musings from the heart…

She’s so much better than any American Idol… mostly because she’s smart and beautiful.  I’m so impressed I’m jealous.

*sigh* if only I could have stood computer programing, perhaps that could have been me.  But no, it boored me to death.

Who is she?  Oh.  Yea.  She’s Marissa Meyer and she works for Google.  Actually, she practically RUNS Google.  Follow that link and read the recent write-up on her in the SF Magazine.

… I want to work for Google, but I can’t figure out why in the world they should hire me.  If you’re a Googler out there and you want to hire me, let me know!!!!  I’ll sweep floors or whatever!

I’m sitting in Starbucks in Banning, CA and I can’t help but overhear two men at the next table debating fine theological points.  Namely guy A is arguing some sort of theory that the world (and other religions) are out to get us because of sin so we can’t live eternally forever etc. as we were created to.  His theory seems to be that if we are pure enough and connected to God enough we can reverse aging and never get sick (note- not in the Christian Science understanding).  Guy B is arguing that yes, we can’t live forever because of sin blah blah blah…

SO… Here’s my soapbox about sin.  Read the Bible.  Sin is not this bizarre evil force that spreads through the world and infects us.  It’s not another force that acts upon us and makes us do bad things.  That’s some other sort of weird understanding of evil.  It’s not sin as the bible understands it.  In the Bible, sin is the breaking of a relationship.   This is the only definition that I’ve seen work again and again and again through out the biblical narrative and examples of sin. [Read more →]

Is it really Saturday? Seems like it was just Saturday yesterday. And now here I am again, playing catch-up from my brain-freeze during the beginning of my week. Since going freelance, I’ve not developed a lot of the good habits a healthy freelancer should cultivate. As of tomorrow I’m setting out to change these things! I will have a NORMAL life. I WILL I WILL I WILL. Ok, well not normal, per say, but regular. How about that. And don’t anyone go sending me a box of prunes!

My Saturday Night resolutions (because New Years is just way to far off and truly just as random as February 17th):

1. I will get up at the same time every day M-F (that time being 6am, which is a normal time in normal land, except of course I live in late-night-land which makes it much harder.)
2. I will keep regular working hours from 7-4 M-F
3. I will walk 1/2 an hour at lunch time.
4. I will drink coffee, not soda pop. And water.
5. I will listen to music. Lots of music.
6. I will not fall into the 3pm cavernous waste of time unless I’ve already been productive since 7am.
7. I will NOT work Saturdays (except on personal projects).
8. I will NOT work Sundays (except on personal projects).
9. I will maintain an Editorial Calendar and stick to it.
10. I will go to bed at a reasonable hour. (this being 10pm)

Ok. Ten simple things to do. Perhaps I’ll revise them into my “Ten Commandments of Freelancing” tomorrow. But for now, I need to finish my work for tonight so I can start tomorrow with the not working at all on Sundays thing.

-S

Tim and I now work together, well ok actually in the same room.  It’s nice to be back to this again.   A bit from tonight’s conversation over computer clicks:

Tim: “Northwestern canceled evening classes this week due to the weather.”

Me.  I think for a moment, not registering.  I’ve not heard about dramatic weather.  Then I remember.  WINTER.  Oh yes, how quickly we forget.

Me:  “I’m so glad we’re here.  We got out just in time.”  (laughter)

click.  click.  click.  a little while later….

Tim: “High tonight of 33 degrees.  High tomorrow of 22.  And it’s suposed to snow all this week and into the next.”

I just checked my window.  Yep.  Nothing but sunny skies.  If only this year would be as promising as the new weather…

ok. I got lost.  a bit of an update on the past 2 months in the life of Susan.  Or rather just a crash-course to bring readers up to speed.

1)  We’re now living in California.  T just has his exams left on his master’s degree and isn’t going on to the PhD so we’re back.  Because I threw a fit and insisted.  But I’m glad I did.

2)  I’m offically a full-time freelancer.  I’m working full-time for Kango.com right now which is a sweet deal for a freelancer.  I want to expand more to do more writing, but right now I’m learning so much about internet marketing that it’s really worthwhile for me to be doing this full-time.

3)  I didn’t get more than one interview done with Grandma.  For which I am eternally sad.  About a week before T & I returned to CA she went into the hospital for pain in her arm.  It was just too much.  She died last Thursday with her children around her.  I am grateful that I was able to see her several times before then and to tell her how much I loved her.  I will always regret that I didn’t get to finish the interviews, but I will probably still try to write the book.  We’ll see.

4)  Katherine had her baby.  Ok, not my news, but still awesome.  Check her and the baby out at her blog.

Life continues.  Blogging, hopefully, will as well.

-S.

I’m in California.  I’m a writer.  And things have begun to go wrong.  Of course.

I got up early so I could get a head start on the book, but then I ran into a roadblock with getting interviews.  I spent a couple of hours at a local coffee shop working and I got some good stuff done.  Then I went to Papa’s to work more (Grandma wasn’t up for a visit yesterday) but the table that was to take 30 mins wasn’t done.  So I worked on his computer, but the screen makes me slightly seasick.  I don’t know what’s different about it. 

Things should get better though.  I did get several things done yesterday that I needed to.  I got started on a new project and applied for my daily quota of 5 new freelance gigs.  Unfortunately I left my thumb drive at Papa’s so I’ll have to wait on today’s applications.  It feels good, as always, to check things off on my list of things to do.

Overall impressions:  good.  It’s going to be a challenge to make sure I get all the work I assign myself done each day.  So I should go and update the blogs that I’ve assigned for myself today.  Rock on!

I’m getting very excited about the trek to CA and getting to see the friends and family there.  Nervous too about taking that leap to try freelancing for a month.  I get scared that I won’t be disciplined enough to get done what I need to get done in the time I have.  There will be a lot of distractions that I will need to work though (friends and family wanting to hang out as if I were on vacation) and a lot of challenges (seeking out internet connections).  And I’m going to miss my boys.

But I’m excited too.  Its like I’m grabbing life by the horns again, and it feels good.  I am very excited about the opportunity to move my writing jobs from the back burner of stolen evenings to my prime daytime production hours.  Somehow I feel like this will make that work more like legitimate work and less like a hobby.  Which I hope will also give me   more courage to find even more freelance gigs.

It will also be great to be in a place with more sunlight.  The short days of being this far north really get to me.   I don’t like riding my bike home at 5pm in the dark.  And I really don’t like being at the cemetery at 4 and having it be getting dark.  It’s not scary (as in horror movie scary) just a little uncomfortable.  The park is 336 acres and that’s a lot of space for something to hide in, with lots of stones and mausoleums to hide behind.  So it’s just a little uneasy after dark.

So I peddled in this morning to work, came down the hill and figured I’d park the bike in my ‘assigned parking spot’ and take a picture to post here.  I come over the hill look down to the ‘assigned’ spot.  Of all the spots on that side, only one is filled and it’s mine. 

Guess who stole my ‘assigned’ parking spot that I got given as a ‘thank you’ from my bosses?

MY BOSS!

I feel so rewarded…

Ok, so ever since I started working at the Cemetery, I’ve ridden my bike at least 1-2 days a week to work.  Since T started working every day at dog walking, I’ve ridden my bike to work 5-6 days a week.  Everyone at work knows I ride my bike every day.  They all know I do this because we can’t afford a 2nd car.

Last month I was the top sales rep at my location and something like 4th in the district.  Yay me.

My boss decides that since this is obviously a reflection of his good management skills he needs to ‘reward’ me.  Never mind that he was away 4-5 days a week during October at ‘training’ meetings.

How does the management decide to reward us?  By giving me- get this right - an assigned PARKING SPOT!

NO KIDDING!  They had the grounds crew put up a sign and everything.  Only problem?  The sign isn’t securely enough in the ground that I can actually use it to lock my bike to.  So I can’t actually park there.  And, because it’s been assigned to me as a reward, neither can anyone else who actually uses a car.  That’s freeking briliant, do you think?

Thanks.  Really.  Thanks.

A multi-million dollar, Fortune 500 company, and they can’t afford to reward me with something useful like a Starbucks card.   Go figure.

(Pictures to come of lovely said parking spot.  Perhaps I’ll spend my month trying to come up with unusual things to ‘park’ there…)

I’m terribly excited in a geeky way about my new toy.  As I’m going to be interviewing Grandma and working on a podcast, I needed to get a digital audio recorder.  T and I split a check that I got from some random setup work I did last month for Citgo between us for ‘fun’ things we wanted.  He’s going to stay in the hotel where SBL is having its annual meeting so he doesn’t have to couchsurf or sleep on someone’s floor while he’s trying to look presentable to potential professors.  Also, so he can go to the parties.

I got an Olympus DS-30 digital voice recorder.  I had thought I would have to settle for something with less features but I found this one on Ebay for about half the retail cost!  Yay for saving money.  I like best that it records in stereo and that it automatically filters the sound.  It also sounds great when it’s not held right next to your mouth, which is exceptional.  I’ve got great schemes to record the cat before I leave- watch for upcoming episodes!