First Depress, then Lift

Sometimes, life sucks. I've learned to accept that, unfortunately certain members of my family have serious difficulty dealing with the difficulties of life. I'm not going to bore what few people read this with the woes of my personal life, since a lot of it will sound like a poorly written daytime soap, but just know this: not all is well at the moment. Personally, I'm okay, but I'm worried for everybody else (especially the adults).

*sigh*

I don't have any problem talking about it, it's just that I'm TIRED of talking about it. Our problems is just about the only thing my family wants to talk about! It's like nobody has any hopes or aspirations or interest in anything other than crying, complaining, and being generally frustrated or depressed. While I was at Iona, I didn't have to deal with it as much... I managed to escape the drama and live my own life for a while. Now that I'm back here... it's been jarring, to say the least.

*sigh*

You know, I've been thinking more and more about moving out of my house and getting an apartment on my own. I'm not anywhere near able to afford that, but the idea seems FAR more palatable now than it did a year ago when I was still in New Rochelle. At least then I won't have to deal with this stuff on a near-constant basis.

ANYWAYS.

I still haven't finished my novel. This is distressing, although not surprising anymore. I want it done, but finishing the rough draft is almost like pulling teeth! What makes it worse is that I'm so achingly close to the end, I feel like a complete idiot. My cousin Dan makes sure to point out that I still haven't finished every time I see him (which is, oh, just about EVERY weekend) which is a fairly good motivator, but not quite enough. I need to find something a bit stronger to push me to the end.

I've thought a bit about how I'm going to revise it, though. Stuff like changing a few names, adding details to strengthen the Celtic connection, cutting down POV characters (so far I'm down from 6 to 4... If I can axe it to just 3 I'll be REALLY happy!), and some alterations to the storyline. It's going to be a serious effort that I'm finding just a TAD overwhelming already, but since I already have some idea of what I want the next draft to look like it couldn't possibly be THAT bad...

(ONE YEAR LATER: "Oh good GOD! How did I ever think this could be anything but the most EXCRUCIATING AGONY IMAGINABLE?!!")

To be honest, I'm seriously tempted to forget finishing the rough draft and just start the 2nd draft now... except, I know that if I don't finish this draft NOW, I'll end up with the same roadblock months later when I reach the end again. I need to finish this. I'm kinda banking my future on my writing abilities... probably a bad idea, but I don't see myself doing anything other than writing. Sure, I'm a Film major, and I'm technically looking for media-related work... but, I feel like writing novels is what I was meant to do. Seriously, when one of your earliest memories is trying to draw out a story (since I didn't know how to write yet!) that ends up being PAGES and PAGES long... I think that's a big hint.

Of course, this wouldn't seem so patently ridiculous if I was at least published. Which I'm not. I've only submitted ONE story ONCE... and it got rejected. Why didn't I try again? SHEER LAZINESS. I'm lazy to the point of crippling... I'm a complete slacker in every definition of the word.

Ah well.

Wow, this was a lot of self-pity crap, wasn't it? O.o I've noticed a tendency to do that with this blog, which wasn't really my intention. Ah well... it's something to write, right? = )

On a minor note, I did some math today regarding habitable star systems:

• As far as we're aware, there are 2 systems with habitable planets: Sol and Gliese 581.
• Gliese 581 is one of the 100 closest stars to Earth (I don't know the number specifically, so I'm sticking with "100th").
• This means that, out of a given 100 stars, we can expect at least 2 habitable systems. 2/100 = 1/50, or 2%.
• There are 250 Billion stars in our galaxy.
• 2% of 250 Billion is 300 Million.

This means, if my math isn't completely off, there may be at least 300 MILLION Earth-like planets in our galaxy! O.O And this is with CURRENT data... what if there turns out to be even more habitable planets nearby? We could be looking at a galaxy closer to the Star Trek universe than previously expected! O.o

Just throwing that out there. ^_~