Saturday, February 13, 2010

What I'm Doing; or, 0 of 12

February 12 was pretty much a normal day. I did stuff. I didn't think too much about it. That is, until I went over to Heather's to watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, and she said, "Let me take a picture of you for 12 of 12!" and I said, "Wait, today's the 12th?" and she said, "Smile!" and I said, "Aaaaargh."

So. I have no pictures, today, of myself 1) waking up, or 2) writing, or 3) walking to Trader Joe's (via the yarn store), or 4) eating sweet potato bisque, Dubliner cheese on crackers, and a mineola for lunch, or 5) making the maiden tweet on Austenacious's brand-new, steeped-in-emotional-ambiguity Twitter feed, or 6) driving to Heather and Erik's for the Olympics, or 7) getting verklempt over stand-up comics falling in love on NPR, or 8) eating heavenly gingered eggplant and chickpeas over basmati rice for dinner, or 9) realizing that I now get two weeks of hunky Brian Williams on my TV without having to watch the news, or 10) eating heavenly rose water-buttermilk sherbet and cornmeal-orange shortbread, still warm from the oven, for dessert, or 11) coveting that flying-harness dude's job in much the way that I have previously coveted Tinkerbelle's job in the Disneyland fireworks show, or 12) coming home, feeding cats, and crawling into bed.


Nevertheless, it occurs to me that, in quitting my job and moving cross-country and then completely failing to post here, I may not be doing an excellent job of explaining what exactly I'm doing right now.


Well.


Fair enough.


I'm writing. I'm keeping up with Austenacious and trying to post to P.S. BTW like a normal person. I'm eyeing this blog guiltily and promising to post more. I've just turned the Act IV corner on an original TV pilot script, which I hope to use as a calling card so that I can get somebody to pay me to write more scripts.


I'm doing a bit of freelance work—writing short celebrity bio blurbs for a website about celebrity net worth, should anybody out there be wondering about the financial situation of, say, Zac Efron and/or Donald Trump—and looking for more. This involves much stalking of Craigslist, much writing of cover letters, and much pondering of the distinction between a writing gig and a writing job.


I'm taking a screenwriting class at the local community college, as my eighteen-year-old self says, "I thought I worked hard in high school so I wouldn't have to go to DVC?"


I'm singing with my old choir, because I simply haven't had enough Latin in my life lately.


I'm house-sitting an apartment and two cats in Albany.


I'm running.


I'm flossing my teeth regularly, because seriously, people who don't have jobs are not too busy to floss.


And that's the gist of it: working, trying to make writing my work, alternately hoping for and obsessing over the future, and trying to make the present workable. I'm glad I'm doing what I'm doing, because it's a chance at something awesome, and because not doing what I'm doing is a terrifying prospect, long-term. In any case, it's not a bad gig. Job. Whatever.