the same place, live in the same place, see the same people every day. A dull litany of monotony.

Only one thing really has changed: I've become a freelance writer. No, really, it's technically official. I get paid to write stuff. Granted, I've only had one job and it's still "in progress" but it's a start. I'm not going to count my eggs before they've hatched. But I've applied for a few more jobs and gotten some bites that might develop into actual paying jobs, so I can officially say that I'm a freelance writer now.

I don't really know what I'm working towards with the freelance thing except that it could be the thing I'm supposed to be doing with my life. You know? I've gone through most of my life with varying levels of passion for things and they all seem to fizzle with time, and I went all the way through college not knowing what I wanted to do, and two years later still not knowing. But here I am with this new opportunity and god, the idea of working from home is extremely appealing. At the moment, I have to work around my other job which limits the jobs I can apply for since a lot of them want 24/7 availability.

I know I only just started (literally, signed up last month), and I'm going slow because there's no rush, but I got one job and I've got two potential on the table, so I'd say it's a good start. Here's hoping I'll be able to sustain something in the new year and maybe, just maybe, I'll find a way to do this full time and quit my crappy job. Woo!

every night is like a revival.

Just the other day, I was lamenting yet again) about my current state of life, but I read blog today about twentysomethings and why we all feel so old. We feel old because we have expectations of where we should be at certain points in our lives, specifically in our twenties, and if we're not there, we feel a failure somehow, we feel old.

When I was younger and had a clear view of my life (I was going to be a veterinarian and own about 50 dogs), twenty-four seemed so very far away. I didn't know anyone who was twenty-four. Now I'm twenty-four and the oldest of all my immediate friends which is strange because as a child, I always got along much better with people older than me. There are times when the age differences are glaring to me, even if it's just a few years, and that makes me feel older than ever.

However, I had a brief shining moment of clarity today. It didn't last long, but I thought I'd share it while I still feel this way. It comes and goes, you see.

I am twenty-four, but in my twenty-four years, I've done things that a lot of people would never dream of: I moved to China with no knowledge of the language or what I was really getting into, I moved to France, I traveled to 13 countries, many by myself, I published a novel and wrote four more. I wrote four screenplays, and as bad as most of them are, who do you know who has?

As a kid, I was generally the odd one out. I had a few close friends but very little beyond that aside from acquaintances since it was a small town and I knew everyone in my grade since kindergarten. I loved animals and spent hours reading books and memorizing facts and generally being a huge nerd. Luckily for me, that wasn't unexpected in my town. The whole place was a little odd, and admittedly, I'm very glad we moved away.

The point is, I've never been normal. I've never had normal jobs or done normal things. The closest I came to normal was in college working at a restaurant, but I was promoted to student manager so it wasn't exactly normal again. Now I work at a dog kennel which I also did for two years in high school. My life isn't normal. Most people never think of doing that job because it's not fast food or retail, and sure, it's not going to get me much anywhere but it's more interesting than saying, "I cook hamburgers for a living."

I've always been okay being not normal which I guess means I have to accept that at twenty-four, whatever life goal I'm supposed to be hitting won't be happening. The youth really is wasted on the young.

I've been initiated

Got my first (well, second ever but whatever) dog bite yesterday. Currently hurts like hell if anything touches it and there's a lovely swelling bruise around where the lower incisor was. What sucks most is that it's on my forearm, so... quite visible and unfortunately a place that touches things a lot like the computer, my body, anything I lay it on. Hopefully it will go down by the time I have to work again. Boo.

don't judge me

I just went through and re-formatted all my gifs to under 500kb so I can use them all on tumblr.

This is my life.