Suddenly, I realize my name will never grace a list of 30 whatevers under 30. Although, I have been aware of this unrelenting march towards oblivion, it seems that it has happened so abruptly that I have reached this mile marker of 29. As each day passes, we add a day to our life’s tally. The earth does not cease rotating, the hours do not stop passing, and whatever the biological mechanism that gives wrinkles, greys hairs, and brittles bones does what it does unceasing. Nevertheless, it was so suddenly that the cashiers stopped asking me for identification when I purchased a pack of cigarettes. It seemed so jarring to me the day I realized that Kurt Cobain had killed himself 18 years ago or that I had spent more years on this earth than any of the great musicians that I had loved as a little girl in the sixth grade.
courtesy ifc
Now here it is the eve of my 29th birthday. I have witnessed 28 summers, falls, springs, and winters. It still feels so odd that there are people on this earth who do not have a story for where they were when the Towers fell on September 11. Yet somehow, I cannot shake the feeling that it was not long ago that I graduated from high school with all those promises of the bright future to see, the big things to do, and that feeling that I would take over the world.
A Bright Future? – courtesy biz02
So, how did it come to this? How is it that the days are closing in upon me? I have nearly 365 days left to write that novel or make the big life choices that I had naively thought I would take care of well before I was even close to being 30. It is a crushing weight to know that so many people had such high hopes for me nearly 15 years ago, even I, myself, thought that by 30 I’d be out of medical school, with a fancy house and a glamorous life.
Here I am, embarking upon the last year of my twenties, facing the truth that I have done nothing, gone nowhere, and seen little, and yet I had so much time to do it in. I can easily list people that I admire that did more than I can imagine before they were 30. Earnest Hemingway wrote and published both The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms before he was 30. George Orwell had written and published much including Down and Out in Paris and London before he turned 30. Then there are the people whom I abhor Snooki, Justin Beiber, and Paris Hilton all of whom, have been able to outpace me in writing.
And yet, I remain unpublished.
The sad thing is that I am not even sure if I will accomplish the things I want by the time I am 40. My main fear as I hit this last year of my 20’s is that if I don’t find some way to attempt to meet my goals, I’ll end up 50 years old with no discernible skills, a spotty CV, and still continuing to float through life.
I have changed the passion of my life so many times. At 15, I wanted to be a doctor. 18, a writer. 22, an accountant. 24, a writer again. 25, an editor. 26, a linguist and maybe a writer, or a teacher but mainly a linguist. Now as I approach 29, I have no clue. I am drawn to writing but also speech pathology and philosophy. In short, I have no clear idea what I want to do for the remainder of my days on earth.
However, part of my hesitation on being a writer is because I have never really gone anywhere. How can I write if I haven’t been outside of the northeastern United States other than a few trips to DC and Florida in 22 years and I don’t even know what stops me. I am a freelancer, so I am not tide down by a static career. I could go anywhere and do anything. However, sometimes in the night before I go to sleep, I fear that maybe I will never do anything.
L is for Loser? – courtesy carolineglick.com
My grandfather once told me that someone has to be the garbage man. So what if that is it, what if I cannot write and have not done the things I want to do because I am the person that has to be the lowly office clerk or maybe I’m the person that the universe has chosen to be a housewife and I’m just fighting it. Yet, more than that, if that is true, if when I die it turns out I never wrote a novel, never did anything that my heart yearned to do, what is the point. Why do I have such desire to do great things and yet in spite of everything I want, be unable to do any of those things at all?
Often, my writer friends will worry themselves that their first lines are not good enough and I will often point out to them, that I do not think first lines matter. However, I want to renege on that stance, or at least the general sentiment. After reading the first line of Araminta Star Matthew’s book Blind Hunger, I was a convert to the important first lines club. The very first line of the story is, “Patricia pressed her head into the plastic cocoon-hood of her Hazmat suit before sealing it shut around her collar bone.” I wanted to know what the author had planned for next.
The story is a great teen centered zombie apocalypse. Now, I know you cringe when I say teen centered, you think of pale-yet-sparkly teen vampires and listless teen girls but this story is far from that. It actually celebrates the unique viewpoints of youth. Kind of, like how John Hughes did not pander to us fans of 80’s coming of age films, this story reads true to the character.
What I also like is that the book is clearly written by a fan of the eventual zombie apocalypse, there is a back story to the whole thing that is as far from the cliché as they come. It is in fact how I imagine the start of the eventual zombie apocalypse, in a way, I had not thought of it as happening exactly the way Araminta wrote it. In fact, Ms. Matthews is a self-described zombie enthusiast, her inspiration for the story came from her and her partner “develop[ing] zombie apocalypse survival plans.” She said, “one day while we were examining the efficacy of taking shelter in a window-less Mason’s Lodge, I began to wonder how the very young and the very old would survive against zombies.” Like all good writers she thought on it more and then as she states, “it occurred to me that many probably wouldn’t, and then I started to imagine how it would work if all the adults became zombies and children had to survive against it.”
It being the holiday season, this book is perfect for a teen that refuses to read or the Zombie fan in your life (regardless of how old they might be). Here is a little blurb that Ms. Matthew wrote up:
Blind Hunger follows a gang of youth as they battle against an onslaught of zombie adults in this zombie apocalypse tale. Featuring a nine-year-old genius, sarcastic Goth tweenager, a rebellious young teen, and a picture-perfect jock young adult, this book has been described as “Breakfast Club with zombies” by reviewers. It’s the classic hero’s quest, this time with dead things trying to eat children. Fun for the whole family!
It is a definite must buy for gifts and for yourself. I gave this book 4 out of 5 because I thought the book was awesome and would definitely recommend it to my friends and family, and even buy a couple for gifts this year.
You can like the book on Facebook here, and check out the authors website www.aramintastar.com. In addition, you can purchase the book for Kindle
There’s also a game called Survive (pictured below) based on Blind Hunger. You can find that also on Araminta’s website.
I want to apologize, I normally write more. I had gotten you used to a near daily post and have let it dwindle to about once a week. That isn’t what I had wanted to do and I want to get back on track.
As for my NaNoWriMo book, it’s terribly below par, everyone is at 30K and I’m sitting at a lowly 10,000 words. I’m going to make it up. If I can manage to write nearly 3,500 words per day. I know I can pump out 1,200 words in 45 minutes to an hour so It should be about three hours of writing per day to get back on track by the end of the month. So I’m going to stop being a lazy jerk, stop believing in writer’s block, and start writing.
As you know, I love terrible movies. So, by default I have watched an obscene amount of craptastic movies. One of those movies is Confessions of a Shopaholic. And although, it is possibly a very vain accomplishment, and while I don’t believe I actually win anything. Here I am on the front page of Cracked.com. I’m also not terribly funny. Click Here or the Picture below to be taken to my win and if you feel so inclined you can vote it up some more.
My Winning Gist!
I’ve also recently gone vegetarian, and am working my way towards vegan. However, as promised you will have a bunch of cookbooks reviewed by me. Furthermore, in the right hand sidebar there is a calendar with my NaNoWriMo accomplishments, it’s been at 9900 for quite some time now and still is at the time of this posting. Feel free to berate my writing laziness in the comments section. And that’s me, just tooting my own horn, just pointing you to random pointless accomplishments that I’ve made. Feel free to alert me to your pointless accomplishments in the comments below. I love all that kind of stuff.
Peace, Love and Penguins.
INVISA
Write, Read, Watch 