Thoughts on the Journey

I left my host's place before noon today and checked into the Holiday Inn by a little after 2. They gave me a great rate for staying longer term and there's a furnished apartment, extended stay place across the street that I'm going to talk to and see how they work out. The hope is that I'll have my own place by the end of October, but I'm going to have numerous back up plans in case that doesn't happen.

I'm going to find a thank you card and some sort of basket of goodies to thank my host for keeping me for so long. The leaving went pretty well but I want to make sure to give her a nice gift once I've had time to really stretch a bit more. Its amazing to look at the hotel room, which isn't huge but I have my own TV, there's a fridge and outlets so I can use my kettle, they'll make me breakfast and I'm within walking distance of the school and downtown Birmingham. Talking on the phone with my mom, she said that I sound more like me and I think that's true; sharing a space for so long has been much more stressful than I realized. Now that I'm not doing it, I feel like this huge weight is off of me. My mom also pointed out that finding a new place to live should be fun and since I've been feeling pressed in terms of time, it hasn't been fun, its felt horribly rushed. Now I've got more time to take my time and find the right place for me.

At the moment I'm in a Starbucks that I walked to and I'm thinking about getting myself a new ring. I should explain about the jewelery I always wear and why that's one. I think the first ring I had that I wore all the time was my high school ring, then one from a boyfriend, then I picked up this beautiful ring when I spent a month in France, then my college ring from Randolph-Macon Woman's College, I stopped wearing it when they became co-ed though it still lives next to my bed. After that I somehow ended up having rings to coincide with all my big life shifts, sometimes bracelets as well but my current one from Ann Arbor is still together and has next to it a bracelet from my older brother and his wife that was a Christmas present. They love buying me jewelery, but it doesn't always perfectly fit my style, this bracelet does. The jewelery that changes every day are my earrings and necklace and I have many options for those, but watch, bracelets and ring stay the same. Just since my amber ring was getting bent and broken, I haven't been wearing it and its time for a new one. I can feel the callous it created as I have big knuckled and small fingers.

Tonight I'm considering going to see possibly Looper if I can find it at one of the two theaters in town here, but if I can't I will enjoy watching my very own TV. I'm going to miss Zadie snuggles when I come home, but not having to pass through someone else's space will be fantastic.

Tomorrow is the All School Picnic, which sounds like a bit of a carnival with lots of groups like clubs, teams and classes selling stuff for fundraisers. It should be a lot of fun and rather chaotic but I don't have to stay for all of it just as much as I want and then Monday, I will be so much closer to school. This was the right step for me.

Now to post all the fic I wrote yesterday as there were a lot of them and I'd rather not lose track of them.
( Friday Fics )

To start off a meme that I always enjoy as I love taking photographs.

Suggest something for me to photograph.

Next I'm going to do some writing on topics that were asked about from the last meme, which is still open. Suggestions make me happy as they provide other things to write about other than job slog.

bjornwilde who asked How about...folk tales. Make of that what you will. = D

Folktales are some of my favorite stories as they're the stories that cultures hold onto through the generations, because they speak to something true. One reason I loved studying Classical literature is because you can watch how the stories of the Greek gods are reimagined by various writers, artists and changed throughout time. It's possible to see this in other kinds of stories; trickster tales, fairy tales, and others. They fascinate me and someday I want to run a youth program built around the idea of the power of stories and how through reinterpretation we learn our own voice and then can tell our stories.

bodldops asked Best RP character you've ever had - canon, noncanon, utterly crack, whatevs.

Now this is something I can happily write about for a rather long time, because a lot of my life is divided up by what I was roleplaying at that time. So the answer is a tricky one for me, because it's hard to pick truly, truly favorite. Instead I'm going to ramble on about the characters that stand out for the parts of my roleplaying life.

Gwyn-half-elf Bard for D&D, I created Gwyn at summer camp where I learned how to play D&D from one of the best DMs, I've ever had in my life. At that point, I was realizing that I was a storyteller so I eagerly took the chance to create a backstory for Gwyn, which the DM liked enough that he raised her starting level. She is the character that I play whenever I play D&D, so I've played her at cons and she and those early games are why I love roleplaying as I do.

Various Vampire: the Masquerade characters-From my sophomore year of high school to the summer between my first and second year of college, I played in a Vampire LARP. It's hard to say any of those characters were a favorite as many of them were rather awful but I loved LARPing. I adore the chance to get dressed up and improvise as a character, it makes me so happy. Also that period when I became familiar with the various Worlds of Darkness games and discovered Changeling, which was the game that taught me how to run a game.

Sir William ap Fiona This character was an NPC for the Changeling LARP that I ran at Randolph-Macon Woman's College and still one of my favorites. He gave me an excuse to wear beautiful suits and hats, flirt with everyone as I sneakily moved the plot along. My players were wonderful and created plot where I had only left hints of it. I also ran a Changeling tabletop game and over the years, there was drama and chaos but a lot of fun. That experience taught me how much of a difference, the right group of players makes. When I played in high school, a lot of things got in the way of the game but in college, we all worked to play. We always had a blast getting dressed up, helping each other with costumes and thanks to one of those players, I actually have a Fiona crest wall hanging.

Will Scarlett One of those amazing players introduced me to Milliways and I brought in Will. At the end of February, I'll have been playing in Milliways for five years and I hope there's more. Will is a character that I've been writing in some form since I was about twelve and in Milliways, he's grown. He's also how I've learned LJRP, which adds collaborative writing to the mixture of creativity that makes up roleplaying. He's the one that I can always come back to and though I have others that I currently play more, he's a constant for me.

I'm going to end with a little explanation of my roller coaster week but I'm trying to not do too much as I have this bad habit of twisting myself in knots. This week began with a sense of many things weighing on me that needed doing and not really knowing where to start. On Sunday I was able to write and post a story that had been in the back of my mind. Monday and Tuesday were a tired blur with Tuesday listening to a library head talking about her hiring. Wednesday, I hauled myself out of bed early when I didn't have to, but did allow a fellow librarian to have some more time.

Then I went out, freaked out about all the jobs I wanted to apply for and how I had no time. After a good conversation with my parents, I sat myself down and applied for two of them. I think if I block off two or three hours every week when I put on music and just apply, I will find a job. So while the morning was strange, it helped me accomplish things. Yesterday I met with an old college friend of my dad's who works at Michigan and had a slightly surreal experience of a mock interview mixed with talking with him. It was informative but odd and I hope to talk to him another time without that odd framing device.

The main reason I think this week has been so tough on me is I'm putting pressure on myself due to job stuff and so my nerves feel rubbed rather raw. That means that I'm more sensitive to things that normally wouldn't bother me. I'll try and keep everyone aware of how I'm feeling and do my best not to snap and instead say, I need space. I might not always manage it but that's what's going on in my head.

Today's been a good day, my present shopping is going well and work went quickly. I've been having lots of wonderful RP threads and I'm just feeling hopeful. Here's the five word meme that appeared on kit_the_brave's journal.

Comment to this post, and I will list five things I associate with you, They might make sense or they might be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your LJ (or just add a reply back to me). Other people (including me) can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.

Library school
I just finished my masters' degree at the University of Michigan School of Information and I feel like I keep coming up for breath. It was an amazing two years full of so many projects and long nights and hope. As I'm still working on campus as a librarian, I keep expecting to have a paper due and it's weird but nice not to. Now I'm trying to find a job but I know that I'm in the right profession.

Narnia
I think the Narnia books were the first series that I really went head first into as a little kid. They're still some of my favorite books and I've enjoyed the movie adaptations. I grew up with the BBC ones and liked the newer ones though I've yet to see Dawn Treader. It's not the most complex world building but Narnia feels true and I love that about it. My confession is that even though I own it, I have yet to actually read The Last Battle since I don't want the series to end. I've felt that way since I think I was about twelve when I decided that I wouldn't read it. And another odd story is that I didn't know about the Christian allegory element until I went to college and a friend told me about it. I admit I felt a bit stupid about it but they're beautiful fantasy first for me. Using the icon because it's a Narnian one I don't use a lot and the casting for Kirke just felt right for me.

Milliways
This coming February will be my fifth year at Milliways and it's one of my favorite communities to ever be a member of. I've found friends, improved my writing and seen my life and circles grow. Somehow I've gone from just playing Will Scarlett to having a roster of eight pups and then two that live over at Mixed Muses.

East Coast
I grew up in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania and I consider Philadelphia to be my city. I love the variety of the East Coast and it's one of my favorite places. In terms of what I like to eat and some of my ideas, I know my East Coastness really comes through at times. One of the weird ways it does is my religion as I was raised a Quaker. In Pennsylvania, that's fairly normal but getting farther out and people look confused.

Vorkosigans
I love this series so much. It's how to do character and plot and world building right. The friend who told me about the Christian allegories in Narnia also hooked me on the Vorkosigan books. Basically she had all of them and just kept giving them to me and I read and read. I own almost all of them and they're a series I constantly go back and reread, which I only do with the ones I really love.

I don't have a lot of words about Norway or Amy Winehouse as any death is a loss and so many deaths at once is hard to comprehend. The thing I find scariest is how quickly the world turns these deaths to their own use instead of mourning and allowing time between death and anger. That's one of the dangers of how fast our connected world moves, a version can be written that says one thing no matter if its true as long as it satisfies someone. I hope that some justice can be found and those who lost someone will find time to heal.

Today I finally saw Harry Potter and I enjoyed it. The theater was almost full, which was a really nice surprise though it was a quiet audience. I was one of maybe five or ten people who clapped at various points.
( More Thoughts, slightly nostalgic and probably spoilers )

After the movie, I walked into a drenching rain to get a not so great pizza at a restaurant called Carlyle's that was trying to be much snazzier than it is. It was all dressed up like a really nice steak house but the food I had was just okay.

Another ending I just realized I should mention is Borders, which I keep hearing more and more about since this is their home base. They were my first big bookstore that I could walk to and buy my own books. Its fascinating to get all these emails on my SI listserve of students and faculty talking about Borders and what it meant to them and what their closings means. At some point I will go shopping as I walk by them all the time, its going to be hard to see that big store empty.

Now I'm home, my stomach hurts and the heat has lifted slightly. Life is feeling quite full at the moment. In about two weeks, I have my last class at Michigan and then I dive fully into job searching. At the end of August, my brother gets married and hopefully in not too long, I will find a job and make my next step.

Today is the first day that I've truly felt like I actually have finished the semester. I don't have to work at all this weekend, which hasn't happened since I think the semester started back in January. Even during Spring Break, I still worked both of those weekends so its a little surreal and wonderful to sleep in on a Saturday, I think I've needed it. Also when I woke up today, I realized that the walking iris plant that I carried with me from Delaware bloomed. I'll put a picture up of it later, it makes me so happy, because I've killed a lot of plants since I moved here.

Now the title of this entry comes from the fact that I've been thinking about the fact that I just finished my first year of a two year graduate program. Compared to the other times I've been in school in Wellington and at Randolph-Macon Woman's College, I've been doing a lot less writing for all of my classes. This has been kind of strange for me, but useful. SI is focused on practical experience mixed in with a lot of theory, which is a balance that I really like. For me this has meant that I've been doing a lot of types of writing that are new to me like business writing, a lot of business writing.

The practical stuff has been a real variety from acting as business consultants to spending time getting to know the professional organizations of some of the many varieties of librarians. In terms of all the things that I've done so far, I think the one I'm most proud of is creating and working on my professional blog over at Nurturing Stories, because I've learned to reflect a lot on why I'm making some of the choices in libraries that I am. I plan on keeping it up, because its really useful for me to take the time to step back and think about my future through that medium.

In terms of my creative writing, I've been doing lots of shorter fics mainly from prompts. This is a style that happens to suit how I write, because I tend to be drawn to capturing small moments as opposed to longer stories. So at some point this weekend, I'll be putting up another prompt meme, because I love writing stories for people. One thing I hope to do this summer is push myself in terms of my creative writing. I know that I can write longer stories, Yuletide showed me that I'm better at it than I think and many of you have heard me bounce around a lot of ideas for longer fic. So I would be grateful if there's a story that you've always wanted me to write or have heard me talk about writing if you would mention it in the comments. Comment notifications are reminders of what I should do and thus very helpful to me.

In terms of the rest of the summer. I haven't heard back from the library where I had an interview or to the other place I sent an application for. At this point in time, I'm not going to worry about either of them. Instead I'm going to enjoy being on vacation and that my time is my own again.