Friday, August 22, 2008

Emergency


I think that if you can have a mid-life crisis (around 50 yrs old), what's to stop you from having one in your quarter-life (sometime around 25)?

I think I'm having a quarter-life crisis.

May factors have contributed to this psychological assessment, but ultimately, I think it comes down to three main events.

1) role as a not so desperate house wife- I have been out of work for over a year and while I enjoy being at home with Pazu, my sense of self worth has been swirling down the toilet. Most of us dread going to work on Monday mornings, but you know you have a place in the world. There is someone who depends on you to enlist your intellect and charm to get a job done. Even if you get paid peanuts, its a good feeling to be wanted. Applying for a job online seems to be a waste of time. Unless you mention key words somewhere in your application, your resume gets sent to some digital graveyard. Good luck trying to contact human resources to follow up. What's is so wrong with my resume that someone hasn't said, "What a gem! This girl is gold. Someone call her immediately."


2) the degree field - both of my degrees are in exercise physiology. In undergraduate school, I had these crazy ideas about promoting health and wellness and keeping up with the sports world. But is this what i want to do with the rest of my life? What do I want to be when I grow up? Who do I want to be? Hecked if I know, hence the crisis situation. This might be tied into event #1 with not being able to find a job in the field, even though I'm 100% qualified. I know that I want to be a writer (please see post title "screaming hallelujah"), but unfortunately it might be a year after you complete a book before you see one red cent. Bummer.


3) motherhood- so I thought that my next adventure might be in the role of mother, but the road to baby bliss has been a recurring nightmare of the Atari game "Pitfall." I'll post the more intricate details of this in a later post. While Eric and I know that our day will come, we've been trying for 2.5 years with marginal success. I try not to get upset, but what really burns me is when two people, who may or may not love each other, who probably are not married, mess around and end up pregnant. It seems that the people who most desire a child are denied, while those who don't end up with one. It's funny, so where's the punch line?


So what do I do now? Pray. And pray some more. I have to believe that God has a plan for me, but I've never been a good student of patience.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Screaming Hallelujah!

So I'm going to borrowing ( modify) lyrics of Paramore for this entry.
"This time I didn't give,
I 'd thought it last forever.
Now screaming hallelujah.
I didn't last forever."

The Paladin of Mariposa is D-O-N-E! Stick a fork in that baby!
So here are my crazy stats.

Date started: 5/7/2007 Date finished: 8/11/2008
Total time on project: 1 year, 3 months, 4 days
Longest chapter: 13,096 words, 49 double spaced pages
Shortest chapter: epilogue- 338 words, 1.5 double spaced pages
Average length of a chapter: 24.2 double spaced pages
Most words written in one day: 3,537 words
POM's total word length: 117, 978 wordsPOM's total length: 435.5 double spaced pages
I ended up with a prologue, an epilogue, and 16 chapters. All these numbers and chapter set ups are subject to change during revisions. Especially since I have an itty-bitty epilogue, I may combine this into the last chapter.

I thought that when I got to that last period, I would give a big sigh of relief, but it was like, "Shoot, I'm done." That means there more in me for the sequel.

What a journey! I have learned so much about writing and reading and the power of one's own mind. There were days I wanted to set my computer on fire and on other days, I stayed up until 2 in the morning because I was having an inspiration surge.

Two things have to happen now. 1) get minor corrects and clarificationst taken care of, 2)let the darn thing simmer for 1-2 months. Hands off completely; it'll be torture I tell you.

Now comes the fun part of trying to get this puppy published, but it can't be as hard as writing a novel. Right?

Here is the Paramore video in case you were interested.