Last night was the first time I felt like my old self again. I don't think I've been myself since before July 21. That's sad isn't it. I even started to get freaked out again that I wasn't working hard enough on my writing. This was a good sign.

I slept through the night, and woke up not feeling anxious and not thinking about the red-haired guy and all the problems we were having. This was such a great feeling. I think the anxiety is still there, but at least it's not as strong as it used to be.

I've been dreaming a ton lately. I wonder if my anxiety stemmed from me not getting enough REM sleep, because I was so freaked about what's his face and kept waking up every four hours. I read in an article once that if you don't get enough REM sleep and dream, then you get anxious.

Whatever. At least I feel healthy and more like my old self. It feels like everything is going to work out again in my life, and I haven't felt that way since I met red-haired guy back in late July. That's a long for me not feel joy, isn't it? He hasn't called, and I bless him every day for that. Maybe he did love me just enough to let me go in peace. That's what I'd like to think anyway. I'm starting to feel happy again, and hopefully it will continue. I'd like to go back to where I was just freaking about not writing and not everything else in my life. That would be nice, really nice.

And here's my update for this week on the www.sfist.com website. This week's update even had people commenting. People feeling schadenfreude for yours truly, my cynical self says. But my sweet self is so touched by all the words of encouragement by total strangers. Isn't it sad that totally random strangers can be so sympathetic, whilst the people who we think should love us don't care?

The Glory of Words.

On the dating front, I finally ended it hopefully for the final and last time with the red-haired boy on Wednedsay November 17. I'm going on 7 days with no contact from him (this is a long time for us), so hopefully he took it to heart when I told him "I hope that you love me enough to let me go and not call." Well that and I also told him that if he starts calling again and bugging me, my cell phone company said they could change my cell number in an hour and I'd still get a 415 area code number.

The boy was just stubborn and wouldn't take no for an answer when I tried to break up with him on October 1, and I don't think I was really ready to end it anyway. It was an impulsive break up on my part. But six weeks have passed since then and things weren't getting any better and in fact, they were getting really boring. My experience with him in LA didn't help either, and he thought LA sucked as well.

So I just cut the chord and yes it did sting, but surprisingly it didn't hurt too much. But I've been trying to end it since October 1, so maybe I've already experienced all the hurt I was going to feel. Whenever I think of him, it feels like it's out habit more than out of any real feeling. I don't even think I ever loved him, but I guess when I said it I did at the time.

He's definitely the first guy in my life that I'm hoping I never get back together with, which is so strange because I've always wanted to get back with guys I've been in relationships with. I never thought I'd ever date a guy I wouldn't want to date again just a little bit, but I guess there's a first time for every experience. It's not that I hate him or anything like that. He's a nice guy and all, but I'm just so over the whole thing with him big time, like really big time.

So just because I've been under the weather, doesn't mean I haven't been writing or writing about writing.

I've been doing the weekly updates to the www.sfist.com website about my Nanawromo experience. Here's my update for November 15, 2004.

An Update on our Nanowrimo Writer.

So today is the first day I actually kind of feel like my old self. Thanks to the herbs from my monthly acupuncturist visit, my phlegmy flu is gone. It wasn't really a bad flu. I just had a sore throat, which made me cough a ton. But my body must have been fighting off something fierce because I was tired all the time but still unable to sleep due to all the coughing.

I don't know about you, but sleep is how I cure all my colds. If I can force myself to sleep, I know I'll get over any cold. My problem is I'm an insominiac and have been one for years, and I normally only get about 6 to 6.5 hours of sleep anyway. If I get less than six hours of sleep, my immune system starts to break down. If I get more than 6.5 hours of sleep, I get depressed and cranky. It's a bizarre delicate balancing system that I have to go through just to keep myself "normal".

I wish I was one of those people who could sleep longer. Sometimes when I do manage to sleep for 7-8 hours, I feel really good which must mean I should probably sleep more. But when I sleep for that long, my mind starts to freak out and I start thinking that I'm sleeping my life away and must be depressed or something. Then the cycle starts and I start to reexamine my life, and then boy do I get grumpy.

I don't know if I'm a type-A personality who has to constantly go around with their hair on fire and running from one crisis to the next, but if I'm not constantly on the go or doing something to the point of exhaustion then life feels like totally boring to me. And god forbid I should lead a boring mundane existence.

Many apologies for the lack of posting, but writing about my life on my blog was not very appealing. But not to worry. I'm getting healthier every day, and soon I'll be back ranting about my life again.

Add to my list of job duties:

Writer and creator of monthly senior management newsletter on trends in healthcare quality measurement.

I am doing way too much writing in my job.

Did I mention I wrote up two tutorials to be made into cd-roms for a couple of tools on the company website. I am also the reluctant writer of the website FAQs for my program.

Again, I repeat. I am doing way too much writing in my real job. Is this why I can't write in personal life?

I've had a slight infection in my lungs since Monday. It's one of the hazards of travelling, 3-4 hours of sleep a night, and meeting lots of new people in a different city.

I noticed it on Monday morning when I woke up and my throat was very dry, and by that eveving it became progressively worse. It's not a full blown cold yet because I've been able to fight it off, but it's been zapping my energy so I'm not writing much and trying to sleep.

If I could just sleep for 8 hours straight and not wake up, I know I'd heal myself. But my anxiety is back up and so I sleep fitfully and keep waking up. Not the best healing condition for a infection that's just waiting to turn into a cold or the flu.

I think I'll spend the weekend at home, trying to get caught up with my writing and working on my film history paper that is due next Thursday; in between movie watching of course. It's time like these I'm glad I'm not in a full blown relationship, and I can schedule my time all for myself and what I need to do. I don't know what guy would put up with my schedule demands.

Memo to self:

Do not invite the current man you are seeing to next year’s screenwriting expo on Sunday night. Two weeks before, I know it sounded like a great idea, but it so wasn’t. We’re talking like an epic style disaster in the making. Just don’t do it.

The screenwriting expo is an escape into the Hollywood/Los Angeles reality of maybe, just maybe I’ll write that one screenplay that the studio executives will love and I’ll make wads and wads of money.

Never mind that Hollywood studio execs are fearful of losing their jobs and being the one to greenlight the next ‘Ishtar’ or ‘Waterworld’. Never mind that Hollywood studio execs are trolling thru the Japanese cinema to remake the next runaway Japanese horror flick adaptation. Never mind that the Southeast Asian market is starting to become exceedingly more profitable than the US market, and those audiences want ‘blood, blood and more blood’, which means Hollywood studio execs want ‘blood, blood, and more blood.’

But wait a minute … there are screenwriters out there who’ve made it. There are screenwriting experts galore who for three days teach you the screenwriting secret mantra, ‘Good characters and story still sell in Hollywood.’

But on Sunday night when you’re exhausted from:

1) having supershuttle pick you up at god awful hour so you could make the 6:30 am flight to LAX, then being in seminars from 1 pmm to 8:30 pm on Friday not to mention being up till 1:30 am chatting with the cute guy who says he’s optioned two films and is a budding Hollywood producer (everyone at the expo was a budding Hollywood producer), and marveling at the amazing gene pool of men who are at the party because Hollywood is always full of pretty people.

2) Waking up on Saturday at 6 am to iron your clothes for the next two days, then going on a run around the LA Convention Center at 6:30 am because all that great mexican beer you drank the night before made you feel fat and you’re afraid of not fitting into your clothes, then attending seminars from 8 am to 8:30 pm and then partying at the Networking party and wondering how much you need to speak to on the guys who wrote Shrek, and then ending up at another bar and chowing down on Domino’s pizza because it’s the only pizza place open in downtown LA that will deliver and getting to bed at 2 am.

3) And then finally it’s Sunday and you’ve slept in till 7 am and attended seminars from 10 am to 1:30 pm and attended the closing ceremony exhausted but happy that you came and swearing to yourself that you’ll get your writing act together and finish that screenplay and write three new screenplays to pitch at next year’s expo.

It’s like so anti-climatic to see someone from your 'normal real world' show up to take you to dinner, and all you can talk about is all the guys you’ve met, and how cute Aaron Sorkin is. And your guy looks at you like he doesn’t really quite like you right now and you feel guilty as hell that you’re talking about other guys, and mad as hell at yourself for even inviting him.

And then you end up flying back home on Monday morning and crying from sheer exhaustion and misery at 7 pm as you check your 80 plus personal email messages because now you’re thinking it’s totally over between you and your current guy, never mind that you’ve been trying to break up with him since October 1 and he doesn’t deserve any of your attention anyway.

Having your fantasy/dream worlds and real worlds collide like that on a Sunday night at 7 pm in Los Angeles in close proximity to Hollywood, maker of fantasy/dream worlds, is just such a bummer, a huge, huge bummer.

So my friend Jon got me a gig for the month of November as a guest columnist on the SFist.com website, doing updates on my Nanowrimo progress.

Check the link out: SFist writes about Nanowrimo.

I am "Brenda" friend of SFist. Thanks for the gig, Jon.

Back from my weekend in LA at the screenwritng conference. I'll blog more about it later. Interesting to note. In LA, my anxiety completeley disappeared. Now it's Tuesday morning at work, and my anxiety is back in full force and I can't feel my teeth.

Yes, LA is truly an escape from reality. Too bad it's too difficult to live and stay there.

I tried to post yesterday, but blogger was so slow. Everyone and their mother was blogging about election yesterday it seems. And in the midst of it all, I've been doing the National Novel Writing Month marathon again.

Here's a brief summary of my new novel.

My Nanowrimo novel title: Changing Timelines

The time is 35 years into the future. The world is on the brink of war, and a naïve scientist has sold to the US government the ultimate doomsday bomb, as a first strike mutual deterrence weapon. Tensions are high as the rest of the world feverishly races to arm themselves. His wife Tatsinda must travel back in time with the help of her husband’s greatest adversary to prevent the start of his research project which started when they were first dating. What’s at stake is the future of the world and future of her marriage with her beloved husband? Can she prevent him from starting work on his doomsday weapon without if affecting their relationship and eventual marriage? Will her attraction to her husband’s former best friend and greatest enemy in the future affect their relationship in the past? Can you change events in the past to affect the future? Can you change the timelines, or are some timelines, some loves, some relationships unalterable?

I have chapter titles as well. Mostly I use them as a trigger to let me know what needs to happen in each chapter and where in the plot I'm supposed to be. I have a plot and I know how it's going to end, I just don't know what my characters do to get there. I guess I'll have to write and find out.

Chapter 1 – What you love, you must now destroy
Chapter 2 – Love thy enemy
Chapter 3 – Every love has a beginning, every destruction a seed
Chapter 4 – Hate is the opposite of love
Chapter 5 – To love is a choice
Chapter 6 – Choice is sometimes a loop
Chapter 7 – Rewriting history isn’t what you think
Chapter 8 – The past affects the future, the future affects the past
Chapter 9 – A heart breaks across time and space
Chapter 10 – Some things can’t be altered
Chapter 11 – Two loves can’t exist in the same time and space
Chapter 12 – Sometimes love is almost too permanent.

I'm writing in third person instead of first, and I'm not used to writing from that point of view and it's hard.

So why the name Tatsinda? A friend from highschool told me she wanted to name her daughter that name. I have no idea where she got the name, but it's been stuck in my head since my teens. That friend went on college at Stanford; her father, brother and sister went to school there as well. I have no idea where she is now.

So the Shrubmeister won and I'm saddened, but definitely not surprised. I've been predicting it all along, but just because I'm an very amateurish political analyst doesn't mean I like the results I come up with.

What amazes me is the level of surprise in the media. I mean, is anyone really that surprised by the results of the presidential election, the senate races and the House of Reps? Hey, but I guess incredulity sells newspapers and tv time doesn't it?