Wow, did I spend a ton of money these last three months and I am so paying for it.

In November I took a trip to LA. Then in December I went to Dallas, and in January I went away for my birthday. Then I spent a ton of money on buying a new battery and tires for my car.

And I really messed myself up with my taxes this year. I claimed 2 on my exemptions and I'm barely getting a refund. YIKES! I really like getting a refund on my taxes. I think I may go back to one exemption depending on what my merit increase looks like. I probably would have owed money this year if it wasn't for my deductions.

I just can't spend any money till June now. I hate that. Not that I should be buying new clothes anyway because I feel so fat and gained some weight over the holidays. I'm wearing my fat jeans because they're so much more comfortable than my size 8 jeans right now.

I'm still buying a laptop because I really want one, but not till April when I get my little tax refund. In March my company bonus is supposed to come and since I get paid every two weeks instead of twice a month, I get an extra check in April.

If I'm careful, I will still be on track for paying off my car and all my credit cards this year. I won't be completely debt free because I'll probably go one some kind of vacation this year, but I'll be able to pay it off quicker once my major debts are gone. I think I'll also still be on track for my savings goals as well, if I don't buy anything other than my new laptop.

Thank god, I am pretty through with upgrading everything in my apartment. I still want to upgrade my monitor and get a flat screen, get new computer speakers, and upgrade my printer get a new printer/fax/scanner combo, and upgrade my operating from 256 to 512 because my home computer is just way too slow, but I'll be able to do that after June.

I shouldn't be too whiny about my finances. I'm in the best financial shape I've been in ever, but I hate feeling like I've overspent myself and I so feel like that right now.

I was supposed to work out on Thursday, but my anxiety started to kick in again. At least it happened after I had writte my four pages for the day. Then I just went home and watched TV all night.

"Queen of the Damned" was on and although the movie is sucky, the soundtrack rocks! I was going to buy it until I found out that the Korn guy who sings the vocals for the movie, isn't on the soundtrack cd. Some kind of contractual issues prevented him from being on the cd; what a drag!

I've been having wild dreams all week. I don't remember any of them except that I wake up thinking to myself, what a weird dream. I've been feeling so BLAH this week, and thinking that my life is do drecky! I don't think it's always been this awful. I seem to remember being happy not too long ago.

I still think of the red-haired guy, and I'm sure that's the main cause of my general misery. Honestly, thoughts of the freakazoid will not leave my mind. It's so maddening! I feel so haunted. A friend of mine whose mother was some kind of famous psychic in Paris suggested that he could do a clearing for me. He did it for free which was nice, but he didn't find anything. He told me my misery was internally driven. I hate that! Why would I want to make myself miserable?

Anyway the psychic clearing must have done something, because on the way home I stopped at Borders to look for a book that I need for my Greek Drama. They were out of it at the college bookstore, and a huge bookstore downtown told me that it was on backorder from the publisher for two weeks. But at Borders the book was half off, how great was that? Good thing too because the prof assigned a play out of it this week.

I'm reading "Philoctetes" by Sophocles. I'm also reading my way through CS Lewis' Narnia books. After my CS Lewis kick, I think I'm going on Graham Greene kick since he's my new writing inspiration. Did I mention this before? The New Yorker did an article on him and wrote that Graham Greene wrote 4 handrwritten pages a day.

I like that I'm writing a ton even though I'm fairly depressed. I just hope I don't have to be depressed to write because that wouldn't be a good thing for me.

I decided to count how many pages I had written to see what kind of progress I've been making with trying to establish better writing habits. And much to my surprise, I have written as of today 54 pages. Mind you it's all handwritten pages, and some of the pages are outlines for chapters I'm writing and a character interview as well, but still! That's a lot of pages. I am so impressed with myself!

I still want to get to the point where I'm writing every day, and not taking days off like I have been. Even if I just write one page on busy days, it would still be better than no pages at all. But I know I still have the attitude that if I can't fit in writing four handwritten pages, I'm not going to write all. I have to figure out to break this mindset because when I do take a break, it does take awhile to get back to writing. It's like I lose some momentum every time I take a break. I'd rather have the momentum build slowly and daily till it really starts cooking along.

What's surprising is how easy the 54 pages came. Oh sure I complained a ton and found the whole exercise completely onerous at times, but in retrospect I'm amazed at the number of pages that I've written compared to the amount of time I've put in. It really does all add up, even if you do it a little bit at a time.

It's like saving money I suppose. Even if you just save a little at time, over time the amount keeps growing. Speaking of money, I've been watching it fly much too quickly out of my accounts lately. January is always like this for me. I so freak out at the amount of money I've spent, what with Christmas shopping and holiday spending. I hate digging into my savings, but that's what the money is for right? To pay for things that are out of the ordinary expenses.

God, I can't wait till I pay off my car at the end of this year. I can't wait to have that money freed up. Of course it will all just go into savings, but it will nice to be able to save more money.

So considering I hardly put any effort into my new job and am now an official clock watcher and I scramble out of here at the stroke of 5 pm, I received a "Meets Requirements" which in the corporate world is grade equivalent of "C" grade. My boss said she was very happy with me, but that I needed to take more initiative and not be afraid to speak up at Board meetings. Whatever.

A "Meets" will still get me a 3% or more merit increase which is like a $100 more or less a month, and in this economy that's not a bad increase. At my last company, we didn't even get that much. I also get a $3,000 company bonus in March for our company's 2004 performance. If I factor the 2004 bonus in and the pay increase I received in this new job, I received the equivalent of a 10% merit increase in 2004. And that's incredible given the bad economy out here.

So I can't complain at all about how things turned out job wise, considering where I was around this time last year. I have a job where I work hard but not too hard and still get paid well, and where I can leave at 5 pm without guilt and work on my writing. Nope, can't complain at all.

Now if only I could say the same about my personal and my writing life. But I intend to get those two areas handled this year. I'm definitely laying the foundation for my writing life. It's my love life, I have the most doubts about and what's always been the hardest for me to get a handle on.

I think most people have the opposite problem. They seem to be able to handle their personal life issues better than they do their work life. I'm backwards. Work and other outside activities have always been the easiest areas of my life to control.

When I was getting my massage at Osmosis on Monday, the massage therapist told me that "you get into relationships with people to complete your issues from childhood." I was thinking about this last night and freaking out. My red-headed guy was like cross between my grandparents who raised me, and I'm like no wonder I was miserable. I was reliving my bad childhood with my boyfriend. What is up with that? There's got to be another better way to complete my childhood traumas without having to relive it with a boyfriend or worse yet in a marriage. I am so not having another unhappy childhood at this stage in my life.

Happy Birthday to me! Today's the day. My best friend and I planned a trip up north. On Sunday we went hiking up at Point Reyes and we saw whales spouting and elephant seals lying on the beach.

Then we headed to the Inn at Occidental, which is one of the top 100 hotels in the world according to Conde Nast. It was a very nice B&B, and my friend had a hot tub in her room so we hung out in the hot tub. We had dinner at Negris across the street, and passed out early Sunday night from too much wine and food.

Then we went to Graton to a jewelry outlet, an antique store with pretty nice antiques, and an art gallery with some decent art. We had lunch in Graton, and then headed off to Osmosis Enzyme and Bath. Osmosis is the only day spa in the U.S. that offers the Cedar Enzyme Bath, a rejuvenating heat treatment from Japan.

We sat in an enzyme bath full of woodchips and rice bran, then each had a 75 minute massage. It was very relaxing and supposedly very detoxifying.

It was great way to spend my birthday and I'm very grateful to my friend for planning the whole event!

I'm on a mini writing vacation. I haven't written for two days in a row, and it feels good to relax a little. On Wednesday I was too keyed after the board meeting to write and just had to relax.

I was going to write tonight before going to "Gamester" at ACT, but a friend called and we went out to dinner. The woman who wrote the play I saw tonight said she wrote for 20 minutes every night and finished the first act of the play. Was that like a reminder from the universe to me that I have the time to write. That if a woman can write for 20 minutes every day and have her play produced all over the country, surely I can find 20 minutes in my my day for my writing.

I don't think tomorrow is going to be much better since I'm attending a reception wtih a friend at 8 pm, and she's treating me to dinner using a gift certificate at a restaurant someone gave her.

This week has definitely been a busy week. After Wednesday of next week, my life should calm down a little I think and I can go back to my schedule of writing and going to the gym. I kind of miss it.

So I was sitting in our corporate divisional meeting this morning, and I was looking at the slide deck that I helped put together that our senior VP was presenting. I felt very proud to be part of this collaborative effort. It made me wonder if this is what I'll feel if and when one of my scripts becomes a movie. I'll be sitting in the audience thinking, I helped put that movie together. A script after all is just the structure, one small part of the movie making process.

It was a good feeling until someone in the back complained they couldn't see what on the bottom of the slide. The slide deck was chock full of information and many of the slides were way too busy, but I didn't have final approval. I was only one of many people who helped put the deck together. Still, I felt bad.

And then I thought well, this is bad part of movies as well. The critics, the people who hate your movie, the waiting every Sunday for your box office totals and knowing that if you can't fill them seats your movie will have a limited run at the theatre and go straight into the DVD abyss. Citizen Kane bombed at the box office and the awards and took many years to be considered "one of the finest movies ever made."

I've got another slide deck premiering tomorrow night at the Board meeting. Again, another collaborative effort that I don't have final control over. Maybe it's a good thing I'm not attached to when my slide decks get changed. It's kind of a relief actually to not be totally responsible for a presentation. All I have to worry about is version control.

So my good mood has continued into the night. It feels as if I've really turned a corner in my life, and how good I'm feeling is so radically different than how I felt say a day ago. Whatever is going on in my life today, I'm grateful for it.

I stepped away from my Texas novel today, and went back to the novel I started for Nanowrimo called "Changing Timelines". I printed it out, and although it needs considerable rewriting and tightening, it's not a bad story. I was really surprised at how quickly I entered into the action of the story. That's a first for me. Usually the first chapters are all about exposition, but this story got going pretty darn quickly. It was fun to keep writing for it, and I was able to produce four handwritten pages as I'm still sticking to my Graham Greene four page routine.

Sometimes when I read over my work, I feel like I'm reading the words of a stranger. I can't believe sometimes the stuff that comes out of my pen. Where does it all come from?

I printed out the start of a short story that I keep meaning to write, and the voice in the story is so authentic and I'm like, who is this character and where did I pick up this voice? It's such an odd feeling.

I've had a pretty good day today so far; knock on wood. My last two Mondays were bad, but today was relatively stress free. I even started to get the feeling that everything was going to be alright for a change, and that's a feeling I don't get very often anymore.

I'm trying to keep track of my writing progress, so I write more this year than I did last year. I was looking at the month of January and saw that two weeks have gone. I started panic thinking the year is already rushing by and I'm not getting any writng done, but then I realized I've been trying to write every day come hell or high water it seems and I do have something to show for it.

Chapter 10 of my Texas novel is complete. Chapter 11 is outlined and 1/3 finished. Chapter 12, 13 and 14 and half outlined. And I started a rewrite of Chapter 1 which I really, really like. Not bad for 16 days of writing time available.

I've not even started on my goal of doubling my writing output on the weekends. You'd think I'd have more time on the weekends to write and I do, but I'm not used to scheduling in double the time. Since the writing by hand thing seems to be working for me, I was thinking I could use the weekend time to get caught up on my typing.

I'm learning that as long as I keep telling myself it's easy for me to get my four pages done every day, I can do it. But the minute I think about how hard writing is for me and how I don't have the time to do it, I get stopped. I have to fool my mind into thinking that what I'm doing is easy and pain-free, never mind that it really isn't on some level, but as long as I tell myself it's easy I can do it. It's not the getting the words to come out that is hard, it's getting to the point where I can sit down and be relaxed enough to let them come where the difficulty comes in.

I can see why all the books tell you that you should write at the same time every day. That kind of structure forces you to relax after awhile because it's not like you'll be doing anything else and you get used to relaxing your mind and body at that particular time of the day.

What a frazzled day! I got up late and when I finally got in my car to head to a cafe and write, my car doesn't start. I call Triple A to get a tow truck to jump start my car, and the guy says my battery is dead. I didn't leave anything on, and my battery up and died. This was very strange because I had just gotten a reminder from the car dealership that it was time for my 40,000 mile battery vice. I didn't pay any attention to the notice because I only have about 33,000 miles on my car. But sure enough my battery dies.

After driving on 280 for about an hour, which is about the prettiest freeway in northern California, I ended up at Sears to have my batter tested and sure enough after the first test my battery died again. This confirmed what the tow car guy said so I had them change my battery. I've been thinking my tires needed to be changed and my car needed to be aligned and balanced, so I'm asking the mechanic guy about their tires and there's a sale.

We go out to check my tires and he said I had about 2,000 miles left on my front tires and that it wasn't a good sign that they were cracking. And I'm like I don't want to spend the money, but it's either now or later and with all the bad weather and rain it might as well be now.

So we're looking at the tire prices and I'm asking about just getting the same tires that were on the car before until I look at the price. Those tires were so expensive. The mechanic guy says he likes the next tire in price better because the handling is better. My other tires make less noise but they're not known for their handling. So I'm like okay, just make sure the tires are balanced and aligned.

Six hundred dollars and an hour and a half later I'm driving in my car and the new tires make such a difference in the drive. I was right about the alignment in the car, because the mechanics found that the car was off in alignment on the front like I thought. The new tires are so great. They handle the road much better, and the difference is so noticable.

But what a hectic and tense day. I hate it when I have car problems. I'm supposed to only get my oil changed every 5,000 miles, but I'm going to change it this weekend because I'm at 33,000 miles. The check oil light came on anyway, and I'm pretty sure my four hour drive back and forth to Redding ate up my oil, not to mention my two hour trip and back to Sacramento last month. Better to be safe than sorry with the oil changes I say.

I'm watching the Tsunami concert of hope on TV, and I'm getting flashbacks to 9/11 but the tsunami didn't affect me like 9/11 did. I was on vacation in Houston at my cousin's and the tsunami seemed truly like another world away even though I'd been in that part of the world.

That part of the world will never be the same ever. It will recover, but from the pictures it looks like the landscape has changed forever. I don't know why I'm not affected, because I know I should be. So many people have died, and a generation of people were wiped out. That's huge. I don't know. Maybe I'm in still in shock and one of these soon it will hit me.

The thing that's better about this TV concert is they decided to put the name of the people performing. They didn't do that for 9/11 and a friend of mine who's not plugged into all the new music, spent the whole night wondering who the heck all the performers were.

9/11 made me feel like life could wiped in a second, and I've never forgotten that feeling ever. I think this tsunami disaster did the same for the people who may have forgotten about 9/11. Life is short, and you've got to live like it's your last, but you've also got to make good choices because choices have consequences like anything else.

So I'm taking that class on "Getting Better Writing Habits" and I'm trying to write every day, and I'm like "OH MY GOD, this is so hard!" I had to force myself to write yesterday.

I went home early to have the appliance guy take a look at my heater, because my apartment wasn't heating up fast enough. But he found nothing and suggested I put my blinds down at night to trap the heat. I usually leave my blinds up for the view but if it keeps the apartment warm, then I'm going to start closing them.

After he left, I was so unmotivated to do anything. I had to force myself to sit down and write. Since I had a bunch of pages to type up, I typed pages instead of writing and mananged to transcribe and edit 6 pages.

I'm starting to think I don't have what it takes to be a writer. I'm not motivated enough, not disciplined enough, not whatever enough. I have stories I want to tell and maybe I need to start thinking about writing them just to write, and not think about publishing or getting a screenplay produced. I just don't know if I have the perseverance that's needed to write professionally for a living. I write a ton in my job already, so I have a job where I write maybe 40% of the time. It's business writing, but at least it's still writing.

I don't know. I'm confused. I'm thinking maybe I want to go back to thinking more about my career than my writing. Maybe writing should just be a hobby and not a serious pursuit. I don't know. I gave up acting because I wasn't that motivated to be on stage like all my other acting friends. Writing has held my interest more than acting and it is getting easier, and I could still do it for myself without having to think about pursuing it as a career.

Writing is so much like acting; everyone wants to do it which means very few people ever succeed. I don't know. I guess I'm getting discouraged when I think of the long term prospects of my writing career. I probably have more of a chance being a director at some corporation than I do at being a well-paid writer. It's a thought isn't it? I passed up two jobs that probably would have led to management positions, one of which placed me at number two in line to the top behind the IT manager and that was six years ago. The IT manager is now a director, and he told recently that if I stayed I would have been a director as well. Don't you just hate when people tell you these things? The people from my other job told me the same thing as well, since they're both directors now. Not that this kind of career growth might have happened to me, but it makes me wonder you know.

I write because I feel like it feels like it's "purpose" in my life, and I feel good that I know what my purpose is because there are a ton of people out there still searching for theirs. But sometimes I feel like a writer who dreams of being a corporate VP instead of a corporate drone who dreams of being a writer. Silly isn't it? And I know if I didn't feel that writing was why I was put on this earth, I know I'd seriously go back to climbing the corporate ladder.

I went to a seminar tonight given by a literary agent/manager about how to get published and produced. Earlier in the evening, I was at the adjoining bar/restaurant to the hotel called "Le Scene" and sat at the bar drinking wine and having dinner. I felt very driven sitting there at the bar eating and working on my novel. My dinner was good but expensive, and cost about $40 with wine and tip and I just had one entree and no salad or dessert. It was fun and a treat, and it did feel fun to sit and write. I was able to start work on chapter 11, and wrote two pages. I might have to sit at the bar of an expensive restaurant once a month and write only because it's a wild experience.

There was a party at the back of the restaurant, and there was a guy at the table wearing red cordurouy pants, a white shirt and leather jacket. Come to find the guy in the red cords was the literary agent guy from New York. I only knew it was him because another guy came in and sat with the party, whom I recognized as the person I took a screenwriting seminar from last year. The screenwriting guy was the one who said in the seminar if you're going to write a screenplay, you need to know about film history. And you know he was so right! I only took the two film history classes because of him, and I think the classes really added to my understanding of how a screenplay needs to be written.

The literary agent guy confirmed a lot of what I've thought about the book publishing business was like. For a book, he said you need a completed novel and it has to be a good product. Publishing is a business like anything else, and agents as well as publishers are looking towards the bottom line and need to know if your book is going to add to it. Alot of agents are also looking at books with movie potential or series potential, and want writers who want to write more than one book.

Literary agent guy said his company gets 200-500 submissions a week. That's a ton. They look at everything, but they're very picky and they only take on people not projects, meaning they want a writer who writes alot and can produce books. I liked this guy alot, and I got an intuition that this guy is going to be my agent someday. I hope it comes true. I have no idea how or why this would happen, but I like that I got the feeling. It means I'm thinking ahead for my writing.

But I'm really getting that I'm going to have to work a ton harder on my writing. I feel like my screenplay is 75% there, and my Texas novel is 50% there, and the only way my writing is going to improve is if I do more of it. No, more like heaps and heaps of it. Literary agent guy said he has a client who's written more than 100 short stories and can turn out a novel in 6 to 8 months. Now that's discipline.

I want that kind of discipline and enthusiasm for my work, and I think I'm getting there. Trying to write every day this month has been hard, but I think it's like anything else. You get used to it and the more you do it, the easier it gets. I definitely have to get a laptop. I love writing by hand, but writing by computer is just so much faster. I'm determined to make 2005 a breakthrough year for my writing, but I have a feeling that like everything else in my life, I'll do it backwards and it will still work. I'm not sure why, but it's just a feeling I get.

So this is weird. Last Monday and Tuesday I was a little down, and the same thing happened this Monday and Tuesday. What is going on?

I was in meetings from 10:45 am till 3 pm, and trying to get a project out the door in between my meetings. I didn't end up eating till 3pm and was so nauseated afterwards when I finally ended up eating. By 5:20 pm I thought I was going to seriously hurl, so I went home and got in bed and didn't wake up until midnight.

This always happens when I don't eat for 8 hours straight like I did yesterday. I get sick, so sick that I have to go to bed. I didn't write or work out, which I kind of felt bad about this morning. But I hardly slept on Sunday night, and on Monday night the wind was blowing so hard against my windows I kept waking up hourly.

I feel much better today, and am determined to write before my 6:45 pm seminar. No workout tonight for me, and no workout tomorrow either because I'm having someone come over to look at my heater. My heater isn't working properly and with all this rain, my place is freezing. But I'm definetly writing on Thursday night.

I wrote on Monday night when the rain was just coming down in buckets, and ended up reoutlining the last the five chapters of my novel. I thought I was going to end up with 15 chapters, but decided to combine chapters 11 and 13 and then chapters 12 and 14, which leaves me with a new chapter 11, chapter 12, and a final chapter 13 and 14.

I wrote the outline for Chapter 11, started the outline for Chapter 12. Chapter 13 and 14 are going to be short chapters, kind of like epilogues. I thought last night I would just nap and then wake up and type up the rest of chapter 10, but that didn't happen.

Next week is going to be worse. Tuesday night I start my greek drama class, Wednesday night is the Board meeting that I've been working on and need to attend to help with set up and clean up, and Thursday night I have theatre tickets. I'm going to have fit my writing quota in somehow on those days.

I can probably write on Thurday before I have to go to theatre since the performance doesn't start till 8 pm. On Wednesday night the Board meeting gets out 7 pm, and hopefully I'll be home by 8:30 pm. Tuesday is the iffy day where I'll have to figure out the logistics of when I might have free time.

I've been in a weepy emotional mood since yesterday. I just finished reading the last book, The Amber Spyglass, in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy and the ending made me cry. Poor Will and Lyra! I was surprised by the ending, and didn't see it coming, although I suppose the clues were there.

The ending just felt so heartbreaking to me. Love is such a fantastic gift, it changes life, it changes everything, it has the ability to heal the world, yet it doesn't always mean a happy ending like in a fairy tale and everyone lives happily every after. Sometimes you have to soldier on because it's the only way to make the world right again, and because you can't live in each other's world. It's just so, so tragic. And I'm like this is what my life feels like right now, so, so tragic!

I think I have a good workplan for my screenplay. I'm not really happy with it and it definitely needs a third and final rewrite, but I think I'm going to enter it into a contest just to see how it does. This guy from my screenwriting class entered a contest and he placed, and his script was not very good. I'd like to have the experience of entering a screenplay competition, and to see how my script ranks.

My screenwriting teacher Julie said my script was good enough into a contest and even pitch in Hollywood if I wanted. I wasn't confident about my writing or pitching ability at the time, but you know it can't hurt to enter a competition. I'd also like to send it to the screenwriting prof at UCLA, who said people from his seminar could send in their scripts and he would review for free. But the UCLA guy will get the third and final version, not this second version. Maybe I'll even get feedback from the contest. I hear sometimes they do that. One can only hope.

I'm taking an online class with this guy who was teaching seminars at the screenwriting conference I went to in LA last November. He also teaches screenwriting at UCLA and is active in selling his own work to Hollywood.

Anyway, one of the homework assignments was come up with a new idea for a screenplay and list the source. I wrote something about Zecharia Sitchin who writes books about aliens seeding the planet earth, and here's the messaage I received back.

"Very interesting stuff, Brenda. I'm familiar with Sitchin, he has a whole series of books on the subject of aliens seeding life on Earth, which happens to be a popular topic in Hollywood development. Unfortunately, the reason these projects are still in development may be because of the present religious climate in the U.S. which may not be receptive to alternative ideas. Food for thought."

So Hollywood is interested in scifi stuff ... I got a good buzz about his message because I'm thinking maybe my story ideas and Hollywood's aren't that far off.

I heard Jimmy Cliff's big hit today, "The Harder they come". Boy does that song bring back memories. I love reggae music! I can't believe I don't own any Jimmy Cliff cds. I love danced to reggae. I still remember that reggae festival I attended in DC in Malcom X park. Dancing to reggae in the hot fall DC sun within blocks of the White House. How cool is that?

I didn't write on Saturday. Actually I didn't do much of anything on Saturday, although I made plans to go out. When I finally got up and dressed, the darn rain would not stop and it was so hard. Not that I care about rain, but it's a drag to be wet. So I sat around and watched the "MI-5" marathon on A&E. I think they call it "Spooks" in the UK. I seem to remember sitting around and watching it last year around this time as well. I love "MI-5", have always loved spy shows and always will.

I loved the ending of the first episode of the new season. This is an only in the UK kind of ending. The head of the Joint Intelligence Committedd (an actor I seem to remember from the Black Adder series) is sitting in a club talking to someone from the PM's government. The head of MI-5 comes in, who is also a member of the club. The JIC guy says to the PM aide, "are you a member of the club, because you're not my guest." The head of MI-5 says "he's not my guest either", so the guy has to leave. The head of the JIC had attempted to take over MI-5 and had failed, but he and head of MI-5 are members of the "club", so despite their recent fight the two remain at least in public cordial friends. It's such a Brit class thing I think. The PM aide who obviously is not of the same class gets shunted aside like trash because class has so much more meaning in the UK. It's the same the same here, but they never show that stuff on TV because the US is supposed to be a classless society. Whatever.

I'm so happy about my writing progress this year. It's going like gangbusters! I finished Chapter 10 today, and I was so happy. I wrote the summary for chapter 10 on New Year's day while waiting for my flight at the DFW airport, and now the chapter is written.

This is new for me; writing a summary of what the chapter is supposed to be about. I usually don't do that, but it's really helped to keep me focus on what I'm supposed to be writing about. And if I get lost in the writing, as I tend to do since I write the chapter in more than one sitting, the summary ends up being a map as what I'm supposed to be writing about.

I even started a rewrite of Chapter 1 since New Year's as well. I edited Chapter 1 on the plane to DFW, and it just was not good. The subsequent chapters read much better, so I decided I needed to rewrite chapter 1. The voice was just not there, as I didn't develop the voice till much later. Since I'm now comfortable writing in the voice, rewriting chapter 1 was easier and I think reads much better. There's a real character now talking.

I'm like, okay the rest of my life kind of sucks right now, but at least the writing part is working. Usually the rest of my life is okay, and writing part sucks, or my life is bad and the writing is bad. It's never been where the writing is better than my life. Is this a good sign? I'm starting to think of myself as a storyteller, and it's a good feeling.

A coworker told me on the elevator on Friday night that it's been a rough week for a lot people. Not me I thought. I've been writing every day since December 31, which is 8 days in a row for me. I haven't done that on my own since I was doing the Nanowrimo back in 2003. I worked four days this week, and would have made it five except the gym was closed on Wednesday due to a power outage. And I have the feeling 2005 is going to be a banner year for me with regards to my writing.

But then reality intruded in my world when I was coming from the gym last night. A man passed out on the second Muni train of the two-car train I was riding. A woman on the train told me that the man had told her that he had taken a bunch of anti-depressants, and then she watched him lose consciousness before her eyes. One of the other passenger called 911 and she came up to my train to tell the driver. And so we had to wait there till the ambulance came to get him. The man who said he overdosed managed to wake up and walk into the ambulance.

I think there is some weird vibrational stuff going on in the world right now. I feel especially protected right now, like there's a gold bubble of light around me and it feels like god has me in the palm of his hands and is protecting me. It's a weird feeling, and something I haven't felt since 2003 after my grandma died. I felt very protected, loved and blessed then.

I'm happy again, and I guess that's all that matters. I still think about the red-haird guy a bit, and I'm pretty sure I haven't heard the last of him, but I'm okay with that. I've decided not to worry about till I have to cross that bridge, because I can't control his actions anyway and only have control over my own actions.

I just wish this rain would go away only because it's so cold. But we need the rain because of the drought everyone was speculating about. Hopefully the rain will alleviate our water problems.

These are my writing accomplishments for 2004. Sadly, there's not much here.

Took a science fiction writing class
Took a class on screenwriting from Michael Hague
Took a class on screenwriting and Aristotle’s poetics
Attended a screenwriting conference in Los Angeles
Published 4 times on the internet on www.sfist.com
Started a new novel called "Changing Timelines"
Started a short story called "From LAX to Oakland"
Started a short story called "Confessions of Chocolate Shiksa Goddess"
Started a short story called "Diary of a Robotic Sex Worker"
Started a short called "The Novel Life"
Wrote two chapters (chapters 8 & 9) for "Texas is a State of Mind" and typed them up
Started on chapter 10 for "Texas is a State of Mind"
Edited Chapters 1-3 for "Texas is a State of Mind"
Started a rewrite on Chapter 1 for "Texas is a State of Mind"
Started a new novel called "The Dwarf who heard voices"
Type up notes for "The Unsettler"
Typed up the short story "The Blue Haired Buddha on Union Street"
Redid the outline for "Spooning with my mother"
Took two film history classes
Edited my screenplay "Going Home Again"
Bought two DVDs on writing from Michael Hague
Signed for class on getting published from Learning Annex to be taken on January 12
Signed for Karl Iglesias’s “Mastering the Habits of Highly Effective Writers” to start on January 3

I've actually had quite a good week so far, except for some bad moodiness about my job.

On Wednedsay my group had a team luncheon, and I walked out of the meeting in such a bad mood. Sometimes I feel so unenthusiastic in my job, especially when I hear the enthusiasm of other members of my group for their job. I don't know if they're just better at faking it than me or if they really, really like what they're doing.

This job I have is just a job. It's not a career, it's not something I'm that passionate about and its basic function in my life is to give me a way to pay my bills. I'm not into career advancement at this company, I'm not looking to add any more responsibility for myself, and I definitely have no desire to play the climb the corporate ladder game. Of course, I want to make more money, I mean who doesn't? But I'm not willing to put the time and energy required to do it in this job.

But then again, it sure would be nice to make more money.

I hate when I get like this, when I start to question the career choices I've made with my life, but it always comes up for me only because I used to be the corporate ladder climbing type whose identity pretty much revolved around my job, how much I made and my upward job trajectory at my company. But I'm trying not to be like this anymore. I've made career choices in the last four years so I can have more time to write.

But maybe I'm just more the competitive type than I ever want to admit to myself. It's not like work and career was the only arena of my life I used to "strive" in. I've been a "striver" in any of the churches I've joined, wanting to get into positions of prestige and power. Sick isn't it? I was in a year-long growth and development seminar where you were graded, and I was "striving" to always get an "A". And it's not like I take classes for fun either and can be satisfied with a B or a C grade. I make an effort to get the "A" grade, and I get it 99.9% of the time.

I wish I could transfer more of my "striving ambitions" to my writing. I haven't yet because writing is like an "art" for me, and how do you grade art. But I think I'm going to have do it if only to ease some the sense of constant dissatisfaction that runs like a through-line in my life. I guess I'm one of those people who can't really be happy if they're not always trying to achieve in life. And I just hate having to admit that I might be an over-achiever. I hate over-achievers!

Here's my list of the movies I saw in 2004 - 108 in all. Many of the movies I saw came from the two film history classes I took last year. No wonder I don't have time for a relationship!

A Movie by Bruce Conner
A Trip to the Moon
Alex and Emma
Ali: Fear eats the soul
All About My Mother
Audition
Band of Brothers Vol 1
Band of Brothers Vol 2
Bed and Sofa
Big Fish
Billy Elliot
Birth of a Nation
Bonnie and Clyde
Butch Cassidy amd the Sundance Kid
Captain Corelli's Mandolin
Chinatown
Citizen Kane
City of Lost Children
Closer
Cold Mountain
Double Indemnity
Enemy at the Gates
Enigma
Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind
Finding Nemo
Frida
Grand Illusion
Hardball
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azbakan
Hidalgo
His Girl Friday
Hollywood Homicide
House of Sand and Fog
How Green was my valley
Ikiru
Innocence
It Happened One Night
Kill Bill Vol 2
Killing Me Soflty
Left Behind: The Movie
Love Actually
M by Fritz Lang
Marius
Master and Commander
Meet John Doe
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
Mr Smith Goes to Washington
Mystic River
On the Waterfront
Open City
Abre los ojos (Open Your Eyes)
Pather Panchali
Paycheck
Personal Velocity
Princess Diaries
Rear Window
Règle du jeu, La aka The Rules of the Game
Ringu
Samurai Fiction
Seabiscuit
Secretary
Shrek 2
Spider Man 2
Spring Summer Fall Winter
Stagecoach
Steamboat Bill Jr
Stranger than Paradise
The 39 Steps
The 400 Blows
The Big Fish
The Blair Witch Project
The Butterfly Effect
The Chronicles of Riddick
The Crowd
The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys
The Day After Tomorrow
The Great Train Robbery
The Italian Bicycle Thief
The Kid
The Lady Vanishes
The Last Laugh
The Last Sumurai
The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
The Manchurian Candidate
The Notebook
The Order
The Passion of the Christ
The Sea is Watching
The Third Man
The Twillight Sumarai
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
This is spinal tap
Throne of Blood
Timeline
Tokyo Story
Troy
Twilight samurai
Un Chien Andalou
Under the Tuscan Sun
Vanilla Sky
Wild Strawberries
Yi Yi
Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman Part 1
Zatoichi Part 2
Zatoichi Part 3
Zatoichi Part 4
Zatoichi Part 5
Zatoichi Part 6

Here's my list of books read in 2004 - I read 58 books this year, which is higher than my previous total from 2003.

A Bend ln the road by Nicholas Sparks
A Parallel life and other stories by Robin Beeman
A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
Adulthood Rites by Octavia Butler
Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer
Clay's ark by Octavia Butler
Cowboys are my weakness and other stories by Pam Houston
Dawn by Octavia Butler
Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Finding Your Writer's Voice by Thaisa Frank and Dorothy Wall
From the corner of his eye by Dean Koontz
Genesis by Poul Anderson
Girl in hyacinth blue by Susan Vreeland
Girl with a pearl earring by Tracy Chevalier
Golf in the kingdom by Michael Murphy
I never promised you a rose garden by Joanne Greenberg
Imago by Octavia Butler
Immediate Fiction by Jerry Cleaver
James and the giant peach by Raold Daoul
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
K-Pax by Gene Brewer
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
Left Behind by Tim LaHaye
Life Strategies by Dr. Phil McGraw
Living the best life you can by Joel Osteen
Mind of my mind by Octavia Butler
Minority Report by Philip K Dick
Mystic River by Dennis Lehane
One continuous mistake by Gail Sher
Seeing a large cat by Elizabeth Peters
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
Silas Mariner by George Elliot
South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami
Taken by Thomas Cook
The 60 second procrastinator by Jeff Davidson
The hitchiker’s guide to the galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans
The League of Extraordinary gentlemen by KJ Anderson
The northern lights by Philip Pullman
The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
The parable of the sower by Octavia Butler
The parable of the talents by Octavia e Butler
The Patternmaster by Octavia Butler
The Pearl by John Steinbeck
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren
The Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds
The Red Pony by John Steinbeck
The Simulacra by Philip K Dick
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
The Ultimate Weight Solution by Dr. Phil McGraw
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Vittorio the Vampire by Anne Rice
When God Winks at Love by Squire Bushnell
Wildseed by Octavia Butler
Writing the Mind Alive by Linda T. Metcalf & Tobin Simon

I had my first full four hours of sleep last night. I've had the worst insomnia since my return from vacation. It feels so good to sleep. When I woke up I felt rested for the first time in months.

Maybe my insomnia means I'm not as depressed anymore, because last month I was sleeping more than 8 hours a night and still not feeling rested. Hopefully my life is turning around.

Last night on a whim I went to the Starfbombs across from the Hyatt at Embarcadero to write and while I was there I heard a big crash like there was some car accident outside. People ran outside to look at the commotion, but I didn't. When I finally left the place and walked outside, I saw police and car up on the sidewalk with its end into the wall near the Walgreens. How the car got onto the sidewalk like that is beyond me? Just another couple of feet and it would have crashed into the Starbombs where I was sitting.

I went to Carls Jr to get a bite to eat, and there was bunch of people playing scrabble there. Tuesday must be scrabble night at the Carls Jr located at Embarcadero 4. Like who knew?

Okay, so I don't like getting that excited about money but check this out. I bought into a gold mutual fund in December, and already I've made about $200 in capital gains. Isn't that like so fun? Money isn't everything, but when I learned I made $200 in a month from capital gains I got why people are into money and investments. And the stock market is not doing that well so to make money like is doubly more exciting.

So after this bit of good financial news, I decided to buy into a specialty natural resources energy fund. I know they say gas in going down in price, but so what. It will go up again because winter is coming up and any break in the supply chain of oil should send my mutual fund through the roof. Goodbye cheap gas and hello tons of capital gains for me.

If I have to play the capitalist pig dog investor, I might as well make a ton of money doing it.

I'm going to try and get back on the schedule today that I think seemed to work pretty well for me last year. From 5 to 7 pm, I sit in a Starfbombs somewhere in downtown San Francisco and write, and then from 7 to 9 pm I head to the gym. Boring as hell I know, but I get the two things done that I need to get regular about; writing and working out.

I've found three Starfbombs downtown that are open till 7 pm and where it's comfortable to sit and write. My gym is close by and after 7 pm, it clears out and I can get on a machine or lift weights without having to wait in line.

The only bad thing about this schedule is dinner. If I wait to eat till I get home, I'm starving and about to pass out. Usually I just have a latte, but it's really not enough food for dinner. So I'm adding dinner this year.

With all the writing I've been doing, I can either write tonight or spend my designated writing time typing up the 8 pages of handwritten text I've accumulated. Typing is a nice change for me and even if I do end up buying a laptop, I'll still have the option of handwriting or typing and I'll skip the step of transferring my text from my PDA into a word document on my home computer.

I've been tracking my writing since December 16 through today, and I've written for 11 of those days, spent two days reading a new book on writing and skipped six days. These results are good for me. I've not gone longer than two days without writing, and on those days I didn't write I could have written if I wanted to. I just didn't feel like I could make the time.

I've playing a little game with myself as well that I learned from this book called "Immediate Fiction". I set the timer on my watch for 10 minutes, and I tell myself that I only need to write for 10 minutes. If I'm not into writing at the end of the 10 minutes I'm allowed to stop. It's a good trick, because invariably at the end of 10 minutes I'm still interested in writing and can usually get four pages of handwritten scribble down before I feel the urge to stop.

The 10 minute rule is supposed to be done every day, but I'm not at that point yet. I'd like to get there. I'd like to be able to sit down every day and do a 10-minute write, but I'm still at the point where if I don't feel like writing I won't do it. But taking no more than a two-day break is real progress for me, real progress.

I had a good day on Sunday. My clueless brother sent my christmas present to my old address, and thank goodness my building manager was kind enough to call me and hold it for me till I got back. As I walked by my old apartment, I wondered who was living there.

Then I went to the Starfbombs near my gym to write. Some older dude was there staring at me the whole time. He was kind of alright looking, and was there with his grownup son having coffee. I suppose it's a good way to start the new year with a guy who was making it very obvious that I was a hottie.

I'm doing the Graham Greene method and writing 500-700 words a day, which is about four handwritten pages for me. I'm also thinking of going on Graham Greene binge and reading all of his stuff. Loved that New Yorker article on him which I finished over my vacation.

Next stop was to the gym for a run. I started to panic when after a mile, my left knee started hurting. I walked for a few minutes, and then started running again and the pain was gone. My body was rebelling and telling me you just can't start running hard after not running since early November. After my knee pain, I decided to quit while I was ahead and not do another half an hour on the bike or weights.

Then it was laundry and grocery shopping. Sunday night is the worst night to grocer shop. The veggie shelves at Trader Joes and Safeway were so empty!

Final stop was home for dinner and a movie from Netflix - Zatoichi, Volume 7. Yes, I'm still on my japanese samurai movie kick. I'm still getting a thrill out of the watching the blind guy kill tons of people. I think I'm going to have to purchase Kill Bill Volumes 1 & 2, so I can get my kung fu movie kick whenever I want.

I was thinking this morning that it's sad that good days for me lately have been few and far between these past few months. It used to be the opposite. Guess I'm going to have spend 2005 reversing the trend.

I had a good day on Sunday. My clueless brother sent my christmas present to my old address, and thank goodness my building manager was kind enough to call me and hold it for me till I got back. As I walked by my old apartment, I wondered who was living there.

Then I went to the Starfbombs near my gym to write. Some older dude was there staring at me the whole time. He was kind of alright looking, and was there with his grownup son having coffee. I suppose it's a good way to start the new year with a guy who was making it very obvious that I was a hottie.

I'm doing the Graham Greene method and writing 500-700 words a day, which is about four handwritten pages for me. I'm also thinking of going on Graham Greene binge and reading all of his stuff. Loved that New Yorker article on him which I finished over my vacation.

Next stop was to the gym for a run. I started to panic when after a mile, my left knee started hurting. I walked for a few minutes, and then started running again and the pain was gone. My body was rebelling and telling me you just can't start running hard after not running since early November. After my knee pain, I decided to quit while I was ahead and not do another half an hour on the bike or weights.

Then it was laundry and grocery shopping. Sunday night is the worst night to grocer shop. The veggie shelves at Trader Joes and Safeway were so empty!

Final stop was home for dinner and a movie from Netflix - Zatoichi, Volume 7. Yes, I'm still on my japanese samurai movie kick. I'm still getting a thrill out of the watching the blind guy kill tons of people. I think I'm going to have to purchase Kill Bill Volumes 1 & 2, so I can get my kung fu movie kick whenever I want.

I was thinking this morning that it's sad that good days for me lately have been few and far between these past few months. It used to be the opposite. Guess I'm going to have spend 2005 reversing the trend.

I had a good day on Sunday. My clueless brother sent my christmas present to my old address, and thank goodness my building manager was kind enough to call me and hold it for me till I got back. As I walked by my old apartment, I wondered who was living there.

Then I went to the Starfbombs near my gym to write. Some older dude was there staring at me the whole time. He was kind of alright looking, and was there with his grownup son having coffee. I suppose it's a good way to start the new year with a guy who was making it very obvious that I was a hottie.

I'm doing the Graham Greene method and writing 500-700 words a day, which is about four handwritten pages for me. I'm also thinking of going on Graham Greene binge and reading all of his stuff. Loved that New Yorker article on him which I finished over my vacation.

Next stop was to the gym for a run. I started to panic when after a mile, my left knee started hurting. I walked for a few minutes, and then started running again and the pain was gone. My body was rebelling and telling me you just can't start running hard after not running since early November. After my knee pain, I decided to quit while I was ahead and not do another half an hour on the bike or weights.

Then it was laundry and grocery shopping. Sunday night is the worst night to grocer shop. The veggie shelves at Trader Joes and Safeway were so empty!

Final stop was home for dinner and a movie from Netflix - Zatoichi, Volume 7. Yes, I'm still on my japanese samurai movie kick. I'm still getting a thrill out of the watching the blind guy kill tons of people. I think I'm going to have to purchase Kill Bill Volumes 1 & 2, so I can get my kung fu movie kick whenever I want.

I was thinking this morning that it's sad that good days for me lately have been few and far between these past few months. It used to be the opposite. Guess I'm going to have spend 2005 reversing the trend.

Observations I made while at DFW airport on New Year's day.

I went to Wendy's to get a bite to eat. Nothing look appetizing except a burger and a soda. There were four University of Tennessee football players there, with bags that were embroidered with the logo "SBC Cotton Bowl". They were huge and all wearing black velour Addidas track suits. Guess they were hungry for Wendy's burgers too. Some guy saw them all sitting there and said "great game guys!" and they waved. So I'm sitting there thinking who won the Cotton Bowl? I know it was Texas A&M and some team. The Tennessee players didn't look unhappy. On the news monitor later, I saw a report which said Tennessee won.

Speaking of football. There a town of people walking around with Purdue clothing on. There some guy sitting in back of me as I was waiting for my gate. He had a Purdue jacket and on and was telling someone on the phone that he was in El Paso. Then he talked about the Sun Bowl in El Paso. I don't think Purdue did well because the guy didn't sound very happy on the phone.

Want to recharge you cellphone? Go to the women's restroom next to gate C36 and DFW airport. Plug your cellphone charger into the socket on the left side of the sinks. Block the sink and stare at yourself in the mirror and pretend like you're doing something totally normally by charging your cellphone in a public bathroom.

American Airlines is doing their patriotic duty for the war on Iraq. There's a huge sign at the Admirals Club, which says if you're in the military and you can show ID and I guess that you were in Iraq, you can hang out in the club.

Dell had a kiosk there. The only people that were using it were American Airlines pilots. It must be the place for airline pilots to check on their email and surf the Net.