Just Keep Writing

All day, every day, everywhere I look, all I can think about is writing.

“In order to break the rules, you have to learn them first.”

Grammar rules, building worlds, the guidelines of writing any type of fiction from pulp to YA- “In order to break the rules, you have to learn them first.”

It’s so tiring. I feel like giving up. Just give me the towel, I’ll throw it in. Do you even know what it’s like to stare at a blank screen and not have anything good to say.

Good writing. That’s what it’s about. Perfection.

I see black curves and beautifully structured sentences in my dreams. Paragraphs, like gold fountains, spill off the pages into the readers’ mind, sticking themselves to the inner workings of anyone who reads.

What does that even mean?

“Do you even know what you want to say?”

Okay, yes, I give up. What do I have in common with any of the best writers? Nothing. I give up. Let me scream it from the rooftops. This here is the end of my writing career.

Just then you, oh wonderful reader, send me an email:

Love this! Interesting characters and a hint of conflict to come. Keep it up!

Spirit, renewed.

Read, re-read, analyze, re-re-read. That single comment is the life vest I needed to keep me afloat.

You know, for a moment, I almost forgot what it was like to love writing.

Local Travel: San Diego

Even though I’ve lived in California my entire life, I haven’t exactly explored it to the degree that I should. The first time I went into Los Angeles, to shop and dine and visit all the necessary places, I was only 19 years old. My friend and I marveled at all the things to do and the places to eat. We hailed from a small, unknown city just north of Anaheim; we’d never seen so many cool places before!

My sister moved to San Diego three years ago. I swore to visit her, but never did. I can make excuses, but the fact was I just never did. Other things seemed to occupy my time which was a shame, because San Diego had everything a girl like me could want: seafood, spectacular views, and, most importantly, a plethora of museums and historical hot spots.

When I finally made it down there, driving along the scenic route so I could look out across the ocean, I knew what a mistake it was to never have traveled around the greatest cities of California before.

I love this state! God, it’s so gorgeous and it wasn’t until San Diego that I realized how lucky I was to have been born here. San Diego, by the way, is just awesome. Yes, I am in awe of it. It’s so clean and beautiful. I can understand why my sister loves it so much.

I spent three days at Balboa Park- yes, three- and spent some time in Old Towne and ate at Kafa Sobaka ( oh, my god, the Chanakhi is to die for).

There is so much to do, so much to see….so much to eat here in Cali. I will never again take this state for granted. Next stop is Joshua Tree. I will try and post pics next time.

Four Things I learned When I Returned to College

I was a brilliant high school student so naturally the assumption was I would further my education and be as brilliant a student in college. The first year was easy; the second, not so much. It become apparent during sophomore year that I had no life plan, no career goals. I switched majors more than a few times and tried to straighten myself out but couldn’t. I was adrift.

Knowing I was wasting my time and money on something I wasn’t ready for, I made the choice to leave college. I never intended to return. I continued to drift through menial jobs and volunteer work whilst planning for my future. The plans didn’t stick, the money always ran out and the despair in the pit of my stomach sat heavy like a stone.

It was only after years of this sort of existence that I formulated a career path and researched companies I wanted to work for. I knew I needed at least a bachelors, so I applied to my former college and was amazed when I was accepted two months before school was to begin. There I was, short on cash and crunched for time. My options were limited (very) and in returning to school I figured out some things I had never considered before:

1. Loans Are Hard To Get

Frankly, I thought it was going to be easy to get a school loan. Nearly every student I’d met had taken out a loan. However, they had cosigners -I didn’t. Even with my nearly perfect credit score, I was unable to get a loan without a cosigner. No one was willing to cosign and I totally understood why, but it brought forth another issue….

2. All Bridges Burn In Time

I was lucky the first time around as a student. I had money from FASFA, scholarships and my parents and I am ashamed that I took it all for granted. I was reluctant to bring up the subject of cosigning with my father as he was already past the point in his life where he was able to help me. He had no obligation to give me aid and looking back, I wished I had never asked for it. He didn’t want to cosign, point-blank-period. I was relieved. It would have been too big a burden for both of us. But my resources were nearly depleted; I had no access to loans, or scholarships or FASFA. Those bridges had long since burned down and there was no way of getting them back.

3. College Is A Bureaucracy and a Business

Oh, the extensive, expensive and complicated paperwork; the never ending emails letting me know about that one “final” thing I must do in order to attend college; the inflated tuition cost and additional fees crammed in here and there; the brusque, and seemingly practiced, unhelpfulness of university administration. Is this what higher learning had become? It changed so much in such a short time. It saddened me to see the current state of the university system. It was like seeing an old friend become a bitter, shriveled up stone; all the life had been sucked out years ago.

4. Where There Is A Will, There Is A Way

Even though I have had some financial and personal setbacks, I’ve managed to somehow keep myself moving forward. My first college experience was wholly different to what it is now, but of course I am not the same person I was then. I am much stronger, more independent. I am glad I returned to school. Doors that were once closed to me are now open. This time around, I will appreciate college and the opportunities a solid education provides me. This time, I won’t waste my chances.

The Case For Going to College

No, I don’t believe college is about making you a well-rounded person, nor do I believe it is a chance to explore who you are. I do believe, however, it is about exploring what you are: biologist, engineer, psychologist, historian, journalist.

Higher education isn’t an easy ride to an easy life; quite the opposite. College is a time to research, to expand one’s knowledge on a concentrated subject, to network, to intern. College should be all about work, but I think so many in our society forget that. College is treated like an extension of the high school playground, where the only priority is partying, socializing and…well partying.

Is it any wonder then when students graduate it is to find themselves falling flat on their faces’? One can’t expect to meander through four to five years of higher learning and then get a job at the drop of a hat, especially if you only have a bachelors in an area where a masters or PhD is necessary.

The reason I switched from psych is because I couldn’t fathom continuing onto a masters psych program. I loathed the professors, their teaching style and found the subject to be dry. I understood there would be no jobs available to me with just a bachelors in psych, and since I didn’t want to continue studying it any further, I switched.

Too many students fail to do this, to evaluate their major then assess what career options would be available to them after graduation. It’s simple, but too often I read comments about someone’s inability to get a job with a bio degree, psych degree, history degree, therefore degrees are useless and by extension college is useless.

Not so!

College is necessary for careers based around science, technology, and the humanities. Yes, the humanities. You can get a job with a humanities degree. An art degree, for example, helps with art restoration, gallery work, art history and visual resource positions. Shocking, I know. My point is there is a good case for furthering one’s education.

College isn’t a trend. It’s not a playground for young adults. It’s work. It’s where students should buckle down, make decisions about the direction their lives are taking and get to interning and networking and learning. If you don’t know where your life is headed take a break from school and figure it out. For those who have already decided, don’t waste the endless, amazing resources and opportunities universities offer. Take them, because I guarantee once graduation comes and goes, those opportunities are lost to you forever.

Book Review: Falling into Place

The title should read The Detestable Liz Emerson.

She is a popular, beautiful high school student with a long list of boyfriends, friends and admirers- in short Liz Emerson is the girl you love to hate. She embodies all the horrible things you remember from high school: bullying, manipulation, and the  “cool kids”. Think the Plastics from Mean Girls, but with a dark twist.

The story is narrated by a mystery person revealed only in the last pages of the book, but if you read carefully enough it is easy to figure out just who the person is. The story centers on Liz Emerson, a popular girl in Meridian (Idaho, I assume) who has learned to navigate life according to the suffocating social pressures of her peers and who plans to commit suicide by crashing her car.

Once a shy girl, Liz decided to no longer be an object acted upon, but be a force that acts upon objects. Oh, yeah, there are lot of physics analogies thrown in. Anyway, there is a quote from the book that describes Liz accurately,

“The only other option was to be what Mackenzie was. An object in motion that                would stay in motion, even it if meant flattening everything in her path” (p. 116).

Mackenzie was a popular girl who teased a new girl at school for being different. Liz wants to be like Mackenzie, and that part about “flattening everything in her path” is no joke as Liz does a significant amount of damage to the people around her:

Bully and tease mercilessly-check.

Cheat on boyfriend with various guys -check.

Introduce drugs to one of her best friends, get her hooked, then ignore the obvious signs that her friend has become a drug addict- check.

Pressure her friend to get an abortion, then hook up with friend’s boyfriend-check.

Drink, get drugged out and take no responsibility for her actions- check.

Passively-aggressively attack her teachers in order to be “cool”- check.

Destroy an innocent young man’s reputation by implementing a harsh three-phased attack-check.

Yup.

But don’t worry, Liz Emerson is exceptional, she’s dazzling, she’s fantastic, she is the wonderful, unstoppable, unsinkable Liz Emerson. Like a rare butterfly she just needs to spread her wings and…okay, yeah, not really.

The author, Amy Zhang, really wants us to connect with Liz, the problem is I don’t, because Liz is a selfish, vain, petty bully that knows exactly what she is doing-and cares– but does not stop. She continues to be an awful human being and feel bad about her actions, yet continues to be bad.

Seriously?

On top of that there are no consequences to her actions. This girl gets away with everything and the people that she hurts forgive her because…..

Well, I don’t know why exactly.

Liam, the young man she destroyed socially, once caught her staring up at the sky with a look “so vulnerable and indignant” (p 204) he decides to forgive her cruelty because “he realized that Liz Emerson yearned for beautiful things too” (204).

What?!

Zhang does a great job of telling the reader Liz Emerson is a good person, but does a very poor job of showing she is good. We get the various perspectives of her friends and admirers, but those snapshots do very little to convince me that Liz is a person worth forgiving which is a shame because she deals with an incredible amount of self loathing and regret. Again, she cares about the damage she does to those around her, but refuses to do anything about it. That is crux of the problem. How can I root for a protagonist that refuses to own up?

Though I ranted here in the review, I can’t say that I hate the book or Liz. The story hit me in the feels, especially in the final pages. I get the angst, the anger, the self-hatred that Liz goes through (who wouldn’t?) and I understand, were Liz a real person, her suicide attempt would be the defining moment of her life. It certainly is something to sympathize with.

This is Zhang’s first novel and she does an excellent job at recreating teenage dialogue, and her prose, while not entirely lyrical, does have an easy flow. Sometimes, however, it disintegrates into flowery language and corny lines and some sentences that just don’t make sense-“she is so pale that her skin is almost green” (p.70)- but if I hadn’t known any better, I would have assumed that Amy Zhang had written plenty of novels before this.

I do recommend this book. If anyone else has read it let me know. This is the type of novel that gets readers talking and really, isn’t that what books are supposed to do?

Zhang, Amy. Falling into Place. New York: Greenwillow Books, 2014.

The Case Against Going to College

Here comes the unpopular opinion: College isn’t for everyone.

Let’s face it, if you were a C student, just cruising through high school not really making plans for your future, you won’t make it past the first semester of college. Or maybe you will…and then drop out junior year or senior year.

That’s what I did. Yep, one year away from graduating and then I lost it and dropped out. But that’s okay. I just should have done it sooner.

I wasn’t a C student. I was actually in the top 10 percent at my school (private if that matters). I was involved in the community and in school activities. I began working at 16 and have kept working since then. The problem came when deciding what to do with my future: STEM major or humanities? Follow my dream as a writer or pick a more suitable career? Do I even have the fortitude to follow through with a STEM major, after all I am not great at math. What about library work? How about insurance?

To say I was at a loss was an understatement. I was absolutely clueless about where I was headed so I decided to check out completely. I worked various jobs, volunteered, and traveled. During this time, I also did a lot of introspection. It was only after two years that I began to form an actual plan about my future, to save, to invest money and to actively write for a living.

There are plenty of people who did or are doing what I did: drop out, work, and find out what you want from life. We didn’t plan anything in high school and thus have wasted the first few years of our twenties. And yes, I do mean wasted.

People like me shouldn’t have dove straight into college after high school. It was a waste of money and time. I should have taken the opportunity to explore AA degrees or trade schools or worked my way up the corporate ladder instead of sitting in class wondering if I was making a mistake.

I wasn’t ready for college and there are some kids that never are ready. Of course there are those who don’t want to go but feel pressured into doing so. I am here to say DON’T FEEL PRESSURED! You can make money any old way and have a career that doesn’t involve a four year university. It will involve hard work, but at least you don’t have to sit through a painful Oral Presentation Class or worse a interpretive dance class you must take to fulfill GE requirements (seriously?).

I wish our society was honest when it came to college. I wish high schools would bring back work programs where students at the junior and senior level were assigned to shadow at a local company like a law firm, retail store, museum, or mechanic shop. I wish trade schools were recommended in the same breath as UCLA or Berkeley. I wish we didn’t equate college with wealth, because furthering your education means just that. It doesn’t mean “get a degree, make a hundred thousand a year instantly.”

This was a rambling mess, but I hope the message got across.

Happy Fourth of July!

Fourth of July- BBQ, cheeseburgers, family, beer & wine, and of course the lovely colorful explosions of fireworks. Wherever you are, I wish you a happy fourth!

http://www.public-domain-image.com (public domain image)

*pic Anna Cervova FIREWORKS, (public domain not copyrighted, no rights reserved, royalty free stock photo)  http://www.public-domain-image.com/miscellaneous/firework/slides/fireworks.html

The Value of Persistence

How is success achieved? We study rich entrepreneurs and elite business people to find the nugget of gold that made them wealthy. Maybe it was pure luck or networking or perhaps they had a very good idea/product. Rarely is success attributed to good old fashioned hard work.

Living in a society where our every need and whim can be instantly gratified dulls our work ethic. Often we forget that if you want something, you have to work for it and work hard. Persistence is key to success. You can’t just give up whenever you hit a roadblock or, worse, fail to even get up before noon.

Success is a long, strange and hard journey. It requires sacrifice, delayed gratification and persistence. It does not mean tweeting endlessly about random things, it does not mean getting drunk nearly every night, it does not mean calling out of work at least once a week and it certainly does not mean you can give up because the task at hand is just too hard.

Obstacles cannot crush me
Every obstacle yields to stern resolve
He who is fixed to a star does not change
his mind.

-Leonardo da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (Richter 1888)

Volume I, Section X , p. 682

Book Review: Buddhism, Plain & Simple

One of the many things that has bothered me when reading books on spirituality is the sense that the authors is trying to sell me something. Not sell me on the idea of being spiritual, or new agey or what have you, but sell me a product the author seems is important for my journey on self discovery.

That isn’t so with Buddhism, Plain & Simple written by Steve Hagen. Hagen takes away all the decorative flourishes the west- and even the east- has wrapped around Buddhism. He manages to strip it down to the bare essentials, to what the Buddha, or Gautama, intended it to be ( if the Buddha intended anything to come from it all, that is). Hagen’s main point is that there is no real trick to Buddhism, to spiritual freedom, enlightenment. All you need to do is wake up; all you need to do is see.

This rather abstract advice really isn’t so abstract, nor is it difficult to put into practice, even though, yeah, it kinda is. That is one of the most frustrating things about this book. It is simple, and in it’s simplicity it totally lost me. It wasn’t until I neared the end of the book that I finally caught on to what Hagen was saying (I think):

“To see doesn’t mean to initiate a program of inaction…….the question is whether or not we’re awake….. What we have to do is see what’s happening in each moment, and base our actions on what we see, not on what we think. When we actually see what’s happening, when we see the natural order of things…. we’ll cease to act in defiance of Reality” (p.148).

That is Hagen’s primary focus: seeing reality for what it is, but not distancing from it; accepting the Truth of all things especially oneself.

If you are looking around for a book on Buddhism, I’d recommend this one.

Hagen, Steve. Buddhism Plain & Simple. New York: Broadway Books, 2007.

Embrace the Options: Alternative Jobs for the New Age II

It’s time to get creative with work again. Ready for more alternative options to the regular 9 to 5? Then, here we go:

1. Web Developer

Web developer is one of those trendy jobs that people toss out as if to say, “Oh! Better catch the wave before technology dies out,” or worse, “Become a web developer..it’s so easy!”

In truth, there are various aspects to being a web developer. There are sometimes jobs that require simple, plain text and others that are more complex; big companies have large teams of developers that are designated their own project part like client relations, back/front end development. That is what makes this career so exciting. There is so much to do so you never get bored.

Another great thing about this job? It can be self-taught. Learn HTML, Java, CSS, Python, work on small projects to improve your skills, start a site, make a portfolio, look around for non-paying opportunities in order to have references. It will take time and perseverance, but this job has a nice payoff.

2. Nitpicker (Lice Removal)

Yup. If you are not so much inclined towards tech and are better with children and aren’t squeamish, then become a nitpicker. Sign on with any number of nitpicking companies (look on Craigslist or Indeed), meet with itchy headed clients, pick out the lice and get paid a pretty penny for it. This would be a good opportunity for moms because nitpicking is mostly done part time. It is also a great path towards self employment. Just a year or so establishing connections and you can have a nice part time business.

3. Bar Back

Not a bartender…not yet, anyway. Bar backs functions almost like bartender’s assistants. They wash glasses, re-stock shelves with alcohol, act as servers when needed and do everything except make drinks. This can be done either part time or full time. Tips are often split between the bar back and the bartender and if you’re lucky, you can learn on job to become a bartender. These jobs are very popular with travelers, so if you ever wondered how you’d be able to sight see while earning money abroad this is definitely one way.

4. Instructors (GMAT, LSAT, SAT, GRE)

Got teaching experience? Fantastic! Join up with test prep companies like Manhattan Prep, Kaplan, or Revolution Prep and start a new career. Just be warned that even though ads claim to pay a wage of $112 an hour, it doesn’t mean that’s what you will be paid, nor does it mean you will be working full time. Instructors can work as little as three hours a week.

5. Pet Groomer

A job working with animals is both fun and smart. People love their pets and will pay handsomely to keep their furry friends happy. To become a pet groomer you can go to a pet grooming school and get certified or (my favorite) work your way up from the top. Look around your neighborhood for self employed groomers and ask to apprentice under them; snag a job in a private owned shop and learn to groom while going about other tasks like cashiering and cleaning.

I love these lists so I will be back with more at a later date.