2004-12-14 - Our blood is just like the Atlantic:

Do you ever find yourself making arty music videos for the songs that really move you? Because I do it all the time. Sometimes using elements of my own life, but increasingly, I've been doing it with the characters of the novel I've been working on since 1997.

I know: 1997, you say! Well, yeah. And (I hope) I am not one of those people who is all, "Yeah, I'm a writer!" and then they show you a bunch of bad poetry and stories they wrote in 8th grade because they were mad at their mom or something.

1997, that's a long time. I always thought that I'd been working on it for 6 years. But really, It's pushing 8. I guess I've been saying 6 years for so long that it is no longer relevant. That's a long time to be working on something. But one more year and I will seriously be done. I am looking around (albeit casually, for now) for literary agents, because I don't understand things like literary politics. Also, it will be really cool when I am a rich and famous novelist and can start sentences with My agent...

But I won't be an asshole about it. I promise. I will be a philanthropist. For the past few years, when talking to my parents, I will say things like "When I am rich and famous I will buy you guys a boat." And they just laugh: "OK, sure, honey." But dammit, you have to act like you mean it. And if I never am a rich and famous novelist, at least I tried, right? How does that quote go? Something about being brave enough to try and failing miserably is better than never trying anything at all, or something to that effect.

Anyway.

Every time I move around the apartment doing something important, the cat gets under my feet and does this:

Sure, it's cute. But fuck, I am trying to go to work, here! Your kitty bowl doesn't fill itself!

I am sorry that the cat looks tatty and mangy. She really is well cared for: but she spends so much time rolling around on the damn floor getting stuff stuck to her fur, that brushing her is practically an act in futility.

Anyway, I am done now.