What I'm doing with my life

Hello blogosphere! I don't post here nearly often enough. Right now, that's because I fear I'd just sound like a depressed broken record, but I'm getting to the point where I have to do something and I have to do it soon (and I really should have done it months ago) and I can't stand to hear myself being depressed and beaten down anymore.

I'm making plans.

Always a bad idea, I know, since nothing ever goes according to plan, but I have to do something or I'm going to just accidentally jump off a cliff or something. In Florida, which means I'll have to build a cliff and then accidentally jump off it. Which is too much trouble.

I've been applying for real-life jobs and online writing jobs left and right and I'm struggling to maintain faith that I actually know what I'm doing there, but it gets a little easier every time to put myself up for positions I really want. It's not that I don't think I can do the jobs so much as it's that I'm afraid of getting the job I want and then failing and being right back here. But I can't possibly do more than another year or so of a job I know I'll hate just because I need the money. I can't. I'll die in some fundamental way, and I won't become one of those beaten down, hateful waitresses that are all over TV, because I doubt some rich millionaire will fall for me and bring me back to the land of the living the way they do on TV and romcoms. Real life isn't that nice to me.

But what I'm really doing is trying to set up my life the way I want it. It started when I discovered Puttylike and Rightbrain Rockstar and then all the other people who are doing just that out there, and suddenly I was hopeful again. There really are people out there doing what I want to do. And they're successful at it! Which means I can do it, too, once I figure out how.

Right now, I'm looking at the list of things I like doing and trying to formulate an overarching theme, while pinpointing the life I actually want to be living. In no particular order, here's what I do know:

• I love writing more than I love any other job I've done, and I have Ideas I want to pursue there
• I love embroidery and silversmithing, and I want to make pretty things for peoples lives
• My dream house is not really a house so much as a collection of all those little movable houses that green designers keep putting gorgeous pictures of all over the internet--so I can take it with me and go anywhere
• I don't want to live in Florida anymore
• I do want a garden, even if the garden, too is portable--and maybe especially if it's portable
• I need to get some stamps in my passport before I go insane
• I need to work online because offices make me sad, but a good office is a different matter entirely
• I'm tired of being solitary, but any non-solitariness needs to happen on my own terms or I'm just going to feel smothered and bitter again
• I have far too much emotional investment in television, which means I need to make more of a living off it so that the investment matches the income
• I really, honestly love making video games that tell fun stories
• The Where Should I Live? test told me I should move to Bartimore--or Minesota, but I think Baltimore is more reasonable
• I like making lists and paperwork and handouts more than anyone else I've met
• I need sunlight to finction
• I am not a morning person, and I'm less each time I wake up in the morning
• I want to take up piano again, and learn to sing
• I'm so tired of being non-creative in large parts of my life that I feel like I could burst into flames--I'm already diagnosed as semi-dysfunctionally-rightbrained, and that isn't going to change so I should figure out how to use it

And that's what I have to work with

more ideas for an ideal life

My ideal life will include:

- A cast iron tea set, a yixing red clay tea set, and the ability to afford each without having to scrimp and save forever.
- The feeling of time, even if I'm really very busy: Time to spend an hour making and drinking tea on the front porch, time to plant my spring garden and tend it through the rough months until summer can take care of itself, time to grow roses, time to visit friends and go on vacations and attend local events and eat at food festivals.

I'm feeling like I need to make changes.

musings: the life i want

I have been very busy of late, probably over-busy based on how hard it is to stay asleep and how much difficulty I'm having just sitting down to read the books I need to read. But I'm starting to figure out more of what I want out of life.

For one, first and foremost, I've discovered that I don't care if I have to have arm surgery later on: writing is definitely all I want to do. I mean, I want to eke out time to craft and make and redecorate, I want to have the money to travel and see new things and not get left behind when friends invite me places because I just can't afford them, but I want it all to be because I'm writing. I made a list the other day of all the books I have lined up in my head, waiting to be written. There were twelve just off the top of my head, and that's not even counting sequels and half-thought-out probably-novels, or Wolfe and Raven which informed me that now it wants to be a webseries (10 x 6 minute episodes, probably four seasons).

I want a house somewhere with weather I like and enough land to plant several gardens where roses will grow. And cannas. And lillies. And lilacs. And a big ol' victorian-style greenhouse where I can grow oranges and lemons and let them out into the sun in the summer like they do in Italian Villas. I want a house I can stay in, where I can plant my poor sickly pine tree in the ground and know that I'll still be living there so he can thrive. Where I can have / get kids and plant a tree for each of them, too, and start a forest dedicated to my family.

I want to decorate from Ikea and Urban Outfitters, yes, but I also want to find beautiful antiques that people don't know the value of-- a velvet fainting couch, a canopied bed (especially if it's a Chinese wedding bed!), an old wash-basin stand. I want to gather trinkets and art pieces from everywhere I've been and display them properly. I want a house full of color and eclectic wonderfulness. My sister once described my bedroom as a treasure-box, said there was always something more to look at; I want a whole house like that.

I'm not terribly picky about who lives in the house with me. I don't necessarily need a husband, and even if I get one, he would have to be very special for me to want to live with him. I'm getting far too indipendent and unusual in my advancing age.

I think I want a writing cottage. I want my books and my desk and my working computer to be somewhere separated from the house, a little beautiful thing that's only for me, where I can hole up when deadlines are tight and I need the separation from distractions.

I think I want to dance. And I want space to dance in. I might even want an audience. I definitely want classes.

I want to never have to learn how to drive. Which means I want a big-girl bike that can get my longer distances with a lot less trouble and uncertainty. I love my baby-bike, but it's just too slow and too rickety for the long haul.

I want to carry my babies on my back and plant my own food and live somewhere where the cats can go in and out as they please without having to worry about cars and dogs and diseases. I want to make my own furniture and do it well and love doing it. I want to publish more than one book a year, every year, until I die or I go mad, and even then still have seven or ten or twenty books written and waiting, started, planned out, that others can finish and publish. I want my house to always be surrounded by nature and full of people I love, talented, opinionated, beautiful, glamourous, wonderful people who laugh and cook and drink wine and home-made ales. I want to raise kids in that atmosphere. I want to change the world just a little bit. I want to be famous enough to never have to be poor again. I want to give back to the community with a scholarship and maybe some community funding, like a garden project or something. I want to start a school and save a publisher and edit anthologies. I want to visit friends who live far away, and maybe sometimes live far away myself, but always have this one beautiful house to come home to.

And you know what? Sometimes, I feel like I'm getting there.