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Wednesday, 30 June 2010

Friday, 11 June 2010

  • Another Year Gone...

    And so my birthday has rolled around again. This past year was an interesting one, full of things that I did that I have not in the past, full of lessons that I needed to relearn, and full of information about my own life that I needed to discover.

    Things that I did that were new:
    I traveled to New York City on a tourist trip with my friends. I had never organized that involved a trip before, and it was nice to see it come to fruition. It was a wonderful time of visiting with those girls in a way that I had not done for a long time. Plus, we got to see the city.

    I went to Boston and heard a Star Wars Overture played by a live orchestra at the Hatchshell along the Charles River. Not to be forgotten soon.

    I started Grad School. More about this later, but this felt like something a long time coming. After visiting Ireland in 2008, and deciding Trinity College was not going to work, UConn felt less daunting, and I was excited about moving forward with my career, even if it did mean leaving the American Antiquarian Society.

    I worked 60+ hours a week for three months straight.

    I am employed by Walmart. Of all the places I thought I'd end up, Walmart was nowhere on that list. But I am very grateful to them for the ways they have worked with me around my school schedule. They have been wonderful to me.

    I met people born in foreign countries and far off continents, and I call them my friends.

    Information discovered about my own Life:
    I am blessed to live in the United States of America. Information driven home by interactions with Ghanaian nationals who have so little in their home country, while I have so much.

    I can get up early, and go to bed late, and still function in a way approximating normality.

    I am not an academic historian. The arguments and specialization... it's not for me. I prefer to reach a wide audience, with a broad interpretation, and broad knowledge base that I can use to (1) get people interested in their history, and (2) make them think about the historians craft. I also discovered that I do not like the discipline inherent in the discipline of history. Some is good, but I think History should be more freeform and flowing, and encompassing more forms than are currently thought of as history. But I am currently in an academic history program, and will be here for another semester at least.
    A PhD is not in my foreseeable future.

    I will not talk in class unless I have something valuable to add. If I'm not speaking, I have nothing to contribute. If you try to push me, you will get words and phrases that do not make sense with each other, and then we are both uncomfortable.

    I need a set schedule to motivate me to do work. It is really hard to get up, then sit in my room and work. I need to move, to go somewhere else in order to do what needs to be done.

    If my heart and my head are not functioning as one, I am a mess, and even more scatterbrained than normal. If they work together, however, it can seem as though everything in the world is going right.

    Life Lessons I needed to relearn:
    I can do nothing without God who strengthens me, gives me wisdom, and reminds me constantly that I am just a human, and I have so much more sanctification to undergo before I am like Christ.

    I learned things about love that I had known in my head. My heart needed to learn them as well.

    God brings hardship into our lives so that we learn to trust Him more.

    We don't know what is in our future. Only God does. But everything He does in our future, and in our present, He does for our good, and for His glory. Therefore, all worries are ridiculous if we are truly God's children.

    Michelle

Saturday, 29 May 2010

  • You know a movie is perfect for you when...

    1. The movie costumes are things you would actually consider making and wearing to events (And in some cases started making before you even saw the movie for the first time)

    2. You reach the end, and all you can think of is... I need to kill some more people in my story.

    3. (closely related) You start thinking how you can use some insights you gained from the movie in your writing projects

    4. You feel like crying at least at one point during the movie

    5. You get annoyed when the characters act in stupid ways

    6. Your pulse picks up at the action scenes

    7. You go to see the movie in the theater, and all the previews are from movies you think you would also like to see

    8. the movie finishes, and you mentally go over your calendar for the next month, wondering if you will be able to squeeze in another viewing

    9. each death of the good guys comes in a meaningful way, and you realize you're going to miss their contributions to the storyline

    10. You wish you were athletic enough to get into parkour.

    11. You start to think even harder about LARP

    12. Your stories call you. "Come, help me! I need to be written! Don't leave me here, get to the good stuff!"

    13. you wonder, "will I ever have at least some of the emotional impact on other people that this movie had on me?"

    I knew Prince of Persia was a movie right up my alley. I just had no idea how it would start the creative energies flowing. It's a fabulous movie. I'd recommend it to anyone who was even contemplating watching it. Unless,of course, you don't share my movie tastes for action and adventure and fantasy. In which case you may be unimpressed. (do you know how hard it is for me to imagine someone unimpressed by the movie?)

Wednesday, 19 May 2010

Wednesday, 14 April 2010

  • Writing Hiatus

    Hiatus is such an odd word. It means a suspension, an interruption or decline in the intensity of an activity. When I say I am on a writing hiatus, that doesn't really catch what I mean. For there has been no suspension, no interruption nor decline in intensity of my writing.

    Oh no.

    In fact, recently there has been an increase in the intensity of my writing ventures. For an example, let me talk briefly about my week last week. I had to write 25-32 pages on Newport (RI) and the Memory of the American Revolution. At the beginning of the week (Monday) I had a grand total of three pages. Tuesday was a wash. Wednesday I made my last (hopefully) archive trip to get more primary sources. Thursday I wrote 16 pages/4000 words. Friday and Saturday I worked at Walmart, but managed to read two of the articles I was using in the project. Sunday night I managed to write another six pages until 1:00 am Monday morning when I made the decision to go to sleep. I then woke up six hours later and finished with 26 pages by 10:00 am Monday morning. The intensity has not decreased at all.

    It has only changed.

    Writing the Newport paper was fun, in a weird, workaholic way. The sources I used, and the argument I made, kept me going mentally. But it's not the same as sitting down and writing three chapters or a short story of fiction. My hiatus - as that word is understood - is in fiction writing, and fiction reading.

    One of my friends from work asked me when was the last time I read something for fun.

    "I'm not sure," I answered.

    He laughed, "I've only ever seen you carrying around and reading a serious book."

    I know. I have a whole list of things to read, and things to write, once May comes around and I have "time" to do a little fictionalizing. I miss Alathea. I left her hanging, sitting around the Tireschan camp with nothing to do and no one to talk to, waiting for me to come and increase the intensity of her activities. She's in for some changes, right around the corner. I just have to get her there.

    And then, of course, there are those short stories that popped up as I read Eighteenth Century newspapers, and ideas that came to me in dreams, and that one story that is just begging me to write it - The Princess of Grocery.

    I'll find time for them eventually, but until that time reappears, I return to my other writing... currently, the peer-review process for our 5102 projects. Ahh, original historical research projects... How we love thee, how we hate thee...

    Thank you for your indulgence, dear readers.

AnotherSecondMommy

  • Visit AnotherSecondMommy's Xanga Site
    • Name: Michelle
    • Gender: Female
    • Member Since: 8/21/2005

About Me

  • What to say?... I am from Auburn, MA, and have lived in three corners of the continental US: New England, Florida, and Washington State. I am a Reformed Baptist, and a member of an ARBCA church. My interests, well, I love Star Wars. No, that's too mild: I LOVE STAR WARS. I have seen all of the movies a million times, and read practically all of the books and anthologies. My two favorite characters are Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker. And that's across the entire Expanded Universe spectrum. Even though there have been numerous authors who tried to ruin Luke, but this is not the place for that kind of discussion...

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