Dangerous Writing and Reading

16,110 words. 19 days. I haven't been keeping up with my word count as I should have. I've been slowly grinding my writing wheels at a leisurely pace. From where I stand now I can see the icy winter shores of December right on the horizon. Now more than ever, I have to furiously spin the wheels of my imagination. The literary tapestry I'm weaving is not even close to finished, but I have to hurry. Time is slowly running out.

I attempted NaNoWriMo last year, it was a failure. In fact, it failed so epically that it had to be called an Epic Failé. The accented e is reserved for the most epic of failures in my circle of friends. Now, yes I failed to write a novel last year, this is my motivation for writing at the moment. I have to finish. I need to prove I can do this. That and on my show two Tuesdays ago on Abstract Discourse I said if I didn't finish that I would be punished live on air, but not in THAT way. I mean there's a window, and polite company, god you guys! Sick bastards.

Moving on, this Sunday I'm going to have the perfect writing environment at the Office of Letters and Light's Night of Writing Dangerously.

For those of you who are barely familiar with NaNoWriMo, the Night of Writing Dangerously it's a writing event held in the Julia Morgan ballroom in San Francisco. six straight hours of writing. With raffles and snacks, and tons of writers I can talk to. Or ignore, my choice. If all goes well, my word count will get a maximum 9,000 word boost. If not, I'll still probably have a decent word count boost, plus I'll have met some new people, some of whom, I can hopefully brainwash into joining my Furthest Edge project. A small side note, no news to announce as far as thats concerned except that I've only got two episodes left for this year, weird. So writing, I hope to be doing a lot of it this weekend to catch up.

School is being a pain in my ass, right when I get involved in writing a novel and commit to it, the classes pile it on. I can't answer how many tests I'm taking in the next week and a half. Or the amount of assignments due. I wish I could put all that aside and get to it when I get to it. My grades aren't taking this novel too well. Well only two classes, but they're important ones. My growing apathy isn't helping either. Once upon a time I was eager to go to school, then somewhere along the way I lost that. I could blame the teachers, but for the most part that's not it. I think it's the reality of it all. As time ticks ever so slowly, I'm constantly told that this is important for my future. That it's all riding on how I do this year. I want to write. That's all, I just want to write until I collapse. I feel good when I write, It's more satisfying than turning in a research paper. Or getting a math problem right. I know I should care about that, and to an extent I do, it's just that things are different now, I'm different. I don't have the enthusiasm, Writing is the crack I'm addicted to and I can't get enough. When I'm writing or I'm talking on the radio, it's a rush. I feel such freedom. It's my way to unwind. It relaxes me. It stresses me out at times, frequently actually. Yet, I feel so calm when I just talk with my co-host every week. As much as I love all this though, much to certain people's shock, I don't want to do that for a living.

I once posted a facebook status that went, "I love it too much to want to do it professionally."

At the time I felt that there was too much pressure around jobs and I didn't want my favorite pastime turn into a weekly stress inducing time suck.

Anyways, that's my lament for this post. I have been reading again, last week I talked about books with my co-host Shannon Bowman-Sarkisian and I was motivated to finish off some of the books on my shelf. The Girl in the Arena was one of those books. if you listened to that show, then you know I did not think highly of the book. I soon realized that this was because I stopped right before the story picked up. It is not a magnificent book but it wasn't as bad as I made it out to be. I will be making that clear next Tuesday in my next book review.

I've also been popping back into some of my favorite books, Vintage: A Ghost Story and The Twilight Gods. both paranormal LGBT books, both really close to my heart as a reader. Despite the fantastical situations in the books, I often related to the emotions and confusion and angst that comes from being a teenager. Both were stand alone books, both felt too short, by the end I had fallen in love with the characters and just wanted them to keep going.

So I guess, if any of this spoke to you in any way, comment below. or contact me via all the methods at the end of this post. I also want to pose a question to you readers, what books are your favorites and why. Do you occasionally go back and stroll down memory lane with the characters?

Next week expect me to blog a little about the Night of Writing Dangerously.

Contact me in the following ways:
Email me: anglemeister.lpz@gmail.com
Email my shows: FEshow@kpdo.org or AbstractDiscourse@gmail.com
Follow me: @Anglemeister 

School and Death

It's been a couple days since I came back from the camping trip I was on last Monday-Tuesday and I just have a few updates for this week.

First and least important (or most for some people) I start school next Tuesday. August 24 I return to the seemingly endless cycle of "learning" I'm honestly anxious about coming back. I don't remember where I left off as far as my grades are concerned. I still don't know how I did on my STAR Test (Standardized Testing And Results) which is something I should know by now. School always makes me stress, the only class I'm looking forward to is History, somehow it's the one class that I'm even slightly interested in. It also happens to be where I do my best writing!

Once Tuesday comes around everything will be topsy-turvey and annoyingly busy. I will be continuing my radio show on a weekly basis and every other week I'll still attempt to be a part of the SafeHaven Podcast however doing so will be much more difficult with homework and such. Sadly my reading will also slow down because of this but I will figure something out to still finish my list by the end of the year. Unfortunately school won't be the only thing hindering what I love doing, my obligations to raising money for my Youth & Government trips will suck up some time, and my lunch time where I can do more reading will also be hindered by my Youth Advisory Council (YAC) and Peer Mentor meetings. I generally feel that this year is gonna be a pain in my ass, especially because this is the year that College becomes a much more tangible concept, and I have to take the SATs and I am going to strive to get my driver's license. It's times like this I appreciate the good ol' days. I sorely miss being able to just goof off and not have any responsibilities. I miss not being relied upon for things, It's all too much too fast in my opinion. I don't like it. I don't want to grow up, but I know that I can't go back to being a kid.

None of us can. All we can do is to make the best of where we are and attempt or succeed in steering ourselves to our own destinations. We all are going to just have to suck it up and live.

Then of course Die.

I know it's a grim subject that few of us allow ourselves to think about but you can't think about the future without at some point dwelling on the fact that you are going to die.

I don't often dwell on the subject, it leaves me feeling empty and scared to think someday I'm going to keel over and just stop. I don't know if anything happens to my consciousness afterwards, that is of course what scares me the most. Not knowing, I don't want to just cease to be unfortunately that may be exactly what happens. Or perhaps I'll burn in hell for some sin or another. However if that's the case I'm not burning among strangers. Maybe I'll get into some kind of heaven or perhaps there is no heaven or hell just one place where all souls go after passing away. No one knows for sure, but death is very real. Just as real as growing up. Just like how I don't want to grow up, I don't want to die. I would crawl into a hole if I knew it would keep me alive forever.

Rather that's what I "wish" I would do. I know doing something like that is no better than dying so I may as well get out there and LIVE. Don't get me wrong I'm scared to death of Death, but I have come to realize I can't do anything about death. It sucks but that's life I guess.

anyway I hope you enjoyed my rant on growing up and my half-assed thoughts on Death. I'll probably elaborate on my past week in general from a blurb about my camping to the book that came in while I was gone that I am absolutely adoring!

You can contact me in the following ways:

Email me: anglemeister.lpz@gmail.com
Email my show: FEshow@kpdo.org
Follow me: http://twitter.com/Anglemeister
Ask me questions: http://Formspring.me/Anglemeister

An Asshole

So once more someone has managed to spoil my generally good mood by being an asshole and pissing me off, who is this person you ask? None other than your's truly.

Now before people start saying, "You shouldn't be so hard on yourself. You have to have good self esteem...blah, blah, blah." I just want to say I'm don't have a low self esteem (most of the time) and I'm not being hard on myself, I'm acknowledging my annoying behavior today and realizing how much I'm pissed off that I acted that way.

Why am I an asshole? I took on too many things at once and allowed them all to go craptastic on my part. these three things being, My Radio show, my participation in the SafeHaven Podcast, and catching up with a close friend.

Now I don't think I've properly pimped out the fact that I now am part of the SafeHaven crew. I have joined in to add to the geekery over at http://southernscifisociety.libsyn.com/ but more on that below.

So back to what I was saying, I ended up doing all of those things simultaneously, managing my radio show which was having issues of it's own what with me being stuck with fucking audacity to edit down my show. another side frustration was how long it took to break up since it was a whole 41 minutes as opposed to the average 30 minutes.

Anyway, I also was participating in SafeHaven, my frustration here was that I wasn't really contributing, I joined the crew hoping to add something to it, but I still have yet to move past the occasional humorous quip. I feel that I was just...there. I feel I should actively participate or just get gone. I'm not saying I don't want to be part of the crew, If any of the crew is reading this, know I want to be there, but I don't want to just sit there. Hopefully when we do the "Vampire Smackdown" episode as I like to call it I'll be much more active.

Also suffering due to my stupid idea to multi-task, was my show. I probably had the absolute WORST show ever tonight. first off I was not really minding the show as much as I was listening in on SafeHaven. On top of that I was running the latest Cybrosis off my Laptop, and for some reason It played but didn't register on the VU meters (if you don't know what any of this is, skip ahead to next frustration. At the moment I can't explain it with out getting irrationally pissed off at having to explain it) So I had no real idea if the audio was coming in at the right level. Additionally, because of my focus on SafeHaven I was hasty and sloppy in preforming my Radio Host duties of reading our Underwriting and PSA's (I refer you to the previous parenthesis) I made tons of rookie mistakes this time such as leaving my mic when I went and played an audio track, also not double checking I had the three tracks in the appropriate order and then having to skip over one leaving moments of unprofessional dead air and fumbling as well as confusion for the poor listener.

now as for the conversation, I ended up also talking to a friend who I haven't been in steady communication with as of late. I may have blown a chance to get to keep in touch with her as much as I like, because me being an asshole I ended up mostly ignoring her as she kept trying to message me via Facebook Chat. Now I was keeping track of a couple pressing matters and probably shouldn't have started the conversation in the first place knowing I was busy, but I figured I could keep track of everything. Unfortunately not. I ended up ignoring her for at least 15 minutes before she said she had to go. She said she had to get off the computer but a part of me just knew that It was mostly because of my rude asshole behavior. Just because I'm doing a radio station doesn't mean I can get away with ignoring my friends in that way, then just go I'm sorry and everything go back to normal. It was just rude of me to do.

You can try and tell me that everyone has off days and that I'm not an asshole, but I think I was an asshole. I mean all the events that pissed me off except for the technical difficulties were my fault and could have been avoided if I had been more responsible or had said, "Look, I can't juggle all of this I have to focus on what is most pressing"

On a new Tangent, I have recently had more stress in my life due to the fact that I have been taking on lots of projects and their responsibilities, I've already mentioned the Radio show and the Podcast but I haven't mentioned I am still taking on the role of writer and am supposed to be cranking out scripts for Furthest Edge in September, on top of that I should be studying for summer school.

Tomorrow is my last day of summer school where I find out if I pass the integrated science course I bombed last year. After tomorrow I get to enjoy a full three weeks before school starts up again. Yay, a whole three weeks were I can enjoy the sun and get out and see my friends - wait a second, I forgot I spend every hour of daylight at the radio station! Yup I haven't put myself in a situation to truly savor the summer and it's practically over already, another reason for me to be pissed off at myself.
On top of those things I still haven't completed a summer assignment I received for English because for the second consecutive year, I lost the fucking packet. way to fucking go Angel. Did I mention I piss myself off? Or that I have to pick up a retainer to replace the one I fucking lost when I recorded my last Anglemeister Chronicles Podcast?

So yea I'm really annoyed with myself right now. I'll probably take a nap and get over it tomorrow but I had to at least vent my feelings however erratic they may be. I'm sorry that this entry was both Erratic and Depressing (again, more reason to be pissed). I'll try to do better next time, hopefully I will have improved and be less of an asshole.

Time for my now trademark plugging of my social networks

you can contact me in the following ways:
Email me: anglemeister.lpz@gmail.com
Email my show: FEshow@kpdo.org
Follow me: http://twitter.com/Anglemeister
Ask me questions: http://Formspring.me/Anglemeister 

Why cant we do that?

EDIT: I recently learned of a way to do this making this rant completely irrelevant but read on anyway.

I was just thinking (Not again!) why can't there be a button that flips exclamation and question marks for when someone is writing something in Spanish, why can't we add accent marks and stuff, they teach Spanish all over the US anyway so why can't they add ONE LOUSY KEY THAT DOES THAT! okay I'll calm down. sorry but still. if you agree then post: "I agree" in the comment board for this entry!

- Anglemeister