The smell of Autumn

I was walking my dogs the other night and it happened to be a much cooler night then normal.  With the crisp cool air came a flood of smells of the autumn season that immediately ignited my nostalgia.  I couldn't help but remember a time when I was much younger and didn't have as much weighing on my shoulders on a daily basis.  The worst thing I had to worry about was homework, chores and whether or not a girl could possibly like me.  Riding my bike and being able to go anywhere I wanted to.  Hanging out with friends and never getting tired of playing and replaying every game I owned.  How drastically things can change in just a few short years.

My blog almost got left behind again as I began to procrastinate writing in it.  I felt the urge pretty hard due to fatigue and just plain boredom.  Most of the time I live a pretty boring life and don't have much to report.  My daily routine usually involves waking up, walking the dogs, eating breakfast, getting ready for work, going to work, coming home, eating dinner, walking the dogs and messing around on the internet until I'm to tired to go on.  My days off usually entail doing things around the house like laundry, vacuuming, sweeping, dishes, mowing the lawn and whatever else needs done.  If I had a better income I would probably go out more and see what the world has to offer but because we live in a state of constant poverty, I'm unable to do the kind of stuff I used to do with friends.

So since my last post we went to the fair and it was pretty awesome.  Walking around that place and taking in all the sights and sounds was something I hadn't done in a very, very long time.  Not since I lived in Florida the first time I believe.  Although I didn't get to play much of any games, we did get to go on plenty of rides and ate some of the carny food.  All in all, was a great time for sure.

Yesterday we also took a short trip out of town to go eat someplace different and shop a little.  I felt like we definitely needed a new place to roam around and that was just the thing to do it.  The only bad part again was that since I don't have a lot of money we couldn't really buy that much which is frustrating.

I've also been thinking of ideas for games lately since I've been on a break from writing my book.  I keep thinking of working on something that I've already written out or redoing my game from the final project of my college degree.  The more I think of it, the more I want to remake that game.  I feel like I had a good idea and a great concept but it just ended up being some pretty bland and only mildly interesting to play.  That was probably more due to the fact that I was on such a tight deadline and that I was still learning the engine I was working with.  That engine was something I was familiar with but had never actually finished a game in.  It was also something I didn't learn about in college which probably made it that much stranger to my teacher and fellow students.  The fact that I wasn't comfortable using Flash or anything else we had "learned" since we didn't actually learn much on those things was hard for me to deal with.  Even so, it ended up getting me a perfect grade and probably sealing the deal on graduating with highest honors.

Thinking about times like that really shows me how much I'm wasting my potential by just sitting here everyday and not working on something.  I should be making a game, pushing out a book, or doing something with my mind.  I'm not even sure that if I was in a better situation that I'd still be able to focus on doing something like that.  It's hard to concentrate and sit down to work on a project when you're always tired, stressed out, depressed and frustrated at things.  I feel like it's going to click soon though.  I'm reaching a breaking point where I just throw everything out the window and finally break down.  I just need to push myself enough into it.

This all went on much longer then I anticipated but it's a good thing.  Writing has helped me to get some things out that I normally wouldn't be able to.  Thanks to everyone who has been reading, whoever you are, and I hope to see you again in the future.

Time to buy a chicken

It's been a week hasn't it?  I've been preoccupying myself with other things besides writing on here but I decided today was a good day to put a little something down.  Here's the low down for the week.

Eggs are expensive.  I don't know if they are where you live but here they have been consistently costly.  A dozen costing almost three dollars and an eighteen pack costing almost four dollars.  The prices have been fluctuating but it's enough to both people and frustrate them that they have to pay so much to buy eggs.  While stocking eggs, almost every person who walks up will say "I'm going to have to get a chicken if prices don't go down."  In reality I don't know how much it would cost to keep a chicken but I'm sure you would need more then one and a rooster to go with it not to mention a place to hold them and keep them safe, warm and fed.  It sounds expensive to me, much more then just buying eggs at a store.  That is of course if you have the room for it and the money then by all means go for it.

To me it's just one of those things people take for granted.  It's a convenience that we are afforded every day to be able to go to the store and just pick whatever we want to eat depending on our finances.  What would happen if chickens went extinct?  What kind of eggs would we eat then?  What about cows?  Turkeys?  It's an interesting thing to think about as most people have never had to live in a time where things like this weren't readily available and mass produced.  I actually hope it never gets to that point though.

Later today I'll be heading to the fair.  I haven't been to a fair in a very long time to the point that I can't remember the last time I've been to one.  It's going to be an awesome experience and I can't wait.  The only thing I wish I had was more money so I could spend more on games and to be able to take in all that I can during the fair.  If anything I'll just get on as many rides as I can to make it worth it.  I'm usually pretty good at games anyway so I'll just have to pick the right ones and win as much as I can.

So hows my book going?  I had another moment of creativity when writing out character backgrounds and came up with a group of characters that I didn't even think to write out.  The characters were part of the school at the beginning and are sort of rivals to the main character and her group.  When I started coming up with their names and backgrounds it just hit me out of no where.  This in turn led me to write a bunch of other stuff for the history of elves in my world which then led me to start writing about some more of the main characters in the world.  This all started from me writing out a new outline for my book to encompass what I had actually written in the first draft.  I didn't even get out of the first couple of chapters and I branched out to writing background information for other characters.  It was insane!  I still haven't even gotten around to editing the first draft but at least this way I'll have a better idea of the characters in my world.

That's a good enough update for me.  Nothing else interesting to report right now but as always thank you everyone for reading this, whoever you are, and I hope to see you in the future.

Wal-mart: Your one stop mom and pop shop

After seven days of work, I finally made it to my days off.  My first day off went well, did some much needed resting and not much else.  Tomorrow will be much busier with having to grocery shop and having to run errands around town since I get paid.  So what news is there to talk about?

For one, my job has decided to start cutting hours again.  I've gone a pretty long while without having my hours drastically cut besides the usual time during a holiday where they don't want to pay us for an extra day of work so they end up giving people a third day off during the week.  This time though they have started cutting hours during a non holiday week.  It makes no sense why they need to cut hours.  They are probably the largest retail company in the world and make billions a year and yet they act like they are hurting for money constantly to the point the have to make sure that no one is getting over time and that they can't afford to pay us extra for a holiday.  Make any excuse you want but as a company that makes as much as they do, they should be able to afford paying their employees more then they do and provide better for them.

Speaking of the pay, that is another stupid thing they have decided to do recently.  Their decision to raise employee wages has turned out to be another crock of shit.  So they raise everyone who is under nine dollars up to nine dollars and anyone over that gets a two percent raise.  Next year they are supposed to bring everyone up to ten dollars an hour.  That means that since I've been there for three years, not counting the other five or six years of experience I have in retail, I'll be making as much as someone they just hired after six months.  That is just plan stupid and makes me madder then it should.  I feel bad for the people who have capped wages there at this point.  They didn't get any kind of raise and even people who aren't at cap but are making much more then the minimum didn't get anything.  Department managers at my store have it worse.  They were supposed to go up to thirteen and fifteen dollars an hour depending on their area of work and how many employees they might have but instead they are going up to eleven and thirteen dollars an hour.  I guess the notice they gave us about the changes to pay and scheduling was more of a guideline then an actual set in stone thing.

The hard part is over

Third day into my seven days of work and the hard part is at least over with.  I made it through my closing shift and then my opening shift and after only a few hours of being at home I promptly went to sleep.  My body was just done with it.  If you have ever worked retail, then you may have had to work this type of shift before.  You have to close your area which usually entails staying until ten, eleven, or twelve at night and then you have to come in early the next day, usually at six, seven or eight in the morning.  It gives you very little time to sleep and you might think, oh I can just get to sleep when I get home.  If you can do that, then you are some kind of inhuman robot.  Most people can't just fall asleep right after work and have to wind down for at least a couple hours before they are tired enough.  I ended up getting maybe five hours of sleep and it sucked.  Thankfully it's over now for at least another two weeks.

In other, much better news, I finished off the last few lines of my book.  I now have a first draft of some written fiction.  For now, I'm taking a slight break from it and just working on character background information, trying to make my characters more likable and making it easier for people to relate to them.  It's a great first step to finishing this story but I feel like it's going to take a much longer time editing the draft and making it more readable.  Right now it's a pretty terrible mess of different perspectives and very little description of any kind of environment or places in the world.  It's really just a series of conversations between the characters which I guess is a good thing but it doesn't help me try to figure out how to actually write good descriptions.  I'm terrible at describing things very well and don't know how to use words that will convey what you should be looking at in the story.  It's just something I'll have to learn I suppose.

A weird thing also happened the other day.  I have a Youtube channel I created to try and do Let's Play videos on and I haven't really done anything with it for over a year now.  I was going to try and start updating it at the beginning of this year but I never got around to it for a couple of reasons.  A few days ago though I ended up getting a view on my Facebook page for it.  It was really weird and made me think about starting it up again.  When I started it before, I had great ideas and wanted to just push content out everyday, which for most people would be much easier then what I had anticipated.  My time is very limited when I'm at home though so I don't have the kind of time to record that much.  My microphone is also absolute garbage.  In many of my videos, you can hear my breathing and it's very grating to hear when your trying to watch someone play a game.  If I could get a better microphone that isn't a headset, I may try and make videos again but for now I'm stuck with the channel as is.

Not much else going on at the moment so I'll leave it at that.  Thanks again for reading, whoever you few people are and if you are actual people.  Sometimes I wonder if it's just robots that scour the internet that are viewing my blog.  If not then I hope the people out there are enjoying reading what I have to say.  I hope to see you all again in the future.

A Long Week

It's my last day off and I'm dreading work again.  It's going to be a long seven days before I get another day off.  My schedule is up and down too so I'll be working nights and days up until next Wednesday.  I always hate weeks like this but since they screwed my schedule up to  have me in the Deli for those two weeks, it messed everything up in my normal department.  It should hopefully be straightened out after this week though.

My book is literally on it's last sentence. I need to just finish the end scene and I can begin the editing process.  I feel like I'll be waiting on that now since I've got more character development to work on.  I've gotten so many great ideas for my characters since I've started writing this that I've got to rewrite their backgrounds a bit.  Not they will be more like actual people with emotions instead of just blank slates.  My main character still is an issue though.  I feel like she is not quite where I want her to be but I hope to fix that once I get the others figured out.  For now she is the glue that keeps the group together for the most part.  I feel she needs more though.

My time of has been pretty uneventful.  I didn't accomplish much with the time I had and just spent a lot of time being lazy and unproductive.  It kind of sucked actually.  When I'm at work I always have good intentions of getting motivated and wanting to come home and work on something but then I completely bomb out when I'm here.  I get distracted by to many other things that are going on.  How can I stop doing that?  I feel like I need to set some time out of my days to work on projects while I'm at home instead of doing nothing.  It's a matter of finding my discipline to actually force myself into working on something instead of doing nothing that keeps me from taking that next step.  I think the first step will be getting out of the rut I'm in.  Right now it's a pretty deep hole and I don't think it will get better until I make some quality of life improvements.  

Pretty short post for today as I didn't really have much to talk about besides my book and even that was pretty limited.  If anyone wants to hear more details on it, feel free to comment and I'll post some more info on characters and plot.

Thanks again for checking out my blog and I hope to see you in the future.