I never know what to say for the blog titles.

Delved into a new hobby: writing fiction. A certain subset, mwahaha, but we won't get into that. I'm finding that the most difficult part is writing believable dialogue. All I've ever written is nonfiction. I always pushed the envelope with Associated Press style with my articles, but it was never really outside the box of the rigid style journalists have to adhere to (i.e. inverted-pyramid, anecdotes, quotes from at least 3 sources, typically 500 words per article, etc). Now that I'm left without those guidelines, I feel a bit too free. One of my problems is that I have trouble making decisions unless I have goals and guidelines, so this is pretty difficult. The part that is making it easier is doing a LOT of reading up on similar stories that I want to emulate and writing my detailed outlines. I find that once I write an outline and do any necessary research that whatever story I've set out to tell will write itself. See, already I take the journalist's approach of gathering information, assessing what I have, and then going from there. The problem here is that now I'm totally confused because I have no experience to fall back on in this arena. Once I have all my interviews transcribed and my research completed, writing a 500-word article is cake. This is totally different and daunting. I have a bajillion mini stories floating around my lap top just to get my feet wet, but this whole beginning-middle-end, omniscient 3rd person narrator, rounding out the characters, giving the proper setting...man, it just never ends. My dream would be to a) just finish a god-forsaken story and then b) put it online on a free web site and see if it gets attention/comments, and then c) maybe if it's good enough, get paid.

Recently, I discovered the beauty of the "e-book." Literally, you just write a book and pay a fee to a hosting site and get commission for the sales of your e-books, which buyers read in an online-friendly format. It's way less hassle than finding a publisher and promoting yourself that way, because anybody can say they have an e-book if they pay a hosting site, it's just a matter of getting enough sales to make it worth your while. The whole self-promotion thing is a bit of a head scratcher, but one idea for that is posting free stories on free hosting web sites and putting up information about your longer e-books that can be purchased. That would be an ideal move for me, because I'm such a writing/reading junkie and it's something that I can do on my own time without a boss. There are certainly editors you can find online, though, really easily. I've already contacted a few of them and I've even volunteered my own editing services to others. Editing is another job I enjoy, mainly because it kills me to see the frequent grammatical errors floating around, especially online, where ppl talk like this lol. PET. PEEVE. The occasional use of "Net Lingo" doesn't bother me, but when people talk exclusively in shorthand I just want to set myself on fire. I certainly have my own weaknesses in my writing, but when I see flagrant disregard for my beloved language, I get irritated.

Anyway, we'll see if this whole making-money-at-writing dream pans out. Wish me luck on my noble quest.

Bloggy McBloggerson

Oh look, I hath returned to Ye Olde Blog. If I had as much motivation to write mindless tripe in other areas of my life, I would be quite successful.

For some reason, I've been dorking out and following the Olympics as much as possible. I hardly know anything about hockey, but I've even watched that. What I know about hockey comes from my scant knowledge of polo. Yes, polo on a horse, not water polo, to clarify. Now there's a sport I'd like to do -- polo, not hockey, let's be serious. Then again, I don't exactly have the polo rider physique (or even hunter/jumper physique, woops). What I'd really need is much more upper body strength, and if you take a look at my arms you'll notice they resemble those of a T Rex (i.e. scrawny). I've had the chance to tinker with polo before, namely during my first job when I was 15 and I took care of a bajillionaire's polo horses. And the barn where I rode, at the time, had a rep for polo teams using the facilities. One of our outdoor rings was even referred to as the polo field because the gates were high enough for the ball to smack into it at high speeds. I also got to exercise some polo horses on the side, and those animals are totally different from the frou frou of hunter/jumper show horses. For one, they're tiny, powerful, have no mane and a cropped tail, and they stop and turn on a dime. They also have less of a spook, generally. Oh, and polo is one of the most expensive sports you can do probably right up there with yacht racing. Yeah.

Anyway, what caused that tangent? Who knows. My mind is a mystery to me.

Speaking of horse endeavors, it's going...yeah. It's going. This weekend's show will be filed under "a learning experience" (groan). I get all worked up about my nerves, patchy show experience in the past decade, nonexistent memory, and then having to work at training a green animal and wondering if I'm even qualified for something like that. Whatever, I do my thang. Luckily the horse I'm riding is totally game and brave, jumping from any distance imaginable and putting in an absurd effort to clear a jump that you'd think must be on fire for him to be clearing it so high. So what he lacks in experience is compensated by willingness to do whatever. Well, mostly...And when I start to get frustrated with all the aforementioned things, then I'll get seethingly jealous when another trainer inquires about Z being for sale. I get all indignant that I've done so much work and it'll all be meaningless. Back when I had my own horse it was always awesome if another trainer would compliment the animal that carted me around, now I dread hearing anything. I know, I know, grow a pair and get over it. It's a business, yadda yadda. I just need to complain.

What else? Oh, y'know, life is fab. My daily perusal of the news is hampering my desire to plunge ahead in the job search, when you hear about home foreclosures and how writing jobs are nonexistent. I guess that's the case with any of those right-brained, creativity-driven jobs though, even in a bangin' economy. People always seem to revel in telling you you'll never make it as a ____ because of the competition. Well, those people can shove it. Ain't nothin' gonna break my style, ain't nothin' gonna hold me down, oh no, I got to keep on movin'.

Other: my knee is still out of whack, hyperextended. It pops sometimes when I walk. Who knows what that's about, but let me tell you that it's not the most pleasant feeling when you stretch in the morning and your knee gives out a shriek of pain. I will continue to complain about this situation until this ends.

OK I am now off like a prom dress. Bye bye for now, blog.

Zebras

I'm not sure if it's just because of the equine connection, but I've been loving the zebra print fad, lately, and let me clarify that I usually hate fads. I also hate leopard print, usually...I don't know what the deal is. This puzzles me greatly, actually. Shrug.

Still at one of those life crossroads things. This troubles me. I'm one of those people who can't make a decision to save my life, so it's difficult to choose what I want to do and how to pursue it in the most efficient way. I'm determined as #*)%, so I know that pretty much whatever I want (in reason) can be achieved. I've done it befo'. So in the meantime, I have to work on pinpointing where and what I want to do and then going for it gung-ho and then saying a prayer to the Atheist gods that the economy won't obliterate my chances of getting what I want. It's annoying that most jobs I find are a near-fit, but I'm usually either over- or under-qualified.
Then there's also the location issue -- I went to college 3000 miles away from home and then after I graduated I went 10,000 miles away from home, now I just wanna stay put for awhile. It occurred to me that Ventura County isn't where I want to be, long-term, but I don't exactly know what sounds ideal, either. Hrmph.

Something needs to pan out with my writing endeavors. I have several writing projects on my lap top that I've been doing just for something to do, but I haven't pursued getting them published. I also haven't done much in the way of cold calling to offer my writing skillz, partly because I'm being lazy and then there's the fear that I won't be taken on and that would be a royal slap in the face because I'm a rejection-phobe. *Deflates*

Horse stuff is going fairly well. It would be going better if I had more funds to do more stuff and snag an animal to ride long-term, but ya can't always get what you want. Y'know what would be nice? If I could buy a dirt cheap animal (I'm talking a couple thou) and then training that bad boy up and selling him. Nah...right now that sounds like a fool's errand. I remember one of the horses I rode in NY, Trilby, was what If Only Farm called "Sue's Folly," because she was super expensive, but hardly anybody could ride her because she was such a pain in the keester, so she never got sold. Mares can be a real piece of work -- add in the thoroughbred factor and a wicked temper and you have the trifecta of yuckery. Then again, I got Trilby to like me, so neener-neener. Only one other rider got her to go around well, and that was a quasi-pro who trained at IOF and took her to Harrisburg in the A/A Hunters. So yeah -- if someone tells me something can't be done, I make it my mission to prove otherwise. Because I'm a *bleep* and it gives me a delicious sense of schadenfreude, I suppose. Well, anyway, I'll admit I didn't fit her very well, seeing how she was *maybe* 16 hands and I'm 5'9" with junk in the trunk, but hey, she had a massive barrel and suitability isn't the be-all, end-all for adult amateur hunters. Also, no match is perfect, even if you spent 7 figures, the animal can go permanently lame and you're out all that $. I mean, take a look at a horse's legs at some point -- they're super long and spindly and they're holding up an animal that weighs as much as a car. They also land from large jumps at high velocity, so there's that, too.

Somebody told me a week or so ago that horses aren't meant to be ridden. He said it might've been necessary back when they were essential for transportation, but that anybody who rides a horse these days is just making the animal into a mindless plaything and should just join the circus. After I told this person that I couldn't continue the argument because I was busy eating a veal sandwich and I was off to go hunting in my mink coat, I actually thought about this. After dorking out and doing more research and going over the bajillions of coffee table books I've collected over the years, I've determined that there's a valid point in the "you shouldn't ride a horse" statement, but that it's not necessarily cruel. True, there's abuse. There are idiots who don't know what they're doing and don't realize there's a delicate balance in what is appropriate for each individual animal and that one size doesn't fit all. Then there's the fact that domesticated horses have their needs micromanaged, from food, supplements, medical attention, shoes, teeth, exercise, and of course aesthetics for the show horses. Training horses, also, is a lot of work for horse/rider, but it's not abuse if it's done correctly. Using things like whips/spurs also can be done effectively -- after all, not correcting something an animal does wrong and then deciding to beat the %*)% out of him after the 20th time only confuses the animal and therein lies the abuse, amirite? Yep. I am right. I win, QED. I have more to say on this subject, but shmeh. Later.

OK I just realized I'm tired. Imma go read and perhaps wake up for a game plan for my life. Wish me luck.