I survived 2012 after all.
Though I did schlep about the last few days of it on my couch/hooker bed, poisoned by bad beets. I tried a yellow one at my friend's boss's Super Bowl party last night, and they still leave a bad taste in my mouth. >.<
But uh, I was glad to see the year taper out. My little cat that I had since seven died, and I cried for like two days solid, though I continued to go to work and stuff. And I found out a few days after that this guy that I really liked back in the fall got with some veterinarian chick about a week after we stopped hanging out, and at that point it was kind of like ... I'm gonna cut something here, folks. So, I cut my hair. I've only had short hair (and here I define that as shoulder-length, I've yet to champion the pixie/dyke cut) once, when I was nine. But I lopped off my braid, and I will say that it's kind of nice working at the car wash without having to tuck everything up into/under my oppressed worker's hat (even with the braid, halfway through the day there'd be fly-aways), and walking in the wind tastes a lot less hairy now. Shower time's cut down a few minutes, too. So, farewell to many things, not to mention the year.
I spent a lot of this past month working on grad school application stuff. I had one due date of January 15, and everything else was due this Friday past, though I made sure it was in the mail the week before. So now I'm applied to UMKC, Arkansas, New Mexico, and Claremont Graduate. Claremont Graduate's more for the will-I-get-in? intrigue, because even if I was accepted (it is a really good program I'm applying to, is the other more substantial reason for applying), even if I got a shit-ton of aid to go, if I don't want to die of extreme poverty three weeks after going out there (Claremont being situated about half an hour east of L.A.) I'm looking at residence in either Koreatown (which I found out exists) or sharing a house with like a thousand dozen international and/or Asian-American students. Either way, it looks like attendance to Claremont = me liking kimchi long time. I think I could do it ^^ So, I'll wait and hear back on those; in the meantime, I'm waiting on just one more W-2 from one of my jobs, so I can get this tax thingy rolling and hop on my FAFSA, hopefully in the next week and a half.
Other than that, things I'm working on right now include...
*asserting my living space. I moved into my current place when my youngest sister was still living with me, and I was tired of her having to live on a couch in a house where I was the only one who cleaned regularly. A few of my flaky ex-roommates I helped out of a bad bad confrontation with an even flakier and on top of that violent dude, slept in my current place before I did because it was the "safe house" I brought them to before I was fully moved in. Lately I've been leaving the house around seven-something in the morning, and coming home around six-something in the evening, sometimes going back out immediately or not long after that, other times passing the fuck out at ten at night, and one a few occasions staying up into the wee hours reading or writing; but all that means that largely, it's been the cats' reign. The past week though I've been cleaning up/rearranging a few things, and six months after moving in, have a plan to execute as regards a living set-up that looks a little less transient, haha.
*writing. EVERYTHING. I've got like four different short stories and a couple longer pieces that I've started the past year, and I've managed full drafts for I think two of them? I've touched fanfic even less, having over the year made several start-and-stop attempts on a few updates. I've got an idea for a compilation of six related short stories that I'm almost halfway through (sans mass revision/editing once all the materials are assembled), after which I'd like to look around and pitch for publication. It's kind of horror the same way Anne Rice's vampires are horror, so, not really at all; and kind of fantasy in a magical realism aspect. The main character is the Devil, or are the devils. More on that later. While I'm on that and a couple of other projects that have promise and I don't want to lose in a desk drawer someplace, I also want to revisit my fanfics. I've got a couple stories so near completion I'm ashamed I haven't finished them off already; I hope to have the last chapter of something up and out ... maybe sometime this month, and see if I get any indication that anyone who writes more than a five-word review still reads anything of mine. (Not that I don't appreciate those five-word reviews after their own fashion; any indication someone's reading and appreciates it enough to tell me so...)
*(enjoying) going out more. This time last year I went out at least twice a week most weeks, and little dramas aside enjoyed myself very much. I've been a lot more reclusive since the late fall, and part of that's the weather but part of that's just boredom that often sets in even when I do go out. The past month, however, I've been going out drinking/playing pool/hanging out at a few people's houses I hadn't been to in a hot minute, made it to a couple of shows, some that were pretty great, a few I wasn't feeling, but I find that those little excursions send me home (and usually waking up the morning after, because I'm not doing anything productive when I come home at 1, 2 a.m.) with uh, I don't know if one would term it higher morale, or a more solid sense of efficacy, but I think I got to work, or do work around here at my place, in a better mood, perhaps better productivity even, because it doens't all seem like a senseless cyclical nothing of drudgery, as I often fall into danger of considering my life in general at times. (Yes, I know ... O the wangst!) Something to be said for the all-work-and-no-play, mantra. (P.S., going to a buddy's house and watching the director's cut of The Shining, which I'd never seen before aside from a few clips, was one of the enjoying-going-out-more things I did this month past.)
That's it for now. I could bitch about the politics I've hardened and asserted more in the past month and a half, but then I'd have to do an LJ cut. And that shiiyett deserves an entire entry--nay, a series of entries--unto itself. Themselves. Something.
But uh, I was glad to see the year taper out. My little cat that I had since seven died, and I cried for like two days solid, though I continued to go to work and stuff. And I found out a few days after that this guy that I really liked back in the fall got with some veterinarian chick about a week after we stopped hanging out, and at that point it was kind of like ... I'm gonna cut something here, folks. So, I cut my hair. I've only had short hair (and here I define that as shoulder-length, I've yet to champion the pixie/dyke cut) once, when I was nine. But I lopped off my braid, and I will say that it's kind of nice working at the car wash without having to tuck everything up into/under my oppressed worker's hat (even with the braid, halfway through the day there'd be fly-aways), and walking in the wind tastes a lot less hairy now. Shower time's cut down a few minutes, too. So, farewell to many things, not to mention the year.
I spent a lot of this past month working on grad school application stuff. I had one due date of January 15, and everything else was due this Friday past, though I made sure it was in the mail the week before. So now I'm applied to UMKC, Arkansas, New Mexico, and Claremont Graduate. Claremont Graduate's more for the will-I-get-in? intrigue, because even if I was accepted (it is a really good program I'm applying to, is the other more substantial reason for applying), even if I got a shit-ton of aid to go, if I don't want to die of extreme poverty three weeks after going out there (Claremont being situated about half an hour east of L.A.) I'm looking at residence in either Koreatown (which I found out exists) or sharing a house with like a thousand dozen international and/or Asian-American students. Either way, it looks like attendance to Claremont = me liking kimchi long time. I think I could do it ^^ So, I'll wait and hear back on those; in the meantime, I'm waiting on just one more W-2 from one of my jobs, so I can get this tax thingy rolling and hop on my FAFSA, hopefully in the next week and a half.
Other than that, things I'm working on right now include...
*asserting my living space. I moved into my current place when my youngest sister was still living with me, and I was tired of her having to live on a couch in a house where I was the only one who cleaned regularly. A few of my flaky ex-roommates I helped out of a bad bad confrontation with an even flakier and on top of that violent dude, slept in my current place before I did because it was the "safe house" I brought them to before I was fully moved in. Lately I've been leaving the house around seven-something in the morning, and coming home around six-something in the evening, sometimes going back out immediately or not long after that, other times passing the fuck out at ten at night, and one a few occasions staying up into the wee hours reading or writing; but all that means that largely, it's been the cats' reign. The past week though I've been cleaning up/rearranging a few things, and six months after moving in, have a plan to execute as regards a living set-up that looks a little less transient, haha.
*writing. EVERYTHING. I've got like four different short stories and a couple longer pieces that I've started the past year, and I've managed full drafts for I think two of them? I've touched fanfic even less, having over the year made several start-and-stop attempts on a few updates. I've got an idea for a compilation of six related short stories that I'm almost halfway through (sans mass revision/editing once all the materials are assembled), after which I'd like to look around and pitch for publication. It's kind of horror the same way Anne Rice's vampires are horror, so, not really at all; and kind of fantasy in a magical realism aspect. The main character is the Devil, or are the devils. More on that later. While I'm on that and a couple of other projects that have promise and I don't want to lose in a desk drawer someplace, I also want to revisit my fanfics. I've got a couple stories so near completion I'm ashamed I haven't finished them off already; I hope to have the last chapter of something up and out ... maybe sometime this month, and see if I get any indication that anyone who writes more than a five-word review still reads anything of mine. (Not that I don't appreciate those five-word reviews after their own fashion; any indication someone's reading and appreciates it enough to tell me so...)
*(enjoying) going out more. This time last year I went out at least twice a week most weeks, and little dramas aside enjoyed myself very much. I've been a lot more reclusive since the late fall, and part of that's the weather but part of that's just boredom that often sets in even when I do go out. The past month, however, I've been going out drinking/playing pool/hanging out at a few people's houses I hadn't been to in a hot minute, made it to a couple of shows, some that were pretty great, a few I wasn't feeling, but I find that those little excursions send me home (and usually waking up the morning after, because I'm not doing anything productive when I come home at 1, 2 a.m.) with uh, I don't know if one would term it higher morale, or a more solid sense of efficacy, but I think I got to work, or do work around here at my place, in a better mood, perhaps better productivity even, because it doens't all seem like a senseless cyclical nothing of drudgery, as I often fall into danger of considering my life in general at times. (Yes, I know ... O the wangst!) Something to be said for the all-work-and-no-play, mantra. (P.S., going to a buddy's house and watching the director's cut of The Shining, which I'd never seen before aside from a few clips, was one of the enjoying-going-out-more things I did this month past.)
That's it for now. I could bitch about the politics I've hardened and asserted more in the past month and a half, but then I'd have to do an LJ cut. And that shiiyett deserves an entire entry--nay, a series of entries--unto itself. Themselves. Something.