Turning 25 Eh?

This is gonna be a good bit of reminiscing.

When I was eighteen and had just begun to formulate the general idea of what the End Game series would become, I remember thinking through what I hoped to do by the time I turned thirty. I had just read Eragon by Christopher Paolini and, though I felt a good chunk of his book was a rehashing of Tolkien, I still felt like somehow I too could be empowered to write a book and become published before I was thirty. In fact, I had this little daydream that was all about how I would become a published author before I turned twenty-five. I turn twenty-five on Friday.

Obviously, that little daydream didn't come true.

Although I don't feel like I'm approaching my birthday. I know I'm approaching a celebration because I'm going to New York state to spend three days with a good chunk of my college friends. But do I feel like a doomsday-esque mile marker is on the horizon? Nope. Can't say that I do.

At the same time, I feel as though I've let myself down. I had such great aspirations when I was nineteen and wrote the first (awful), draft of Genesis. I thought I'd at least have the first book published by this point and that there would be great anticipation for the following books. Now, reality has a way of laying things out differently then we think is best. I've found that these instances are the times when I need to be content with what's happening because in the end, whatever is around the corner is better than what I originally had planned.

Roughly every week (I'm gonna be taking this week off 'cause I'm getting myself ready for my dog and will be spending the latter half of the week in New York state), I've been sending 2-3 queries out to agents. Naturally, I haven't heard back from any of them. It makes me wonder if perhaps I've done something faulty in the process of sending the query. But getting caught in the "what ifs" never helps me in the slightest. So I try to stop myself as quickly as possible to keep from wandering down that rabbit hole.

So I'm gonna embrace the age of twenty-five. It's just another day. Just another year I happened to experience. It was a wild year, that's for sure. But I'm grateful for all that it's offered. The ups and the downs. 'Cause all along the way I've been learning.

Adventure well everyone! This'll probably be the only post I do. Especially come Wednesday. I'm rather excited for the weekend.

Currently Editing: Unity

Currently Listening to: "When Can I See You Again?" by Owl City

I'M GETTING A DOG

Oh my gosh, I'm getting a dog!

I'm so excited I can't even properly express it! So many images are coming to mind of what me and my pal are gonna be doing! Our walks and road trips and puppy therapy times at work (yeah, I plan on like once a week, taking him up to work and giving my coworkers a bit of puppy therapy). I think the thing I'm looking forward to most is curling up with him at night and playing fetch and going adventuring. I'm just so stinking excited.

I can't stop smiling.

I'm gonna go look at what toys I'm gonna buy him.

Currently Editing: Unity
Currently Reading: Brisinger by Christopher Paolini
Currently Listening to: "When Can I See You Again?" by Owl City

Seriously?

We all have countless friends like this on Facebook and/or Twitter. They take what have been termed "selfies" on a daily basis and then post said picture to their profiles. This isn't that big of a deal. Except for the fact that I'm seeing more and more pictures of young women showing off their cleavage. It's beginning to disgust me.

These are the same sort of girls that will then turn around and start posting about how they want a man's respect or they don't know why so much drama always happens around them or how tired they are of the games or, my personal favorite, that they're smart beautiful women that deserve to be treated right.

This goes back to a deep seeded frustration I have with some women. I know I wrote about this a while back (to be honest, I couldn't find the post. It's buried in here somewhere), where some "famous" person was on one of those late night shows. First off, she walks onto the stage wearing this skin tight, low cut, barely covering her butt dress. As she struggles to sit down without flashing the entire audience, the host asks if she needs help. About a minute later as she's answering one of his questions, she has the audacity to say to him, "Um, my eyes are up here."

The audience laughs as he looks around and he flounders for an answer. 'Cause he's the bad guy.

Seriously?! The audience finds this entertaining? A woman is practically shoving her body in the public's face and then demeans a man when he stares? What does she expect? Oh, she's expecting to be respected. 'Cause that's how respectable people dress.

Women, please stop kidding yourselves. We dress our best when we feel good about ourselves. When we want attention, we put on the clothes that we know accentuate our best features. All women do this. Stop pretending like you aren't doing it. You are. And please, if you're someone who thinks wearing next to no clothing is perfectly acceptable, then expect to get stares and don't be a witch with a capital b and call them all pigs. If you're gonna act like a billboard, you shouldn't expect to be treated like a selectively handed out flyer.

Rant is over.

I'm playing a waiting game on two fronts. 1) agents. 2) dog adoption agency. Yes, I'm actively pursuing getting a dog. I couldn't get a Mustang, so I'm going with my second bucket-list item.

Currently Editing: Unity
Currently Reading: Brisinger by Christopher Paolini
Currently listening to: the Man of Steel soundtrack

A Twinge of Regret

As life spirals around me in this sort of tornado type feeling, I find myself looking back over the past year. It's been a year since I graduated from college. Almost immediately after that momentous day, I was at Staples being rehired. Two days after being reintegrated into the system, I was working.

My sister just graduated from college a few weeks ago. She's currently out at Millbrook - a theater near Lehigh University - for the summer working as an actress and a set builder. After that, she'll be hopping onto a plane and living in Ireland for at least a year as she gets her masters in theater. Though we aren't very similar in our personalities, we seem to do the same sort of things with our lives. It seems as though we march on forward and wind up tumbling down hills into situations we originally didn't anticipate being in.

About a week ago, the two of us were chatting. I think I was sitting in the middle of her floor as she packed for Millbrook. At one point I said to her, "Y'know something I've found I regret? Not taking time off between graduating and working."

"Yeah, but you've got money now. That's a good thing."

Sure, I've got a buffer of funds for the "just in case something explodes" incidences. And that is nice. I really can't deny that I feel a lot more secure knowing that I have some buffer room financially. I could potentially lose my job and not have the world crash around me. This is definitely a good thing.

But at the same time, I feel like I jipped myself a little.

I think about all the traveling I would like to do. All the places I want to go. Y'know something I'd love to do? Take a cross-country roadtrip with a friend. Just travel and see and do for a while. Like two months or something. For a brief time, abandon what I know and adventure. Y'know something else I'd love to do? Get on a plane again and go somewhere. Y'know something else I'd love to do? Spend a week at a friend's house and see all those places they've always told me about. Stay up till three in the morning talking about random things that have no point.

So really, I wish I had given myself time to travel.

This may just be me, but I think that college kids should take a month off after they graduate. Granted, that's assuming they have a job they can walk into. I was lucky enough to have kept a good reputation at my old workplace and was even more fortunate to have a job practically waiting for me when I walked in the door. Not everyone has such opportunities. But I think that there's something to be said for relaxing and destressing. I'm not saying I necessarily needed to destress. I did have the easiest last semester of college ever.

But I also know a lot of friends that were on the verge of mental breakdowns at the end of their college career. There's something to be said for mental health. And I don't know if we stress enough how important it is to relax your brain for a time. And not just by sitting in front of the TV. But by doing something you've always wanted to do.

Like I said, maybe that's just me.

Adventure well warriors! Take today and do something you've always wanted to do. Be a little spontaneous. There's nothing wrong with making life an epic journey one small story at a time.

Currently Editing: Unity

Currently Reading: Brisinger by Christopher Paolini

Currently Listening to: "Into the West" by Annie Lenox

Overnight

One of the many ways I'm broken: I like the nighttime.

My brain turns on around ten o'clock and it keeps running circles until about three in the morning. Even when I'm most tired, I find myself unable to fall asleep before midnight. I write best during these times. It also helps that no one's around to watch me bawl at my computer or make faces or laugh at something I so wittily came up with.

We're at a stage at work where we have to do some overnight shifts to accomplish various tasks. I had been secretly praying for the opportunity to work them. So when my GM called me into the office two weeks ago and asked me to work the overnights he had in mind, I almost yelled, "THANK YOU." I love overnights. Not only am I most alert during that time, but there aren't any distractions. Well, not many. There's always at least two other people with me on an overnight shift. But it tends to be that the people I work with are just as focused on their tasks as I am on mine. So I'm rather thankful for the opportunity.

Also, this kind of helps me think.

See, as I'm running amuck getting stuff done, I normally have my headphones in. I listen to my music and I go through the motions of what I need to do. Though my body is very present in what I'm doing, my brain wanders off into my imagination and pulls images and ideas and stories to the forefront of reality. I wind up getting sucked into my creative mindset and essentially do a lot of brainstorming. I can't physically write stuff down during these overnights. But nothing's stopping me from thinking.

I got to work one overnight shift this week and I did a lot of adventuring in my mind. And we also sang along with Bohemian Rhapsody. That was fantastic. Oh, and I also started a new tradition - if you work an overnight at our store, you will go out to breakfast the following morning. Why would we do this, you may ask? Because it's five in the AM and by that time you're hungry! And, well, on Tuesday when I went in, I told my fellow coworkers it was my treat. They're the ones who decided it was now tradition.

I definitely am not complaining.

Adventure well my fellow warriors. Whatever it is that you've got set in your heart to tackle today, do it bravely! Go exploring. Take a road trip. Think aloud. Don't be afraid to break boundaries and push past limits. Make it your goal to become boundless and limitless. Go and be.

Go and do.

Currently Editing: Unity
Currently Reading: Brisinger by Christopher Paolini
Currently Listening to: "Paperman" by Christophe Beck (I'm convinced his mom just forgot to put an 'r' at the end of his first name and he just ran with it.)

You Ridiculous Person You

Adventures in Susan's mind chapter one.

Today I was standing with one of my coworkers as he toiled away and I waited to get on the computer to print something. As he worked, he brought up the fact that he was required to friendzone a girl he was seeing. "Why are you friendzoning her?" I asked.

"She doesn't meet my requirements."

"Okay, how doesn't she measure up?"

"Well, for starters, she's twenty-five, she works at a dead end job, she doesn't have a college degree, and her greatest ambition in life is to move out of her parents house. That just won't work for me."

I almost laughed in his face.

"That's so mean!" You say. I must not like my coworkers very much to want to laugh square in their face when they say something like that. I must be a cold-hearted individual to think such a response is appropriate. Hold your horses there cowboy. Just settle down for a sec. Here's why I almost laughed at him:

Because he was describing himself.

Aside from the "twenty-five years old" bit, literally, that kid just lumped her into the same category as himself. And he's deluded enough to think that somehow he's better than her! This kid dropped out of college after a semester, has allowed himself to rise to his own level of incompetence at our workplace (which is retail by the way), and whenever I ask him about what he wants to do with his life, he responds with, "I dunno." His greatest ambition is to build a quad and move out of his parents house. Aside from the quad, it sounds exactly the same as this girl that he's forcing into the friendzone.

See, this is why people are so screwed up. We all think that somehow we're allowed to put restrictions on other people and "requirements" on our potential spouse. But at the same time, don't you dare put a requirement on me. Somehow, that rule doesn't apply to myself, but it certainly applies to everyone else in my life.

How ridiculous. This is precisely why I can't take this kid seriously.

In other, completely unrelated news, I sent out queries & synopsis to three agents tonight. Hopefully, within the next two weeks, I'll be hearing something. Additionally, our Nonprofit group finally was authenticated by the government.

Currently Editing: Unity
Currently Reading: Brisinger by Christopher Paolini
Currently Listening to: "Clarity" by Zedd

Cars

So, my lovely Mitchell is acting up. What started as a minor jittering in the steering has evolved into something that no one seems to recognize. If this issue was only this one time and likely would be the only problem for several years, okay. Its part if buying a used car. However, I've already put nearly a thousand dollars into Mitch. That was six months ago.

When do you say enough is enough? This is my dilemma. If it turns out that I need to put a substantial amount of money into the car, do I cut my losses, trade it in, and get something else? I've been wrestling with this issue for about a week now. He just went to the mechanic today, and hopefully by tomorrow or Wednesday they'll have some news for me. Until then, I'm gonna keep mulling and praying.

In other news, I work an overnight shift tomorrow. Is it weird that I'm looking forward to it?

Therapy Weekend

I took an emergency trip to New York a few days ago. Why? Because I needed to get away from everything that was giving me stress and laugh.

So after working on Thursday, I drove six hours and arrived in Buffalo around midnight. I stayed up till three in the morning talking with one of my friends and then woke up at six in time for a coffee/breakfast get together with two of my friends. By four in the afternoon, I was on the road to Jamestown. By seven I was with my best friend and her husband out to dinner. By midnight I was cuddled with one of her cats, smiling as I fell asleep. By ten in the morning on Saturday I was up and about by the time one of my friends from Buffalo came down and then my friend from North Carolina showed up and we laughed for hours until my best friend and her husband came back. Then we took a car ride, helped someone move, went on an epic grocery hunt, went back to Jamestown, drove around until we found a viable Chinese food place, and watched a live action version of an anime while eating dinner. By ten in the evening, I had two of my friends trying to pull me back into the house, begging me not to leave just yet. To call out of work and tell my worship leader that I wasn't coming home yet - I had to stay with my family.

I smiled for an hour on my ride home; just thinking over all the laughter I had been part of within two days. When I crossed back into Pennsylvania, I already could feel my heart yearning to turn back around and spend just a little more time with my second family - the family I chose. The family that chose me.

My college friends and I have been through a lot. We've seen one another at our worst and at our best. We've laughed, we've cried, we've pulled all-nighters together and we've gotten lost together. Through everything that we've encountered, we've come out stronger than we once were. We spend ninety percent of our time together laughing. And I mean the, 'laugh-till-your-sides-hurt-and-joy-radiates-off-your-face' kind of laughter.

This was by far one of the most therapeutic two-day extravaganza I've ever had.

I pray you have a group of friends as wonderful as mine. Because there's a simple fact: I'm beyond blessed to have them in my life. Words cannot describe how much I love them all and how much I wish I could always be around them. Everyone should be so lucky as to have a group of friends that are so wonderful tied together that regardless of the time apart and the miles that separate one another, whenever they're together, it's as if nothing has changed.

Currently Reading: Brisinger by Christopher Paolini
Currently Listening to: "Miles Apart" by Yellowcard (fitting, right?)