life changes at warp speed…per usual.

i realized some time ago that major life changes happen at warp speed for me.  lately this meant getting a job and moving to balitmore in the span of 2 weeks.  this is the first time i’ve been able to take a few minutes and actually soak it all in…

the move was insane – great, but insane.  thanks to the greatest friends in the world, i was able to get all my stuff loaded up in a u-haul last thursday and spent the night in ft. wayne with matty and aimee.  it was so fun to have a “last night” with them.  that morning aaron flew into ft. wayne and we took off!  just the two of us with a u-haul truck, my old crappy car and all of my worldly posessions.

aaron was a champ and drove the truck while i drove my car, thankfully we had planned ahead and decided to stay overnight in Pittsburgh (about 5 1/2 hours away from Ft. Wayne).  great night of just hanging out – good food – and my new addiction to nintendo ds’ version of super mario….i suck, but i love it!

we rolled into town last Saturday night and crashed.  it was fantastic to finally be “home” with Kate, Andrew and Cam…since then I’ve unpacked, had a major bout of un-fun stomach flu, started my new job, found out that my new job rocks and all my co-workers and bosses are the nicest people on the planet.  i’m slowly settling in, but still get stupid happy grin on my face every time i drive up 295 and see that baltimore skyline on my way to work every morning.

of course it would be fantastic to be closer to aaron (he’s still 2 hours away), but after being 12 hours away from each other for the past 3 years, we’ll make 2 hours work.

so all of that to say i’m here in one piece and want everyone i love indiana to come visit – especially matty, aimee, josh, ruthie and the best kid sister on the planet (molly)…i love and miss you guys so much, that’s the only part that sucks about moving here.

i promise a more creative/fun update will be coming soon, i just got tired of being harassed by everyone i know to do an update…thanks for the love guys.

we should be unpacking...

An Update of Semi-Biblical Proportions

I’m going to do it. I’m going to make that lame “sorry I haven’t blogged in awhile” opening statement. So just prepare for it, because here it comes…

So, sorry I haven’t blogged in awhile – life has gotten busy and changed and blah blah blah (insert chosen excuse for a writer not to be writing here), but I was on the phone with my favorite boy last night randomly talking about our old Xanga blogs (holy old school) and it inspired me to start keeping up with my blog again…so here goes!

Several major things have changed in my life lately, pretty much all for the better – which rocks and doesn’t happen that often, because no matter what anyone tries to tell you, change mostly sucks. Why else would we have books, websites and trained professionals all ready to help people deal with the crap that is “change”? It usually is painful and awful and something forced upon you…but not so with me lately, so woo to the hoo, right?

The first “big” change that has happened lately is that today is mine and Aaron’s one-month-aversary, which is pretty much the best thing in my life. I’ve never been with someone who has been my best friend in the world, and he’s the greatest. We’re happy except for the 700 mile distance – which if there is a God in heaven – will be a non-issue very soon. Being with Aaron is like adding a new fantastic level onto an already tighter than tight friendship, I can’t even describe it completely…which is saying a lot, because since when am I at a loss for words, right?

Ok, before I turn this entire post into a nauseating sonnet to my boyfriend, I’ll move on and spare most of you from experiencing the culmination of that gag reflex you’ve been fighting for the past few seconds. Work is another change, more of a change in process.

I decided pretty much right after the conference in Vegas this year that I was leaving my job by hook or by crook (I have no clue why that cliché popped into my head, but hey why not use it? Does it make anyone else think of pirates? Like it wouldn’t be effective unless it was snarled out through the clenched teeth of a swarthy pirate villain?) and moving back to the East Coast. The latest I’ll be moving is October. I desperately want to leave earlier, but that hinges on a job I’m waiting to hear back on. It’s a dream job for me really – a marketing firm in the Baltimore area with offices that are so great I could just cry. I had two great interviews, so now I’m just waiting……………………………which massively sucks because as I may or may not have mentioned before, I suck at the waiting thing.

So one way or the other I’ll be back in Maryland soon-ish…one of the greatest parts about moving back is that I’m going to be living with Kate, Andrew, Cam and my yet-to-be-born/named niece or nephew for awhile! I really miss my big sister, bro and nephew like crazy, so we’re all freakishly excited about living together like one big dysfunctionally awesome family.

For once change isn’t kicking me in the teeth – my only slight complaint is that I’m still waiting to hear about the job and thus stuck out in Indiana so far this summer…but things are looking up, so I can’t help but hope that the rest of the changes in my life lately will continue to follow that trend…

Rock and or roll!

my head of late…

Lately I’ve been struggling with wanting to pull back into my own head.  Not that this is always a bad thing, but for someone who always writes or talks things out it can be a sign of retreating.  So many things have contributed to this feeling, it’s almost overwhelming.

This weekend a friend of mine from college was killed suddenly in a car accident, which sent all of us who knew her into shock.  She was only 27 years old and everyone just assumed (as we always do) that she would live a full and long life – then she was just gone without any warning.  When I got the news I just sat there – frozen – unable to think at all.  Then everything started rushing in…all the anger, grief, doubt and helplessness washed over me, not just from Autumn’s death, but my grandmother’s (last month), my grandfather’s (May 2008), my grandfather (June 2007), my friend Jabes (January 2005) and so on…I have lost so many people in my life and each time it’s gut-wrenching, but I thought I had “moved on”…just tucked away the feelings and pushed forward because I had to keep moving.

But this weekend it was painfully obvious that I hadn’t “dealt” with anything at all.  How can a person be expected to handle the fact that someone they love is just gone – never to be seen again.  It doesn’ t matter if it was sudden or a long illness, doesn’t matter whether they’ve lived for two weeks or ninety years…it always is an overwhelming sickening surge of grief and anger.

The anger is what surprised me.

After the initial shock and tears had washed past me, what was left was this tight, white-hot clenched anger sitting in my chest.  It’s still there and I have no idea how to deal with that feeling.  It scares me.  I know at the core of my being that holding that kind of anger is dangerous and at the very least self-destructive.  Still there is no outlet I have found yet for that kind of rage…it just sits there, burning, building every single day because not a moment passes when I don’t think about the ones I’ve lost, who I will never see again.

Then the fear set in.

I don’t get scared easily…ok, to be fair, i get scared easily by silly things like horror movies and funhouses (NOT fun by the way), but life doesn’t scare me often.  I usually feel fairly well equipped to handle what is thrown my way and usually drag a good friend or my sisters along with me.  But death and the spiritual world?  That scares me.  Scares me so much that I’ve been sleeping with the lights on again.  I thank God (and I mean that literally) every night that I can still sleep, but this hot mixture of fear and anger is a constant stifling presence in my chest and I don’t know how to get past it…or even if I’m supposed to.  I don’t even know how to voice this level of fear and rage…at least I’m writing about it.

So what next?

Who will I lose next?

Each time I feel little pieces of myself cracking away, changing into someone I don’t recognize, someone so hurt and damaged by the past years she can barely keep standing…

big big life changes…

so i feel like i can finally post this information, now that most of the people in my life know…so i can stop leaving subtle (and some not-so-subtle) hints via facebook status updates and just say:

i’m leaving indiana…and moving back east to Ft. Meade, MD (near Baltimore), my official last day at work is October 13 (yes, I know it’s like 6 months from now!)

how is this possible all of a sudden (finally!)?

in a big way its due to my older sister kate who is letting me live when her, cam and andrew while i get my feet under me and get things in order out there…we’re so excited we’re going to be living together, can’t even stand it! she’s also getting me started in this sales/marketing business she’s working with, which really will help me over the mark financially and generate the extra income i need to move and pay my student loan bills while i job hunt….

and it gets even better! i might be able to get a job on-base through my fantastic brother-in-law working in one of the after-school/daycare facilities part-time while i job hunt…so i’ll be doing what i love, making money and living with my sister and hanging out 24/7 with cam…

and it gets better STILL!

i’ll only be a few hours (like 2) from aaron…YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS – its about freakin time.

so six months or so down the road…i’m out of indiana and i can’t wait – its going to be a long couple of months…

oh the wonders of my bad chi…

ok so i had a fantastic bad chi moment today which thankfully did not result in me injuring myself, but it was kind of hilarious.  if you don’t know my history with bad chi, holy crap its amazing and has resulted in many massive injuries to myself.  if you want specific stories, let me know…
 
so this morning i set off our alarm at the office (the noise is so loud you could hear it from space, i swear)
it was SO not my fault - one of my co-workers locked our inner door which we NEVER lock because we don’t have a key for it.  So I unlock the outside door, which makes the alarm beep and on a normal day I would have just walked through the inner door and punched in my code to stop the alarm…but this morning i couldn’t get in the inner door because it was locked and the alarm starts wailing.
 
SO i have to run around the building and let myself in the side door, which i have never used so it took forever to get my key to work…then right after i successfully open the door i realize there is this stupid heavy plastic sheeting over it because we were weatherproofing it!  so i pull an incredible-hulk like move and burst through the plastic sheeting, trip over the empty mail bins sitting in front of it, grabbing the phone because our alarm company was calling to find out if we were being robbed.
 
did i mention all of this happened in the middle of a torrential downpour of bibilical proportions?

rock on bad chi.

rock on.

reading and stuff and things

so there are a ton of things i could blog about…the fact that about 2 weeks ago my best friend in the whole world decided to show up out of nowhere and surprise me and hang out for 4 days (he drove alllllll the way from MD to do it) or i could write about how i’m really starting to get into working on my new novel and its almost all i think about…or i could blog about how the other thing i think about all the time is moving back east…

but instead.

i will write about how yesterday i read almost 2,000 pages…yep.  I have re-definied speed reading for myself.  my elbows are actually still red and sore this morning from reading on my stomach, propped up on them for hours upon hours yesterday…

so aaron (the aforementioned best friend in the entire world) has been bugging me to read the twilight series for awhile now.  and to be fair, i have yet to read/watch/listen to anything he recommends to me and hate it, so i just kind of put it off because i had other books i was in the middle of and didn’t really feel like getting into a series…but then i read the first one about 2 weeks ago and got completely hooked. my slightly addictive personality (only when it comes to media!) kicked in and i bought the other 3 books…and i read them all…yesterday.

now to be fair, i didn’t plan on starting at 9:30am and reading 3 huge novels for 12 hours straight, stopping only to grab a sandwich or a drink, then go right back to reading (usually while eating or drinking or acually spilling whatever i was eating or drinking while i read), but it was the best day…the story is so amazing and i can imagine how much more i love it because i read the whole thing straight through as if it was one continuous story instead of one broken into 4 different books.

i feel oddly calm and zen-like, actually rested and refreshed…of course i’m at work so i don’t know how long that feeling will last, but i’m hoping i can find a way to hold onto it through at least the rest of today.

SO if you haven’t read the series and have a love of fiction/fantasty novels, you have to read it. seriously. amazing.

Random reflection brought on by Facebook photos…

This morning started just like any other, my alarm went off at 7 and I hit the snooze a few times, barely leaving myself enough time to shower and get out the door for work at ten til 8 (thankfully I live about 5 minutes away from the office!).  It was freezing outside (as usual) and I got to chip a few layers of frost off the car I begrudgingly drive and head off to work.  I wasn’t too stressed about the time, knowing that today my boss is out of the office all day and that just makes the entire office staff more relaxed and laid back.  It’s a nice way to be on a Friday, especially after all of the insanity lately.

 

So I make my way to work and open up the office, check my email and bounce around on myspace, netflix and finally facebook.  I noticed that one of my old friends from back in the day in Maryland had posted some photos, so I checked them out and found them to be mostly of my old youth pastor’s kids (the oldest was born when I was in 8^th grade!) and I let myself take a few minutes to flip through all the photos and be in complete shock that all of them are so grown up (and completely adorable).  It feels like a lifetime ago when I was spending most of my high school years in that house, hanging out with my youth pastor, his wife (who became like another sister to me), and the girls.  The two oldest I got to know best, as the two youngest kids weren’t around until right before and after I left for college.  I started thinking about who I was in high school and what I wanted to be and it was so odd to think about because when I was that age, I didn’t care.  All I was looking to do was to get out of the city I grew up in and start somewhere new where I could be who I wanted and do what I wanted without anyone else having any pre-conceived notions of who I was.

 

And so I ended up in Indiana, actually going to a “Christian” college (who would have thought, right?) thanks to my youth pastor’s wife who graduated from there and gently steered me in that direction when I was floundering around trying to decide between which state schools to attend.  Instead of making an informed decision, I applied, got accepted and was heading out to Grace College the summer of 2001 without ever even seeing the place.  Practicality and informed decision-making were never really high on my priority list at that point in my life…and honestly they don’t rank that high on it now…maybe a little higher now that its about 7 years later!

 

And that decision to go to Grace completely changed my life.  And not in a lame promote the school way.  In a real way, it wasn’t the courses (although I loved, hated and slept through so many of them equally), but the people.  It was the most amazing thing to be all of a sudden transplanted into an environment where no living soul knew who I was – it was the perfect time to start over and figure out what I wanted to do.

And so I did…after failing my very first college course (Drawing 1 – thanks Prof. Young), I dropped my major and went undeclared for awhile before switching to English and finally to Journalism/Communications.  I had always had the verbal/written thing going for me, I just never thought about channeling it into a major, so it took about 2 years to convince me I should make that leap, not to mention my insane speed reading habits made my literature courses a breeze.  I continued to head back to Maryland in the summers and it was always kind of odd, but good, as I picked up jobs when I felt like it and spent too much time out in Salisbury/Ocean City with my big sister.

 

When I wrapped up my college years, I had this odd panicked sensation that I knew what I wanted to do…kind of…but had no idea how I was going to do it.  So I just focused on surviving.  Which is a hilarious couple years to look back on – not so funny at the time, but my word.  The memories of sharing a 2 bedroom apartment between 3 people, using it as basically a hostel because we had friends crashing there constantly.  Barely scraping by getting paid $9.25 an hour to deal with the most boring job on the planet at a psychiatric facility, using my BP gas card to buy groceries at the gas station because otherwise we wouldn’t have anything to eat, maxing out ATM withdrawal limits on credit cards to just get by paying the rent, extreme sleep deprivation leading to writing my first novel and spending every waking moment in coffeehouses with some of my best friends hashing out plot points and illustrations, listening to fantastic music and horrible music, none of it mattering because we just needed something to draw inspiration from.

 

Then I finally got a job that was paying my bills…and Fez died (for those of you who don’t remember, Fez was my orange 1972 superbeetle and my very first car) and I got to enjoy the entire saga of that, since his engine exploded when I was almost to Indianapolis (that is an insanely long and hilarious story that I will tell another time).  BUT it happened at the perfect time, because my best friend in the whole world (aaron) was getting rid of his old car and getting a new one, so I bought Trixie Anne from him and drove her until she died and now I have a car I hate, but begrudgingly respect because it is safe and warm, even though it is sooo fugly.

 

Anyway, now I am at that odd point again where I’m ok financially and have the time to think about what I want to do next.  I don’t have to take a job just to pay my bills – I really want to focus on what I want to do next and what will get me closer to the goal of starting my own publishing house.  I’m working on my second novel and it’s completely new and exciting and I love the thrill of being buried in a new project.  Location wise I really really hate living in Indiana, mostly because I miss the coast and my big sister, brother-in-law and my nephew…and the fantastic friends I have back in Maryland and Pennsylvania.  And so I have some decisions to make, some things to plan…unless I go with the way I made my decision to go to Grace and just blindly make a choice and see what happens…

 

And to think, all of this started with photos on facebook…

 

weary…

Being frustrated is extremely exhausting.  Being frustrated with nearly every aspect of my life is even more exhausting.  Life inside and outside my head has not been easy lately.  Of course there have been good times, but everything is overshadowed by the fact that I’m insanely discontent…doing everything I can to change my situation, but it has come to a point that I can’t do anything else but sit and wait. 

I am not so good with the waiting…

i can’t remember when the earth turned slowly…

everything lately has been humming along at an extremely fast pace – life, work, family, friends…everything. it has been easy to just survive and kind of switch to autopilot, put in my time and not really open my eyes to the opportunities around me. 

and so…i’m taking a little time to slow down and make myself think. which i haven’t done in a long long time. every second of my day from the time i wake up until the time i go to bed is full of people, noise, music, tv, phonecalls and every other distraction you could possibly imagine. i make myself busy on the surface…then i don’t have to stop and think about life and where i’m actually heading.

i’m not sure when this switch happened – i’ve always been weirdly goal oriented…but i think that since i’ve actually acheived some of my major goals, i’m floundering a bit trying to figure out what to do next.  i’m not sure what i’m working towards or really what i want out of my next job…i just have a location in mind, which is maybe half of the solution…but nowhere near a solid goal.

so once i got over the insane level of panic this realization caused, i started thinking…and am still thinking…making lists and thinking some more…and with each day i feel a little bit closer to figuring out what i want next…

here’s to making the most of living in warsaw for another year and a half - help me out here!

prologue/sneak peek of my new fantasty novel…

so i’ve been working on my new novel for a few months now and i think i’m in a really good place – finally nailing down the specific myths and Irish folklore i want to include in my story…so here’s the very first draft of my prologue – let me know what you think…

The banshee couldn’t breathe as she grasped the dark-haired toddler close, flying as fast as she possibly could, her scream fighting to be free of her throat. The child held still, somehow sensing the danger they were fleeing and curled closer to the banshee’s chest, resting his head on her shoulder and she streaked through the clouds. She had never flown this far or this fast before and couldn’t bear to stop and think if she could do it, she just knew she must. Turning back was not an option, not with this little boy cradled in her ethereal grasp. She hoped he would fall asleep once they began to cross the ocean, even though he would be much heavier with his small body completely relaxed, she would be able to disassociate herself from the fact that she was whisking a tiny human boy across the vast expanse of the Atlantic ocean to…what? She herself had no idea what would be waiting for them on the other side of the dark water, all she could do was fly and hope she would be enough, would find a way to be enough to protect him.

As she flew on through the night, away from the land she knew and loved so dear, she allowed herself to think about the possible repercussions of her actions. As fear gripped her heart, she briefly considered letting the small bundle she was carrying fall into the dark waves below and freeing the shriek trapped in her lungs. As her grip slackened, the child murmured in his sleep and flailed out with a small fist. Her entire being wrenched at the sight of his complete trust in her and she tightened her grip once more.

The hours streamed by and she began to use the time to devise a plan, one that might be able to save both herself and the boy. She knew there were fey living in the new world most called America, but was unsure of how the courts operated on those foreign shores. The fey were usually a friend to her in her homeland, but she had heard terrible stories about the wild, uncontrollable faerie communities that had taken up residence in the unorthodox lands across the sea. Still…faced with what she knew was undoubtedly still chasing her, she would rather take her chances with the unknown wild fey than stay in Ireland. Daring a look behind her, unwilling to slow her pace, she turned her neck and allowed the wisps of her untamed hair to strike blows across her narrow face, she saw the fleeting shadows of the darkness that still pursued her and she knew she wouldn’t be able to outrun them forever.
Furrowing her brow, she began to fly even faster through the clouds, devising a plan to protect herself and the toddler she held as she fled through the midnight skies…

“Faster,” ___________ rasped in a thin yet booming voice and he commanded his compatriots to move through the night after the banshee that had foiled them and taken the youngest O’Brien son into her care. He could not allow this banshee to escape to the new world. He knew the repercussions that would certainly reverberate across the sea to his kingdom if she were allowed to find solace in the new world with the child. He never considered why the banshee had gone so wholeheartedly against her nature, as he had never seen one do so before. Compassion was not an emotion he allowed himself to experience and operated solely in a world of extremes. It would not do to upset the balance of life and death, he would not allow it and took pleasure in the latter part of this responsibility. What was meant to die is to be dead, there was no room for interpretation. This lone banshee challenged this entire concept, one that had founded the very soul of the world he inhabited and watched grow closer and closer to destruction for eons. He could not allow this. And so he urged his brothers and sisters on faster, readying himself for what he knew must be done.

She flew on faster for hours and hours and as the midnight skies began to subtly lighten with the promise of daybreak she began to sense the presence of land ahead. She breathed in deep, inhaling the intoxicating scent of lush grasses and fresh water. After hours of breathing nothing but damp clouds and the salty excesses of the sea, the oddly familiar scent of land was a welcome respite. The child had fallen deeply asleep as she had hoped and she breathed a quiet prayer to whatever god had not yet cast her asunder, asking that he remain so for the time being. She still felt ___________’s presence behind her, it filtered deep into her consciousness and was slowly growing stronger, which meant she was growing weaker. She knew her only chance of making it to shore and keeping ______ and his collaboration of _____s at bay was to use nearly the last shreds of her strength to reach out to the unknown faerie’s Seelie court in the hopes of striking a bargain. If that didn’t work, she was prepared to take the more dangerous route of contacting the members of the Unseelie court in this new land, trading whatever necessary to shroud the boy and herself from ________. She couldn’t allow herself to guess at the outcome if the unknown fey community she was desperate to reach rejected her.

His frustration and anger long since morphed into rage, ___________ kept urging the darkness flanking him to move faster, somehow the banshee was always slightly out of reach. His control stretched impossibly thin, he was barely holding onto his deep influence in her presence. He could feel the darkness unfurling from her as she flew farther away from their native shores. She was using what little strength she had left to shield the boy from him and as he reached out, he couldn’t even sense the child’s heartbeat. If he could only tap into the pulse of the toddler he could accelerate it, efficiently killing the boy, leaving the banshee as his only target. His rage burning even hotter in his chest, he let out of howl of frustration as even his most concentrated darkness was unable to seek out the deep thrum of the boy’s blood pumping through his tiny veins. Baring his teeth, he pushed the ravaged hosts at his back to move faster still.

Swallowing her intense relief, the banshee parted her lips, and a sliver of pure white steam, the very essence of her being, wafted toward the pinkening sky. A signal of her agreement to the terms of the fey’s deal, it flew higher still, taking the form of a ______ binding herself, the boy and the fey to the terms of the agreement. Still aware of the danger __________ posed if she didn’t make it past the shores and into the wild fey’s kingdom, she couldn’t allow herself to relax, even as a deep exhaustion broke over her like the waves crashing against the cliffs jutting out of the mist directly below her.

Sensing a shift in the clouds, ________ turned his gaze sharply upward and to his horror saw the burning white __________ shimmering no more than a few kilometers ahead of him. He howled in rage and sorrows as he directly witnessed what he so dreaded come to pass. The banshee had escaped into the new world with the last living piece of the O’Brien clan, unable to be touched by all his forces of _______. As dawn’s first light began to creep into the clouds, he closed his eyes and inhaled the swirling darkness of his companions deep into his burning lungs, drawing from what was left of their stamina, then with one last furious look at the smoldering brilliance of the _____ before him, turned and began the long journey back to familiar shores. As he turned away, he swore his own oath to destroy the banshee and the O’Brien boy my any means available to him. Taking the form of a _______, his oath shimmered in the early morning light facing the sign of the banshee’s defiance as a signal of his eternal rage and determination to destroy her and the boy she had snatched from him.