Day 94

Spoiler Alert! May contain planning-stage plot/character details or other spoilers!

09 May 2016

So. It’s been a much longer break than I’d intended, what with one thing and another. Or chalk it up to laziness…

I’ve been pulling in some good rates on corporate marketing writing/rewriting, but low volume. Up to a few hundred Pounds and a handful of Euros, which I only realized after proposing, will basically be impossible to spend, as I’m not likely to be opening accounts outside of the UK, but anyways… Use it on eBay or something eventually. Turns out PayPal charges a fair bit to accept funds in other currencies and from other countries, but lessons learned, I guess. Trying not to get too caught up in all that, while at the same time increasingly aware that I need to make some money and not just be spending it hand over fist.

And on the ‘spending money’ topic, I just received my UK work visa! Two years starting in July! So it’s like, for reals now.

I’ve also started making Luxardo cocktails (maraschino flavour + lime juice + ginger ale) to use up the bottle I bought last year… working on trimming down the stock! Weirdest thing you’ve ever tasted; bitter and floral and sour all at once, but fairly refreshing and intriguingly complex.

One of these days, I’m going to get back into the swing of writing in bars and breweries to bring the travelogue component back in to these notes, but for now, it’s cheaper and more accessible to write from home, not to mention easier to concentrate!

An 11 year old - let’s call her Lily, no relation to Cole’s (soon to be) friend - I’ve been feeding books to just produced an astonishingly good short story, which has been the coolest experience (for me). Fascinating how exposure to reading, and ‘good’ reading, converts to increased writing and communication skills, and in such a short time, too! Made me more determined than ever to retain a minimum level of literacy in my writing; dumbing things down may have it’s place, but it’s not where I want to focus my energy. Three cheers for glorious complexity; beautiful, intricate, elaborate and excessive art is the way to go!

I think last weekend was my last opportunity to perform for a while, which is kind of a shame, but I do need to focus. I’m pretty done participating in selfish, self-satisfying church expressions, so it was hard to push through, but after the first set I was able to just have fun and go crazy. It’s great what not caring does for creativity, lol. Someone came up and wanted me to teach his teenagers afterwards, which was gratifying, if unlikely. I quit studying at their age and have never taught music at all, although that was my dream at one point. Something to think about for the future; maybe I could teach workshops on improv or something…? Tutoring tends not to be a great gig, though, and it’s not like I need any more distractions…

My uncle (in London) will be visiting in June for my other uncle’s wedding, and offered to take a piece of luggage back for me, which is awesome, as I would have felt super weird about asking, but could totally use the help. Still not sure if it’ll be enough, or if I should get yet another piece of luggage for when I go to take more stuff over, but it does reopen the possibility of taking my guitar and violin along. Still don’t get why, when I have no clothes or shoes (comparably), I can’t fit everything into a suitcase, but I got a travel scale and vacuum pack bags to ride those margins.

Stuck again in this weird balance of wanting to write (and finish this project!), but not actually getting to it, and totally wasting time on things that don’t really matter or that I don’t care that much about. I did watch some shows over the last few weeks, even great ones, but I’m not as drawn to, or capable of, continuously marathoning TV or anything. And reading articles is nice, but often simply a distraction. Trying to back off of the library and make more progress on my to-read shelf so I can clear that out before I go, too. So, so much left to do…

So get to it, right??

Monday

Start Time: 1 pm

Location: couch/living room

Drinking: Luxardo cocktail

Post Index