Archive for the 'Memoirette' Category

My Quest to Quit Writing Always Fails

So I went to sleep yesterday lamenting that I couldn’t figure a way out of what my subconscious told me, “Hey! It’s time to rewrite.” Oh joys, I hate you. As usual, the old subconscious punished me by sending me a weird dream that I wish I could remember all of because it was like a 1920′s hardboiled detective thing only with Giant Monsters in it. There was a whale-looking thing that was flying with two tails. Made Godzilla and the Kaiju team look normal. All the usual characters were there as well. You had the fair maid, the scientist/skeptic, and then the helpless bystanders.

Yeah, my subconscious punishes me for not writing. Why can’t I quit writing? Because my subconscious thinks it is Picasso and me, my conscious thinks it is a nutball that needs to shut up once in a while. Why can’t I just put the creative side and the intuitive side on hold once in a while and shut up? I guess because at some point when I do that my subconscious always finds a way to win the battle. It either sends a cool dream or when I ignore it I suddenly find myself doing something that I shouldn’t be doing, and blinking at myself.

When I don’t write I talk to myself a lot, stare at people and wonder what their life story is, often inserting the absurd into the mix. My mind wanders over their life story and I want to craft something from the fact that their shoelaces are untied this very moment.

Maybe once you are a writer you always are? Or maybe that’s just me. Stories have been part of my life and coping mechanism for so long that I often find myself thinking two thoughts at the same time–one about my story in the background and in the foreground I have whatever I’m talking about to the other person. Probably makes me look very unengaged. Maybe it’s the lack of proper sleep since the bed bugs, but I think it’s also a lifetime of loving stories so much that they permeate my every day existence.

Anyway, Subconscious, if you’re listening: I hate you, even if you know better than I do.

Dream Jobs

My ideal job is long term and permanent. Probably because I have that Korean mindset, albeit from the 1980′s, where you could have a job for 10 years, and not flinch because there was upwards mobility.

But then when I was little I also thought having a husband would be nice too.

Currently I would like to be a website designer at a company–not doing the  programming, but doing the designing. I’ll compromise on doing just one or the other side of that for a while.

I would ideally some day be good enough to design multiple websites from a web design firm–that way I can ask fellow designers for advice and we can work as a team. I’ve always wanted some version of that–so I can get experience with working on multiple websites. Maybe if the economy turns around I can do that. I like simple and clean websites, from the architecture to the design. Simple Elegance.

I also would like to be published (In fiction). But I’m probably dreaming that at the moment. Sometimes I have doubts because I’m not sure if my Korean grammarisms are getting in the way. Sometimes I just want to say “Screw it, I’ll write it my way” but then I oscillate to the other side and say that I’ll never get published if I have that attitude. I’m not sure at times what I bring to the writing game and often whine (at least to myself) that I’m either too far ahead or too far behind. I ask myself to quit, but then I’m miserable when I do quit.

Other dream jobs I would like (Not likely to happen):

Working for Viz comics as a copy editor.

Working for a manga/manhwa company doing copy editing.

Working for a Shineh Website company I can point to.

Working as an author on a Big book deal big enough to get it translated into Korean.

Have a book sell big enough to make it into a Korean drama. (Well, delusions are made worse by selecting actors to play the parts in my books)

Work with training animals. (I’ve always wanted to try it once…)

Eventually, I would like things to stabilize so that I can do charity too… I kinda wanted to work in a dog shelter, for example. Or work to help advocate for adoption advocacy stuff. I like doing that sort of thing.

People think being rich is everything in this world, but what I want is things that are fun, interesting and make my heart feel good at the end of the day. After all, I worked at Tokyopop without pay or college credits for free for a while and I didn’t care… ’cause really I was having fun. (Until they told me I should get paid then I was like OK.)