Today is my mom’s birthday and we’ll be spending the day together, but I wanted to tell you guys about the fun I had yesterday. My two roomates, my sister, and my mother all sat together last night and had a writing party. We had snacks and music and we encouraged each other along while we tried to hit the NaNoWriMo word count goal of 1700 words. It made me really happy.

I also made a semi-goal to myself to try and get things my mother will use every day as a gift for her birthdays. The last few gifts have been DvDs like Starman, Millions, Out of Africa, and Somewhere In Time. She loves them, sure, but only gets to watch them once and a while. I want to get her things like a new comfortable office chair, a new monitor for her computer. Because she’s a nerd like me and would geek over that stuff. At least I assume so judging by the way she geeked over the ambidextrous mouse I bought her.

My dreams are so distant from me,
each like a flower you cannot fully see
until you lift it in the palm of your hands.
Its paper-thin petals are so frail
that they crumble in your shaking palm.

But I am making baby steps towards obtaining these dreams. In April or May of last year, I was put in a position where I needed, suddenly and unexpectedly, to buy a new car or I would then lose my job, and then be kicked out of my apartment, and then I wouldn’t be able to go to school. And I would be out a running working car to live in. So I took out a car loan of $12,ooo at an interest rate of 7.5%. Yesterday when I received my tax return, I put every penny straight towards my car loan. I didn’t buy an ipod, go shopping for new clothes, or do anything that I really wanted to do. I put it ALL towards my car loan. As of right now, I have $8,926.29 remaining. This was hard for me, because I feel like I didn’t even make a dent putting $1,ooo towards the loan, but I keep reminding myself that I did make a difference. And paying off my car is the only thing that is preventing me from working less, going to school full time, and living life like the rest of the kids my age.

I also made a goal for myself a few weeks ago, one that started no February 21st to be exact, to write one of my Young Adult fantasy novels in forty days. Because lets face it, if you never get started, if you never put the words down, you can never edit them, tweak them, rewrite them to anything good. It will never be right the first time. It will never be perfect. I have to start somewhere, and start at all. Well, it was a goal of about 1,25o words a day.

I am already behind. But today I closed the gap by writing roughly 4,000 words. Today, as it stands, I should be at 16,868 words out of 5o,ooo. I rest at 4,6o5. If I write two 1,25o word additions every day, I will have caught up by the fourteenth, and I plan on doing it.

I just don’t want to be miserable here anymore.
So I am doing it.