A to Z Challenge Day 12: Lisse (the Child of the Dystopian Future)

When I was in grade school, my best friend and I wrote a series of stories that we titled, “The Game Masters”. They were silly stories about how we and our friends would enter video game worlds. I’m sure there was a reason, but I can’t remember it at all. I think at some point some monsters came along and were, like, trying to destroy the digital world or something. I’m certain that the stories would be excruciatingly embarrassing if I were to reread them today.

The reason I mention this is because one day, at a school book fair, my friend picked up a book called, “Invitation to the Game” and read the back cover. She subsequently thrust the book at me and told me to read because that blurb on the back of the book sounded strangely like our series of stories. Basically, a group of friends enters a digital “video game” world. We were shocked, so much so that I just had to buy the book and check it out. As it turned out the plot of the book wasn’t even the tiniest bit like our story (the “video game” was a kind of virtual world and that was the only tiny similarity), but I wound up being extremely happy with my purchase because the book was brilliant. A few of the themes went over my head as a child, but I’ve reread the book at least two dozen times as I’ve grown up, and the differences in personal maturity make the book that much better every time.

Lisse is our protagonist, the narrator of the story. She and a group of friends (for some the term is loose) graduate from school together and are shipped off into the work world…or so they think, at first. The world has become a dystopian future where the overwhelming majority of young graduates are designated as permanently unemployed and sent off to live on an extremely tiny government pittance. The group of kids decide to stick together and pool their resources, and somewhere along the line are invited to take part in an underground virtual experiment called “The Game”.

The reason I loved Lisse so much as a child, and continued to love her as I grew and matured, is because she reminds me so much of myself. Amongst her group there is a would-be chemist, a would-be doctor, a would-be agriculturist, and a would-be architect, amongst others, but Lisse graduated with no idea of what she might become. She was an artist at heart with no set discernible skill (she was smart, but not a genius at any one thing like her comrades). She tells the story through the eyes of someone who doesn’t understand what her place in things is, which is how I felt most of my life. In the end she winds up serving a very important, if unexpected, purpose, and that really hit home from the very first time I read it.

If you get a chance, I definitely recommend picking up this book. It’s a wonderfully written tale with lots of surprises and lots of heart.

Accountability Wednesdays: Week 9

By the time you are reading this I will have been home from my shift out West for approximately one full day, which also means that I’ll have been unemployed for one full day. Yes, my job has ended once again. I was aware that it might not last very long because of the nature of the work we were doing, but I was a bit surprised to have been laid off so soon. I expected to get at least one more month out of it, as evidenced by the flight I had already booked and now wont get reimbursed for. But I’m not bitter. No, really, no bitterness here at all.

Hopefully I’ll get back to work sooner rather than later (if anyone knows of any commissioning jobs starting up soon, for the love of god let me know), but in the meantime I’m going to look on the positive side, which is that I’ll have time to focus on my goals for a little while.

Goal #1: Lose ten pounds and become healthier overall.

I have mixed feelings about the success of this week, but I’m going to go ahead and say that it was a good one overall. For one thing, I successfully avoided calorie-bomb beverages for five out of seven days, and on those other two days it was just half a can of pop with supper. For every other beverage throughout the week I drank either water or herbal tea (with no milk or sugar). And for the record, that’s a huge sacrifice for me because I love pop and loathe plain water.

On the exercise front I can’t say that I did anything significant, but that’s because I’m much more out of shape than I thought I was. Every time I try to do anything I wind up feeling that my heart is going to burst from my chest, and the next morning my body feels like I got hit by a truck. So my plan for the next few weeks (and hubby, if you’re reading this, make me do it) is to hop on the treadmill for half an hour a day until I start to feel like I can handle something a little more intense.

Also, as a side note, I discovered that my FitBit can sync with the “My Fitness Pal” app, which is my favorite app for keeping track of calorie intake and exercise, so yay for that!

Goal #2: Be more active on social media and work hard on my “author platform”.

Week 9 was definitely not as good as week 8, but still not bad. I slacked off a little on Twitter, but I’ve been working hard on the “reciprocation” side of social media. That is, I’ve been actually hitting the “Like” button (or the “Favorite” button, or whatever) when I like something that someone else has posted or shared. I’ve also been sharing things that I really like to help promote them, and commenting on things instead of just moving on after I’ve enjoyed them. It only seems fair. If I want people to interact with me, I should interact with them, right? Right.

Goal #3: COMPLETE my zombie apocalypse novel, Nowhere to Hide.

I feel like I’m forever repeating the same things over and over again, but as previously mentioned I haven’t been able to work on this for a while because I’ve been out West. That said, now that I’m home and unemployed for an indeterminate amount of time, I plan to put a real drive on for the final draft. If I can whip through the changes that I want to make based on my beta-reader’s comments, I should have a final draft in no time. Then I can focus on things like formatting and a cover, and get this sucker published!

Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.

The week when I fly home from out West always takes a hit on word count because of all the time I end up spending on packing, sitting on (extremely bumpy) buses, and just dealing with the hassles of traveling in general. That said, I’m actually not too disappointed in how I did this week. Handwriting blog entries in my notebook, I managed to put 3524 words to paper this week. I hope to at least double that number this coming week, so wish me luck!

“What I’m Currently…”

Since yesterday was such a serious topic, I though I’d be a little more lighthearted today. I think it’s time for an installment of “What I’m Currently…”

“What I’m Currently Watching…”
At the moment I’m about halfway through season five of True Blood, with intentions of watching season six. I’ve already seen season five, but I’m re-watching it in order to rekindle my memories of what happened since I recently read a slew of the books that the show is based on (the Sookie Stackhouse novels). The two mediums take very different paths, so it’s hard to keep track of both at once.

That said, I love the show as much as I love the books. Whereas the books are written entirely from Sookie’s point of view, the show tells the stories of all of the characters – the humans, the vampires, the shifters and weres, and everything in between. There are several completely unnecessary characters in the books who have their own whole subplots in the show. There’s even one character who dies in the first book, but in the show he’s a very important character and is, in fact, one of my favorites. It all works out very nicely.

I realize that vampires and other supernatural creatures are not for everyone, but this show is worth giving it a try, in my opinion. For one thing the vampires are not flighty, sparkly, perfect examples of sex gods and goddesses who can do no wrong. Yes, there’s some romance involved in the show, but the vampires are also cruel, dangerous, and occasionally downright evil. Even the vampires that we’re meant to like regularly plot, kill, and torture, amongst other things. It’s a nice change of pace to have vampires who are protagonists but are also still monsters.

The show has a lot of other good points, but I don’t need to list them all here (*cough*incredibly hot actors*cough*). Just trust me on this one. Give the show a chance if you haven’t already.

“What I’m Currently Playing…”
I’ve finally gotten around to playing Soul Sacrifice for the Playstation Vita, and I have to say that I’m hooked. At first I was a bit confused because it’s one of those games that just throws you into the fray without explaining anything, but bit by bit you get filled in and everything starts to make sense.

At the core the game actually has a very simple premise: kill monsters and either save or sacrifice their souls to affect your character’s health and defense, or magic and attack power. Adding to that are a whole host of “offerings” (which boil down to your magic spells), “sigils” that you can equip to affect your stats, and the ability to sacrifice your own flesh (in the form of stat losses and the like) in exchange for one-time bursts of power to defeat difficult enemies. The whole thing is wrapped up in a strange but very interesting story.

To evidence just how interesting, I spent over two hours just reading all the background info on how each of the monsters became monsters in the first place. Two hours.

“What I’m Currently Reading…”
Make way for the Queen of all nerds. Though I haven’t touched it in two weeks because it’s too clunky to bring out West with me, I’ve been working my way through Marvel Avengers: The Ultimate Character Guide. My husband got me a whole slew of these kinds of books for Christmas because I indicated that I’d like to learn more about different superheroes because I’m an enormous nerd.

Evidence!

The “Avengers” edition of these books gives bios and short histories of any Marvel character – hero or villain – who has ever been involved with any of the Avengers storylines. It really is quite interesting (if you’re an enormous nerd) but I have to say that the best part of reading this book is when my three-year-old daughter plunks down next to me and starts exclaiming, “Look! It’s IronMan! Look! It’s Hulk! Look! It’s Thor!”

And finally,
“What I’m Currently Thinking…”
…is that I’ll have plenty of time to watch, play, and read, now that I’m unemployed again. Ha ha ah ha ha ha…*sob sob*

(Just kidding, I’m not actually sobbing, don’t worry!)

Jobs I’ve Had (and Headaches I’ve Endured)

After stumbling across this post from lazylauramaisey I started thinking about all the jobs I’ve had over the years and I thought, hey…why not share?

Papergirl for the Cape Breton Post
This was the first job I ever had and believe it or not I think it was one the longest ones I ever had. If I’m remembering correctly, I started the route in the eighth grade and didn’t quit it until I went to college. Sometimes my mother would drive me because the route was a few streets away from where we lived, but a lot of the time I walked as well. It wasn’t a bad job for the most part, and at Christmas I got some pretty nice tips, but there was this one family I spent five years wanting to strangle. They were as rich as any family can be in Cape Breton, and it was like pulling a crocodile’s teeth trying to get my payment out of them. They would actually look out the window – right at me – and then not answer the door. My first “customers are idiots” experience.

Cashier at Zellers
For those who might not know, Zellers was a Canadian department store, much like Walmart. When I was in high school I got a job there for the Christmas season, working cash. I absolutely hated it for two main reasons. One, I was still pretty shy in high school and the job forced me to talk to people all day. Two, there weren’t enough support staff. A major flaw at Zellers was that sales were rarely properly programed into the registers, which resulted in a lot of customers loudly proclaiming, “That’s not the right price!” as I scanned. The thing is, people would do this all the time whether the item was on sale or not to try and cheat the system, and the only way to combat it was to call a “floor-walker” to go find the item in the store and prove what the actual price was. During the holidays calling a “floor-walker” was tantamount to insanity…it was so busy that chances were they would never get to you. So when my line-ups started getting super-long and all the customers started getting super-agitated I just stopped calling for help all together and overrode any price the customer’s told me was wrong. I probably cost Zellers a lot of money that holiday season, but in my defense, they should have hired more damn people.

“Waitress” at the Marine Atlantic Ferry Terminal
I put quotation marks around waitress because I didn’t really serve the food, but I did sometimes serve ice cream. It wasn’t a bad job, but I had an idiot boss who would rather us wash down the same tables fifty times than stand still and do nothing for five minutes when there were no customers. I offset my annoyance by constantly filching Rice Krispie Square treats.
Also, once, my boss demanded that I stay late, even though legally I couldn’t drive that late (I was still a new driver with a restricted license). It was my first run-in with opposing an employer. I told her that I’d happily stay late if she paid my fine when I got it. She ended up sending me home.

“IT Specialist” at the Coast Guard College
This was a work term for my university program, and I can honestly say I didn’t learn a damn thing. The job mostly consisted of things like replacing the batteries in the TV remotes in the residents’ rooms. The one challenge I had was when the speaker at a meeting was having issues getting his computer to work with the overhead projector…that was the first time I’d ever seen a Mac computer, but damn it, I got it working.

“IT Specialist” at Cape Breton University
Another work term, and twice as useless as the first. This is the university that I actually attended, and they created the job just to have something available because they were having absolutely no luck finding work terms for the students in my program. I had almost nothing to do for this entire term. I spent most of my time transposing a huge map via this huge electronic drafting board, which wasn’t part of my job…it was just to pass the time.

“Floor Walker” at a different Zellers
This was the first job I got after my future husband and I moved in together, and I hated it so much worse than the first Zellers. I mostly wandered around replacing merchandise that people had moved, or straightening up clothes that people had unfolded, but those were the “good” parts. The bad parts were dealing with customers, who at this particular store seemed to be twice as idiotic as others I’d dealt with in the past. I remember this one particular lady brought in a flyer the day before the sales were to start, and absolutely demanded that we give her the sales prices that day because one of the graphics on the flyer said, “Come in and enjoy our great sales today!”

A-Little-Bit-of-Everything at a Nova Scotia Liquor Store
As far as customer service goes, this was one of the better ones. Everyone in the store did a bit of everything, so I’d be on cash one day and replacing stock another day, unloading new stock the day after that. But the best part was the drive-thru. Yes. I worked at a liquor store with a drive-thru. It was completely idiotic because legally the customer had to receive their liquor, pull forward, get out, and put the liquor in the trunk. It was just…foolish, honestly. But whatever. I enjoyed working the drive-thru. I particularly liked working it with this one other girl about my age. We would trade off on working the window/cash and actually running for the order. I enjoyed running for the order. It was also quite humorous because you can’t imagine how many customers we got who drove up to the drive-thru speaker with no idea as to what they actually wanted. I’ve gotten orders such as “uh…some kinda rum?” and “this thing in a blue bottle…I have no idea what kind of liquor it is”. I also had more than one traveler from another province beg me to let them take a picture of me handing their order out the drive-thru window. I don’t blame them. Leave it to Nova Scotia to have drive-thru liquor stores.

A-Little-Bit-of-Everything at Walmart
Yes, I did eventually end up at a Walmart, only because the liquor store just kinda…stopped scheduling me in. Anyway, I started in an actual store, doing more floor work, but what I was really hired for was a large group that was set to “build” the new Walmart that was going up. We put the shelving together and arranged it properly, pieced the cash register area together, put up all the signage, and eventually stocked all the shelves. It wasn’t a bad gig for brain-dead work that you could zone out during, but I hated it for one reason: the manager. Never have a met such a stone-cold witch. The best example I have against her is when she refused to let my young coworker have the afternoon off to go to her cousin’s funeral. Apparently “a cousin isn’t a close enough relative”. I was so disgusted that when I got the girl alone I told her to take off and I’d cover for her. She didn’t because she needed the job to pay for school and was scared she’d lose it, which just made me that much more disgusted. When I finally left that job it was all I could do to keep myself from slugging that manager in the face on my way out.

Customer Service Rep for Sirius Satellite Radio
…which is a nicer way of saying, “call center punching bag”. I activated people’s radios, took payments, resolved issues with accounts, and helped them troubleshoot issues with their radios. By way of explaining what this job was like, I beg everyone this: if you ever get a Sirius Satellite Radio, listen to the rep who is activating it for you. I lost track of the number of times I asked, “Does your radio have a clear view of the sky?” and received a “Yes!” only to find out later when the radio wouldn’t work that they were really in a parking garage or in the middle of their apartment building. It was all I could do not to scream bloody murder at some people.
Also, occasionally, the Sirius system would screw up and double- or triple-charge people. This made for some very interesting conversations. One man with a trucking company had purchased three radios with lifetime subscriptions (approximately $500 each) and been triple-charged, making his bill jump from $1500 to $4500. He was extremely calm and polite while I fixed the issue. Meanwhile a few years later I got a customer who had been double-charged his $15 monthly bill and he completely lost his mind. I actually hung up on him three times because he wouldn’t stop swearing and calling me every name under the sun. Pleasant!

Instrumentation Maintenance Tech at the Paper Mill
My first “career” job, which is what I trained at university for. This job taught me first and foremost that I knew nothing. I may have spent four years and a crap-ton of money becoming a technologist, but my first few months at that mill taught me that school means absolutely bupkiss without experience. I really had no idea what I was doing, and my older and much-more-experienced coworkers didn’t let me forget it. Within my first six months I burned myself on several steam pipes and once managed to spray myself with hot condensate. It’s really quite amazing that I have any skin left. Oh yes, and lots and lots of 120 volt shocks. You’d think I would have learned to wear my gloves, but…no.
Maintenance is an interesting beast. You learn a lot – because you have to – but it can be very stressful because you have to keep the plant running. When the plant is down it’s losing money every minute, and that’s directly correlated to how fast you can fix something. I didn’t really realize just how stressed out this job made me until long after I’d lost it (when the mill shut down and was sold).

Commissioning Technician on the Kearl Lake Project
My first (and so far only) job out West turned out to be an excellent one. I had a good contract, good coworkers, good (for the most part) bosses, and good work. Sometimes it was hard work – particularly in the middle of winter when you’re outside in minus 40 degrees Celsius – but it was interesting work with very little stress. Since we were still building the plant there was no big scary rush to get things going like right goddamn now!!! I also got to experience the job both from the field and from the control room, which I think taught me a lot. All in all I can’t complain about this one. It was a good job with good people and I made a lot of money to pay off lots of debts and bills. Yes, after ten other jobs, I finally hit one that didn’t make me want to murder the world.

Writer!Okay, so it can’t really be considered a job until you’ve been paid for it, but it sounds better to say that I’m currently working as a writer than to say that I’m currently unemployed. 😛

My eighth grade English teacher told us once that by the time we were thirty-five we would have had up to ten different “jobs” and possibly one or two different “careers”. I didn’t believe him at the time, but there you have it: I’ve had 11 different jobs, only two of them part of my career as a technologist, and one unpaid “job” as a writer. Amazing. Has anyone else had a varied string of jobs like mine? Please share!

Distractions are…um…hold that thought for just one second…

This past weekend my husband and I celebrated the dual joys of our 4th wedding anniversary, and the marriage of two friends of ours. We enjoyed a beautiful ceremony in the lovely community of Cheticamp, whilst also spending time with another married couple who we hadn’t seen in a long time, and marked the whole thing off by staying at a sweet little chalet along the coast. It was all quite lovely.

Because it was our anniversary, we were inevitably asked what we got each other, and my husband got to tell our companions that he bought me a Playstation Vita.

For our wedding anniversary.

Because I asked for it.

Hey, if you’ve been reading this blog for a while and haven’t yet figured out that I’m a total and utter dork…now you know.

Hubby bought me a Wi-Fi version Vita with a 32 GB memory card, connected it to his Playstation Network account, and downloaded a bunch of free games for me (Sony, don’t ever change your Playstation Plus system…you’re definitely doing it right), plus he picked up Rayman Origins at Walmart. Since last week I’ve been glued to this little handheld joy-box. The Vita definitely has it’s flaws, as any gaming system tends to, but I’m absolutely loving it.

And that’s a bad thing.

Okay, it’s a good thing because it was a present and I wanted it, so obviously one would hope that I enjoy playing with it. But it’s a bad thing because it is a positive time vampire. This morning I got up at about 8:30 am and started playing it. Other than to put it aside long enough to get breakfast for the baby, a coffee for the hubby, and to dance with the baby when she suddenly decided I had to dance with her, I didn’t put the Vita down until 1:00 pm. I got a dozen or so Rayman trophies, and that is all I accomplished all morning.

This is the face of my procrastination.

I didn’t write, I didn’t edit. I definitely didn’t exercise. I didn’t do any laundry or dishes, and I didn’t start tidying up the guest room (which I have to do because we have two days worth of guests coming next weekend). I didn’t even really get dressed. I put on a pair of jeans long enough to run out to the car for something, but I couldn’t be bothered to throw a bra on under my shirt, and I still haven’t as I’m typing this. The baby is still wearing her pajamas. I only just took something out of the deep freeze for supper, and I haven’t established what I’m going to do with it yet. The kitty litter is full and the cats’ streaming water dish has been broken for several days. There are a ton of leftovers in the fridge that have gone bad and I haven’t thrown them out. There are about ten boxes of old baby clothes in the hallway that I’ve been meaning to go through so I can send some stuff to consignment.

But instead of dealing with any of these things that need dealing with, I played my new Playstation Vita for four and a half hours straight. And if I’m totally honest? The only reason I actually stopped playing is because I realized that battery was dying. Yes, the only thing that dragged me away from my gaming is the fact that battery scientists (that’s a thing, right?) haven’t figured out how to make mobile batteries last longer yet.

Distractions are a terrible thing when you’re in a position that requires you to be self-motivated. Currently I am not employed; I’m working on my writing, but I’m not in a position where I am getting paid or compensated in any way. That means that every morning when I get up I have to look at myself in the mirror and tell myself, “Okay. You are going to get some damn work done today!” And then I have to try to follow through with it. I have to pick my own self up, with no hope of any kind of payment of any form, and I have to force myself to sit down and write. That in and of itself wouldn’t be too bad, except for the fact that while I’m trying to force myself to write I also have to deal with a child who thinks I should wear little pink play glasses all day, and a household worth of chores and errands that never seem to slack off in any sense of the word.

Distractions are terrible and they must be eliminated. They must be stricken from the lifestyle. It is the only way. Only when distractions have been completely removed will one be able to go on with one’s day productively and efficiently.

Unfortunately, I’m way too distracted by my shiny new Vita to get on with eliminating my distractions right now, so if you don’t mind…

WHY DO YOU MOCK ME SO?!

If You’d Just THINK For a Moment…

The more I hear about the changes that are coming to the Canadian EI system, the more frustrated I get. And it’s not even the changes themselves that are making me the most angry (though there’s definitely some rage there); it’s the comments I keep hearing from people who support the changes, or think the changes should be even harsher. The most common comment I’ve heard is that Atlantic Canadians (and our seasonal workers in particular) are lazy bums sponging off the system several months a year, and that we should be forced to suck it up and either get a job flipping burgers or move out West for work.

Funny how sure of themselves are these people who have stable jobs and don’t have to deal with being regularly unemployed themselves. They’re so angry about people “abusing” the system that they pay for (uh, hello, the same people “abusing” the system pay EI premiums too, you know) that they don’t stop to think for a moment about some of the comments they’re making.

A few points, if you will:

– Yes, our seasonal workers (fishermen, tourism workers, agriculturists, etc) “sponge” off the system every year. That’s because their jobs, the jobs they’ve worked all their lives and are trained for, don’t enable them to work 12 months out of the year. I’ve heard so many comments about how those people should “look for other work then, if their jobs are so unsteady”. And that is one of the most ridiculously stupid things I’ve ever heard. If all the fishermen suddenly packed up and said, “You know what? We should go find a job that’s available all year through” who the hell would catch your fish?! Like it or not, seasonal work is required work. Those seasonal workers catch your fish, harvest your crops, cut your lumber, and a host of other things that need doing. Cut them out of the equation and you create a massive deficit in freakin’ society.

– “Okay, so don’t make them find new jobs, but force them to take other jobs during the off months!” Do you really think that’s so easy? First of all, most of these seasonal workers are only trained in the job they do. In order to find a secondary job that pays them at least closed to what they make normally, they would need to be trained in something. Who is going to pay to train them? Do you remember what college costs? Because it’s gone up. A lot. The EI changes that are coming will put no money into helping retrain the unemployed. So where is that money going to come from? Believe it or not, not everyone can afford to just say, “Hey, I think I’ll go back to college so I can work two jobs a year.”

– “Okay, screw a career, just make them work at McDonald’s in the off months!” Oh, you sad, sorry little person. There are currently tens of thousands of seasonal workers in Nova Scotia. Do you honestly believe that there are tens of thousands of unskilled jobs just sitting around waiting to be filled? Particularly in Nova Scotia? Because if you do, I’ll pray for your sanity if you ever lose your job. It hasn’t been very long since I was a college student looking for part-time work to help pay my tuition, so I know what it’s like. It’s not uncommon to hand out a hundred resumes before getting one interview (and that’s in the cities, not the super-rural areas many of us live in). And I’m going to explain something to you right now: minimum wage employers like fast food joints and department stores don’t want to hire you if they know you’re going to be leaving for another job in a few months. Why would McDonald’s want to hire a fisherman and spend a bunch of money training him, knowing that he’s going to leave to go back to fishing in a few short months? Minimum wage employers don’t want to deal with that nonsense anymore than any other employer would. Turnover at those places is bad enough without hiring people that they know for sure aren’t sticking around for very long. And as previously mentioned, even if some seasonal workers do manage to pick up these types of jobs, there aren’t enough available for everyone. To think that there are is complete and utter folly. If there were that many minimum wage jobs just sitting around, students wouldn’t have such a hard time finding part-time and summer jobs.
The entire thing, in my opinion (and many other people’s opinions) smacks of trying to force as many people out west as possible. If seasonal workers (and others who claim EI regularly for other reasons) are forced to take jobs outside their pay grade (and yes, 70% of what you’re used to is significantly reduced pay when you’re fixed into things like mortgages and vehicle loans), then they’re going to start looking at greener pastures, which seems to be exactly what the feds want. The West will continue to grow and prosper, while the East steadily collapses. The more people who head out to the oil sands for better-paying work, the less money that will be spent in Nova Scotia, the higher our taxes will rise, and so on and so forth. And to all you people who support the changes, you who have steady, well-paying jobs and never have to rely on EI yourselves…you can be damn sure that as the Nova Scotia economy rapidly declines, your jobs will end up in jeopardy as well.

Will you be ready and willing to take a minimum wage job or uproot your entire life to move out West?

15 Day Book Challenge – Day 1

So I was cruising around looking for a new challenge to do, since I don’t have a lot to talk about at the moment that wouldn’t be just depressing (see previous post). I found quite a few, many of them quite ambitious, but I thought I’d try this one for now. It’s 15 days of questions about books. Seems reasonable on a writing blog, eh? 🙂

Here are the questions:

Day 1- Your favorite book and why
Day 2- A quote from said book
Day 3- Your favorite author and favorite book by them
Day 4- Your favorite book from your childhood
Day 5- Guilty pleasure book
Day 6- If you were stranded on a desert island, what book would you want?
Day 7- Favorite movie adaptation of a book
Day 8- Favorite quote from any book
Day 9- What are you currently reading?
Day 10- Write a review of the last book you read
Day 11- Favorite book you had to read for school
Day 12- Favorite classic
Day 13- Favorite poet
Day 14- Post your favorite poem
Day 15- Recommend 5 books to your lovely followers 🙂

And now on to the Day 1 post:

Day 1- Your favorite book and why

If I had to pick a favorite book of all the books I’ve read, it would be Invitation to the Game, by Monica Hughes. It’s an older book, first published in 1990, and I first picked it up sometime in grade school, I think possibly around grade 5.

The book takes place in a dystopian future where robots do most of the work and the overwhelming majority of young people are unemployed, “taken care of” by the government. The story follows a group of new graduates who decide to live together in hopes of surviving the world they’ve been shoved into. After discovering that the world is a pretty damn cruel place they are suddenly sent a mysterious invitation to join something called “The Game”, which turns out to consume their lives, though they have no idea of the true purpose of this distraction.

From the first time I read this book I absolutely loved it. I love the way it’s written, I love the world Hughes has created, I love the characters and the way they interact together. I can genuinely imagine the awful future she paints and I can believe the attitudes and reactions of the characters to it. I love this book so much that I’ve read it once every year or two since the day I bought it, which comes out to probably about 15 times or so. Soon I’ll probably have to buy a new copy because mine is getting pretty worn out. I definitely recommend it to anyone. 🙂

“What do you want to be?”

We start asking children what they want to be when they grow up long before they’ve had enough world experience to really be able to answer the question. We think it’s cute to see what they say, but we generally don’t put a lot of stock in their answer.

I started telling people that I wanted to be a writer back in the third grade, and that answer hasn’t really changed even now that I’m almost twenty years older, married, a mother, and trained in a very technical/industrial field. When it came time to go to college I ignored my desire to become an author and defaulted to my other interest – technology – because it seemed like the smarter financial choice. After all, in order to make any money as an author you have to be really good, and really lucky, right? Yet here I sit, having been unemployed for the past four months due to my company being shut down and in the process of being sold, and I can’t help but chuckle a little. I went for my second choice of career so I could be more financially stable, and I received the exact opposite.

It may not be a reason to completely overhaul my life and start from scratch (after all, the company is being sold and could be running again any day now), but I do think it’s a lesson in not making assumptions. I gave up on the idea of being a professional writer because I figured I’d never be good enough or lucky enough to succeed. What I see now is that I just wasn’t willing to try, because trying can lead to failure. It’s a cowardly way to do things. And as with anything, you have to face your fears in order to truly succeed.

Maybe I’ll become an author yet.