A decade in review - 2004
Dec. 28th, 2009 04:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seabird78Okay, so I have to admit I'm kind of feeling a little burnt out on doing these recaps. On one hand, I know it's helpful to see the path my life has taken, so I can feel a sense of accomplishment and progress and read patterns that might help me better navigate the years to come. But all this talking about myself feels soooo freakin self-indulgent and worse than that, boring. I'm gonna press on as much as I can, mostly because I need to teach myself to have more follow-through with my writing projects. But if it gets to be too much I reserve the right to cancel this series after I complete this post.
It would be a good one to leave off on...this was another year when lots of stuff happened.
So to start, there was a return trip to Orlando for more fun at Disney and Universal. I don't remember a lot of specifics, aside from there being an N'Sync sighting at Universal, and a couple of really nice dinners, one at an African buffet in Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge, and another at a Cuban place owned by Gloria Estefan and her husband. And also we went to see Lost in Translation on an evening we just felt like being chill. I enjoyed it except for the fact that I couldn't relate to Scarlett Johannsen's character at all. I wanted to wring her neck for being bored and unhappy with all the privilege her life afforded -- not having to work, being in Japan with all kinds of time to explore or relax, and having a pretty cute and accomplished photographer (or was he a filmmaker?) husband. In any case, it seemed to me that she should be grateful and not whiny and trying to screw around with Bill Murray. I did not feel her pain.
When we returned I set about losing all of the weight I'd put on after several years of really bad eating habits and a series of sedentary jobs. My BFF Dawn invited me to go with her to Weight Watchers, and I was amazed at how quickly and easily I undid all the damage I'd been doing to myself. By the middle of the year I had taken off about 35 pounds and for the most part I've managed to keep it off. These last six months have found me creeping up a bit, but I feel like I'm better equipped to catch it before it gets out of hand this time, and make the necessary adjustments to get back down where I need to be.
I took my last traditional story workshop class, with one of the greatest writing professors ever, Joe Meno. I loved this class probably more than any other because Joe reminded us of the importance of having fun with our work, and he had such great faith in me even though I was struggling thanks to juggling school and an increased workload. I think I mentioned in a previous entry how he gave me a private pep talk that I still value to this day....telling me how the only thing holding me back was me. I didn't make a lot of novel progress in that class because I was starting to hate my material, but I did come out of it with a very long short story (I call it my Dave Kramer story) that I still want to go back to so I can polish it and send it out in the world. Coincidentally enough, my story very closely mirrored the one chronicled in the documentary film The King of Kong, which I would not see until several years later and was not aware of at all at the time of my writing.
Concurrent with my workshop class, I was also invited to enroll in a class that would allow me to serve as a student editor of Hair Trigger, the literary anthology published annually by my department. I'd worked on it as a copyeditor/proofreader as part of my office job, but thanks to this I also had a hand in selecting the manuscripts that were chosen. I was excited about this because only the top students were allowed to work on this publication, and usually if you were picked it meant someone thought you had a manuscript worthy of being selected for the book as well. Though to be fair, we were not allowed to weigh in when our work came up for discussion and even had to leave the room to ensure there wasn't a conflict of interest.
IWA Midsouth shows became a staple of our weekends. They excited me so much that I wanted to learn more about how the promotion worked. I saw an opportunity to do that while also helping its amazing women's division gain exposure by writing about it. I spoke with Dave Prazak, who was helping with booking at the time, and he arranged for me to interview a bunch of the female roster after a show one evening. In speaking with Mickie Knuckles, Allison Danger, MsChif, and Daizee Haze, I gained my first wrestling clip, and also discovered the potential for a story that seemed much more interesting than my failing novel. I didn't switch subjects right away, but the seeds were definitely planted that night.
In other wrestling news, I buried the seeds I planted with dirt and doused them with water in September, when I took a three-hour seminar with A.J. Styles that was being held the morning before the second night of IWA's Ted Petty Invitational Tournament. As far as learning the moves, I was absolutely terrible at everything except the basics, but even though I realized I didn't have the stuff to be a worker myself, I felt like I'd gained a bit of knowledge that would allow me to understand and create a character pursuing that kind of career. Thanks to this seminar I also met fellow female wrestling fans Meg and Tiffany. And, and aaaand, A.J. remembered me later that night after winning the tournament. He spotted me in the crowd when he was slapping hands with everyone who wanted to congratulate him and he gave me a covert wink. It made me feel all special and melty, even though I don't really have much of a crush on him.
Got to represent my department at the AWP conference for the second time, only this time it was taking place in Chicago so there was no cool travel involved. I simply got myself a room at the Palmer House Hilton, which was conference headquarters so I wouldn't have to commute back and forth late after all the writerly festivities had died down.
In collaboration with one of my office co-workers, I published my own literary journal, which was called Pigeon. We did everything related to putting this book together: read submissions, corresponded with authors, copyedited and proofread. I even taught myself how to do typesetting using Adobe Pagemaker, which unfortunately has become obsolete thanks to the rise of InDesign. It's a great book, one that is still prominently displayed on one of my bookshelves.
Also assisted Mike with his own literary journal, which was themed around working class fiction. He called it Blue.
I really started getting ambitious about breaking into freelance markets, scoring my first cover story with NewCity Chicago, (who I'd continue to write for over the next two years) a lengthy feature for the Chicago Journal, a couple clips in nationally distributed skateboarding magazine called Bail (one of which was a piece about my coolgrrrls.com editor's newest venture, a company that manufactured skate decks) and a steady freelance gig with Centerstagechicago.com. I also made a return to the Northwestern campus to read on their radio station again, and logged one of my proudest creative writing accomplishments: an assignment to write a short story which I then recorded for broadcast on Chicago Public Radio's program, 848. On top of all this I started angling for experience with writing that was a little more lucrative, including advertising and marketing copy. By the end of the year I'd even gotten some practice with an agency that let me contribute to a campaign they were working on.
I had my first ever bout of bronchitis, which lasted about a month because I had reached a point where I felt like I couldn't take an extended break from work to get proper rest. I still maintain that this has continued to affect me, and is the reason my respiratory system is so touchy to this day.
On a lark, and also because my office job was starting to take its toll, I applied for a writing job at PETA. Much to my surprise, they responded to my application and invited me to come out to Norfolk, Virginia for what they called a "working interview." I spent two days out there, where they put me up in a house reserved specifically for their interview candidates. It was a great experience, and I think I really would have loved working there, but unfortunately they couldn't offer any relocation help and accepting the job would have meant taking a pretty sizable reduction in pay. It broke my heart to turn down their offer of employment, but it was something that had to be done.
Mike and I did another visit to the San Diego comi-con. Also that summer, I went on my own out to Boston for the first time and got to see a bit of Massachusetts near Amherst. That was a short trip. Over that Labor Day weekend, we also took an impromptu trip to San Francisco, after getting some last-minute airfare rates that we couldn't pass up.
That fall, I took my last-ever grad school course, a Fiction Seminar with Antonia Logue, who I mentioned in my 2003 recap. This was the class where I dumped my flailing novel once and for all. I extracted the main character and transpoted her into a new situation inspired by all of my indie wrestling show-going. Instead of having conflict with a flaky sister, her conflict was going to be trying to make it as a woman in a man's world. For the first time in a long time, I got excited about writing fiction again.
Had a small reunion with the editorial staff of my high school newspaper that was kind of interesting.
Thanks to my work with PunkRockreviews, I got to branch out into yet another publication, a local music zine called Love, Chicago. The piece wouldn't see print until early 2005, but the interview, one of my favorites to this day, was conducted right before my birthday (on thanksgiving eve), with a band called The Safes. I'll always remember it because we sat shivering in the van that transported their gear for our talk, because the venue where they just played, the Logan Square Auditorium, was too loud to carry on a conversation. Seeing their show continued a tradition that I'd begun in 2003 of seeing live music on our around my birthday.
I believe it was right around the holiday/new year season that I wound up purchasing my second car, another Dodge Neon, but this one being bright orange and slightly upgraded from the previous one. This came about because at the time Mike had a car that was on its last leg, and while he couldn't afford to purchase a brand new vehicle, he had enough in savings to pay off the remainder of what I owed on the first Neon. I figured I was gonna have a car payment regardless, and so rather than continuing to pay on the car I currently owned, I might as well take advantage of a special offer being extended to returning customers at the dealer where I got that car, and get some new wheels at a special discount. The increase in my monthly payment was tiny, and allowed Mike to solve his car issue, so it seemed like win-win for everyone. Neon the second had a built-in CD player, which made me super happy.
Continuing with the live show theme, Mike and I saw the best show I've seen to this date on New Year's Eve. It was a double bill of The Flaming Lips and the White Stripes at the Aragon. We were joined for this one by Steph and the guy she was dating at the time. Steph and I had started to become show-going buddies at this point, and that's what formed the base for the deeper friendship we share now.
Okay I think that's enough. I'll try to get to at least 2005 today, but after all of this typing and reflecting I need a break!
It would be a good one to leave off on...this was another year when lots of stuff happened.
So to start, there was a return trip to Orlando for more fun at Disney and Universal. I don't remember a lot of specifics, aside from there being an N'Sync sighting at Universal, and a couple of really nice dinners, one at an African buffet in Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge, and another at a Cuban place owned by Gloria Estefan and her husband. And also we went to see Lost in Translation on an evening we just felt like being chill. I enjoyed it except for the fact that I couldn't relate to Scarlett Johannsen's character at all. I wanted to wring her neck for being bored and unhappy with all the privilege her life afforded -- not having to work, being in Japan with all kinds of time to explore or relax, and having a pretty cute and accomplished photographer (or was he a filmmaker?) husband. In any case, it seemed to me that she should be grateful and not whiny and trying to screw around with Bill Murray. I did not feel her pain.
When we returned I set about losing all of the weight I'd put on after several years of really bad eating habits and a series of sedentary jobs. My BFF Dawn invited me to go with her to Weight Watchers, and I was amazed at how quickly and easily I undid all the damage I'd been doing to myself. By the middle of the year I had taken off about 35 pounds and for the most part I've managed to keep it off. These last six months have found me creeping up a bit, but I feel like I'm better equipped to catch it before it gets out of hand this time, and make the necessary adjustments to get back down where I need to be.
I took my last traditional story workshop class, with one of the greatest writing professors ever, Joe Meno. I loved this class probably more than any other because Joe reminded us of the importance of having fun with our work, and he had such great faith in me even though I was struggling thanks to juggling school and an increased workload. I think I mentioned in a previous entry how he gave me a private pep talk that I still value to this day....telling me how the only thing holding me back was me. I didn't make a lot of novel progress in that class because I was starting to hate my material, but I did come out of it with a very long short story (I call it my Dave Kramer story) that I still want to go back to so I can polish it and send it out in the world. Coincidentally enough, my story very closely mirrored the one chronicled in the documentary film The King of Kong, which I would not see until several years later and was not aware of at all at the time of my writing.
Concurrent with my workshop class, I was also invited to enroll in a class that would allow me to serve as a student editor of Hair Trigger, the literary anthology published annually by my department. I'd worked on it as a copyeditor/proofreader as part of my office job, but thanks to this I also had a hand in selecting the manuscripts that were chosen. I was excited about this because only the top students were allowed to work on this publication, and usually if you were picked it meant someone thought you had a manuscript worthy of being selected for the book as well. Though to be fair, we were not allowed to weigh in when our work came up for discussion and even had to leave the room to ensure there wasn't a conflict of interest.
IWA Midsouth shows became a staple of our weekends. They excited me so much that I wanted to learn more about how the promotion worked. I saw an opportunity to do that while also helping its amazing women's division gain exposure by writing about it. I spoke with Dave Prazak, who was helping with booking at the time, and he arranged for me to interview a bunch of the female roster after a show one evening. In speaking with Mickie Knuckles, Allison Danger, MsChif, and Daizee Haze, I gained my first wrestling clip, and also discovered the potential for a story that seemed much more interesting than my failing novel. I didn't switch subjects right away, but the seeds were definitely planted that night.
In other wrestling news, I buried the seeds I planted with dirt and doused them with water in September, when I took a three-hour seminar with A.J. Styles that was being held the morning before the second night of IWA's Ted Petty Invitational Tournament. As far as learning the moves, I was absolutely terrible at everything except the basics, but even though I realized I didn't have the stuff to be a worker myself, I felt like I'd gained a bit of knowledge that would allow me to understand and create a character pursuing that kind of career. Thanks to this seminar I also met fellow female wrestling fans Meg and Tiffany. And, and aaaand, A.J. remembered me later that night after winning the tournament. He spotted me in the crowd when he was slapping hands with everyone who wanted to congratulate him and he gave me a covert wink. It made me feel all special and melty, even though I don't really have much of a crush on him.
Got to represent my department at the AWP conference for the second time, only this time it was taking place in Chicago so there was no cool travel involved. I simply got myself a room at the Palmer House Hilton, which was conference headquarters so I wouldn't have to commute back and forth late after all the writerly festivities had died down.
In collaboration with one of my office co-workers, I published my own literary journal, which was called Pigeon. We did everything related to putting this book together: read submissions, corresponded with authors, copyedited and proofread. I even taught myself how to do typesetting using Adobe Pagemaker, which unfortunately has become obsolete thanks to the rise of InDesign. It's a great book, one that is still prominently displayed on one of my bookshelves.
Also assisted Mike with his own literary journal, which was themed around working class fiction. He called it Blue.
I really started getting ambitious about breaking into freelance markets, scoring my first cover story with NewCity Chicago, (who I'd continue to write for over the next two years) a lengthy feature for the Chicago Journal, a couple clips in nationally distributed skateboarding magazine called Bail (one of which was a piece about my coolgrrrls.com editor's newest venture, a company that manufactured skate decks) and a steady freelance gig with Centerstagechicago.com. I also made a return to the Northwestern campus to read on their radio station again, and logged one of my proudest creative writing accomplishments: an assignment to write a short story which I then recorded for broadcast on Chicago Public Radio's program, 848. On top of all this I started angling for experience with writing that was a little more lucrative, including advertising and marketing copy. By the end of the year I'd even gotten some practice with an agency that let me contribute to a campaign they were working on.
I had my first ever bout of bronchitis, which lasted about a month because I had reached a point where I felt like I couldn't take an extended break from work to get proper rest. I still maintain that this has continued to affect me, and is the reason my respiratory system is so touchy to this day.
On a lark, and also because my office job was starting to take its toll, I applied for a writing job at PETA. Much to my surprise, they responded to my application and invited me to come out to Norfolk, Virginia for what they called a "working interview." I spent two days out there, where they put me up in a house reserved specifically for their interview candidates. It was a great experience, and I think I really would have loved working there, but unfortunately they couldn't offer any relocation help and accepting the job would have meant taking a pretty sizable reduction in pay. It broke my heart to turn down their offer of employment, but it was something that had to be done.
Mike and I did another visit to the San Diego comi-con. Also that summer, I went on my own out to Boston for the first time and got to see a bit of Massachusetts near Amherst. That was a short trip. Over that Labor Day weekend, we also took an impromptu trip to San Francisco, after getting some last-minute airfare rates that we couldn't pass up.
That fall, I took my last-ever grad school course, a Fiction Seminar with Antonia Logue, who I mentioned in my 2003 recap. This was the class where I dumped my flailing novel once and for all. I extracted the main character and transpoted her into a new situation inspired by all of my indie wrestling show-going. Instead of having conflict with a flaky sister, her conflict was going to be trying to make it as a woman in a man's world. For the first time in a long time, I got excited about writing fiction again.
Had a small reunion with the editorial staff of my high school newspaper that was kind of interesting.
Thanks to my work with PunkRockreviews, I got to branch out into yet another publication, a local music zine called Love, Chicago. The piece wouldn't see print until early 2005, but the interview, one of my favorites to this day, was conducted right before my birthday (on thanksgiving eve), with a band called The Safes. I'll always remember it because we sat shivering in the van that transported their gear for our talk, because the venue where they just played, the Logan Square Auditorium, was too loud to carry on a conversation. Seeing their show continued a tradition that I'd begun in 2003 of seeing live music on our around my birthday.
I believe it was right around the holiday/new year season that I wound up purchasing my second car, another Dodge Neon, but this one being bright orange and slightly upgraded from the previous one. This came about because at the time Mike had a car that was on its last leg, and while he couldn't afford to purchase a brand new vehicle, he had enough in savings to pay off the remainder of what I owed on the first Neon. I figured I was gonna have a car payment regardless, and so rather than continuing to pay on the car I currently owned, I might as well take advantage of a special offer being extended to returning customers at the dealer where I got that car, and get some new wheels at a special discount. The increase in my monthly payment was tiny, and allowed Mike to solve his car issue, so it seemed like win-win for everyone. Neon the second had a built-in CD player, which made me super happy.
Continuing with the live show theme, Mike and I saw the best show I've seen to this date on New Year's Eve. It was a double bill of The Flaming Lips and the White Stripes at the Aragon. We were joined for this one by Steph and the guy she was dating at the time. Steph and I had started to become show-going buddies at this point, and that's what formed the base for the deeper friendship we share now.
Okay I think that's enough. I'll try to get to at least 2005 today, but after all of this typing and reflecting I need a break!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-12-29 10:39 pm (UTC)Damn, you've been a whirlwind of activity...
no subject
Date: 2009-12-30 02:03 am (UTC)If I seem like a whirlwind of activity, it's mostly because the period from 2004-06 (which I have yet to write about) was where I sort of peaked in terms of writing ambition. I'm trying to document that to get a better sense of perspective about my life and my accomplishments. With the exception of these entries, I tend to downplay the things I've done, I think. And I want to try to stop doing that in order to develop a better sense of self esteem. We'll see if that works.