Life Updates:
· Finished my internship
o It’s already been almost two weeks since I’ve completed my fall internship. Kinda missing that newspaper smell when I would arrive into their office, though, haha.
· I’ve been sick
o Last Tuesday, I knew I was in trouble when my throat was hurting all day. And despite dramatically increasing my Vitamin C that day, I still woke up the following morning with a cold. As of today, I’m probably about 95% better now. I still occasionally have a cough, and my voice seems raspy at times, but at least I feel like a functional human being now.
· My sister’s Floridian friend; snow
o My sister officially graduated from college last Saturday (even though she technically finished school back in August), and her best friend from Florida flew up to witness the ceremony. She arrived on Thursday and left very early Sunday morning. The entire time, I was worried I was going to get her sick, since she was living in our house during her stay. (I had never met her in-person prior to last week.) In the end, she did get sick, but it seems like she caught her husband’s flu virus (that he had before she came to visit us).
o Last week, here in Michigan, we were also dumped with a ton of snow. The first real snowfall of the season this year. The Floridian had only ever seen snow three times in her life before her trip, so she was pretty excited. As for myself, I was not happy at how many times I had to unbury my car because I have to park outside. (But at least the engine has been starting!)
· A mountain of emails
o Do you remember me once stating how I graduated with my second degree last December? Well, it’s been a year now, so my email account for the school officially disappeared yesterday. Last Wednesday, I finally buckled down and began sorting through all 724 messages in my inbox (my outbox had 100-something), trying to decide what was worth saving. On Sunday, I sat down and had to forward all those important messages to my main email. It took a little over three hours, and I managed to save about 20% of my emails, but I did it. The task was incredibly time-consuming, though.
· Scrambling with Christmas shopping
o Like many other people, I got behind with all of my gift shopping this year. I was originally planning on going out last week, but between the snow and me getting sick, I was in no shape to go out. On Monday, I literally had only two small items – clearly not covering anyone on my list. And Christmas is officially less than a week away. I hate going to stores around this time of the year because of how crazy busy it gets, but I didn’t have much of a choice. (I really wish I could just give everyone a book. It’d make my life easier, and I’d have so much fun picking out each novel for everyone. But alas.) So I was in a mild state of panic, trying to accomplish all of my shopping. Luckily, as of today, I managed to finish buying all of my gifts.
Creative/Literary Pursuits:
· Post-NaNo
o I’ve been slowly chipping away at separating my NaNo stories from its central document. I’m not transferring all of them into their own document - only the ones I deem “good” or “has potential”. (The number is 20, so I guess it’s a majority of the stories, haha.)
o Once I’ve pasted each story into its individual document, I’ve also been reading through them and doing simple proofreading edits. A couple of my errors have me shaking my head at the silly mistakes. For example, in one story, I had wrote, “His sleeves were rolled up to his sleeves.” The last “sleeve” is supposed to be “elbows”, but all I kept imagining were an infinity of sleeves on this character’s arm, constantly rolled up to expose another set of sleeves. In another story, I had accidentally renamed a cat near the story’s end. Twice. This is why it’s important to read through your work, everyone.
· Wrote a poem
o First off, I am not much of a poetry person. I can totally appreciate the art form, but I’ve never quite had a knack for it. Since 2011, I tend to only write two poems a year. (I don’t set out to do this; it’s just a Thing that I discovered about myself.) Anyway, the poem I wrote last week became my third poem this year, so that’s pretty good? Quality-wise, I think my February poem is better, but this December poem is better than my August poem, so there’s that.
· Books
o On Dec 12, I finally finished Roth’s book. (It’s about time.) Of course, what happens? I pick up a new book the very next day. Instead of grabbing one of my older books sitting in my pile, I reached for the most recent one: TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN by John Green.
§ The book was everything, yet nothing, what I expected when I initially cracked it open. The book is more on the shorter side with 286 pages, and I blew through it within five days. In fact, my entire to-do list on Dec 14 was basically thrown out of the window while I tried to read as much as I could that day. Highly recommend Green’s novel.
So, yeah…that’s what I’ve been up to lately. I wasn’t kidding when I said I’ve been busy.
P.S. Stay healthy, everyone! Being sick during the holidays is not a fun thing. (That is, unless you’re taking drastic measures to avoid your relatives. Then by all means…)
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