Well, it’s been two and a half days since I handed in my resume and portfolio to the Pacific Daily News and I haven’t heard anything back. I’m kinda disappointed because the office looked pretty cool and the people I met at the desk were really nice.

I thought my portfolio was quite killer too; it had some of my better photo work (not my favorites, but better technically), some of my more recent web design work (which included this blog’s design actually) and a wide range of writing samples (though most were a bit dated). I think it may have hurt that the resume and portfolio itself was a tad bit old (I cant afford to reprint atm) and it had my old cellphone number (which is out of area) and my current e-mail whose name is kind of embarrassing on Guam (hafadai at live dawt com).

I really think I’ve been too dependent on luck these days though. I’ve always had a habit of not worrying too much when things got tough because they’ve ALWAYS worked themselves out by the grace of providence and no real effort on my part. I don’t know why I figured I’d just move over here with a laptop and a bit of cash and that after looking around a bit I’d just go ahead and get a cool job at a cool place with cool people right away (say that without breathing). Guess it’s not working out for me this time, but whatever, I guess I gotta grow up and meet real life sometime.

My mom’s telling me I should give my Aunt’s friend a call since her husband works IT at the islands primary phone provider or something. Oh yeah, go work with computers, right. Where on my degree does it say communications, or computer engineering? Nooowhere? Hmmm. I mean, I understand that I gotta work somewhere, but it just feels like I’d have pissed away 4 years and 40 grand if I don’t enter a field related to something I’m at least moderately educated in. Ahhh! That thought just gets me feeling a little frustrated.

I do remember not long ago I intended to write a novel though. What happened to that idea? Seriously, I still have a draft of chapter one sitting somewhere. I think it may have gotten suffocated by my short story focus that I picked up a year later. I was really trying to go places with each piece.

The novel itself is called “Green Leaves and Brown Flowers”. I came up with it halfway into the draft. I swear there is a figurative meaning to it and it had something to do with the ages of the two main characters and the state of the world around them. I can’t for the life of me remember what it meant though. Anyway, the story is about a young woman named Joanna and a little girl named Masa. The environment they lived in went kind of, uhhh, dead. Electricity as a physical force of nature, stored and otherwise, ceased to exist and the world was just unable to cope with that. Pretty much a textbook apocalypse story, but with a lack of zombies and desert raiders and all that mess. I really just wanted to write from a female point of view for a change, since guys in general love to write women out with the most retarded characterizations ever, I felt I owed a little something to the character type. Joanna was pretty much just escorting Masa on her way to find her father. Joanna herself lost her fiance, and having never been the type to do much on her own, sets out to find her strength in independence. Or something. I don’t know. The people I showed the draft to called it a coming of age story even though nothing really happens in that chapter. Either way, it was definitely something that needs revising (and revisiting).

The projects were a couple of short stories that had nothing to do with each other really, but shared a common character. The first story I wrote was a little something for the ladies. Okay, not really, it was something that popped into my head at a gas station. It’s called “Open Windows,” previously known as “The Quiet Times,” previously known as “She’s Toxic”. I started with the title “She’s Toxic” because I wanted to write a story about a woman named Rachel who kills her lovers after she’s gotten what she wants from them. The title word, “Toxic” is taken from the fact that Rachel kinda looks like the word Arachnid (not really) and spiders bite each other’s heads off after sex or something. It’s amazing how halfbaked ideas seem sometime when they’re written down. The story eventually evolved into a piece about a dude who’s boss has this hot yet mentally unstable girlfriend who eventually turns her eye to him. A guy who read an early draft described it as a “Guy meets girl, girl wants guy, girl can’t have guy” story. Essentially, yeah. Problem I had is everyone thought the main guy was an asshole and totally ignored crazy girl’s crazy ass. They also didn’t get hwy I named it “Quiet Times” because, well, everything is very loud and abrupt in that story. I just shrugged and smiled and refused to admit that I couldn’t think of a title at the time (“She’s Toxic” was not going to be used) and I just picked a random song title from my then playing media player (Dido – “Quiet Times”). I later changed the title to “Open Windows” as an allusion to many scenes throughout the story and due to the intended ambiguity of a lot of the scenes. On that note, I’m aware that I’m being vague on details here, but I do intend to post the drafts of some of these short stories, and I’d hate to ruin the fun.~

The other short story I wrote was called “Things Look Up” and it was a light-hearted comedy that was based on a line spoken by a minor character from “Open Windows”. In that story, a guy named Solomon tells a story to the main characters about a time where he punched a hobo in the mouth. “Things Look Up” is that story. Uuuuuunfortunately, as absolutely amused by the story as I was, people were kinda put off by the first person narration and how esoteric it was. There were comic book and internet meme references out the ass. The one guy who got the references was all smiles though. I might put that one up later as well. I had much more fun with that story though I don’t think it’s as good as Open Windows. I guess it can be likened as Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back in relation to Clerks.

Anyway, I definitely think I should work on my fiction in between all this job searching. Beats sitting on my hands I suppose.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 14th, 2009 at 8:12 pm and is filed under Another Blog, Literature, Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.