i basically live at starbucks now.
I...
1) ...have just applied for a PA/general assistant job at a television production company that is absurdly close to my flat and would be everything I have ever wanted in my life. My tenure at my current internship is coming to an end, and this is a (well-)paid position, so please keep every possible finger and toe you have (and even other people's, if they are sleeping or something) crossed for me!!
This is quite unexpected because, until last night, I was dead-set on getting a pub job, making all of the dollars in tips (hi, accent), and then traveling Europe in the summer. Then, of all people, my mother sent me this job listing. I was definitely hesitant because I'd been struggling to reconcile my desire to take advantage of Europe and travel like a free person with my desire to work in TV/film. My argument with my parents is that, if positions this good are around now, they'll be around six months from now when I've (partially) sated my wanderlust. However, this one is just too perfectly located, came up at the most fated time (I'm finished interning next week), and...it's in TV!
You know what's funny? In high school, I felt like I had no future because my "passions" were reading, writing, and watching TV and movies. Everyone always tells you "turn whatever you like into a job", but, man, there are no high school classes in TV-watching! For some reason I was convinced that if it wasn't a subject you could take in school, it wasn't a thing you could do as a job. (At least, it wasn't a thing I could do as a job, since I went to a private school, university was a requirement from the moment I was born, and I thought, you know, if the school doesn't offer it, how is it a viable life choice?)
Anyway, then I started applying to universities and realized...hey, wait! I can totally major in reading books and watching movies! English and Film are available options on this drop-down list of degree choices!! My interests have been validated!
While I did honestly love my degree (and this is not misguided nostalgia talking; the number of papers I genuinely enjoyed writing, despite the gallons of caffeine required, far outnumbers the ones that were a slog -- hello, I got to write a paper on Star Wars fandom!), I found myself getting way more into TV as an extracurricular activity. Throughout my undergrad, I had almost zero time to read or watch movies for pleasure. Besides, even when I did, trust me on this one: the last thing you want to do after attending three film screenings for various classes is go to see another movie. TV, however, was bite-sized, and I was already invested in the characters! But, you know, that wasn't my degree -- you can't major in television fandom.
I think you can see where I'm going with this. Guys, TV is a valid career path, and regardless of whether this particular position pans out or not, it's something I can pursue. This only took 22 years to register!
The moral of this story, kids, is keep writing your Buffy the Vampire Slayer self-insertion fanfiction and staying up until 4 AM watching episodes of Farscape the night before your IB history exam, because no one will ever ask you about Austro-Hungarian politics ever again, but you might really hit it off with someone over your mutual love of Aeryn Sun. Did this just get really sentimental?? SORRY GUYS. Fiction: I kind of love it? (This should be the title of my autobiography.)
2) ...am writing a really quite epic Star Trek: TOS/Star Wars OT crossover? It is...it's maybe 6000 words already? And...I maybe signed up for the scifibigbang for it? Which means it will be a minimum of 25,000 by the time I am finished with it? And I don't feel I will have the remotest problem achieving this length? Dear goodness, I have time-consuming and entirely (...I almost wrote 'illogical' here without even thinking about it) ridiculous hobbies.
3) ...am currently taking advantage of the 2 weeks of free Paid Account on LJ. It's crazy, over the past five years I've just drifted farther and farther away from LJ, but since I started sitting at a computer (for work) for 9 hours every day, it has sucked me back in. It's a combination of this, and Star Trek eating my brain. Oh, and the fact that I've been writing more than I ever have in my life, and while some of it is original, a lot of it is still fanfiction. Anyway, I don't know, I feel like I'm experiencing a renaissance! I know I keep saying this over and over again, but it's like I'm sixteen again, minus the crippling self-doubt. I don't feel like I'm necessarily hiding behind fandom anymore as an excuse for not having successful personal relationships; it's like I went through all this personal growth and blah blah blah, and now I can enjoy it in its own right. That sentence doesn't make sense/I think too much about my own behaviour/I have read too much Henry Jenkins, but there we go! OH P.S. OH GOD I LOVE THE ICON SPACE. I've never had more than six icons...ever. And I've been here for (OH GOD) ten years. (?????!!!??!?!?!?!?)
4) ...am freezing my ass off because it is 2 degrees outside and Starbucks is blasting AIR CONDITIONING on me for some reason. WHY, WHAT IS THIS, ARE YOU GUYS FUCKING MENTAL. I only come to Starbucks because I like being out in public for as long as possible. This is probably strange, I know, but if I'm home, I am in my pyjamas, is the general rule. If I get home at 8:30 PM after a Friday night movie, I will change into my PJs immediately and not leave the house again. Somewhat along the same lines, if I go more than half an hour without changing/getting ready/leaving my house in the mornings, I'll probably be trapped there until midafternoon. My flat is a black hole of unproductivity.
Not only that, but my windows are improbably poorly insulated. I am pretty sure they are built like those Lego windows that are just a piece of plastic on a hinge, and if I leaned my body weight on one, the pane would fall out and land on my neighbour's new Vespa. Anyway, what this means is that I haven't opened my curtains in over a week because this is the only way I have figured out how to keep the warm air inside my apartment and the cold air out. I kind of like sunlight too much to spend all day in an apartment with all the curtains drawn, hence...Starbucks.
5) ...realize that this entry is becoming a monster. WORD VOMIT WORD VOMIT. This is what happens when I haven't updated in a very long time and then realize that I have had all these THOUGHTS that can't be communicated in 140 characters and certainly wouldn't be of interest to most of the people I'm friends with on Facebook.
It's pretty depressing to me that these have become virtually my only ways of communicating online. Last night, as usual, I couldn't sleep, so I went through some of my tags, and I miss writing those dumb episode/movie response posts that consisted almost entirely of capslocking and exclamation points in bullet point form. I mean, I still do it, but now it's either by livetweeting, BBMing with friends, or via Facebook status, and none of these things are remotely permanent. I went back and reread (legitimately hilarious!) responses to Star Wars books and episodes of Queer as Folk that I didn't even remember writing, and it was so great! I'm pretty sad that the last few years of enjoyment I've gotten out of things is not documented in any way. FANGIRLING, I MISS YOU. I feel like there was a period of time in uni where I thought I had grown past it and was trying to be all "YEAH drinkin' and makin' out with strangers, this is where the cool kids are at", but...nope, after extensive experimentation, that is definitely for losers. Turns out I knew more about responsible behaviour at 16 than I did at 20, I just didn't realize it at the time because it was not self-imposed.
6) ...love my mom so hard and cannot wait for her and my dad to come visit at the end of the month! They'll stay long enough to be here for my mom's birthday on April 5 and I am so so so super-pumped. We're going for tea and to see The 39 Steps and for fancy cocktails and to some of my favourite London restaurants (that I cannot ordinarily afford). Yay, parents! They are kind of great sometimes.
7) ...am going to get my ass OUT OF HERE because my fingers are getting numb with the cold, not to mention my arms/toes/EVERYTHING. WHY IS THE AC ON, THIS IS MY #1 LIFE QUESTION TODAY.
1) ...have just applied for a PA/general assistant job at a television production company that is absurdly close to my flat and would be everything I have ever wanted in my life. My tenure at my current internship is coming to an end, and this is a (well-)paid position, so please keep every possible finger and toe you have (and even other people's, if they are sleeping or something) crossed for me!!
This is quite unexpected because, until last night, I was dead-set on getting a pub job, making all of the dollars in tips (hi, accent), and then traveling Europe in the summer. Then, of all people, my mother sent me this job listing. I was definitely hesitant because I'd been struggling to reconcile my desire to take advantage of Europe and travel like a free person with my desire to work in TV/film. My argument with my parents is that, if positions this good are around now, they'll be around six months from now when I've (partially) sated my wanderlust. However, this one is just too perfectly located, came up at the most fated time (I'm finished interning next week), and...it's in TV!
You know what's funny? In high school, I felt like I had no future because my "passions" were reading, writing, and watching TV and movies. Everyone always tells you "turn whatever you like into a job", but, man, there are no high school classes in TV-watching! For some reason I was convinced that if it wasn't a subject you could take in school, it wasn't a thing you could do as a job. (At least, it wasn't a thing I could do as a job, since I went to a private school, university was a requirement from the moment I was born, and I thought, you know, if the school doesn't offer it, how is it a viable life choice?)
Anyway, then I started applying to universities and realized...hey, wait! I can totally major in reading books and watching movies! English and Film are available options on this drop-down list of degree choices!! My interests have been validated!
While I did honestly love my degree (and this is not misguided nostalgia talking; the number of papers I genuinely enjoyed writing, despite the gallons of caffeine required, far outnumbers the ones that were a slog -- hello, I got to write a paper on Star Wars fandom!), I found myself getting way more into TV as an extracurricular activity. Throughout my undergrad, I had almost zero time to read or watch movies for pleasure. Besides, even when I did, trust me on this one: the last thing you want to do after attending three film screenings for various classes is go to see another movie. TV, however, was bite-sized, and I was already invested in the characters! But, you know, that wasn't my degree -- you can't major in television fandom.
I think you can see where I'm going with this. Guys, TV is a valid career path, and regardless of whether this particular position pans out or not, it's something I can pursue. This only took 22 years to register!
The moral of this story, kids, is keep writing your Buffy the Vampire Slayer self-insertion fanfiction and staying up until 4 AM watching episodes of Farscape the night before your IB history exam, because no one will ever ask you about Austro-Hungarian politics ever again, but you might really hit it off with someone over your mutual love of Aeryn Sun. Did this just get really sentimental?? SORRY GUYS. Fiction: I kind of love it? (This should be the title of my autobiography.)
2) ...am writing a really quite epic Star Trek: TOS/Star Wars OT crossover? It is...it's maybe 6000 words already? And...I maybe signed up for the scifibigbang for it? Which means it will be a minimum of 25,000 by the time I am finished with it? And I don't feel I will have the remotest problem achieving this length? Dear goodness, I have time-consuming and entirely (...I almost wrote 'illogical' here without even thinking about it) ridiculous hobbies.
3) ...am currently taking advantage of the 2 weeks of free Paid Account on LJ. It's crazy, over the past five years I've just drifted farther and farther away from LJ, but since I started sitting at a computer (for work) for 9 hours every day, it has sucked me back in. It's a combination of this, and Star Trek eating my brain. Oh, and the fact that I've been writing more than I ever have in my life, and while some of it is original, a lot of it is still fanfiction. Anyway, I don't know, I feel like I'm experiencing a renaissance! I know I keep saying this over and over again, but it's like I'm sixteen again, minus the crippling self-doubt. I don't feel like I'm necessarily hiding behind fandom anymore as an excuse for not having successful personal relationships; it's like I went through all this personal growth and blah blah blah, and now I can enjoy it in its own right. That sentence doesn't make sense/I think too much about my own behaviour/I have read too much Henry Jenkins, but there we go! OH P.S. OH GOD I LOVE THE ICON SPACE. I've never had more than six icons...ever. And I've been here for (OH GOD) ten years. (?????!!!??!?!?!?!?)
4) ...am freezing my ass off because it is 2 degrees outside and Starbucks is blasting AIR CONDITIONING on me for some reason. WHY, WHAT IS THIS, ARE YOU GUYS FUCKING MENTAL. I only come to Starbucks because I like being out in public for as long as possible. This is probably strange, I know, but if I'm home, I am in my pyjamas, is the general rule. If I get home at 8:30 PM after a Friday night movie, I will change into my PJs immediately and not leave the house again. Somewhat along the same lines, if I go more than half an hour without changing/getting ready/leaving my house in the mornings, I'll probably be trapped there until midafternoon. My flat is a black hole of unproductivity.
Not only that, but my windows are improbably poorly insulated. I am pretty sure they are built like those Lego windows that are just a piece of plastic on a hinge, and if I leaned my body weight on one, the pane would fall out and land on my neighbour's new Vespa. Anyway, what this means is that I haven't opened my curtains in over a week because this is the only way I have figured out how to keep the warm air inside my apartment and the cold air out. I kind of like sunlight too much to spend all day in an apartment with all the curtains drawn, hence...Starbucks.
5) ...realize that this entry is becoming a monster. WORD VOMIT WORD VOMIT. This is what happens when I haven't updated in a very long time and then realize that I have had all these THOUGHTS that can't be communicated in 140 characters and certainly wouldn't be of interest to most of the people I'm friends with on Facebook.
It's pretty depressing to me that these have become virtually my only ways of communicating online. Last night, as usual, I couldn't sleep, so I went through some of my tags, and I miss writing those dumb episode/movie response posts that consisted almost entirely of capslocking and exclamation points in bullet point form. I mean, I still do it, but now it's either by livetweeting, BBMing with friends, or via Facebook status, and none of these things are remotely permanent. I went back and reread (legitimately hilarious!) responses to Star Wars books and episodes of Queer as Folk that I didn't even remember writing, and it was so great! I'm pretty sad that the last few years of enjoyment I've gotten out of things is not documented in any way. FANGIRLING, I MISS YOU. I feel like there was a period of time in uni where I thought I had grown past it and was trying to be all "YEAH drinkin' and makin' out with strangers, this is where the cool kids are at", but...nope, after extensive experimentation, that is definitely for losers. Turns out I knew more about responsible behaviour at 16 than I did at 20, I just didn't realize it at the time because it was not self-imposed.
6) ...love my mom so hard and cannot wait for her and my dad to come visit at the end of the month! They'll stay long enough to be here for my mom's birthday on April 5 and I am so so so super-pumped. We're going for tea and to see The 39 Steps and for fancy cocktails and to some of my favourite London restaurants (that I cannot ordinarily afford). Yay, parents! They are kind of great sometimes.
7) ...am going to get my ass OUT OF HERE because my fingers are getting numb with the cold, not to mention my arms/toes/EVERYTHING. WHY IS THE AC ON, THIS IS MY #1 LIFE QUESTION TODAY.