In Which There is (Probably) Much Whining

Dear Ashley,

I have to say I'm incredibly jealous of your bravery. I really admire your ability to decide to do something crazy (and awesome, but really, crazy) like go to Budapest, or not finish a program, and actually do it. I feel like I say how much I'd love to do X,Y and Z, but I don't actually have the balls to go DO X, Y and Z.

So I think it's awesome that you're going to go figure out something that you really want to do with your life. I'm definitely not. At least, not right now. I completely loathe my job.

TANGENT! I'm actually at work right now, but I'm watching the owner's baby, and the baby is sleeping *knock on wood.* But the walls of these old row houses are so thin that their neighbor sounds like she's coughing up a lung in the next house over and I had a mild panic attack that it was the baby making that noise. Because it sounds like it's the next room, not the next house.  /end tangent.

So anyway, I feel like I'm doing absolutely nothing with my life. I dread going to work every day. Mostly, I want to curl up in a little ball of depressed writer and cry. And watch shows like Grimm and wonder about being an actor.

Last night, winning NaNo a whole day early made me feel awesome...I haven't written that much in about two years. And I felt like I could do things again. I need to figure out how to harness that feeling though, and stick with it, because I'm feeling it slipping away again.

I need to start studying for the GRE. You should totally look into programs, because most of my deadlines are in January, and a couple of them are even in February, so there might still be plenty of time for you to get into something for next fall. Then this blog can turn into a bitch fest about how hard grad school is :)

Anyway, I'm going to apply to schools because I don't know what else to do with myself. I just know that I need something different. Thankfully, the Philly NaNo group is going to keep posting weekly progress update threads on the forum, so maybe with that sense of community I can keep working on things. And then there's EditMo in January, so my goal is work on applications and Christmas knitting in December and then Letters to Myself in January. I haven't looked at it all month, which I think is good. I never really let it simmer before I tried to start working on revising it, and all I could focus on were the things that didn't work, but I didn't know how to change them. Hopefully with a fresher eye, I'll have more inspiration.

So I tried really hard not to make this whole post one long whine, but I clearly didn't succeed. That's about where my life is right now, though. Boring, stagnant, in need of a change.
I told my mom the other day that I was like Friends circa Season 8: when it's not funny anymore, just sort of sad.

Let me know if I can help at all with your school picking process- I'll even give you my GRE book when I'm done with it- there's no way I'll get through all 8 practice tests.

To end with something positive, I'm pleased with my NaNo novel. It's complete and utter crap, but I like the characters, and I like the idea. I told Ben the other night, somewhere around 46,000 words, that I was feeling like I was figuring out who my characters were, and where they needed to go. And it only took 80 pages to get to that point!

But seriously, I think I can use some of this stuff. I definitely need to go back and research and plot. There was a lot of:  "It's June!" and then three sentences later it was October because that's when the event actually happened. Psh. Research is for suckers.

Anyway, it's almost time for me to go home, so I'm going to end this now.
Talk to you soon, I'm sure!

-Lizz

I Just Jumped and it Feels Great (I think)!

I feel like I haven't been completely honest with you and tonight I made a crazy, irresponsible choice and I'd like to share it with you.

Budapest was lovely and incredible and eye opening and I would never ever take it back. I met some wonderful people and learned some new things, but the last few months I fell into a bit of a slump and couldn't finish a few papers and my thesis. I was granted an extension till November 30.

Tonight I decided not to finish the program.

I don't love policy. Ok I love debating policy and reading about it and now I can comment on it intelligently, but its not my thing. You know?

I've decided to get back to Psychology. I didn't much like the counseling classes in undergrad, but I love talking to people and helping them and I think I'm pretty good at it! I'm gonna go in that direction - probably :p

I just wanted to let you know that your input means a lot to me and now we can go through the finding grad school thing together :)

That's all on my end. 

Congrats on 40,000 words! Can't wait to read it!!

~Ashley

I Really am Having a Quarter Life Crisis and Other Musings

Lizz,

I miss this.

I mean at least when i was in Budapest, even though I was slowly drowning in self-doubt about potential career paths/life choices, I felt like I was actually living. But now I'm back in Oneonta and the self-doubt turns into a pity party a lot quicker without the view.

I'm working on the self-motivation thing - its certainly better than staring at the wall and wishing for my fairy godmother to drop in and give me until midnight to find my destiny which I certainly hope is more than a handsome prince, but I wouldn't say no to one of those either! I'll let you know how it's going when  I actually look away from the wall...

Sorry had to get that out of the way.

Happy NaNo!

I'm loving all your status updates and can't wait to read what you come up with!

I'm working very slowly having lost my 'whole day doing whatever I want time' to work. It's ok  though, actually having a paycheck makes it worth the lagging word count! And as mentioned on facebook I think I'll be able to catch up this weekend. Yay optimism.

Speaking of optimism. Any news on the GRE yet? Or decisions on which programs you're thinking about signing your soul away to? 

One last thing before I turn in for the night (10:00 - I'm like a little old woman!): Woot woot America! I was honestly worried for a second that the next four years would bring no change in our financial outlook and that our social policies would fall so far back I'd be praising God for my job as a secretary and begging potential suitors to view my working status not as empowerment, but a necessity for keeping house. I'm cautiously optimistic about our chances of improving as a country and that's all I'll say on the matter.

Happy writing!
~Ashley

Blocked

Dear Ashley,


I thought maybe if I started with a short blog post I might be able to break the writer's block/ complete and utter lack of motivation that I've been having.

I've read through all the prompts so far on the PhillyWrimos page, and nothing has inspired me to pick up a pen. Or even write more query letters for the novel that's already written.

I'm not sure where this is coming from, but I really haven't been able to write anything substantial in almost a year. Maybe I'm just out of ideas?

There's a write in online tonight that I'm going to try to join- hopefully being with other people (sort of) will prompt me to do something. I also need to be looking at grad schools. I hope I can get into one. But if I did, what would I do there? No idea. I've been seriously considering seeing a psychologist.

Mostly, all I want to do is lay around and knit.

Farwell Europe Photo Tour

Lizz,

Thanks for my postcard!! You should have thought of this months ago – I could have sent you lots and lots of post cards and not just the one :)  

This is my I don’t want to pack procrastination post. It’s also my last post from Hungary which makes me really sad. I’m already all nostalgic for Budapest. I came in from Romania last night and was like I’ll probably never use this exact metro station again. Granted it was a night bus and I hadn’t really slept, but still great big sad face!

I saw your post about Baltimore jobs (fingers and toes crossed for you by the way!!) so does that mean you’re defiantly making that your next move? From your last long post it sounds like it would be perfect if all the pieces fall into place. Definitely keep me updated! It’s my turn to live vicariously through you well I’m stranded in Oneonta for the year.

If my Peace Corps medical and legal screenings go alright I will be leaving for Africa next June which seems like a really long time, but in all actuality will probably fly by. They don’t give you all the information about your placement at the nomination stage, I’ll have to wait until I pass medical and get the official invitation, but this is what I know: I’ll be teaching English in a French speaking country, rural because there may be no electricity or running water. Based on past leaving dates and country profiles from the website this means I will most likely be in Cameroon or Burkina Faso. I’m kind of hoping for Cameroon because they also have a large Muslim population and I think it would be a fantastic blend of cultures, but obviously I’ll go wherever they want to send me!!

Since my last post I’ve been making the most of my remaining time in Europe!! I visited a few other Hungarian cities Balatonfur​ed and Visegrad and also made it to Krakow, Poland and a few cities in Romania (Bran, Rasnov, and Brasov).

Balatonfured is one of the cities on Lake Balaton which is like the Hungarian Myrtle Beach – everyone makes there way there during the summer. The policy department took us as a ‘yay you’re done!’ gift which I thought was really nice. Basically we all just sat around staring at the water. I sat with a friend for over an hour watching some guy fly fish – an hour! Needless to say not much was accomplished in the way of touring the city, but I got some good pictures of the park and the lake itself.

Visegrad is apparently at a strategic point of the Danube which means that once upon a time that’s where Hungarian kings (and further back Roman army’s) ruled from. Now it’s just a tall hill with a lower and upper castle that attracts lots of tourists. The exciting part was that it’s located in an area that you can take a boat to get there which was amazing. On the way back we saw this incredible rainbow which was seriously the widest rainbow I’d ever seen, but I couldn’t find my camera so no picture. You’ll just have to take my word for it!

Krakow was lovely. The main attraction in the city is the square which of course makes you think you should be in another century. On every hour a trumpet player stands at the top of the tower and reenacts the warning call used to sound a coming attack. It ends abruptly because it’s a memorial to the all the men killed while holding this position. I was actually up in the tower completely by accident when he played and I got a really cool picture. There was also drunken Karaoke with a couple of English guys, a trip to the salt mines (where there was a chapel made completly of salt - check out the chandelier!), and a Bollywood movie filming right outside of my hostel.  

Auschwitz is about an hour outside of Krakow so we went on the day tour. Take Dachau and multiply it by 100. There was such an oppressive sadness in the air. But you know as well as I do that there are no words to describe visits like these except maybe it really puts our own small problems into perspective... They saved everything there were rooms full of shoes, of dishes, of glasses, and the worst a room full of human hair. I couldn’t even stay in that room. It was awful and brilliant at the same time and the tour guide was very good – I learned things I’d very much like to forget. On a lighter note between Auschwitz one and two my flip flop broke and I had to staple it back together – thank you random lady who owns one of the book stores!!

After a quick stop in Budapest I headed to Transylvania! I didn’t meet Dracula (though I could have bought several t-shirts saying that I did), but I did tour Bran Castle that’s the cover of one of the book editions and a fortress that dates way way back. Took a gondola (swear free because you weren’t there to appreciate it with me!) to the top of a mountain where they have a Hollywood sign only it says Brasov, toured a church, walked around, ate some traditional Romanian food, and spent 6 hours (twice, not to mention the 8 hours on a bus...) on a really slow train which was saved by the views of rolling hills and herds of sheep out of the window.

I can’t believe that I’ll be home in less than a week it’s completely surreal, but at least it will be easier to keep each other motivated for Camp NaNo in August!!

-Ashley                   

Microblog 1 in Pictures

The I Forgot A Title The First Time I Posted This Post

Dear Ashley,


So I'm not sure I made this clear in my facebook post, but I love, love, LOVE everything you sent me from Europe. It totally made the longing I feel to go back there even stronger. I definitely printed and framed the picture of the graffiti that says 'to always finding our way back.' That hit me so hard the day I saw it, that I almost cried. It means a lot of things to me, some of which there aren't words for, but most importantly it is a reminder to keep working at my goals and make it back to Europe. Soon.

I can't wait until we find a new apartment so I can frame and hang the art that you sent- and the postcards, at least until we have that bookstore and can put them up there. Here's the mask- back in one piece, although I haven't found time to grab paint. it's okay. I love it just the way it is, too.

I hope your thesis is almost done, since it's currently almost 4am on June 8th. Your time, anyway. It's not even 10pm on June 7th here. That never fails to amaze me. You're in a different day. At least, as far as our totally meaningless construct of time is concerned.

I'm having a terrible time with CampNaNo this time around. Hopefully August will be better. I have 517 words, and I believe I've reached the point of never catching up. I might set a new goal of 10,000 for myself, but the real goal is finding a new job. We're seriously considering Baltimore. There's a great Irish music scene there for Ben, along with his teacher Billy, and there's the University of Baltimore that I've been looking at. That's the place with the combination Creative Writing and Publishing Masters program. So it takes you from creating the book all the way up through publication. That would be handy. I'm also still thinking about PhDs and UMass and Cornell and lots of other things. I've got some time, as I don't need to apply until this fall for the next one, but I'm thinking at least.

I did get some good feedback about Letters last weekend. Overwhelmingly positive, which made me feel good about myself. Their idea was the make the "letters" and the scenes with dialogue separate, using italics or something, because they said they had a hard time reading it the way it is. They were in the mindset of letters, but then there was all this present tense stuff happening...it makes sense. I'll have to look into that.

They also said the things that allowed them to be okay with Ariah and Tristan's relationship was that a) there was no sex and b) Zach finds out at one point that SHE started it.

They also didn't have as much of a problem with Ariah's flatness of character as you and I did. They thought that if she was any less mature and kind of above the whole high school thing that her relationship with Tristan would be a lot less acceptable. I'd still like to develop her more though, because she bugs me a little. But I definitely don't want to make excuses for her relationship. So it's going to be hard.

There was also talk of getting a high school class to read it, to gauge their reactions. The book club ladies are all teachers, so I was really interested in their response, but the more I think about it, the more I'd be curious was juniors and seniors in high school thought of it too. I might email Ainsworth, my 12th grade english teacher, and be like "hey, want to help me out?" It's totally not what he teaches, but maybe he could get the AP class to read it, or the creative writing club. Actually, that last idea might be the best. There's all ages of high schoolers in the creative writing club.

Also, I might need to change Ariah's name. My friend Josh read it, and pointed out that there's apparently a show called Pretty Little Liars that has a girl named Aria having an affair with a teacher. I mean seriously, what are the freaking odds? And it's not one of the four shows I watch, so I had no idea.

Finally, just to have another picture (omg Spain is beautiful! I want to go to Candyland! And the beach...dying for sand and saltwater. So pretty. Oh, and the Holy Grail! LOL! "Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries!")

Anyway. Here's a picture of the baby sweater I'm working on. (For Mike, my boss, and Lauren, his wife. Not for me. Don't panic :) )

-Lizz