The Not Happy Thread

If it makes you feel better, sometimes I feel the same way. Sometimes I look back and ask myself, "Why didn't I get a computer science degree? Why did I have to get a Liberal Arts degree?" Sometimes I look back at all the little moments that I thought didn't matter much when really, they were gems of something big that I could not have known. Now here I am, with a Liberal Arts degree, a resume full of volunteer work and no job. I can't even do YouTube because I'm shy in front of the camera and the idea of entertaining a huge crowd of internet people doesn't interest me. At least with writing, I can mostly hide myself as the entertainment would be on the book, not me.

My anxiety loves to torture me with that. I'm planning to get into Adobe Photoshop, or some other drawing software to improve my art beyond MS Paint, and you know what my anxiety is saying? "Congratulations, dumbass, you're where you should've been TEN FUCKING YEARS AGO!! RINGA-FUCKIN'-DING, YOU'RE ALMOST 30!!"

I'm afraid I don't have much of an answer, but you're not alone in that feeling. Everyone feels depressed, especially when they read about the hopes and dreams they've had decades ago. Lately I've learned to examine the progress I have made, to not judge my life on the things I aspired to be when I was a teen. Did you know that when I was 17, I had planned to write a 10-book long series by the time I was 27? Yeah, realism wasn't a word that existed in my vocabulary back then.

Sorry for the preaching, just wanted to let you know that you're not alone in that feeling. =) Everyone feels that way, and don't judge yourself so harshly for things you could not have know when you were younger.

 

Okay, I am giving you now big *hugs*..

And hopefully a little hope.. When I was 30 it was exactly the same. I had a job but no hope and no dreams. Then I went back to university, got a degree in hard science.. and now 10 years later, well. I have dreams again. And hope from horizon to horizon.

I say that not to make you feel worse, but to make you feel better. There is a life out there, even if at the moment it is beyond your reach. Just take one day at a time and make choices based on what you know NOW. It will be worth it down the road. Promise.

 

@Catrin Lewis - <Yoda Voice>Yes, to Lifeline you listen too, hmm? Hope, there always is. Give up, you must not. A failure, you aren't. Alive, yes? Then too late, it is not! Go! Be on your way, do the things you wanted to do.</Yoda Voice>

Had to do it. And no, I am not sorry at all!

 

I accidentally snorted chocolate up my nose (don't ask) and god damn it hurts.

 

Try citrus sometimes

 

Solid or hot?

Either way, ouch.

 

Youch!

Chewed-up solid. :/ I kind of choked while I was eating it and it went up instead of down?! Seems to have worked its way out now. The stinging has gone.

 

One of my smoke alarms kept going off for no god damn reason (sometimes in the middle of the fucking night ><!), so I killed it. I ripped out its battery and threw it in the dumpster.

 

I have decided to give up writing. It was not an easy thing to conclude considering that I have 1 novel finished, and am working on the sequel. But then again from what I have found out in the forum is that I really screwed the pooch with a few things I have used, like present tense and head hopping (but they are labeled for ease of confusion) in a Sci-Fi story line. Oh and apparently first POV is not a good way to convey a story either, who knew. Doesn't matter considering I am not good enough to make something palatable for anyone to bother reading. So swept under the rug it goes, just like all things that are just not worth bothering over. It was fun while it lasted.

 

Wait, what? I haven't followed any of that; was it in the Workshop? Who said you can't do 1st person POV and present tense in Sci-Fi? Hunger Games is kinda Sci-Fi, it does both, and is wildly successful. Headhopping within a paragraph is a no-no, since it confuses the reader and keeps him from caring about any of the characters that much, but writing one character's POV per paragraph or per scene or chapter, that can be made to work. Yeah, if it's all in 1st POV and the "I" keeps changing, that'd be awkward, no matter how many labels there are. But good grief, anyway. Those are things that can be fixed. Is it a good story? Would it be cool to read? Be good as you really can be and deal with licking it into shape.

And come back to having writing fun.

 

Was that a smoke alarm or a CO alarm?

 

No it doesn't hop mid paragraph, and it is all spaced out just not in a chapter based way. Not that it has chapters, but then it would be awkward if it did considering how it is written. It is a little bit of both from feedback in the workshop and from what little discussion I have had with others, as well as some general discussion threads I have perused. That and a lot of others are really against present tense. It has been about 75% beta read by 1 person before they just kinda stopped out of the blue, and the sequel hasn't really garnered much of anything in the way of feedback. So I don't know, having three POVs and all that other stuff has made me wonder why I have even bothered. It has been challenging to make each unique in their own way so as not to make them all sound the same, but with out any feedback other than "get your tense right" and nothing else. It is almost comic bookish the way it reads, without drawn panels of pictures. From what little I have been told so far is that it reads quickly, and the rhythm is easy to grasp (though I think the labels help). IDK, probably just threw away about a year and 230 pages of utterly catastrophic useless content between the two. Not that it matters, since at least I tried and it failed. At least I tried right, not that I am the best writer either, nor the worst. Just gave it a shot and missed by a mile.

 

Some of the most popular books in recent years have been in present tense, and multiple POVs are in no way rare or ill-advised.

Also, beta-readers disappear and it's usually nothing to do with your writing. It's dang real life.

 

Well I did it again. A nice big fat anti-climatic Valentines day!!! It was a triple failure this year around....

 

Time for a new one Get it, though, you'd be surprised how many lives those things actually save!

 

Husband gave me two things for Valentine's Day:

1. A book of chocolates
2. A cold

 

I feel like that a lot, all of the time usually. It has not been 3 years but at least fifteen or so. I know I have time to change my life I just wish I was in a position where I did not need to work at a dead end crap hole of a job just to make enough money to pay the ever growing debt.

This is my goal right now. I am 36 and in 3 years and four months I will be 40. ( hey it least I can do some math) anyway I am using that big 40 number as a goal, to have my life turned 180 and inside out. I want to have at least 3-4 novels out (One or two in print not just e-book) I want to live somewhere other then where i am now and most of all I want to control this damn depression that has been with me for as long as I can remember. ... one more thing, I would like to type something out without a bunch of red lines underneath showing just how bad of a speller I am.

 

Smoke only. Everything in my building is electric, so there's no CO detectors.

This thing was brand new out of the box this January, with a brand new battery too. I have two perfectly non-psychotic smoke detectors as backup.

 

Sounds like a good creepy story idea... A haunted smoke detector that gets pawned around the city because it seems to drive each owner completely insane in the end... ***My attempt at lame writing humor here***

 

Well, you're not far off.

That god damn thing would trip for absolutely no reason, at any hour. About a week ago it woke me up at 5 AM, and once the thing had quieted itself I couldn't get back to sleep because my own fear of that horrible shriek would jerk me awake right at the last minute.

Without enough distraction I would start to expect it to go off, its menacing, unforgiving siren echoing in my brain. I delayed things like showering in case I needed to smack the "Shut the fuck up you piece of shit" button.

*twitch*

 

Im unhappy. I would list everything, but the internet isnt big enough...health isnt the biggest thing. Its being jerked around, not paid for a year and all the while told that Im an oppressor. Well, I have my eye on a bridge I can live under soon enough. I just need to make sure the water main that runs under is warm. Im not joking either. Im close to being another statistic, another college grad with a useless degree, veteran yadda yadda that ends up homeless. Hurray for happiness

 

There are actually programs for veterans that become homeless to give them a place to live.

• Veterans who are homeless or at imminent risk of becoming homeless can call or visit their local VA Medical Center or Community Resource and Referral Centerwhere VA staff are ready to help.

http://www.va.gov/homeless/

 

Experienced my first legitimate closed door due to piercings today.

I was interviewing for a job at a food processing plant, and they have a strict no-jewelry policy (which is totally understandable, given most jewelry has a risk of falling off and thereby potentially landing in food products and causing health violations and such), but four of my earrings are more or less permanent and non-removable.

I have three conch piercings and a lobe piercing all with captive-ball rings, which are held together by simple tension. It's been an entire year since I got the first piercing that used this type of ring, and that thing's ball only fell out ONCE right after I had it done. I scurried back to my piercing parlor and they fixed it, and nothing has fallen out since then.

A year.

The most recent ones are five months old. These earrings are not going to come apart, and I would need a specialized tool to remove them anyway and there are four of them so it'd be a massive pain in the ass and the more I screw around with them the more likely I am to lose one of those TINY balls. (hehe, balls)

I understand not allowing people to wear jewelry that could potentially fall into product and cause health code violations. I think that's a perfectly reasonable (and expected) policy.

Earrings that have been secured in place for literally a year, though? Come on.

 

It's not that jewelry falls off, there are other reasons.

It can get caught in machinery and rip out. So it's dangerous. And in many cases worker safety regulations make it illegal for the employer to allow it.

Another issue is disinfection but that mostly applies to rings. You can't properly wash your hands with rings on when it comes to food and medical services.

 

True, but the jewelry in question is on my ears, and tight-fitted. If I have my head close enough to a machine for its moving parts to rip out these small earrings, it's close enough to rip my entire ear off and I doubt safety codes would allow that kind of thing in today's modern society.

Sanitation — moot, given the circumstances, in my opinion.

Bureaucracy makes me sick.