Having just a taste of living overseas has filled every pour of my body with the desire to do more. I want to go back to Japan to try living on my own without relying on anyone. To not have to live in a nazi dorm, or be obligated go to classes with other Americans. I want to integrate without the catalyst of a school or people of the same nationality to help me get by.

It doesn’t have to be Japan, I suppose. Though I do want to learn the language still. Europe would be interesting. Australia. Hell, even Canada. I guess really what it comes down to is that I want to be in a place that is novel. I want to rediscover things. To struggle a little bit, but have fun at the same time.

The problem with school is that it becomes static after a while. Every 10 weeks I’m introduced to a new teacher, new subject, new room. But the city I’m in is the same. There’s no opportunity to go out and explore because I have the obligation of classes. The city I’m in is small and has farmland surrounding it. Seattle is too far away to drive to every weekend. Winter especially sucks because it’s cold and miserable.

I’m hoping that joining this club will satisfy my need for something new and unpredictable. It’s going to suck at first because I’m socially awkward around people I don’t know and with whom don’t feel any connection. We’ll see how that goes.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll go out and take some pictures.

Weekly blogging has been going on over at my writing journal, but I hadn’t been cross posting them here until today. I’m sure I’ve said this before somewhere, but I feel like I’m wasting the use of my site. Meaning, I have my site, but I’m not using it.

My blog set up is pretty nice. I guess I shouldn’t be concerned about people commenting on it, because no one ever reads it anyway. The only comments I get are from robots or spam. I would love to utilize my site for something more than recording stats and the occasional opinionated rant. Right now my site is pretty much a very expensive image host.

I keep saying these things, but then doing nothing. I wish I had something worthwhile to say, or something more to offer. But then, my site is a personal one. I put some of my better pictures on my nearly abandoned portfolio. I need to update that badly…

Speaking of photography (complete tangent here), I’ll be taking a black and white film photography class next quarter. I’m actually quite excited to take it. Maybe I’ll buy a scanner and upload photos.

I keep getting distracted by the internet.

Anyway, if my life was more exciting and I had more worthwhile yet not horribly personal things to say, I would make an effort to use my site more. As it is, my life is rather dull, and unless you want to hear (read) me complain about people who drive me bat-shit insane, my posts would also be very dull.

Maybe next quarter, when I’m out and about and taking photos, I’ll write in here more.

OH WAIT. I have something. I joined a CLUB. Yes, misanthropic me has joined a club. Inadvertently, mind you. I wanted to get myself a Japanese conversation partner, and ended up joining a “friends” club that is supposed to help the Japanese exchange students be social with Americans. There are officer positions available, and given my rather horrid time in Japan because such a club didn’t exist at my university, I feel a sort of obligation to give these people a chance to speak English (while teaching me some Japanese). I think it’ll be a win-win situation. One can only hope.

That will be developing soon, so I suppose I can write more on that as it happens. Right now, I’m going to mix myself a drink and go be social with my pseudo-hubby.

This week’s goal was 200 words a day, 1400 words total.

This week was a complete FAIL. The only day I wrote was last Friday. I don’t even know what happened. I decided “Weekends off.” Monday was a highly emotionally charged day. A couple days were spent in the library from 6pm-12am, and Wednesday night was spent studying for a test. All lame excuses, but man… I feel pretty upset over my lack of words this week.

February 19: 326
February 20: 0
February 21: 0
February 22: 0
February 23: 0
February 24: 0
February 25: 0
Total: 326 words

Reading total: 61 pages

Weekly Writing Goal:

326 / 1400 words. 23% done!

Yearly Writing Goal:

6991 / 250000 words. 3% done!

Reading goal:

396 / 4500 pages. 9% done!

I should really work on finishing two short stories that have been lingering toward being finished for weeks or months now. I hope that this week I can finish those up, as well as put in some time revising a story I’ve been wanting to rewrite for over a year now. Meh.

Not doing well is good motivation to get back into that daily habit. I think I’ll start that now.

Read more »

This week’s goal was 175 words a day, 1225 words total.

Sadly I was in a funk over last weekend and did practically no writing. I asked people to help me come up with an idea for a story, and one friend responded with “Morality or the lack thereof in one’s personal conduct", and unicornhime suggested Laundromat. I’m in the process of writing that story still, so I’m not posting any of what I’ve worked on this week.

February 12: 178
February 13: 10
February 14: 0
February 15: 0
February 16: 1360
February 17: 189
February 18: 234
Total: 1971 words

Reading total: 100 pages

Weekly Writing Goal:

1971 / 1225 words. 161% done!

Yearly Writing Goal:

6665 / 250000 words. 3% done! [I get really excited when it goes up one percentage point!]

Reading goal:

335 / 4500 pages. 7% done!

This week’s goal was 150 words a day, 1050 words total.

Last night, I couldn’t think of anything worthwhile to write, but earlier in the week I had been introduced to a fantastic source about Show, Don’t Tell. So I took a paragraph from a story I had written that had SO much tell in it and tried to make it better. I think it turned out well, considering what I had before. Still needs some work, but that’ll be for the next revision. Check out my February 11th post if you want to see the comparison.

February 05: 152
February 06: 0
February 07: 251
February 08: 154
February 09: 203 + 88 (two separate pieces)
February 10: 169
February 11: 209
Total: 1226 words

Reading total: 28 pages (better than nothing?)

Weekly Writing Goal:

1226 / 1050 words. 117% done!

Yearly Writing Goal:

4694 / 250000 words. 2% done!

Reading goal:

235 / 4500 pages. 5% done!

Also brought to my attention by the community the writing pen are two fiction contests. One is fantasy, while the other is general fiction. I have two stories in mind that will work for both. I may ask from some critiques before I submit them. Those critique entries will be friends only, so feel free to leave a comment if you want me to include you in the critique. For all those random readers of this journal? Har…

Read more »