Playlists for days!

Nothing like a writer friend mentioning you in her blog to remind you "omg seriously bitch update your blog what is WRONG with you?"

In my defense, I haven't completely neglected blogging; I've just been doing it elsewhere.

Also on literally the last day of Nanowrimo, my laptop committed seppuku, juuust as I was less than 1k or so from finishing.  So that was fun. (I mean, I totally copypasta'd a bunch of stuff I already had. I knew I was going to win, so I dont feel bad about using a different 50k to win than the 50k I'd actually written than month. Fite me.)

Anyway, back to the whole being-blog-shamed-into-posting by my friend Becky. She's an author and a member of my local writer's group, and in her most recent post, (along with admitting I was right about Spotify) she talked about the glory that is my personal favorite form of "I'm totally writing even though I'm not actually typing any words, sssshhhh.:" The playlist.

I freakin' love playlists. Some of mine include:

• Dancing Around the House in My Underwear
• Dramatic Curtains
• Singing to My Steering Wheel
• The Soundtrack to My Existential Crisis
• WannaBeInNerdfighterLikeWithMe?
• WhatTheFolk?
• Wrock, Trock, and Barrel

Music is a huuuge component in my Major WIP, and I'm even beginning to build a playlist for my vampire/lawyer WIP. It's also a huge part of my writing process in general.

Sometimes it's a pretty obvious connection, like "Heroin" by The Velvet Underground or "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane, or "Semi-Charmed Life" by Third Eye Blind, since one of my MC's is a drug addict. Or "More Than a Feeling" by Boston because I have a character named Boston.

Other times, I can't tell you exactly why the song fits, other than it just does, man.  Like "Teenage Anarchist" by Against Me!: I don't know which character that applies to, but I know it's one of them! Or "Mr. Brightside" by The Killers, it doesn't really have anything to do with the story other than the story starts in 2004 and Mr. Brightside was all the hell over the place in '03 and '04.

Sometimes when I'm stuck in a rut, I put on the playlist for my WIP and it gets the creative juices flowing. Other times, what I need is *new* music and then I hop over to one of Spotify's curated lists like Discover Weekly, or I check out the US or Worldwide Top 50 charts.

I also love other people's playlists.  Musician George Ezra has a great ongoing playlist called "Sunday Sessions". Sarah J. Maas has a playlist she made for her Court of Thorns and Roses series, and there's a second playlist with fan recommendations. Also, Cracked keeps an ongoing playlist of songs that have been featured in their podcast.

Are you a playlist fiend?

Twenty-Eight.

So, my birthday happened recently, on the 11th. As far as weekday birthdays go, it was pretty darn delightful. Seeing Fight Club with my friends at Film Club, then immediately running to see Captain America: Civil War made for an excellent night.

My age, however... I'm feeling much less excellent about that. I'm 28 now. I'm staring down the barrel at 30 and my life doesn't look even a little bit like I wanted to by now. Still broke, still single, college drop-out, and I still havent managed to write anything with a goddamn ending.

I'm not saying everything sucks, I'm just being forced to deal with the fact that all my plans for my life went up in flames and I'm faced with a blank chalkboard, and it's just a little terrifying.

On the bright side, of course, I've been much happier in the last year or so. I cut a lot of really toxic people out of my life, which left me pretty heartbroken. It was really hard for a really long time, but eventually the sucky feelings of losing them were replaced by the blissful realization that I was actually much better off without all the drama and headache and heartache they were causing me.

ProTip: If some one (or a group of someones) makes you feel like shit more often than they don't, they're probaby not your friends. 

So, while I'm not where I want to be, I'm still in a pretty good place.

In other news, for the three of you still reading this, you may or may not notice that about half my posts have been deleted or hidden. I don't know what exactly it was but there was something in the air around here that I needed to get rid of. Some of these posts, I'll rewrite and post, and some are just gone forever now.

Not that things are going to be much different around here; I still don't have any real direction for this thing, and that's fine with me. My life has no focus, why should my blog?

So. No focus, but some goals:
1. Consistency. I am, once again, making a post frequency goal. I've always failed at that before, because I've never felt like I really had anything to say that was worth reading, but fuck it, I'm going to post once a week even if it's just a round-up of that week's instagramming.

2. Prettyfication. If I manage to post consistently for three months, the I'm allowed to buy myself a pretty layout for my blog. That's only 12 posts; if i can't do that, I just suck.

That's it. That's the goal for now. Baby steps and shit.