Day 68 - "Let's Get Ready to Rumble!"

A lot has gone on lately, which is why I haven't been posting, so I guess it's update time.

Two weekends ago was my alma mater's homecoming. I spent the day on campus hanging out with my sorority sisters and seeing a couple of friends. It was great to get away for a day and just have fun, laugh, and relive old shenanigans...while attempting to plan new ones that didn't end up working out.

Last night, one of my good friends from high school got married. It was cute, especially since she didn't really want a big celebration but kind of had one planned for her. The night was kind of startling, though, because even though a small number of people we went to high school with showed up, I realized just how many people I graduated with are already parents. Where'd time go?

I also found out last night that my best friend is filing for divorce. Yes, we're both only 22. However, she thankfully is using her head and getting out of what could be a bad situation before it gets started, especially when a child is involved. It's just mind boggling that, at our age, divorce is even in the picture. I mean, for a large portion of people our age group, we only think about marriage when someone asks about it.

On another note, I've decided to take up a challenge for next month. A bunch of writers who work for the same website I do were talking about National Novel Writing Month, which is coming up in November. Basically, it was started by a group of friends who decided that, as a joke, they were going to write a novel in a month. Now, the premise is to challenge ourselves to write 50,000 words between November 1 and November 30.

All I saw was the big number - 50,000 - and it blew my mind. That's 1,700 words a day! However, since my hours seem to be winding down at the other job (which is a scary thought) I'm probably going to need something to do. Not only that, I have a couple of projects that need finished any way.

So, for the record and anyone else who wants to know, this is how I'm going to write 50,000 words in 30 days (hopefully):

20 Suite101 articles (average of 500 words per article) = 10,000 words
finishing a creative nonfiction piece in progress = 500 words
"The Year Spent PC" posts (500 words 4x per week) = 8,000 words
new creative nonfiction piece = 4,000 words
creative nonfiction collection in progress = 15,000 words
new creative nonfiction collection I want to start = 12, 500 words

Total: 50,000 words! I can do it!

Grad school update: I thought I had everything turned in, but my graduate assistantship / internship application and my resume got lost in the mail. I guess I'm going to have to resubmit those before the writing marathon starts!

Day 38 - "I'm Just A Ramblin' Man"

Well, I'm not really a man, but I'm just kind of wandering around lately. I haven't really accomplished much - well, at least by my definition of accomplishment. I mailed my graduate assistant application for Baldwin-Wallace today, I've written two articles this week, spent some time with my boyfriend and played some rather interesting sand volleyball with some coworkers. And to think that a couple of posts ago I was calling myself a slacker.

Spending last week with my sorority sisters, alum and collegiate, got me caught up on a lot of things that apparently have been happening and I probably should have picked up on and that people hinted at, but I just never caught on. One broke off her engagement with her boyfriend of two years because he was, according to her story, way too clingy and she just wasn't sure if she wanted to live like that. I can't blame her; after listening to her story, he was way too possessive.

Another one of my sisters who transfered at the end of last semester is engaged and pregnant! This one made my jaw drop, simply because this, while happy, didn't seem to fit this sister's personality. Oh well, she's happy and everyone is excited!

Ah, life. Everything seems to be turning around, and that makes me feel so much better about everything.

-AA