Being a "people person" is over rated.

It's looking like I'm not going to be hired to do the data entry job. It has now been 72 hours since my interview, and I was told that I would be contacted within 48 if I was hired. And it never occurred to me to ask for a phone number that I could call. Is that like bad ettiquette anyway? "Hello. I was the totally amazing interviewee of 72 hours ago-- to the minute, seriously. And I was thinking its time that you just give me the job. Whattaya say? I told you I could start yesterday, remember? Think of the work I could already be doing for you if had simply taken the time to call me earlier. What's my schedule?"

I think I might have cursed myself because the one question I froze up on was "Are you a people person?" And there was this brief moment when I considered actually being honest and saying that the social aspect of work is often overwhelming to me and probably the hardest thing for me to deal with. I hesitated just for a second, but it might have cost me the job. Who knows? I would have thought that data entry would be just the sort of job for the socially impaired anyway, since I never knew you had to be a "people person" to type accurately.

But I still have the blogging job, which I officially started yesterday. It's got to be the easiest thing to write out some little blurb and throw it online. I'm happy to have something I can do that I actually enjoy that people will pay me to do. I just want them to pay me a little more. It's something and being really poor has its charms anyway... Right?

I'm a freelance writer now!

So I'm hired to blog. It's all stuff about health and exercise, and I've learned a whole lot about that stuff since I was diagnosed with diabetes. Right now it's all random and I get paid per blog. I'm so excited to be starting my first real paid writing job! Yippee doo!

Ok, I don't know where "yippee doo" came from, but I do have reason to be happy. It doesn't pay a ton, but most writers make very little money. It's miraculous when a writer can actually live exclusively off writing- most have their "real" job and write in their spare time. I'm happy to have the opportunity to get my career started. Someday, it will be exclusively my novels, but for now getting some freelance jobs will look good on my resume.

Ha ha ha. A writing resume. How awesome!

I'm not the protagonist!

So I have spent most of my summer looking for work and it is one of the most frustrating things in the universe. But I have some hopeful prospects, as of today. One online business might hire me to blog for them and I just landed an interview for a summer data entry job. I know, data entry sounds boring, but my friend did the same job last summer, and she said it wasn't bad at all. So I feel excited at the possibility.

I have been spending a lot of time this last week working on my latest book. I figured since I actually had time for the first time in a long time, I should take advantage of it. So I got to work and just wrote page after page. Writing is funny because I really do get rusty at it. When I do it regularly (as in every day) it comes naturally and I don't have to stop and think of how I will proceed or what words I will use in this instance. But when I'm out of practice, it is slower and takes a lot of concentration. It's like stretching your muscles before working out.

But it is already getting easier after only a week. I find myself anxious to get back to the story, thinking constantly of how the poor character is going to get out of one situation or another. I am trying to write a protagonist who is different than I am in certain key characteristics and I've been surprised at how often I want to make him do the things I would do in the same circumstances. I have to stop myself and say, "No, no. He would not react that way. Think about how he would react..."

The easiest thing for a writer to do is to go autobiographical, to lean heavily on personal experience and insight when creating the main character. I already did that one in my first completed novel (the one I worked so hard on but now keep carefully hidden away for no one in the world to read). Now I have to put a lot of attention into making my current main character unlike me so that the novel is HIS story, not mine. It's surprisingly hard to do, but I know it will get easier with practice. The characters are supposed to be like real people you could know, but not like real people that actually exist.

Picnic near Vernal.

I love quakie trees and they are in abundance in the High Uinta Mountains. We came out to Vernal for Sara's high school graduation and yesterday my family had a picnic up on the mountain. It was so fun! Everything is so green with the spring. My dad made pork chops, which were delicious. We all tried napping on a blanket, but there were a lot of fire ants that made sleeping difficult. Sara and her boyfriend Kyle still managed to sleep, but I don't know how with all the ants crawling all over them. We went up Grizzly Ridge and Paul climbed a tower that is at least fifty feet high. I was thinking that someday when we have a little kid like Paul, I will never have peace of mind.

Ah. Shoes and water bottles.

I spent most of the day watching my friend's one-year-old Isaac. He's got to be one of the easiest kids to babysit. If you want to play with him, he'll laugh and have fun, but if you want to do something else, he'll happily entertain himself for hours. He has a lot of toys, but he seems to be more entertained by objects like shoes and water bottles. I've noticed this about kids. They always like the unusual things as if the new expensive noise-making toy is just not that cool. Boo ya for boxes, which seem to be a universal favorite of toddlers the world over.

I'm an Associate... or something like that. :)

Today my Associates Degree diploma came in the mail. It was exciting! Since we didn't actually walk in line at our graduation from UVU, it didn't really seem really or significant. "Yeah, so I finally finished all the classes from the pink paper... Yay." (The English department's list classes is pink, in case that confused you.)

But getting the fancy certificate in the mail cheered me up a lot. It suddenly made it seem like all the time I spent studying and forcing myself to class when I was freaking sick were worth it. I was slow getting it because of the illness and I often felt like it couldn't be worth it. But the letters on the certificate are shiny and everyone knows that a certificate with shiny letters is superior to one with dull letters....

Big news for my little sister.

My sister Sara is graduating from high school this week and it is so weird! She has really grown up fast. I still catch myself thinking of her as the little kid that she was back when I lived with my parents, but that was years ago and Sara isn't little anymore.

I don't know if circumstances will allow me to make it to her graduation, but I'm really proud of her for getting to this point. I remember how I felt at my own high school graduation, as if all of life lay at my feet for the taking. I hope she feels that way too, and that she finds life to be an adventure. :)