Writing as a career?

For about two years now, I have had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I dropped out of college at 20 because I didn’t want to take out student loans if I didn’t know what I was going to use my degree for. Since then, I have been working at Blockbuster trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. My parents are getting anxious.

Well last night, the answer seemed to hit me. Ever since I was a very small child, I wanted to be an author. It wasn’t until I was a teenager and realized that being an author is not a sure source of income, that I tried to choose a different career path. Well last night I decided that I should just go for it. I’m 22 years old, I have quite a bit of life ahead of me before I have to become responsible, so if I want to become a published author, I should just try now. So I gave myself a deadline of three years, which puts me at 25. If, by my 25th birthday, I have still not made any headway towards becoming a full-time writer, then I will put my writing aside and find something responsible to do.

In the meantime, however, this is the plan. Write on my blog on a much more regular basis. If you guys enjoy reading my blog, I’d very much appreciate it if you would share it with your family and friends. This way I can establish a readership base. Second on the plan is to write at least two novels a year, revise them and seriously start querying agents. Thirdly, I will write some short stories and attempt to win contests with them and get them published to get some credentials under my belt.

On the NaNoing side of things, I am at 14,549 words!

Wish me luck!

Christmas in October

So let me just start off by saying that it is way too early for Christmas. I don't really consider it the Christmas season until after Thanksgiving. And yet, since I work in the retail industry, I get exposed to the Christmas hype way, way too early. But I love it. Christmas is my favorite time of the year and I really excited as soon as it starts to feel like Christmas.

So about two weeks ago I walked into Rite Aid by my house and lo and behold, they had Christmas wrapping paper for sale. (For all the overachievers that wrap their Christmas presents in October, I guess.) Since then, more and more Christmas stuff has begun to find it's way into the stores: wrapping paper, decorations, fake Christmas trees. I'm still not sure who buys this stuff before Halloween, but that's not the point.

The icing on the cake was yesterday at work. The week after Halloween, Blockbuster does it's big "Holiday Reset." We move all our product around, change all the signs to Christmas-themed signage, put out tables of novelty gifts (this years it's Snuggies, Star Wars gifts, and, of course, Silly Bandz), and create three full bays of the old, classic Christmas movies on our New Release wall. So yesterday I pulled out the signage from the back office and began to sort through it to prepare myself for the reset starting Sunday. This years signs are light blue with white snowflakes and red ornaments hanging down that look like DVD's. They are so festive and Christmasy and I got very excited and spread them all over the floor in the store and jumped up and down and then had to put them all away again. So I thought it would be appropriate today to share with you my top ten favorite things about Christmas:

1. Lights. I love Christmas lights, especially the white ones. And now that it's getting dark earlier, they'll be even more visible.

2. Snow. Not completely Christmas related, but I love snow. They are predicting a very snowy winter this year and I'm hoping they are right.

3. Cold weather. I love bundling up and going out into the icy weather. I love coming home to a warm apartment and cuddling up with a cup of tea.

4. The bell ringers. I'm like Pavlov's dog in this regard. The Salvation Army bell ringers are such an integral part of Christmas for me that I get excited just to hear them.

5. Buying presents. I love to get things for people and then watch them open them.

6. All the people. I love the hustle and bustle of the city at Christmastime, everyone rushing around in the cold and hurrying in and out of stores.

7. The holiday pay. Christmas, New Years and the second half of New Year's Eve are time and a half pay for us.

8. Business at work. I love it when it's busy at work and people come hurrying in to pick up movies to take home to the family.

9. Egg nog. You didn't think I was going to forget about the food, did you? Egg nog is manna from heaven.

10. Green bean casserole. Thanksgiving and Christmas are usually the only times that I get to have this.

Now I'm just waiting for the Christmas tree to go up on the Space Needle and the first snow and then it will really be Christmas!

Laughing, Gaming and Shooting

First off, a funny story from work. My boss answered the phone the other day and the customer said, "Do you guys have 'Halloweentown'?" so she looked it up and found it was checked out. When the customer found that out, she said "Well, do you have 'Return to Halloweentown'?" That was available and when my boss told her that she then asked "So is 'Return to Halloweentown' the first one or the second one?" Hmmmmm....

On Tuesday Aaron and I were off work and we have been talking about getting the new PlayStation 3 Move since we have a PS3, so we decided to just go downtown and get it since the rainy weather has set in here in Seattle, limiting our repertoire of affordable activities we can do together. So on a break from the weather we headed downtown to Game Stop to pick it up. As we finished at Game Stop Aaron looked at his phone and I remember him saying "It's 4:44." Just as we were leaving Pacific Place, we began to hear sirens and five police cars passed us with their lights on and soon an ambulance went by too. Within a few minutes two news helicopters were hovering over downtown. We were wondering what was going on and Aaron bet that it was an accident. From the number of police cars, I guessed a shooting. When we got home, we turned on the news and found out that I was right. A man had been shot point blank at 2nd and Pine, about five blocks from where we were, at 4:41, just minutes before we walked out of Game Stop. It was a little weird to be that close to something like that.

But on a lighter note, the PS3 Move is really fun. It comes with a bundle of sports games, including disc golf, archery and ping pong. We played it for a while on Tuesday night and again last night and I have to say, my arm is a bit sore. Unlike the Wii, where you can flick your wrist and it is just as affective as moving your whole arm, the Move tracks the motion of your whole body with a camera, so you really have to do the whole motion. I tried doing it sitting down and just about threw out my shoulder trying to get the necessary power behind it. It just doesn't work. The initial charge on the controller was a little annoying as it took over 3 hours and we were impatient to play. But definitely worth the 100 dollars it costs to get the bundle add-on to an existing PS3.

P.S. I'd also like to shout out to my international readers, a few of which I seem to have gained! Thanks for stopping by!

Interesting people and UFO's

So since I am having trouble coming up with something to blog about out of my sometimes incredibly boring life, so I thought I might share with you a few of my more amusing stories of the interesting people I meet at work (and I'm not even talking about my co-workers!). I would to preface this by saying that in the event that these people have actual social or mental disabilities, that I am sorry for them and that I hope they get the help they need. I am not sharing this to ridicule them or even to make fun of them but simply because these stories amused me and I wanted to share them for the amusement of others. I am grateful for the interesting people that I meet on a day to day basis at my job because they counteract all of the jerks and idiots.

Also, I would like to point out that often times people of lower incomes or means are looked down upon and assumed to be dangerous, jerks, or terrible people but in my almost three year experience working customer service, I have found that generally they are kind, considerate and polite, while the real jerks are the rich or middle class snobs with two and a half kids who assume they are entitled to the world and view me as a robot sent to aid them in their every whim rather than an actual person. But back to the story.

So this first incident occurred about four or five months ago. Legion had just come out and a gentleman came in looking for it. He was probably about forty, nicely dressed and clean-shaven, and while probably not wealthy, he certainly wasn't homeless. We were all rented out of our copies and he asked me if I could suggest a similar movie. Legion is about an army of angels sent from heaven to destroy the earth, and since I generally do not watch movies like that, as they don't interest me much, I was having trouble coming up with a similar title. While I was thinking, the customer suddenly said, "That's true, you know." I was a bit confused and it must have showed, for he followed it up by saying, "I have a friend who can look through his night vision goggles and see the angels fighting in heaven." He stated this as though it was a well known but interesting fact. I must have raised my eyebrows slightly as I nodded, a bit taken a back. I changed the subject back to movies, since I didn't know what else to say after that statement. After a minute or two, he very conversationally said, "I saw my first UFO last year!" just as someone would say, "I got to go to the Grand Canyon," or something. I said, "Oh...really?" trying not to be rude but really not knowing what to say. He went on to say, "Yeah, I was down in the Arizona desert, looking for some, and suddenly there it was! It was hovering above the desert and I was all by myself that night so I used my brain waves to communicate telepathically with the aliens and I told them to come back the next night so that I could bring my friend out. They said they would, so the next night I came back with my friend and they came back and he got to see them too!"

I nodded and said, "Oh cool!" as though he were talking about a normal vacation, and he thanked me very politely and left. I have met a few people who have thought they could talk to aliens but most of them were completely nuts. He seemed totally normal, coherent and intelligent, so who knows? Maybe he was telling the truth?