Even though February is a slightly shorter month, it really did seem to fly by, and it had its moments. From wanting to quit my job to celebrating my birthday, playing in the snow and buying a new computer, February was a rollercoaster of highs and lows.
Let’s start at the beginning.
I was officially written up at work for a few small things that could have easily been solved with a conversation. At my current employment, they only start paperwork when they want a paper trail on people they’re getting ready to fire. I took the hit hard because their accusations implied they thought I was capable of lying and stealing, among a couple of other not so flattering personality traits. And the source of it all, the one person I trusted. The person I share a very small office with.
Needless to say, it’s been a difficult few weeks in the aftermath, but it was also an enlightening moment. Previously I wrote about having taken stock of my life near the end of last year and realized I had become too invested in a job that I didn’t truly care about. I wasn’t nearly focused enough on my writing and the career I actually want, so having it reiterated to me so effectively was enough of a boost to shift my attitude and focus.
The following week was my birthday. Dinner with friends and a numerical reminder that I’m not where I wanted to be by this particular moment in time.
Then it snowed. Like a lot. So much so that the city issued a snow day, well, technically, a black ice warning. Now, for those of you who live in places where you have actual winters, you may mock us here in the desert, but the truth is, we don’t see snow very often and we are not at all equipped to deal with it. It was awesome though.
It was during this confinement that I finally decided to bite the bullet and buy a new computer, something I had been deliberating for months. With the desire to move my writing career forward fueled by the past weeks’ infuriating nonsense, paying a pretty big penny for a new piece of equipment that’s meant to help me suddenly became the easiest decision.
Keeping up the momentum I entered two more screenwriting contests and started the whole “get my professional portfolio in order before the big screenwriting conference”. Yes, I am going to attend my first conference this fall during the Austin Film Festival.
I’ve found that when we get comfortable, things slide. I know I’ve had this conversation with myself a number of times in the past, getting my sh*t in order, but then my job gets in the way. In some way or another. It’s usually my major source of ire, and whether I have a job that sucks and spend too much time looking for another, or invest too much and lose focus on what really matters, I get comfortable.
The now tenuous work situation has me looking at things differently. Maybe my increased maturity 😉 is also helping to streamline my focus. I don’t want to regret not taking this chance. I don’t want to only ever say I’m a writer without anything to show for it. And while I’ve said this a time or two before, something’s different now.
After shedding a number of tears because the higher ups insulted my character, I said some words aloud on the drive home that were meant to give me perspective, and they did just that. And that’s when I felt it. The shift. I literally felt a detachment occur.
As clichéd as it’s going to sound, life continues to put us into situations that we may not understand at the time, but are meant to help propel us in the right direction when we finally realize the pattern. This is my moment of discovery. It’s time to take advantage of it.
I feel like I know who I am as a writer. I don’t outline much; I “generally” know where it’s going to go though, before I sit down. I like happy endings, my characters are often sarcastic and they’re always do-gooders (the protagonists anyway), and because of my genre choice, I have some freedom to let my imagination run wild. I listen to my characters. I alternate between procrastination and binge. I like to write some things by hand (my fanfiction has almost entirely been written by 
hand, oddly enough), but the computer monitor allows me more space to “see” (hence, all my screenplays have been written via the modern age). Plus I type much faster than my hand can write to keep up with my brain (which is why some of my fanfiction looks like chicken scrawl).
times, I discover alternate paths and ideas that I never would have seen had I not allowed my story to just unfold. I have literally found myself astounded with what I’ve unearthed this way.
I’d like to start up the Writing Prompt Challenge again.
At the beginning of every year we each decide what we’d like to accomplish, what we want to change. The dreaded New Year’s Resolution – gyms are overcrowded for a month, a flurry of spending happens while we’re excited for a new hobby, mentally we prepare for the first of the year as if it were a magic reset button, but usually it’s all in vain. We say things like, “This year, it will all be different.” “Kiss last year goodbye and say hello to the new one and all the newness that comes with it.” We set goals, we make resolutions, only to lose momentum a fraction of the way through the year.
but I have been thinking a lot about spirituality, my purpose, and vainly, my legacy.
Yes, you read that correctly. In all my years updating my blog for posterity’s sake, I’ve never mentioned a vacation, and that’s because there hasn’t been one, in like 16 years.
It was a little over four years ago when The Sis and I had a conversation.
A Writer's Discrepant Memoirs and Other Tales 