Money is the Root of Everything

It really is, ya'll. 

Things aren't going so well right now. My life, school, my family...everything is really shitty and I feel like I'm watching all of it come to head behind a thick glass window and I don't know how to stop any of it. I don't know how to break that glass. I thought this summer...I thought all summers...was supposed to be a relaxing time full of vacations, lazy days, afternoon naps and endless bouts of watering my crops on Harvest Moon. So that when August came around I would be primped and ready for the next school year, ready to tackle all my fears and...

Nothing. 

I've never had a summer like that, not in a real long time. Summers for me have always been about death and change and watching my mother's face get more drawn as she resigned herself to signing away money we could have used for food so that she could pay a bill or satisfy a growing overdraft in her bank account. Summers for me have long stopped be fun and lazy and carefree...they're just a few months to prepare for more heartache when winter comes along...a grace period before the inevitable swallows us all whole. 

That's life, I know, and I'm preaching to the choir here with all my complaining but I just always thought...I always thought that when things got as bad as they are now that something would happen, you know? All the stories I use to read, about plucky kids down on their luck with magical dragons underneath their beds and fantasy realms in their closets...I always thought that would happen to me. That some deus ex machina factor would shine into my life and everything would be fine. We would all be saved. My mom use to always tell me, "It will get better, everything will be fine" but as I grew older I realized that it was just a band aid. A band aid on a wound that was growing more and more diseased and pus filled as the years wore on. It's at its boiling point now. It has festered and bubbled in the heat of all the chaos of our lives and it's about to burst. We're about to move into a cramped apartment with little space to do anything; I'm headed back to school with a huge bill I can't pay for; I think my relationship with my dad and stepmom is about to finally take that long awaited plunge it's been threatening to take...it's about to get a whole lot worse before it even gets average. 

I don't know what to do. I would like to be naive and Disney-optimistic and say that writing is what's going to fix everything, my writing, but who am I kidding? I'll never be able to make any money off this thing, I don't have the drive or talent to keep it going. I'm looking at coming back to school early, going to community college, and getting a dead end nine to five job somewhere that only pays the rent while I scrounge for saltines in the back of my pantry because I can't afford food. Things are going to get worse...I've long stopped wondering if better was even an options for us, for me. 

Not feeling too good about the future right now...if I even have one. 

 

The Writing Life (or lack thereof...)

Hahhhh...

Not writing in a long time is a LOT like not exercising for a long time. All the muscles you may have previously built up turn into mush when you try to take it up all over again. 

I think I need to regulate myself to a schedule. I'm a repetition person; routine is my friend, my guiding light. When I continually do something over and over again it forces me to concentrate. I have a spontaneous mind and I get bored easily--not such a good thing when you're trying to make writing your career of choice. 

So yeah, I need to work on getting on a schedule and sticking to it like glue. 

On another note, I've been trolling George R. R. Martin's blog a little bit these past few days (excuse me, not his blog but his livejournal that acts as a mouthpiece for some of his current happenings and projects, ie possibly a way to placate his ravenous Song of Ice and Fire groupies). 


On it he said that he isn't one of those "ooh look at me, I wrote three pages today, guys!" kind of writers, though not in so many words. Yes, it made me feel guilty because that is exactly what I set out for this blog to be---a kind of validation of me trying to recapture my prose generating mojo along with tracking my day to day writing progress. I'm guessing Martin's thinking is more akin to "just DO it and stop bitching about why you CAN'T do it". 


Yeah, but I'm not some Santa Claus beard, hat wearing 63 year old generating MACHINE who has a hit tv series on HBO based on his books, a new anthology coming out every other month along with a possible FILM adaptation of one of his said anthologies, who can afford to basically sit on his ASS for a year and do nothing but watch Netflix and eat Chinese food without worry of cementing a pathway toward failure in his life. 


(Okay. So maybe not but...yeah, I do sort of wish I could do that...a year of just staying at home--loss of social skills and friends aside--on my ass, pigging out on all the food I want and watching reruns of old shows on Netflix that I'm glad I missed when they were airing on TV so that I can watch them to my leisure...speaking of that, how great is Desperate Housewives? Chick lit, rom-com, grocery store romance novel cliches aside, how CAN you ignore all the great arcs and plot line and character drama when you are a TOTAL drama whore like I am? Can't be done)


Welps, I need to get this writing thing in order. My well is dry, my motivation is less than stellar, and, yes, I am in doubt about my potential as a writer/author one day but I get up every morning thinking about my stories, my characters, and sitting down and writing about them. How can I be wrong about this?

On another note, I happened to find this little piece Martin wrote on his not-blog about fanfiction. 


Now Martin's stance on the subject has been passed around enough I think to call it old news, but I still feel like it's an issue that's always worth talking about. In a nutshell, Martin doesn't like fanfiction because he sees it as a sort of killing, I guess, of the things he knows and loves about his favorite series including his own work. 


Me? Well, I am one of those dastardly fanfiction writers. Not the ones who insert a buttload of OCC's and strange plot lines and retcon into my favorite existing works, but I do occasionally (not as much as I use to) write some short story about a particular character or characters that I like and make some weird shit happen to them.


So what?


I get Martin's stamp of disapproval on his own work but the rest of his entry sort of came across as judgmental to me. He at the very least seems to be a purist of the highest order, and to him I'm guessing anything that changes the initial vision of some pre-existing work needs to go some place and burn and die quickly. Again, I totally get his sensitivity toward his own work but writing fanfiction off as this ungodly movement that is dedicated to making some characters gay or bringing back to life otherwise mutilated protagonists just seems really...unfair to me. Or maybe whiny is the word I'm looking for. 


Yes, published authors have the right to cease fanfiction on their own work--I totally get that. But then going back and saying all these things about why fanfiction is bad and why fanficton writers are bad writers and fans, blah, blah, well, you're kind of beating a dead horse to me. You can't stop fans from wanting more from your worlds, you can't stop people from reading your book and wishing something else would have happened to your character,you can't stop a fan from daydreaming of a scenario where...I don't know...one of your characters comes to them in a monokini offering a cocktail and hot steamy sex. I mean, I think it's sort of an honor if someone wants to have hot dream sex with a character you've created but I guess the idea grosses Martin out. Again, that's okay. 


He says he understands that fans can connect so deeply with a work that he/she would feel so incensed as to make up a story featuring them so what's with calling out fanfiction as the destruction of all good ideas in a story? And maybe he wasn't really doing that, but again it just seemed like he's one disgruntled fan--who also happens to have written a pretty great bestselling fantasy series about dudes fighting over an uncomfortable chair--who doesn't like it when people change the things he knows and loves. 

I'm kind of the same way, but I'm sympathetic to fanfic writers. Not only because I kinda am one, but it just seems really totalitarian of me to stop fans from writing about my work because I don't want to see a beloved character of mine turned into a hooker or something. It's fine when it's your own work, but decrying the whole practice is a little harsh. Fans come in all shapes and sizes, not every fanfiction is full of Mary Sues or senseless violence. 


I don't know. Like I said, his stance is old, this subject is continually debated, but my final verdict is that if I ever--by some weird act of motivation or eye opening revelation that I have GOT to get my ass into gear and write, write, WRITE--then I'm totally cool with people writing fics about my work. I won't go as far as to help them develop it or something like that but it's okay if it happens. You can't stop fan imagination, you can't stop people from wanting more, and I mean...when you set out to write fiction isn't that what you kind of hoped would happen in the first place? 

At least I do. 

No More Excuses

Hurrr. 

You know, I really don't want to use this blog for complaining, or at the very least not for too much complaining. Which I tend to do a LOT. 

So in mentioning this I'm not complaining, but venting, maybe? Just blogging about it, I guess.

Gotta find a job for school, work study, pretty big deal. I don't have a huge bill to tackle but it's definitely going to inflate if I don't cut it down some by finding a job. Work in Chicago (*cue Ms. Krabappel laugh*--or is it Flanders now?). 


But yeah, it's gotta be done. Not happy about that and only because I'm so nervous about actually finding a job. I don't really know what I'm good at and if anyone wants me to handle their money I'm majorly screwed (as are they). 


Yeah. Not gonna complain. Complaining just breeds bad feelings about stuff you know is mandatory and if anyone is like me they know that their complaining is actually a form of procrastination. Excuse-making. Complaining breeds excuses and vice versa. You know what really works for me when it comes to getting a job done? Doing it. Not overthinking it unless it requires some hard thinking. 


Same goes with my writing I guess. I produce my best writing when I actually sit me arse down and belt out two or three pages of prose, rather nonsensical or illuminating. 


I need to get into this new way of thinking now. Or maybe not thinking, just doing. 


Annnnd I'm out.

 

Boom. Boom. Boom. 

That's the sound of my doldrums a callin'. 

Okay, yeah, that was corny I know, but I'm not feeling the best today. Just called my school and despite changing to a cheaper room for next semester I'm still looking at a rather large overdraft that will have to be covered with a loan. I have no co-signers, no credit history, nothing that any loan company would consider giving me money for. 

I just don't feel good. 

I want to go back to this school, I do, but only for the experience that it has given me, not because I'm extremely in love with the city or made a bunch of new friends. I just have this dark, gross, disgusting feeling that If I quit right now and come back home I'll never leave. I'm so afraid of losing sight of what I want to do in life--it's scaring the living hell out of me. I see my future: I'm a twenty something still at home with Mom, a little overweight, sad, depressed, not a friend of companion to my name, and filling my boring days that aren't occupied with my droll 9-5 job with Netflix and too much Pepsi. I'm anxious, nervous, and I've sorta failed at life. My mom is sympathetic, but nothing can change the fact that I was the one bird she had that never left the nest. 

I'm being melodramatic, I'm being truthful, I'm really scared to death of what's in store for me. 

My brother old me I'm my own worst enemy and I believe he's right. I may be able to defeat the debt but I don't know how to defeat the her that is me. She's too powerful, she has my heart and mind, doubt is her Excalibur. 

"Don't let me get me."

Am I a Spiritual Person?

I guess my answer to that question would have to be, well, no. At least not right now. 

Not right now--at all. Currently, I'm more concerned with getting back into school and not drowning prematurely into debt; publishing a worthwhile piece of fiction and jump starting my career as an author; figuring out if I really want to go into television screenwriting along with the realization that it would mean I would have to live in dreaded LA; providing for my family in the long run, making sure they're all okay; for once having a normal social life and real friends to talk to and love; having a boyfriend again and regularly...well...you know. That kind of stuff. Not gaining too much weight, trying to look less dowdy and more my age...hell, worrying about if I'm finally going to get to eat at my favorite Asian restaurant in my hometown after having to push it back to scrimp and scrap for school next semester. I'm not worried about God, about heaven or hell, if they all even exist--I just want to live my life and worry about all that stuff when the time comes-- if the time comes. 

This "time" now being a concept I'm wondering about the true existence of. 

See, all my life I was taught to fear God, to love God, to serve God, and to believe that Jesus was his son, he's our Savior, the Holy Ghost, the Spirit, the whatever thing that makes all the old arthritic ladies at my church shove aside their walkers and do the Cupid Shuffle up and down the aisle of the chapel, their eyes rolled in the backs of their heads, the whites of their eyeballs glowing. I was always taught that this was right, that I should strive for this in my life. That one day I should be one of these ladies, kicking up my heels and acting out a seizure so that I could go to heaven and ride on the backs of lions and drink milk and honey. 

Then, my older brother converted to Islam and I started to believe that there was only one true God that I should serve. That my mother's Christian faith was a bunch of hoo-hah that I'd been wasting my time on, that I should be on my hands and knees everyday facing the East and wearing hyjab. 

Then I realized that I didn't want either of these ideologies. I didn't want to pray, I didn't want to go to mosque or church, I didn't want to care about God or Jesus or Mohammed, and why the hell they should be so damn important to me. 

I also realized that I never truly cared. 

I always went to church because I was told that it was indisputably the right thing to do, that I had to be a Christian and that I had to pray to this God and this Jesus who died on a cross for my sins. I started to read the Qu'ran and believe in Allah and smirk at the poor sad souls who testified that they slipped off their diets because they were tempted by the Devil, that their sons and daughters being in jail was the work of demons, and that God was the only thing that would save them and they were just "so glad to be here this morning."

I did all those things, but in the back of my mind I always had this little voice of doubt talking to me. "You sure about this?" It would often say. "I mean, are you sure about this?" 

I never was, but then again I was always taught that because I was a child I had no right questioning these things anyway. I could pick what I wanted to wear in the morning (and sometimes even that was hard with my mother), I could choose between Honey Nut Cheerios or Frosted Flakes for breakfast, but I never, NEVER could speak up about what I wanted religiously. Oh, no. No, that was strictly for Mom and Dad to decide and it was all for my own good. 


So now here I am. On the precipice of this great blank space when it comes to religion. Is it a place of torment? No, not at all. Just a space that I have yet to fill with what I want to denote my spirituality, my beliefs in a higher power or else wise. I don't walk around feeling guilty about my lack of care toward religion. I'm perfectly happy choosing what I want to put my faith into.

So yeah. Blame this little gem here for sparking this random thought. I actually completely forgot to mention this game anywhere in this post, or my thoughts about Buddhism, but I'm sure it will come up later. Just need a healthy reaffirmation once in a while.  





 

Of Roasted Chicken and Half Vampires

Mom's house was so different than Father's, and that was putting it lightly.
 
Like the kitchen for instance. I was in the kitchen. Each surface seemed to shine, glow with this ethereal light that reflected the sunlight streaming into the room. The counters were made of hardwood, polished and sanded to perfection. The frigerator was a metallic behemoth that I knew was stuffed to the brim with fresh lunch meats, tuberware full of potato salad and ambrosia, with the shelves lined with neatly capped bottles of ketchup, mustard, relish, and mayonnaise coupled with an odd low-fat yogurt or two. Just to prove myself right, just because I couldn't help it, I ran over and wrenched open the door to confirm that there was indeed a freshly made coconut cream pie sitting smack dab in the middle of the center shelf, just like I hoped it would be. Pristine, rich-looking, the coconut shavings were like shards of glass on a bed of whipped cream.
 
I could smell something like berries or lemons in the air and spotted a strawberry-colored candle sitting on one of those warmers next to the microwave. I walked over to it to see what flavor it was: pink lemonade, it was called. Her kitchen smelled like pink lemonade.
 
Father didn't have a kitchen, or at least I was forbidden to call the space that was supposed to be the kitchen a kitchen. In that space, there sat nothing more than an old, beaten-looking wooden table that was rough and full of holes. Behind it was one of those large, eighteenth century stoves that ate up most of the wall and required a fully fledged camp fire to get it going. Above it hung an assortment of copper pots and pans that were sharp with rust and clanged like gongs any time the kitchen door was slammed too hard (which wasn't often, because Father doesn't like noises). We didn't have a frigerator in there, no microwave, no oven. All of that stuff, at least the fridge and microwave anyway, was up in my room. Father wanted no reminders of my half-vampirism, nothing that told him that I was a weak little half-breed who still required a Hot Pocket and Gatorade to get him through the day.

Everyone sat down for dinner. Mom, Jonathan, and Quincy. They all sat down and ate together.
Vampires don't do that. They have no concept of sharing a meal, unless they're part of a nest, and then most of the time nesting vampires only eat together to make sure no one is eating better than the other. So it's not really to share quality time with each other, it's just a way for vampires to be more greedy. Or less greedy, I guess.
 
The first thing Mom did was say grace. Grace. A prayer, a blessing over the food. Thanking a god for providing the roast chicken, homemade mashed potatoes, steamed peas and honeyed carrots, and freshly baked croissants that she made. Father and Catalina always told me there was no god, no such thing as heaven or hell. That vampires were creatures created just as animals were, just as humans were. They said vampires were just another link in the great cycle of life, and that it was only a petty human quandry that they happened to come beneath us when it came to who's eating who on the food chain. Catalina, in a rare moment of kindness, told me that we (or they) were kind of like lions and that humans were the antelope. She knew I liked lions, she was trying to make me feel better. It did make me feel better too...until she bought a lion home and ate it in front of me. If I didn't like meat so much I'd totally be a vegetarian right now.
 
After blessing the food, or making it cleaner, or whatever, they all started passing around plates to each other, saying thank you when someone handed over a tureen of gravy or dished a few extra carrots on a plate. They were all so friendly with each other, smiling and laughing--communicating. Catalina, when she wasn't sleeping, would usually have a snarky comment or two for me, seeped into some lesson about vampirism and the greatness of vampires over humans; Andrei spoke to me in much the same way, though everything he said was usually just an insult; Elisabetha and Father slept most of the day, and even if they were up they never spent time talking to me, much as I spent time avoiding talking to them. Nobody asked how their day was going, what they were feeling like, mostly because everyone at Father's house assumed everyone was thinking and feeling the same thing: when is the next kill coming? How long until the sun rises? What places are full of healthy humans but lacking high security?
 
I mostly just sat and watched them. Mom talking about her job at the clinic, giggling and patiently buttering a croissant for Marcie; Jonathan talking about his lawyer stuff, cases and his clients, while he chewed through the chicken; Quincy harping on about his basketball team and all the friends he had, how normal and perfect he was...at least, that's what most of what he was saying sounded like anyway: "Mom, did you know that coach needs a new front for the team? Did you know he said something about me being the front, Mom? Did you know that I'm possibly on my way to being VP next semester, Dad?" As if him succeeding at everything was news to anyone.
 
Nobody said anything to me until Mom looked over and saw that I wasn't eating.
 
"Oh...Dracen, honey, is something wrong?" She asked me, the corners of her eyes wrinkled with concern. "You not hungry or something?"
 
I stared at her, a dumb look on my face, I knew, but I couldn't help it--she was so beautiful. Her face was so alive-looking, pumping with blood and vibrancy. Her blue eyes were warm, her light brown hair pulled back from her heart-shaped face into a messy ponytail. She was so different from Elisabetha, whose face was unlined, sleek as porcelain, dead and cruel-looking. I liked that Mom's age showed in the lines by her mouth, the crinkles around her eyes. Whereas Elisabetha was over a hundred years old, still so young-looking but nothing more than a cold corpse full of somebody else's blood.
 
"Dracen?" She said again, that age-old fear creeping into her voice. I cringed at it. She was still afraid of me, still scared of the half-vampire son that she didn't really know much about---that she didn't really want to know too much about.
 
"What, you don't like carrots?" Qunicy piped up, pointedly shoving a forkful into his mouth. Jackass.
 
"Yeah, is that it, Dracen? Do you not like carrots?" Mom asked, tapping her fork nervously.
Is it blood you want, they all wanted to ask me. You don't need blood, do you? God, we're not going to have to give you some of our blood, do we?
 
"Uh, no, no," I said quickly, dumbly, as I picked up my fork and stabbed through the thigh of my chicken. I pulled off a piece and plopped it into my mouth. It tasted like heaven, like life. Well, dead chicken life, but you know.
 
"Mmm," I murmured, meaning it. "Mm, it's so good, Mom. Really, I love it. I haven't had roasted chicken in a while."
 
She smiled, thinly veiled relief spreading out over her face. "Oh...well, good, honey. I'm glad you like it. I...well, I'm glad you like it."
 
Yeah, I bet she was. In her mind, had I been unhappy I'd have been over the table with my teeth at her neck in seconds, sucking out every last bit of her blood to satisfy myself. Nevermind, that I was a half vampire, incapable of tearing through human skin with my skimpy little fangs and claws. Nevermind that the thought of blood, dark, and full of clots washing down my throat and into my stomach disgusted me. Nevermind that there was still a part of me that was a part of her swimming around in my body, that my blood was her blood, even if Father's poisonous bile was intermingled with it. I was still a monster to her, a foreign guest that she had to put up with every other week per her guilty conscience and government regulations. Mom loved me, sure, but she liked loving me from afar where I didn't remind her of the fatal mistake she made fourteen years ago when she found her way into Father's coffin.
 
Sometimes I think she pitied me more than she loved me. And that she feared me more than she could ever love or pity me. Whether I was in her house, clean and smelling of lemonade and life and light, or whether I was shut up in my enormous, Victorian-styled room in my Father's house that was dank, dark, and void of any human impression whatsoever, I was always going to be in the middle somewhere. Neither vampire, nor human. Not really a son to anyone.
 
A loud burp sounded across the table. It carried a gross combination of chicken, vegetables, and Dr. Pepper. I looked up at Quincy, smirking at me. I'll admit it, it was at least comforting to know that he wasn't really intimidated by my otherworldy-ness. To him I was still no different than the nerdy kids he probably picked on in school, just another life form not blessed with his great looks and beguiling charm, just someone else to lord it over.
 
I frowned at him, taking in his stereotypically jocky face that was all square jawed and chiseled. He was good-looking in an arrogant, asshole kind of way, his eyebrows arched so that he always looked pleasantly surprised.
 
Meanwhile, I was skinny, still too pale for a human, with my sorta-pointy ears, long nose, and black, black hair that refused to spike up for any brand of hair gel. As I watched him, running his hand through his hair, nonchalantly texting underneath the table and smirking at the letters, I thought that I could make a better son than him. I could make her love me.

If she'd give me the chance. 


I actually don't have many bad things to say about this one. Other than some awkward sentences and maybe the general angsty tone to the whole piece, I think it's pretty good. Dracen (or Drace) is a character of mine from this little series I had going on involving the teenage boy offsprings of well-known monsters--ie. Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, etc. Drace, if you couldn't tell, is the son of Dracula and Mina Harker, effectively making him a tortured half vampire who doesn't fit the category of human or vampire. Out of all the characters, he's a little more intriguing to me, mostly because of the fact that writing about the half human son of Dracula brings up a lot of interesting possibilities. He is rather angsty and whiny, but I don't shy away from this fact. He's at once poetic and thoughtful along with being pouty and melodramatic. I love him for it, what can I say. 


Yeah, this isn't my post about the love confession which was actually between he and another character, his best friend. Not really sure I like that angle anymore, at least when it involves his best friend. Seriously, I need to stop writing so many "oh-I'm gay-I-like-my-straight-best-friend" stories. They're becoming a little redundant.

Urrgh...

Well, as of right now I've majorly screwed up the design of my blog. Initially, I only meant to update the background image to something other than the Cowboy Bebop logo, but I didn't know that the whole template and stuff would reset itself. I have YET to understand how these blogs work! 

So in the meantime I will be trying to rectify my mistakes and get it back to looking near decent again. Truthfully, I have wanted to change it but this time around I'll make sure to put more time into its appearance and make it look more like I want it to. It's gonna take some time...

Good news though! I have corrected some major wrongs in my growing bill for college! Whoo! Unfortunately, I'll be back in a suite with another roommate this year instead of getting my own room, but at least I won't have a horrifying overdraft to worry about anymore (I think I deserve a cupcake!)

Can definitely say that I've learned my lesson about jumping the gun when it comes to school, not planning and whatnot. This time round, I'll make sure to be more careful about what I say yes to before doing something. On another note, I have a piece of prose to post on here.  

Um, is it, like, yaoi month or something? I've got a serious hankering for reading, watching, and producing yaoi for some odd reason. Even more so than before. Found this awesome blog that has a compilation of links to some of my favorite yaoi webcomics along with a few that I've never heard of before. 

Anyway, the post that I plan on getting up before the night is over is little scene between two characters of mine. One of them is confessing their feelings toward the other with much drama and angst to accompany it. It's nothing special, just a little something I whipped up to satisfy my self imposed writing quota. 

Not that I satisfy it much...