five state tango

This is a travel blog, or was, and I don't seem to travel much anymore, but here's a little tidbit for you anyway!

Two months ago, almost three now, I moved down to Texas. Don't ask me why because I really don't know still. I needed a change. I had to get out of where I was. There are jobs here. Anyway.

I packed up almost everything I owned into my (very small) car and drove down through five states in about five or six days. I used the trip as an excuse to visit my friends that I hadn't seen since I came back from China. That was two years ago.

First stop was Los Angeles. I crashed at my friend's house for the night. We spent it watching A Very Potter Musical and then the next morning we made crepes with nutella and strawberries! It was delicious and reminded me of my senior year of college when I would make crepes all the time with my friend Nicole. Which was perfect timing given that the next night was spent in Phoenix with Nicole.

It's nice coming back to familiar places. I always thought that I would hate Phoenix for the rest of my life after going to high school there. But there's something nice about knowing where you're going, how to get places, which roads lead to what. It was pleasant to be back in Phoenix, even if I was in Glendale, an area I'm not terribly familiar with.

We hung out in the pool and then went to see the Hunger Games (my third time, Nicole's first). The next morning, I packed up and headed out, straight to...

Albuquerque to visit my friend Caty and her husband Adam. I still find it weird that so many of my friends are getting married. We mostly just hung out and I broke out the colossal Europe photo album (It is twice the size of China's despite the fact that I was in China for a longer amount of time). I also introduced her to Starkid and the genius that is Holy Musical B@man.

But alas the fun couldn't last and it was off to Texas for me.

So here I am three months later. I have a new pet! It's a rabbit, an American Fuzzy Lop which I mentioned a few entries ago. I bet you guys didn't think I'd actually get one, did you? I actually have 3, but only one is here with me in my apartment.

And I've been here 3 months and I'm already bored. I'm thinking about my next move... which I'm fairly sure has to do with writing. If I can double my monthly freelancing income, I could make it my full time job. I suppose that is my goal for the end of the year. Until then, I will go to work every day and figure out a way to make it happen. Until the next trip!

blogs

I'm not really a blogging person most of the time. And I obviously don't use this one much, but if you're interested, I have another blog that's 1) easier to comment on, and 2) that I like better. It's mainly for my writer-y stuff, but mayhaps you're interested in that?

If you want to visit/follow, check out my other blog: http://elyceg.wordpress.com

Just FYI-ing.

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.

I Don't Know What I'm Doing

I don't know if anyone even reads this blog anymore and I never update, but that's mostly because I also have a facebook, tumblr, livejournal, wordpress, etc etc and the list goes on. Granted, I have cut down on the number of accounts I have in the past few years, but new ones always seem to sneak up.

Anyway, what I'm here to talk about now is writing. Yes, most of you know that I like to write in my spare time. I've been writing pretty constantly for the past seven years now. I've published (self-published, whatever) one novel and written over 300 other short stories. I've written six novels, and this year, 2012, is the year I'm finally going to Make. Stuff. Happen. Seriously.

As of Monday, I will be throwing caution to the wind and entering one of my novels in ABNA, the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. Now, I don't expect to get much further than maybe the second round, third if I'm lucky, but of course there's a tiny part of me that's hoping against hope I'll make it to the top three and even win. I'm trying to be realistic, though. My poor little novel. I'm gonna be spreading its wings and pushing it off a cliff! It's a little scary.

In the meantime, though, while that will be going on and I'll be sitting on my hands in antici.... pation, I've also jumped off the deep end into freelance writing. I started about two months ago and I've gotten six jobs so far. In a way, it's awesome because it's getting paid to write, which is one of the things I would love to do full time, but on the other hand, it takes away time from actually writing my own things. I have a list of writing things to do this year, most of which involves editing and rewriting and submitting. But to do that, I have to actually have time to do it.

The novel I'm submitting for ABNA, I wrote it in November. That sounds ridiculously fast considering here we are two months later. In the first two weeks of January, I took hours every day and tore the thing apart and then built it back up piece by piece. I have never been good at editing, mostly because I was always afraid of the delete button, but I bit the bullet and deleted entire sections that had nothing to do with the plot or the characters. I took a chopping ax to the chapters, and managed to fall completely in love with a single chapter (I don't know why I love this chapter so much but I do. It's perfect). I want to get this novel out there, to prove that I'm not just fiddling around aimlessly on my computer. Also, I want to get the eff out of this town and selling a book would get me enough money to do that.

I guess I should go work on my pitch instead of sitting here talking about it, to make sure I do actually get to round two. Adios.

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!

until the sea drowned the sun

November is probably too far off for most people to be thinking about yet, but for me, this is prime time to think of November.

If you recall, November is National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo or just NaNo) in which doomed souls partake in the challenge to write a 50k word novel in 30 days or less. Until last week, I had no plots or even ideas, that is until I stole one... But don't worry! I stole it from my best friend with her permission. Originally, the idea had been for a fake movie meme that filtered through tumblr a few months ago in which you take a few celebrities, a song from shuffle, and make up a plot with these. It's quite fun.

So I stole it and am in the process of plotting out the novel. So far I've got about seven pages of character development but no plot... haha. Typical. Quelle surprise. But here, have the (newly redesigned) fake movie poster!

The coloring in the title got a little screwed up on here, but that's okay. So... when my novel is made into a movie guess who should play the title roles? Haha.

signs point to yes

My Magic 8 Ball sits on my shelf, the desolate shelf that I cleared last summer in preparation that I would actually do something when I got back from France. It sits there along with one framed picture of my childhood. The little blue die inside is slightly battered, white where it's hit the circular window over the years, always popping up to answer my question.

When I was younger, I'd ask, "Does so-and-so like me?" I can't say my questions have gotten much better over the years. This morning, I asked, "Will today be a good day?" Yesterday, I asked, "Will there be a lot of baths today?" The day before, I asked, "Will my schedule be changed again today?"

As a Freshman in high school, we had daily announcements by the principal and every day, he'd end with, "You can make it a great day or not... the choice is yours." The choice was mine. I never made that choice.

Nowadays, my Magic 8 Ball makes the choice for me. It tells me yes or no, a good day or not. If it tells me it can't make a decision, I shake it again. The poor, battered die. For years it has answered my questions, and for years, it has been right. Or perhaps it hasn't been. Perhaps it tells me, I believe it, and because I believe it, it's right.

Magic 8 Ball, you will always be right.