Light at the End

Immediately following my interview the editor at Afterimage signed me on as an intern. I've already started working and have done some copy editing and (get ready now) writing for the magazines' webpage. It's an obituary for a photographer named Milton Rogovin... so true, it's a small piece, but a piece nonetheless... and also a piece about an amazing person who had an amazing life. I was very happy to have been given the assignment.

There is much yet to learn still and I'm excited to dive right in and do everything that I can while i'm with Afterimage. Tomorrow classes start again and I can't wait to get this last semester (well, almost last semester) over with. I'm ready to get my life started.

The work situation will be a bit different this semester, due to the time i'll be putting in to the internship. I'll be picking up a few extra hours at perkins, but unfortunately I have to dump wegmans... sort of. They told me that it would probably be best to work one day a week for even just a few hours to keep my foot in the door if I want to come back and get hours in the summer, which will probably be a part of the plan. So Thursday mornings i'll be at wegmans, but no more time than that. I could conceivable work both jobs and do the internship (and school) but because I want to do my best at everything I do, I feel that if I did all four at once I couldn't give 100% anywhere or for anything, and that I'm not okay with.

I know that I will be busy, and tired, but honestly I haven't felt this good about life in a long time. In the past few months i've been able to pay off a good chunch of credit card debt and have slowly been building my supplies for when I move out in the summer. Now that I have some direction in life and there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and I feel at ease. I have a feeling that 2011 is going to be my year to finally turn things around.

Winter Blues

The editor at Afterimage got back to me and I have an interview set up on friday at 2! I'm really optimistic that I'll get the internship, and really looking forward to beginning this next chapter in life.
Lately however, winter break has been moving along rather slowly. I was hoping to get more hours at work but with the restaurant being slow and all the college kids coming back to wegmans for break I haven't been working as much as I had hoped. I've been sort of idle because of it, with not enough money to go out much. Though I had hoped to start writing I haven't (despite the abundance of time i've had on my hands lately) and i've been spending alot of time in front of the tv instead... This I know is no good.
So last week I finally got back into the gym. To keep me motivated I took my measurements and wrote them down and am planning on checking them again in a few weeks. I downloaded some good music (Mumford and Sons, check them out if you haven't already) and got my butt back on the treadmill. It feels good to push myself again... though with the snow today the temptation to stay home and not drive is pretty great. I do have to go to work later today anyway though, so around 3pm i'll get to the gym for a workout before starting my shift.
Otherwise, i'm just waiting around for friday to get here. I'll keep you posted on how the interview turns out. :)

one step forward

I sent my internship resume to Afterimage (a Rochester magazine) and am crossing my fingers in hopes that the editor will call me back.
Anxiety over what I will do after graduating heightens with every passing day, however if I do get the chance to intern at a magazine I think it will open doors, and give me a new perspective on where my degree can take me. The experience of it, more than just a new thing to add to a resume, is what I am looking forward to (should I actually get it). I don't know the first thing about magazines, but would love the opportunity to learn, and maybe even find that it's something I would love to do for a living... that is something that, at this point in life, I am always on the look out for.
For so long I have imagined myself becoming an author, but seldom do people accomplish that after they write their first book. For some it might not happen until much later in life, if at all. Though I would not trade all the knowledge i've gained in creative writing for a more practical education (say nursing or accounting), sometimes I doubt the choice I made to be an english major. Some people say that such a degree can take you almost anywhere, some say nowhere. Either way, because my experience in the working world is limited to shelving books, food service and a grociery store, i've never been sure of what path I should take. Where do I go, what do I do, always I am thinking... what is the next step?
In March i'll be twenty-five and I never imagined that mid-twenties would be so hard... actually it's just the opposite; for some reason I thought that I would have had everything figured out by now. Instead I feel like every avenue of my life has shifted into crossroads, and now I have to make choices and stop drifting before I lose myself indefinately in my own indecision.
It is also very exciting.... Maybe everything right now is uncertain.
I guess that's why I feel like the sky's the limit.

Holiday Indulging

Christmas has come and gone, and in my usual holiday enthusiasm I ate a lot of food. Cookies, cheese, pepperoni, bread, chips and dip... it was all delicious. But now it's time to buckle down and work off some of the excess weight i've gained between thanksgiving and now.
When I say work I mean literally (as in excercise) but I also mean diet. It doesn't take long to get used to eating all that junk. Now that i've indulged it's time to work some fruit and veggies back into my diet and lay off the carbs.
I do this every year, and I really think it's all the holiday indulging more than the new years resolution thing. I get to the point where I start gaining weight and feeling uncomfortable then I think 'well, time to change it up.' I usually get back down to a comfortable weight but never where I really want to be. I would really like to do that this time around.
For me, excercise isn't the problem. I've fallen out of it but once I get motivated and back in the gym I usually get myself to like it and look forward to going. For me it's the food. I have little will power when it comes to eating and I love all the bad, fattening things. The excercise and slightly better eating usually sheds a few pounds, but once I get back into the swing of things I hope to be a little more sucessful than that.
Of course, with the new year comes a few more things i'd like to accomplish other than just weight loss. There is the ever-present problem of writers block that I would like to over come. Though at this point I think I should just admit to myself that it's not really writers block, it's just laziness. I have taken mondays off of both of my jobs, and hope to use it as a day set aside specifically for writing. I hope to generate some sort of work before the next semester roles around.
Then there is the fact that I will be graduating. With one semester left (and then only one summer class after that) I will finally have my degree. Though that's great and it's been a long time coming, it brings about its own sort of problems. Student loans for one thing, and the fact that I have no idea what I will do with my newly aquired bachelors degree in english... where exactly does that take a person?
It will be an interesting year... and I slightly scary one. However I am optimistic and hope to make the best of it.

Finding my way back...

I started this blog back in May, wrote a few posts, then abandoned it. I guess that's okay though. I don't have any followers so I suppose the only person i've dissapointed by not writing is myself.

This past semester was a tough one but I think I got through it alright. I'm sure math dragged my GPA down some but i'm not too worried about that, as long as I passed the class (which I hope I did). Well, it's over now and I'll find out soon enough.

Things have not been good as far as writing. I wrote a couple pieces for my creative essay class that turned out alright... but that's just it. If it wasn't for the class I probably wouldn't have written them.

So, what to do?

School is almost over for me, I have one full semester in the spring then I'm done. I know that I want to publish, so why won't I write? I don't know. I know that I can write, and I think I can write well enough to eventually publish. What's stopping me?

I think i'm genre confused, for one thing. I always imagined that I would write fantasy. Over the past couple of years though I haven't written much of that at all. I think that I've discovered that I like to write about real-life things. Not necessarily my own life, just life; people.

Still, when I sit down to write something, I have it in my head that I want to write fantasy because I like it and I miss it, but then nothing comes to mind. I sit and think for a minute, and then I go do something else.

It shouldn't be this hard. It never use to be. Maybe the story I'm meant to write isn't fantasy. Or maybe instead of thinking about it so much I should just sit down and write something and not think about what it will turn out to be. I've never been really successful at that though. I think too much, and I think that's my problem.

I really want to start a project over this break and follow through. It would feel so good to write again and let the words fall freely without hesitation or grief over why I write them or what they should be or what they will become. I want to fall in love with it and be obsessed again, like I used to be. I never used to think about it in terms of whether or not it will be successful writing, I just did it, and loved doing it.

I need to get to that place again... how do I get there?

Summer Slipping Through My Fingers...

I can't believe that July is almost over. Summer's going by way too fast for me and it kind of sucks, I had all of these wonderful plans that simply didn't happen. I wanted to start writing again, lose ten pounds or so, take a vacation somewhere... did any of it happen? Nope. It's alright though; I've still got a solid month before the crazy school schedule begins and I've already got some things planned.

First of all I'll be taking my first camping trip. My friend Samantha suggested a few of us go for a couple days and for a while I wasn't sure (never been the outdoors-y type) but then I thought, well, maybe i'm not the outdoors-y type because I never really have a reason to stay outside for long. Maybe a camping trip is just what I need. Either way it will be nice to get away for a while and I'm really looking forward to it. Hopefully while camping I can work off a couple of those pounds I want to lose. I'm sure we'll be doing alot of hiking, swimming and such... either way I'm looking forward to a great trip.

As far as the writing, it's been coming along really... not, I'm sad to say. Getting through writing so much as a blog post is daunting for me lately. It's scary to think that maybe I've lost interest. I didn't think I could ever lose interest! I use to write every day, and now I feel as though I have to force myself to get through even a simple post like this (explanation for the lack of posting over the past couple of months).

Even so I refuse to give up on it completely. Though I haven't written anything in a long time, I still think about writing every day. One would assume that that would make it easier to just get to it and start a project, but it doesn't. Still, because I miss it so much, I know that I still love it. I just have to get myself started again.

That said even though I haven't been writing any of my own stuff I have made it a point to read every day this summer. Right now i'm in the middle of a book by Regina Jeffers called 'Vampire Darcy's Desire'. It's (you guessed it) a retelling of 'Pride and Prejudice' only Mr. Darcy is a vampire. Honestly I'm not sure that I like it very much, but sense I like vampires and I like Mr. Darcy I'll give the book a chance and finish it before I judge. The concept intrigued me to begin with and that was what caused me to buy the book in the first place. I want to find out how this story plays out; if vampires mixed with Jane Austen doesn't work lesson learned; it will be on to the next book.

So, here it is. July is coming to a close and soon the very last month of summer will begin. I'm hoping to make the most of it. Even if I don't end up writing a word I want to atleast get a decent amount of reading in... hoping for a great camping trip and some pound losage as well. After next month it's back to the grind, which will leave little room for books or the gym.

Writing Anxiety

The school year is finally over and as an added bonus I get to enjoy a couple days of rest while my work schedules undergo their usual summer changes. I have had a full day off today and I get one more tomorrow before the hours pile on between my two jobs for the rest of the summer.
While it's nice to relax for a while and just kick back, I feel like I should have done something slightly more productive today. Earlier I went for a walk, read, serfed the internet, and watched TV, which is all well and good for a full day off. But I was thinking that maybe I should have, you know... written something?
This is my problem. I have all of these ideas and certainly a strong desire to write, but when the time comes to actually start I get a little nervous. Even lazy. Alot of us who write know that getting started tends to be the hardest part, but unless I am forced to start something for an assignment, I stare at a blank page for a minute then go and find something else to do. It's just too hard, so I'll slide out of it by convincing myself that there is something much more important that I should be doing, like cleaning my room or catching up on VH1's "40 greatest reality TV moments." That's information that we all need to know in this day and age, right?
I will not make any promises to myself (as I have done many times before), but I want to put an honest effort into writing again. Even if it does turn into flightly little glimpses of stories spewed out on a blog, it will be something. Not that I made this blog with the intention of posting my work on it; I tried that once before and I gave up on the story as soon as I had started it. But, tid-bits of things could pop up here and there.
I'm still not really sure what this blog will end up being about. The title implies a writing theme but i'm sure you (whoever my followers will be eventually, I have none yet) will get a range of different kinds of posts.
It is now 6:20pm, the day is getting older but there is still plenty enough day to enjoy. I might end up reading to get the gears in my brain going again, and hopefully tomorrow I will use the day to do some writing.