Bloggawhat?
It has been far too long since I blogged, but I've got a good reason this time -- I've been pretty caught up in the vast amount of shit I must accomplish in order to finish my master's degree. It is a year late, due to circumstances out of my control, but in some ways that makes it even sweeter. Honestly, last fall when I got injured, I figured I didn't have a chance in hell of finishing. I was already feeling like the practice of writing papers and reading swaths of critical articles had left me, and had the conviction that I had chosen the wrong field of study when I started out.
In many ways, I still feel that way, but I have gotten real about it as well. When I was applying to graduate schools, I was being advised about my fiction writing by a professor who I really looked up to at the time. This person encouraged me to apply to MFA programs, and to go for the best ones. I only applied to a few of the top programs, and NO mid-level programs, which was probably some of the worst advice I've ever gotten and I should have known better. We all want to believe we're awesome, though. The "safe" school I applied to was good ol NCSU, and since my mom had been a fiction writing teacher there until recently, I didn't want to enter the MFA program, so just applied for the MA.
Well, that was dumb, because wouldn't you know it, I bricked on those MFA applications. The prof I was dealing with said sure, come to State, we'll do the thesis together. Blah blah blah. But the latter part didn't work out, and I was forced to change topics very soon before I was (originally) scheduled to graduate.
The rest is kind of history, but this is all to say I have felt very, very unmotivated to write a paper in a field that doesn't interest me (I guess I was hoping for more close readings of texts and analysis of the way they actually worked, as far as style, mood, word choice, etc. -- and less about politics and horseshit, which much of literary criticism seems to be.)
So the fact that I have finished a draft and now am just shy of finishing a major revision is a very, very good thing. I have like two weeks before it's due, I've got to pass a Spanish test next week, and if I can square all that away, I will actually finish. Which is amazing to me. I really had just about written it off.
The next barrel of monkeys will be finding a job, and I am drawing thin as far as ideas for that. Ideally, I'd like to work for the government. Like, starting off at the bottom at some agency office, being a solid worker, rising up through the ranks. I know that the government takes good care of its employees and offers a good retirement package. Unfortunately, however, all those jobs are being cut at the moment. So I will have to figure something else out.
Some volunteering I've been doing has been making me think working with young adults/kids might be a good thing for me. Believe it or not, I've been a teacher for a 6th-7th grade Sunday School class for the last couple of months. I've just enjoyed it so much. Anyone that knows me well knows I'm kind of a cynic about religion, but this is a church I grew up in, with all the right political/social stances, and it just seems to have naturally worked out to come back. That has been a major plus for me, probably the best thing that's happened to me all year. I was really proud of them, they put together a fundraiser and raised like $500 for Haiti relief in one afternoon. Cool stuff like that.
What else... well, I had an awesome experience at an invitation poker tournament that my good friend Ed brought me to. It was a 45-man (or thereabouts) tournament with the top 5 places winning money. I had an awesome run... though I can't really credit myself with amazing play, I just managed to get my chips in when I was ~60% favorite or better, and all my hands held up, until the end. When there were four of us left, I caught two pair on the flop out of the big blind. A guy with a similar chipstack to mine made a huge overbet, I thought he was just stealing so I reraised all in, which was an overbet in itself. To my surprise, he called, with just one pair. It was looking AWESOME for me, but the turn and river cards were both diamonds, giving him a flush. So I was out in 4th for 200 bucks. If I had knocked him out, the 3rd place guy would have been out quickly after (tiny stack) and I would have been playing heads up for the win. 500 for 2nd, 1000 for 1st. So while I was happy that I won what to me is a fairly significant amount of money (lets me have some entertainment anyway), I was hurting over that for days afterward! Man, so close yet so far away. But that's how it goes.
This blog has been all over the place so far, and probably won't be entertaining to most, but whatever. The last thing I wanted to say is that I have gotten back to doing the kind of writing I love to do, just for myself. I haven't had a lot of time for it the last week or so because of the impending school stuff, but it feels so good to be back to exercising that creative muscle. The best thing, probably, is not caring about showing it to anyone. If I write anything worth showing, I'll show it, but otherwise, I'm just going to enjoy myself. And that's a nice feeling.
This is gonna sound over the top, but it's true -- I feel like this has been one of the best years of my life so far, things seem to fall into place one after the other. There are plenty of things I still lack, like, well, a job, and a female that is not my dog -- but I trust things will continue to line up properly as long as I keep giving all my effort. I am actually happier on my own than I have ever been, and I think that's saying something.
So this hasn't been a very humorous blog post, lacking all the constant attempts at sarcasm I normally season these with, but screw it, I just wanted to throw a general update out there. I know a few people read this, but I also like to keep it kinda as a log for my own reference, like "oh, looks like I was feeling pretty good in April 2010, what a naive fool I was!!!" Or something like that.
