I don’t think I’ll ever be one of those people who can write in a blog/journal every single day. I just don’t think my life is ever going to be that interesting. So anyway, I did start the NaNo story and promptly fell behind. But that’s okay I’m going to catch up one day…like soon. I promise. It’s just so many things distracting me. And I didn’t plan and so now I’m winging it and that’s not an excuse it’s just facts. I haven’t written in so long that I’m out of practice. So I’m not focusing on getting to 50,000 or even 25,000, I’m just focusing on writing a story. I think the basis of my story is awesome. Granted because I’ve been so wrapped up in Halloween the past month that it’s going to have a tinged of dark side in there. But it’s going to be an awesome story even if it kills me…which it probably will because as of now the plot stinks like no body’s business.

In other news I’m breaking down and going to pay for internet. I know shocking, but since last weekend my hacked connection has been very weak. And I don’t like that, not at all. I live off the internet.

I got an A on my fun project…she was really impressed with my knowledge of cartoons and creating websites. Go me. I’ve got some serious papers due this month, another reason why I need the internet, it’s not convenient to come up to the wireless cafe (these seats hurt my bottom) or ride up to campus. I don’t want to be there all day and then I don’t want to ride the with my friend back…her car is still not cleaned out. Plus her husband always wants to ride there and he doesn’t understand the fact that I’m not there to keep him company. It still wouldn’t be worth having a car over either.

So my mom and brother did come last weekend but we didn’t make it to the Faire, I felt like crap the next morning and then it was rainy and muggy and just plain gross. So we opted not to go. Instead we went out to Cracker Barrell, I hadn’t been there in years, in fact I’ve only been there once and I didn’t like it. But they love it so we went and it was a lot better this time. Still can’t eat a full serving of pancakes anymore but the syrup was so good. We then we shopping, so I could find a winter/fall coat…then I realize I don’t wear coats. So I got a hoodie from the man’s department in Target. It’s so comfy.

I tried one of those new recipes I found on MorningStar Farms site, and it was pretty good. I’m going grocery shopping again today because Harris Teeter is have triple coupon. I hope my friend’s husband has to work…I don’t like going shopping with him. He’s like a spoiled five year old who keeps asking are we done and throws a fit if he can’t get something special. I’m still trying to see what she saw in him other than a chance to have a kid without birthing the sucker. Oh well. Laters!

B.J.

Now that it’s getting colder everyone is so worried about getting sick. I’m worried to, I can’t really afford to get sick. I missed a class earlier this semester to deal with the funeral. I’m not trying to miss any more. Plus I don’t like being sick, I don’t like being sick at all. Now that I’m here by myself I wouldn’t know how to take care of myself. I must admit I’m still a mommy girl. So I’m debating on rather not I want to go get the flu shot. I’ve never gotten the flu shot in my life, well that I can remember. But I’ve never gotten the flu. I get sinus infections on a regular basis, and sometimes those morph into what I call death…but that’s usually once a year if that. Right now I can tell I’m having some allergy problems, but that’s because I went to the faire and didn’t take any pills before hand. I know not smart.

So I’ve got to get some meds to handle that, I’ve got allergy pills but that’s for everyday not for when they are bothering me. Yesterday I told my mom that I had awaken with a headache, and with me that’s a common occurrence. And she was like are you sure it’s not the bird flu, and I was like it’s a headache, not flu like symptoms. Any ways once I got home and ate something it went away.

This morning I got up and cleaned my bedroom and part of the living room. I vacuumed in there at least. I need to really do some picking up  and some straightening in there. I’ll do it tomorrow. One room at a time I’m lazy like this. Good note is that I haven’t seen any spiders lately. I read that if you keep everything clean and dust free they tend to go away. I just have to keep up with the dust thing.

I think I’m 100% sure that I’m changing stories for NaNo, I found some other ideas today while I was cleaning. I think they seemed more interesting. I’m sure all writers have ideas they never work on. I’m gonna go run some errands with a friend then I’ll figure it all out. I will do some school work this week even if it kills me.

Laters!

Wow I can’t believe that it’a  a new year already. I’ve been on wordpress for one whole year, and I’ve not change much since the beginning. Least I don’t think so. I mean there have been some changes since the last entry.

I got a part time job, well more like two part time jobs but I haven’t started one. The first one was for substitute teaching for my counties school. The problem was that not only did you have to pay to go to the orientation but also to have a physical and TB shot. Ofcourse I had to hear about my mom fussing about them not footing the bill, because alone the two aren’t that expensive but for anyone doctor to do both it cost an arm and a leg. Especially if you are in that group of americans who don’t have  health insurance. So I borrowed the money from my sister to pay for the orientation and then my mom was going to pay for the shoot and I found a place to do the physical free. But then she started fussing about how she didn’t have any money after she gave me the money for the shoot, so I was like screw it I’ll pay for it when I have the money. Because the day I was going to go get the shot, I got a call back from a job that I wanted more than the substituting one. Which leads me to the next job, it’s a part time job at my local library. I was so estatic to be back in the library setting. It’s tiring work for someone who hasn’t been working in a while, but it feels so good to be getting back into something to look forward to do everyday.

My computer is gone for semi-good, the powerbox blew and to replace that would be the same as buying a new one. So I have no way to get online from home. I’m using one of the computers from the library now and it’s an hassle to get on one of these. Jen did buy me a Fly pentop computer for christmas, but it does me no good if I can’t hook it up to a computer. Oh well I’m saving to buy a desktop this time. I’ve done the whole laptop thing and it’s just not for me.

Since being back in the library atmosphere I get to be around books all the time which means I have a ready supply of unread books at my disposal. You don’ t want to know how many I’ve read in the last couple of weeks since I’ve started working. I’ve been hardcore looking for series to read. I’ve finally started working through the Harry Potter series. I know I’m all sorts of late for the craze but that was the point. I never jump on the wagon when everyone else is on it. I’m the one person who waits and then jumps and misses it so I have to go it alone and end up lost and confuse and arrive at the destination two years later. I’ve started another one too, Artemis, this one has been out for a while maybe since the ’90’s but it’s a good series. And yes these are both series meant for young adult but I really don’t care. Since His Dark Materials, I’ve really been more open to looking in the young adult section for reading materials. I tried going back to my adult favorites like Elizabeth Lowell and Jayne Ann Krentz, but the last book for both of them were total disappoinment. So I’ve been reading new authors, like Janet Evanovich and  Sherilyn Kenyon, and some that I’ve read before like Jennifer Crusie, Lori Foster (although I read one book and stopped mid book cause it was boring me to depression.) and Carly Phillips. In some ways I’ve sort of kind of not missed not being able to surf the web….sort of…but not really.

I have managed to do some writing since being computer challenged, like finishing the short story that was waying me down since the begining of last year. And doing some research and planning for other stories. I’ve also seen some good movies lately like Eagel Eye, Kung Fu Panda, Hellboy 2 and National Treasure 2. I’ve seen some not so great ones like The Fountain…to complicated for my taste.

Gotta get going…time is almost out.

B.J.

As promised…here’s more of an update.

Graduate School
Everyone can relax I’ve figured out what it is I want to do with my life. Well sort of…I wanna work in a library. Is that really surprising. I didn’t think so. I want to do something with archival and yet something to do with computers. I haven’t really narrowed it down, because I’m not sure what all there is that is encompassed in a Library Science Degree. But at least I know the direction I want to go to. Now I have to work The Job, so I can pay for the GRE which is $130, I know there’s a fee reduction waiver, which would bring the cost down to $70. But I’m not sure if I qualify for it anymore, so I’m just going on with the thing that it cost the full amount. Then pay for the application fee, which is $45. I’m applying to old Alma Matter, they finally got word back that they will be keeping their accreditation as long as they follow through with some initiatives to get more minorities into their program. Which means scholarships, that’s a good thing. I’ve been trying to write my personal statement. So far my life is summing up to one paragraph, I think that’s kind of sad. At this point I’m kind of stuck, I need an opener and I guess I should talk about why I want to pursue such a degree. But that calls for more thinking on my part…booo to that!

Romance Life
So I hesitate to bring this section up, but ehhh why not. So I’m more than sure I’ve started an online thing with someone. I’ve never done such a thing, and in this day and age, it’s not that big of a deal. I think more people are finding love online than in real life situations. In all honesty I would have like it to be in a real life situations, but when you aren’t able to do much doing the day for lack of transportation. Kind put a hindrance on such things. For the purpose of the blog, his name is S.B. A little information on S.B., he’s Asian…and lives in Canada…go fig, right. I didn’t meet him in a chat room or anything, but on something that I wasn’t look to meet someone. It just kind of happened. We started off as friends, and somehow it’s manifested itself into something more. I’m not sure how much to put into the relationship, since you just never know. But as a friend I’m glad to know him. Super nice guy. Where it’s going, I have no idea. I know one thing I’m not buying a plane ticket to go visit him in Canada, anytime soon. But maybe next year, who knows.

Writing
As long as I’ve not really updated here, I’ve not written a thing. Well I started that short story, and I found that I was really writing to please my readers. They wanted it to go longer and longer, and well there wasn’t much of a story to make it a full fledge novel. It was becoming a soap opera. I hate those things, I can’t be an author of one. So I lost interest in it. But I’m gonna end it soon, despite whether or not people want me to .

So that’s all that’s happened in the last five months. Not much but yet so much. Ha! Now I’m off to get ready to go out with a friend. Check ya later.

I know it’s only two hours away from the end of the day, sorry about the late posting. I made a promise to my readers to have an update by today and I’ve been working on that all day. I just got finished with that and halfway through the day I thought it would be good to take a five hour nap. But anyhow Happy Valentine’s day, I hope yours was filled with love and appreciation. Did anyone do anything special today?

As promised in this post, here is a detail post about the new service called Helium. Basically Helium is a website were writers go and post articles on a wide range of things. There is three aspects of Helium and how it can earn you money. Here’s a quick break down:

1. Write and Rate: This aspect of Helium is quite easy. First after signing up, you can go in to main part of Helium and find a channel you like, Arts and Humanities, Politics, Science, whatever you can think of there’s a spot for it. Once you choose a channel you will find different prompts under the channel. For instance under the Society and Lifestyle channel, you have four major sub-channels: African-American Issues, Lifestyle, Racism, and Society & Lifestyle (other). In the sub-channels you will find topics to write on. Examples in African-American Issues: Barack Obama: Christian or Radical liberal?, Lifestyle: Living unconventional lifestyles, Racism: Passing on our prejudice is a disservice to our children, and S & L (other): Dating and the disabled. Once you find the topic you want to write on, you write. I suggest you write in a word processing program of some sort, that has a good spell and grammar check. Usually there is a word limit of 1200 or more, but sometimes it’s less. After you wrote your article, re-read a couple of times, just like any other writing. And then go back to the site, click on the topic and it will take you to the page where you can post your article. After you go through the posting process, you will be taking to two articles on the same topic. Your asked to read both articles and rate which one is better than the other. After you post your first article you can start rating others.

How do you earn money? You can earn money from this by writing good articles and writing a lot of them. Just like you rated the other articles, someone else is rating yours. And the higher it goes the more it earns. So the more articles you have out there that are well-written, the more money your going to earn. Right now they are doing a reward-athon, the more articles you post under a certain criteria you earn stars, after you earn a star you get paid a certain amount for every article you post, if you post more articles that meet the criteria more stars, more money.

2. The Marketplace: If you are looking to earn a lot of money quickly, then this is the aspect of Helium you want to pay attention to. In the Marketplace you will find postings from editors and publishers on all sorts of topics. They post the topic and the amount they will pay for the article, for example one of the latest was from a children’s magazine looking for mystery stories (even a chance for it to be turned into a series.) If they chose your story, they were going to pay $50 for one. There are pay-outs from as low as $16 to as high as $150 an article. Because of the high pay-outs, these articles are highly competitive (they also have expiring dates- so read the whole post before starting something.).

How do you earn money? Pick a title and write some of the best stuff you’ve every written before. You could earn up to $150 for just one article. But remember that this section is very competitive and the titles needed can be scarce sometimes.

3. Contests: This is kind of self-explanatory. A collection of writing competitions for many different topics. It’s basically like the Write and Rate section, except you have less choice in the subject manner, and it deals with a point system. You collect points by writing as many highly rated articles as you can, under the channel (which has several different titles to chose from.) But if any of your articles drop below the top 50% points will be taken away from you.

How do you earn money? Like the first two, write good articles. First prize is $75, 2nd is $25, 3rd is $10, and 4th is $5.

So with a good combination of all three, you could really make a killing do what you like best writing. Is it worth the time and effort? I think it is, if you enjoy writing, then you really aren’t going to be to bothered about the time and effort it takes to craft a good article. It’s going to come natural to you. And like I said if you find a good combination of the three aspects, then yeah it could be worth it. Plus you are putting your name out there, publishers are looking at this site too. There are tons of success stories form people who were picked up full time (well freelance full time) from magazines.

I just like everyone else tend to make some sort of New Years Resolutions, although I’m not into the label New Years Resolutions. I rather call them goals. Nevertheless, when the new year came about I too was busy making goals. I probably should have posted these goals sometime in the early month, but I like to take the whole month of December too come up with my yearly goals. Unfortunately this December was hectic and busy and I just couldn’t wrapped my head around what was happening in the future. I however I was able to make some small goals for January and I wanted to share with you on how I’ve done so far.

1. Look for places to apply: 100%. Although this is currently an ongoing goal until I find employment. As it stands I have applied to a total of 8 places (although I pretty sure that the number is higher but I can’t remember nor find my list as of now.)
2. Gain full time employment: Not done. Soon…soon.
3. Write out 2008 goals: I’m still counting this as a work in progress. I’m not quite happy with it so I know I will more than likely revisit it from time to time. But for this exercise it’s completed.
4. Write out plan of action for 2008: This is complete, although it is preliminary (not the correct word but the correct word escapes me for now.) I general have a working idea of what I need to do in order to accomplish my goals for the year. 
5. Start a 101 goals in 1001 days: Completed… I have started it but I’m no where near done. I think I’ve got maybe 25 goals so far. 

Summary: I didn’t really have that many goals for this month since I didn’t have much time to  think about it. But the ones I did have, I’ve manage to complete about 80% of them. But that means the ones that weren’t completed have to be pushed to February.

Since January is now over I can share with you my 2008 goals as they stand now:

1. Get a decent paying job – if need be get a part time job
2. Get own apartment
3. Get license and car (I’ve managed to put this off until now, but it’s starting to become more of an hassle to be in the south without a reliable mode of transportation.
4. Open an high-yield savings account (which with the stock issues now I need to get on this as soon as possible)
5. Submit to Five publishers:  started compiling a list of interested publishers
6. Finish draft one of my first novel
7. Write draft two of my first completed short story
8. Catalog my paperback collection
9. Catalog my DVD collection
10. Throw two parties
11. Read nine non-fiction books
12. Read nine new fiction authors
13. Loose an healthy amount of weight:  joined the National Body challenge
14. Participate NaNoWriMo: signed up
15. Write 10 articles for Helium: 1/10
16. Monetary goals: I’m holding off on making these until I receive employment and I have an knowledge of my expected income.

With that in mind, what are my February goals? Still working on those. I should have them ready by tomorrow if not Monday at the latest.

The other day my sister made a comment, she asked me “What do you do all day on that computer?” Whenever I’m not out somewhere and away from home I can usually be found near my computer. So I decided to make a list of the things I do every day.

Writing:I write romance fiction. I currently have one short story manuscript that is finished but is in the stages of editing. I have three full length manuscripts in various stages of completion. One is only two chapters away from being completed, the other two I am at chapter four and five. I currently have seven story ideas that I do small writing projects for. I also have three different blogs, including this one that I write for. 

Job searching: as stated before I’m unemployed, plus I don’t have a car or license ( I have a un-based fear of my car ( It has to be my car, not a any old car. I’ve driven cars that belonged to others) exploding the very moment I crank it up.) So I do a lot of my job searching via the Internet. It’s going slowly, it’s amazing how many different at-home offers there are out there.

Goal Setting: As you can see I like making list and I like prioritizing my life. I also like setting goals for myself. I discuss the problem I have with goal setting in this post, but never the less I still set goals for myself. Now it’s usually daily and weekly goals. I usually have a typed up list that I work on through out the week for the next week and print out several copies to post in different places. I also have a yearly goal list and have started 101 goals in 1001 days list.

Personal Finances: Right now since I’m on limited funds I’ve taken to looking over my personal finances very closely. As well as trying to understand the type of pay I need to live off by myself. This has lead to reading Personal Financial blogs and researching different aspects of personal finances.

Reading: I’m an avid reader, so I read quite a bit. Right now I’ve gotten into reading blogs, online articles about different things, and e-books (usually romance novels.)

Organizing: Another issue (if that’s what you want to call it) is I’m OCD. I spend countless hours organizing my computer files, renaming them, making new folders and all that. The upside to this is that it’s quite easy to find anything you are looking for on my computer. I also organize my email accounts, I have four (five counting my school’s email but that expires in six months) different accounts. One for friends, one for my writing ( I write under a pen name.), one for family, and one for work (now job queries), and there’s one that I have through my Internet provider I don’t use that one but I might once my school one expires. I also try to organize my life and the things around them. My living space is small but well organized.

Gaming: I’ve always been into video gaming, at one point I thought about going into the field. I like going on MSN and Yahoo and playing their web based games, not so much now because I have vista and a lot of the games are not vista-friendly. I also play a computer game called Dream Fall and for Christmas my friend and her husband got me GuildWars, which I try to play everyday…nice way to interact with others. I have a ranger/warrior that just level up to level 10. Unfortunately I have an unstable wireless so it makes it frustrating to have to keep logging back on when I lose the signal. 

Thinking: This is something everyone does I’m sure…but I have a long list of things I think about through out any given day:

1. Story Ideas
2. Current Stories
3. Blog Posts
4. Job searching
5. Getting a Job
6. Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly Goals
7. Personal Finances
8. The things I’ve read
9. The things I’ve seen
10. Organization
11. My environment (direct and indirect
12. My past, present, future
13. My Family
14. My Friends
15. Myself

After I made this list I took to my sister and she responded with a “You need more friends” and I said I was fine with the number I had and walked away. When I complete something from this list of things I fill accomplished, I get a warm and fuzzy filling from hanging out with my friends but nothing like feeling accomplished when you are down in the dumps right?