I Wish I Had a GPS For My Life

I had kind of forgotten that I wrote all that last time. It wasn't so much that I had forgotten that I had written it as much as I had forgotten that I had had all those thoughts just days before I had them all over again, in a much weakened state.

Let me explain: last week was awful. Well, the beginning of the week was awful. It was a low point in my impending quarter-life crisis. Monday was such a crap day, that I decided about halfway through the work day that I was going to go home and search for jobs in Charlotte. Fuck it. I'd had enough. I thought about it for the rest of the day; it was sort of my driving force to get through the rest of the day. I thought about it a bit when I actually got home, but I was so drained from being enraged for most of the day, that I never looked. Still haven't.

Then, on Wednesday, I went into the City to see Chuck Klosterman do a book talk on Eating the Dinosaur. It was really good, really funny. He's such a great and entertaining writer. He simultaneously makes me feel smart and dumb when I read this stuff, and he makes me want to be a better (and paid) writer. His writing inspires me, and I remember that more strongly whenever I spend a particularly long time with his writing, and even more so when I hear him speak (2 times, now). As I was sitting on the train going into the city, I realized that if I were to move to Charlotte, I wouldn't be able to do this anymore. I wouldn't be able to, on a whim, go roam the city, or go to spectacular events, or see famous people out on the street, or almost bump into them getting on the subway. It's the little things, you know? These little insignificant things that make me happy, that make me feel validated, at least the tiniest fraction of a bit. There are other things in Charlotte, namely people who are important to me, that are calling me, but it would just be so much better if they all lived here with me, haha. I realize how selfish that sounds, but I'm completely serious. They should just all move here. We'd have so much fun (and get in so much trouble).

But they're not here, and they're not moving here, and again I'm torn. I'm not happy here; that much is clear to me. But I 1) lack the money to move into the city, and 2) lack the job opportunities to try to make a location change right now. Being complacent is so much easier than taking action. Especially when I can't figure out which action would be best, which I deep down want the most. I realized yesterday that I may be able to continue my job from a remote location (i.e., Charlotte), but I don't know if it would remain full-time, or turn into a freelance situation with sporadic work. That wouldn't be good. So still, I'm stagnant. And it's driving me insane.

I'm 24 years old, I'm only able to bank about 1/8th of my salary each month, and I'm drowning. I don't know what to do anymore. I'm lost. Someone come find me, please.

Welcome to Starbucks. May I Interest You in a Venti Soy Caramel I'm-Not-Getting-Any-Younger-uccino?

Is it weird that for a second there, I just considered quitting my job and working at Starbucks? Like, for a second, I actually thought that making snotty professional types their half-caf soy mocha lattes or whatever could be inspiring. It could definitely afford me some much needed free time, don't you think?

But it's bad that I thought this, right? Like, it would be a serious pay cut. I already feel like I make on the low-end for what I do. I seriously need to be paid more for the amount of work that I do. Maybe I'm in the wrong industry. Maybe I should have gone to school to be a psychologist like I had thought about while I was in high school. For a while there, I really wanted to be an FBI profiler. No joke. I was all into it. But then journalism caught my heart, and against the advice of my parents, I went for it. Now I have a degree that was awesome to study, but is essentially useless to me since I don't even work in the journalism field. I hate newspapers. Hate them with a passion. Magazines are better, but hard as shit to get a job at if you're not freelancing, which I don't know if that's something I want to do right now. There's definitely the money in psychology, but I think I might enjoy reading/watching suspense crime dramas more than actually living them. I don't want a high risk job.

I don't know what to do with my life. I'm at a standstill. I think I mentioned this yesterday. I hate Jersey so much. I want out of this armpit. But if I go anywhere but into NYC, I'm going to miss it too much. I so badly want to move back to Charlotte, but, as much as I love it, that city is beans compared to NYC. It's THE CITY. You can't find a better city than that. It's true that I don't go in there often, but what would I do if I didn't have it in my life? It's like a weird addiction. A lover on retainer. I don't need it all the time, but it's nice to know that it's there when I do. When I need to escape into it. When I need to experience something new and exciting. How could I possibly part with it?

I'm sorry this is rambley, and disjointed, and possibly hard to follow. Welcome to my brain. I just wish I knew what I was doing with my life. I want to do something new, I want to get out of here, but I don't want to limit myself and dash my dreams by moving back to a relatively smaller metropolis. I don't even know what my dreams are.

I think I'm on the verge of a quarter-life crisis here.

Not Enough Hours In The Day

Okay, so that writing I mentioned I was going to do while everyone was at work last post? Yeah, that didn't happen. I got distracted with an online game called Bloons. What the hell is wrong with me? My cousin was also there, trying to write lyrics... but I got him addicted to Bloons too! We suck at staving off procrastination, haha.

Anywho, I'm back in New Jersey now, having not written anything in like a week. I really need to get on that. I have so many side projects going on right now, it's hard to find the time, though. I think maybe my job isn't stimulating for me in the way that it needs to be in order for me to feel fulfilled. Instead, I have to put in 100% effort just to stay on task, which doesn't always happen. I take breaks, I get off task, but I still manage to finish my work. I'm just not that passionate about it. So I have to use my time after 5 to work on my side projects for which I have FAR more passion. These projects include, but are not necessarily limited to: reading, writing, reviewing, blogging, watching movies, catching up on TV shows, etc. Unforunately, there aren't enough hours in the day to engage in all of these activities in a given evening, so I have to pick and choose. Which leaves me WAY less than satisfied most of the time.

Which is why I usually only sleep 5 or 6 hours a night. I'm trying to suck every last second that I can out of that day, just so I can do something that I enjoy. Is that so much to ask? To be allowed to do something that enables me to escape a little bit from my sad, pathetic life? Tonight, I think I'm going to try to write. Not fiction, but an essay of sorts for a blog that my friend and I are trying to start. It hasn't been updated in almost a month, and we need new material. We have a bunch of ideas floating around, but nothing has been written. I guess you could call it a fangirl site, of sorts. It's a little dorky, but we love it. It's all about the CW (I know, I know) show The Vampire Diaries. You can read our 2 posts (haha *sigh*) here: The Salvatore Boarding House. We figure since it's the summer, we can be a bit slack, but once the season starts, we're going to try to update more regularly. If you decide to visit, I hope you enjoy.

Once I'm done with that, maybe I'll try working more on my 2009 NaNo, which I have tentatively titled "It's Not Too Late." We'll see. Or maybe I'll read. Or something else. I don't know. I need a job where I can get paid to do a hobby. That would be sweet. Until then, I have to content myself with staying up until 2 a.m. to allow my brain some sort of creative outlet...

NaNo 2009 Rewriting Update

So, I decided to try what I was talking about last post. I've put aside the one story I've been working on fairly steadily for over a year, to rework my NaNo from 2009. For the most part I've kept most of what was written for the girl. I decided to keep her POV solely as written in her online blog, as before. But with the guy, I've pretty much rewritten that. Now, instead of only hearing what he's saying to the dog or around the dog, it's just standard first person POV. I've tried to keep the stream of consciousness to a minimum, focusing more on actions and what other people say, but I sneak some thoughts in there, too. So far, I think it's working. I've reworked something like 14 scenes, and it's flowing fairly easily. I'm pretty excited about that, actually. I'm still trying to figure out if it will be possible to pull off the original concept. I veered so far away from it in my original version, I'm not really sure how to pull it back. I'm trying though. I'll report back... :)

In other news, I flew to Florida late last night for a bit of visiting with the family. It's just as hot here as it was in New Jersey with that freaking heat wave. It's actually a little cooler here than it has been there, but apparently the temperature dropped like 15 degrees up there, so now it's cooler there than here. I can't win. Sheesh, haha.

Okay, while everyone is at work, I think I'm going to try a bit of writing before the house fills up again, and I get distracted...

Until then!