Catching Up

Just to take a step out of the land of serious blogging, I thought I'd give you all a little glimpse into the recent goings-on in my life.

WARNING: This post is going to be rambly!

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I moved!  Again.

As much as I loved my darling loft apartment with its exposed brick walls and the elevator and the little call-box thingy that I'd get to use to let people into the building, back in March/April I decided that I'd had enough of living alone.  I was tired of eating poorly, spending the majority of my income on rent/utilities and coming home to cold polished concrete floors and echoing 12-foot ceilings.

Around Memorial Day (end of May for my non-American readers) some of my closest friends found a newly refinished duplex for extremely reasonable rent that is just a block from my work.

I love it here.  Our house is spacious enough that even with four adults living here it never feels like we're on top of each other.  Our house was built in the 1890's but with the recent upkeep that was done I think it manages to look quite stylish, especially since all four of us like decorating.  (Come Christmas, we'll put the Griswolds to shame.)

I moved the last carload of stuff out of my old apartment at precisely 11:30pm on June 27th.

I woke up at 5:00am on June 28th, drove to my parents' house and then my dad, brother, and I drove to Chicago, caught a plane to Milan, Italy where we met my mother and boarded a train to Venice.

We did a whirlwind tour of Europe that included two nights in Venice; 5 nights in Switzerland staying with our family; 1 night in Germany; 1 night in Luxembourg; 1 night in Belgium; 1 night in Amiens, France; and 2 (or 3?) nights in Paris.  We also had dinner in Holland and visited Bruges for an afternoon. At least... I'm pretty sure that's how that all went.

It was an amazing experience that I'd love to talk on and on and on about right now, but I'll just post a bunch of pictures

Venice was beautiful.  I've kind of been saying I didn't think I ever needed to go back.
But looking at all of the pictures... I think I need to!

 

On the way to the top of Jungfraujoch in Switzerland.
Green grass, snowy peaks, and weird t-shirts.

At the top - low altitude is to blame for that facial expression.

The house in Bischofszell, Switzerland where my great-grandfather was born.

Celebrating the 4th of July with my cousins in Bischofszell.
Wearing an America on my chest and a Swiss flag on my head.
At least I represented!

Der Kindlifresserbrunnen (The Child-Eater) of Berne, Switzerland

We explored the ruins of an old castle in the German countryside.

Bruges, Belgium - I could have spent weeks exploring this town.

I got to explore the city on my own, so I made
sure to find my way to the canals.

Did I mention it was raining the whole time we were in Bruges? I was a pretty! 

It also rained most of the time we were in Paris - 

It was rainy and foggy - but that didn't stop me from going all the way - 

To the top of the Eiffel Tower!  I was the only one of my family brave
enough to tolerate the cold, wind, rain and fog for pictures of mist.

Our last day in Paris had beautiful weather. 

I walked all over and explored the city on my own.  It was amazing.

So many lovers have visited this bridge and locked their love to stay forever.

I met a surprise bicycle marathon as I was approaching l'Arc de Triomphe

Our last night in Paris ended with a sunset visit to Sacre Coeur in Montmarte.

I would go back to Paris, just to visit this church again.

Needless to say, June/July were a couple of crazy intense months for me.  As soon as I returned home from Europe I had to finish unpacking from my move.  Luckily, my roommates had done a lot of work in the weeks I was away, but we planned a house warming party for two weeks after I returned so the house needed to be in tip-top shape.

But we got it done! And we got a fully-stocked liquor cabinet as a result of the party... which I've already had to partially replenish...  I like making weird shots, it's a problem.

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Other than that, I've been camping, kayaking, swimming, boating, and getting up to all manner of other summer shenanigans.

Our house has become a meeting place for many of our friends since we're right in the heart of downtown and are within walking distance of everything.  I've always loved having a house full of people so it's a great situation for me.

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I'm still working on my book, though the behind-the-scene planning is still getting in the way of me doing much development with the story-line.  It's going place though, which is a wonderful feeling.  I got a lot of writing done in my downtime in Europe and hammered out a lot of the holes with the main character's back-story.

I estimate you'll see it on the shelves of your local bookseller (aka Amazon...) no later than the fall of 2030.

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So that's kind of a whirlwind tour of the big goings-on in my life.  A lot has changed, more has stayed the same.

I'm still struggling to figure out adulthood and asking myself really hard questions about what I want my future to look like while simultaneously recognizing that much of it is already here.

I hope you had a wonderful summer!

Is anyone else as excited for fall as I am?

Much love,
Annie Jay

A Clean Slate and Putting Up With Less Than You Deserve

This kitten has absolutely nothing to do with this blog.
He's just here to be adorable.  Good job, Wulfie.

(For those of you who’ve been reading my blog for some time, you’ll notice that some things are missing… like the last two years’ worth of blogs.  Sometimes you just want a clean slate, ya know?)

It’s Saturday.

I woke up at 7am with the knowledge that I had a ton of stuff to get done before a birthday party I’m going to this afternoon. 

Naturally, this means I have been finding every excuse I can to procrastinate doing what actually needs done.

Thus the revised blog.

As you know (or don’t know, if this is your first time here), I’m writing a book.  I came to terms with the idea about three or four months ago and set myself a target deadline for having it written.

I will have my book written by May.

But as it turns out, writing a book is more than just merely thinking up random situations and hijinks to throw your characters into.  It seems that writing a book, especially a sci-fi space-travel book, means creating not just a world, but an entire universe.  And I don’t’ know about the rest of you, but if God created the heavens and the earth in only seven days, he must’ve been mainlining coffee-laced crack-cocaine to get the job done so quickly.

How will the physics of this world work? Are the planets that my hero visits inhabited by human settlers, or different humanoid-ish species, or something in between? Does everything I write only seem to be derivative of one of the hundreds of sci-fi/fantasy stories I’ve heard before or am I straight up plagiarizing my favorites? Do I need to worry about the fact that at this point in all of my characters seem to be speaking with the same voice – namely, my voice?

And most of all, it’s no wonder that I find the character and place names in Dune to be so laborious to read. (Tlielaxu, indeed.  WTF, Frank Herbert?)  How does a person create differentiated and memorable names for alien lands and species when one only has the mildest understanding of how our modern Earth languages are formed?  At times it feels like I should just free fall into the English alphabet and pull out letters at random in order to name places.  They can’t all be called New Iowa, right?

Needless to say, although I’m over 100 pages into my writing, I’ve decided to start over.  Relax; I’m saving what was written so I can use it again in the future.  I just need to get to know my universe better before I can send my hero on an epic quest to save it.

But still, I have four and a half months to get at least a shitty first draft of my book written.  I think I can handle that.

In other news –

It’s surprising what a difference sleeping on a level surface can make in a person’s life.  (How’s that for segues?)

Over a year ago, when I was still living at the Barpartment, I realized that one of the casters attached to my bed frame was bent.  After ten-years of drunken sleepovers and countless hamster-piles, I guess the sonovabitch decided it needed a reprieve.  It was only slightly bent, so using the carpeting in my bedroom at the Barpartment I was able to keep the caster held in place and I didn’t think of it again until moving into my current apartment.

My bedroom now has polished concrete floors,which means that not only was there nothing to aide with holding the bent caster in place but my bed was also extremely prone to rolling around in the middle of the night.  It was not uncommon for me to awaken to my alarm and find that my bed had rolled three feet from the nightstand the alarm sat upon.  This motion surely helped in worsening the bend in the caster, but hindsight is hindsight.

Shortly after moving into my apartment last April, I began to wake up every day with a sore back, barely able to move.  By July, my morning routine would include vain attempts at stretching, shedding tears as I shampooed my hair, and eventually popping a couple Aleve to get me through the day. 

“My body is aging before its time,” I emphatically told myself with the depressing clarity that comes only when one is sure that they have reached the end of their lifecycle.

(*ahem*…You may or may not know that I often like to ignore the rational part of my brain that tells me when I’m overreacting about things.  This was definitely one of those times.  Just like when I was five-years old and screamed and cried as a chipmunk tried to befriend me.)

It took until October for me to figure out that what was really happening was that I had been sleeping on an incline.  Apparently facing my imminent demise was more exciting than taking a moment to follow the logical thought process from “Hmm, I wonder if I should investigate what’s causing this problem?” to “Oh, duh. My feet are a good four inches lower than my head each night.  I bet my spine hates that.”

No, I lived for six months considering how I would tell my parents that they would soon be caring for their invalid daughter.  Some part of me even spent the time rejoicing at how much writing I’d get done when luxuries like walking and sitting were no longer an option for me.  It was all very romantic, in that depressingly pitiful sort of way.

Until one day when I snapped out of whatever stupor I was in and realized that there is a hell of a lot more life left in these rattling old bones.  I could put up with my situation, or find a way out of it.  Luckily, the remedy was as simple as removing my bed frame and moving the fuck on with my life. 

The whole debacle has made me aware of how easy it can be to accept what seems to be the worst-case scenario (I’m dying) instead of looking for a simple solution (take the frame off the damn bed) to improve everything.

So why the hell did I feel the need to share this sad little tale with you all? 

Well, I think a lot of us tend to put up with shittiness like this from time to time without considering the ways that we can improve our situation.  In my case, it probably had a lot to do with fear. 

If I always kept the “maybe my bed’s just fucked up” thought in the very back of my mind, I could ignore the possibility that maybe I had a back issue I needed to deal with.  Because if I fixed the problem with my bed frame and the back problems persisted, I had a much scarier process of figuring out what was actually wrong with my body to face.  That thought alone was scary enough to keep me sleeping on a slant for six months.

Taking such a simple action required little actual physical effort (although, do try removing a bed frame while balancing a queen-size box spring and mattress on your back and then tell me how easy it was for you) but I had to cross some mental hurdles to get myself there. 

What shittiness are you putting up with out of fear?  Maybe it’s as simple as removing a bed frame.  But maybe it’s something more.  Either way, fear is never the reason to put up with less than what you deserve.

And in case you’re wondering – you deserve awesomeness.

Much Love,

Annie Jay

PS – I find it really creepy that as soon as I got done writing this post I went on Facebook and saw a link to this TED-Talk in my newsfeed.  I guess the NSA really is watching what I do online.  At least they’re being helpful about it.  http://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-to-build-a-fictional-world-kate-messner

An Apartment Tour and a Startling (to me) Announcement

I’ve been increasingly hermity lately.  But unlike the past when times like this came from a pretty negative place (depression, social anxiety, general hate-the-worldiness) I’m thinking this time it’s more for positive reasons. 

1 – I really love my apartment.  It’s beautiful and makes me feel grown-up and I can do whatever the fuck I want there.  And I don’t have to wear pants.  Or shirts.  Or anything.  And it’s pretty darn awesome. All of the entertainment I want is readily available to me.  I have my books, my writing, my paints, my Netflix, my apt’s gym, my keyboard… and on and on.

And oh - hey, I never took you on a tour of my apartment.  Please see the below pictures. I took these a few months ago on my crappy cellphone that takes crappy pictures and that I can rarely hold steady.  My bedroom and bathroom are still rather boring looking so they're not pictured here.

Someday the keyboard will get a proper chair.

Backless bookshelf born out of "Oh shit, the bookshelf got
broken in the move!" and my brother's ingenuity.

The fun things on the windowsills get rearranged every time the windows
are opened. They look nothing like this anymore.

The scary wood thingie on the wall that Mom and Dad keep suggesting I
cover up.  Dad suggests an American Flag.  Jokingly... I hope.

Couch courtesy of Grandma and Granpa's old house.

Sadly, those stools still don't have cushions on them.

Clearly, this place is not lit for photography.

So yes, that's my little hodge-podge home :-)  Now, back to the post - 

2 – I feel like the things I do at home are better for my personal growth than the things I do outside of my home.  I go out, I have some laughs, I have copious amounts of alcohol, I make questionable choices and I… that’s about it.  But if I stay in, I have some laughs, I learn some things, I edge closer to being the person I want to be.

3 – I’m using my money more effectively.  AKA – I’m paying my bills and buying decent food instead of putting off my bills, feeling like I’m drowning in debt and eating takeout all the time.  I’m living more frugally and it feels freaking fantastic.

Now, I’m not saying I never leave my house except to go to work.  But Sunday-Thursday, you’re most likely to catch me at home than anywhere else.  Friday and Saturday I do try to get out of the house to socialize with my friends, but I’m also trying to make these events more likely to be events where I’ll meet someone new instead of just visiting the same old dive-bars we went to when we were 21. 

Because, really, I’m tired of the same old same old, and if that’s the alternative I’d much rather stay at home where I feel like I’m doing things that cause me to grow, than sitting around having the same conversations in the same tired places. 

Maybe I’m just becoming an old fuddy-duddy?  

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In other, sort of unrelated, news, I’m still writing my story. 

It’s weird.  This is the first time I’ve put this much thought into anything I’ve ever written.  I’m planning the storyline, creating the world (because it’s very Sci-fi/Fantasy), and trying to create believable but highly differentiated characters.

And so here’s the part where I decide I’m going to stop saying “I’m writing my story” and just finally admit (to myself as much as anything) that -

I’m writing a book.

Well great jumping jackalopes, that’s a little scary to look at.

But the fact of the matter is, the storyline that’s developed in my head is so incredibly massive it seems unfair to continue to just refer to it as “my story” as if it’s some kind of trifle.  Ever since I was 10 years old and began writing for fun, I’ve been writing “my stories”.

But this thing, it has taken on a life of its own and to call it anything less than a book feels like I’m insulting its integrity.  So it is, with great fear, anxiety, pretense and many vomity feelings, that I’m going to start saying –

I’m writing a book.

*Whew* Well, now that that’s out there in the universe…

I’m not going to share much of the plot because it still feels a little silly.  When you’re a rational adult, trying to explain a story about space travel and magical abilities is very blush-and-giggle-inducing.  So far I’ve only talked to my family and Han about the actual plotline and the physics of the world I’m creating.  Han’s gotten a chance to read the first ten pages and has helped me over a couple of the hurdles I was initially facing.

But here are a couple of questions you can all help me with:

• Do you prefer to know a character’s back-story all at once at the beginning or in little pieces throughout?
• What are some tired plot devices or character types that you never want to see in another book?

I’d love some input :-)

Much love,

Annie Jay