Alex's Journal

So one of the things I've been doing lately is 8760 Hours. It's basically a REALLY INTENSIVE version of your New Year's resolutions, but taking like... a day or two (or several weeks, if you're me and don't always actually go work on it when you say you're going to) to sort out. In the end, you have about 14-20 things that you' like to accomplish during the year, of which you pick 3-5 to really focus on (with expansion potential if you achieve the first set).

So my goals for the year (which I'm really counting as the current half-year, so I'll re-do this in December) are as follows:
( Under a cut for those who don't care )

So that's the five that I thought were most important to me. Other stuff on the list includes reducing meat consumption (those of you also on FB saw the results of that; I'm going to try but I'm not putting a concerted effort into it yet, the eating out thing is more important), improve earnings (I want to get to a regular $3600/mo pre-HST and income tax deductions, or about $2700 actual "my" money), write 500 words/day, see friends more frequently, have potlucks more frequently (see previous point), volunteer, get myself more organized/less prone to getting out of bed at the crack of noon, and meditate 20min/day.

(By which I mean reflectedeve is doing it, and she's pretty damn cool.)

So basically, over the last I-don't-even-want-to-think-about-how-long-it's-been while, I have had IMMENSE difficulty putting words to page (screen? disk?) and also reading (like, let me tell you how many books I've read in full this year. ...yup) and it is AWFUL LIKE BURNING and I just don't even know what to do with myself any more. SO I'M GONNA DO THIS HERE PROCESSFEST THING (Processfest!) and maybe, hopefully, kind of give myself the inspiration to start something. I'm even gonna TRY REALLY HARD NOT TO BE NEGATIVE LIKE BURNING while I do it.

BUUUUUURNING.

(Okay, now that that's out of my system... allez cuisine!)

( Day 1: Where do you create? What does your work space look like? )

( Day 2: What's your first spark of inspiration? What makes you decide to work on a new project? What's your first step? Is it always the same or does your method change? How do you begin when you create? )

( Day 3: Do you work on multiple projects at once? If you do, how do you juggle them? Do they fight for your attention? Or are you singularly focused? Do you set aside specific time for one project or many projects, or do you let yourself be guided by what you want to work on the most? )

( Day 4: What do you consider a challenge for you? What is something that's hard for you? What part of your process trips you up? What do you wrestle with? What's always in your notes from your beta? What's the part of your process that makes you throw your hands up and go 'This? Again? ARGH!' )

( Day 5: Tell us about your go-to creative buddies. You don't have to name names, but this is the place to talk about what your collaborator brings to your creative process, how the two-or-three-or-many of you work together, how you figured out how to work together, and why it works. None of us create entirely alone, so who gives you a hand when you stumble? Who helps you get unstuck? Who is that person who always understands what you were trying to do and helps you make it happen? )

I'm gonna leave Day 6 for later, because... again... trying to avoid the negative... (so well, as you can tell. :P)

For those of you that still read LJ, I wrote an Az/D'or fic over at my other blog: 011. Faith

I need to figure out a way to tell people that aren't here without blasting it to, for example, my family. #firstworldproblems

Whatever else they might have called us, we were the ghost generation. When the aliens came to our planet, there was little left for them to find of us.

Oh, there were endless variations on a tall rectangular building with flat roofs, and some crumbling, rotting evidence of rows of white fences and cheerful bungalows. But who had inhabited these buildings? They guessed we were tall by the soaring ceilings, but were confused by the relatively low doors (where they still existed). They were able to re-create our maps, after a fashion, but I saw the puzzlement of the scholars; were the endless circles religious, they wondered, or merely practical? And what about the grid patterning in the more densely built areas? They eventually decided that it was symbolic; everything was interconnected, everyone touching upon everyone else.

I began following the more imaginative of the scientists as she worked her way through the wreckage sites, trying to reconstruct technology she had never encountered to create a viable model of how we had lived. She complained frequently to her partner.

"It's like they were robots," she said once. "They burned everything they were done with. We haven't found so much as a single physical specimen left."

"That's usual, on these places," he said gently. "John thinks they were wiped out by plague. They probably burned all the bodies to be safe."

We were burning our bodies long before then, I told him. He didn't hear me.

"But not even a speck of any biological material?" she continued. "We have no idea what they ate and drank, except for that menu that Ariel was able to rig back up."

Her partner shrugged again. "We just have to keep looking." He turned the white object in his hands over and over again. "I'm more worried about their culture. Everything we've been able to date has been well over five millenia old, but they were only wiped out four millenia ago. What happened between those times? No photographs, no art, nothing." He shook his head.

We had those things, I told him. But they belonged to everyone and no one. You could see them on that device you're holding, if you could only turn it on. They existed somewhere between the real world and the unreal.

Like me.

I'm here, too.

"Do you feel sad for them?" She asked after a long pause.

"Every day," he said.

She reached over and squeezed his arm, and he patted her leg. "Why do you think they put apples on everything?" he asked her.

"To ward off evil?" she suggested, and looked up. "Did you hear that?"

"No."

"Like someone laughing..."

He cocked his head. "I think that's the dinner bell," he said. "Come on. Let's go eat."

So this is how I'm going to do it: as part of LJ Idol Season 8. :D

Now to get to work on my Week 1 entry. *rubs hands together*

Okay, guys. TVTropes has sucked away so many hours of my life that I now want it to give stuff back to me. And that stuff is totally awesome shorthands for my RPG characters. To make it more fun, I want YOU to tell me your characters' Tropes as well! Links are awesome but not necessary.

Who's with me?!

I'll only cut once the lists start getting very long. ;)

LIDIA:
-Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant, because any Malkavian who is not this? FAILS.
-Pyro Maniac, for obvious reasons.
-Waif Prophet, perhaps? Not that Lidia was waifish, she was actually pretty solid if you looked at her stats...

VICKI:
-The Chick. If there was ever a perfect example of this trope in my PCs, Vicki is it. Many of the subtropes, including Team Mom and Nice Girl, also apply. Her Cast Calculus is a bit tricky, because both she and Jake are the social, but Jake deviated enough into the blasty that I think he can take up the Physical third of the Vicki/Jake/Thomas triad.

DANIELLE:
-Black and White Beauty
-Hooker With a Heart of Gold (obviously)

AZ:
-I Hate You Vampire Dad *hysterical gigglefit*

NADJA:
-Dark Action Girl (no, that's not a typo - she's not a villain, but she's way too hardcore to just be a straight-up Action Girl)
-Wrench Wench
-Kuudere especially after breaking up with Danny; heaping elements of Yandere when it comes to Danny, although manifested more as "I will change the world to make it so that you will See The Light and we can be together" rather than, say, flipping out and killing any other woman who looks at him sideways.
-Determinator. See above. Also see Love Makes You Crazy and I Can Change My Beloved. What can I tell you, she's a teenager.

See? HOURS OF ENDLESS FUN!

025. Strangers

(Since I didn't give it its own entry, before.)

So, apropos of nothing, what would you like to see in your vampire porn-with-romance-in? (This of course has nothing to do with the recent call for submissions. >_> <_<) See, I have these ideas, and they're sort of floating around and not congealing into anything interesting no matter how much I poke at them. So... yeah. I will continue to poke over here.

I have questions. >_> They might be about Circlet's fall call for submissions. (With an s, not without. With! *ahem* Sorry.)

Mostly pretty general questions.

Oh god, I'm kind of embarrassed that I'm even asking these questions. That does not bode well.

Woo, three more goals to add to the list. Maybe today I'll do my PostSecret postcard (though I don't think I have anything appropriate for it... so maybe I'll do the fan letter instead.)

Keep up with the goal list here.

( 08. Finish editing the Vampire pilot. )

( 24. Read something by Haruki Murakami. )

( 100. Get a raise. )

So that's my life lately.