Late March Junk Mail

Here's what's happening with me:

• Sleep, that warm fluffy fox, remains elusive. I haven't been sleeping since I put my dog down. Most days I average between 3-5 hours a night. I get up in the late morning and fuel myself with tall soy mochas with no whipped cream, then feel wired and jittery until the late afternoon. Many times I'm hopped up on caffeine, lots of sugar, and not much food. I don't take drugs or drink when I'm feeling this way (except the caffeine or sugar) but believe me, I've been considering it.

• I'm back into writing fiction, thank goodness. I'm still working on my historical novel and have been trying to go to my writing group at least once a week. The writing group, Shut Up & Write at meetup.org, has been invaluable. The more I go, the more productive I am.

• Current projects which should come as no surprise to anyone reading this blog: logging all the Korean films I've seen so far in my Master Notebook (I'm more than halfway through the list), logging all the films I watched for the Akira Kurosawa film survey, gleefully frolicking my way through the TV anime series Fullmetal Alchemist (I'm still watching the 2003 series, though I've made it to the second season), reading the plays of Federico Garcia Lorca (I've read three so far and will be reading more later when I receive the books from Amazon), continuing to learn about Luis, Dali, and Lorca's relationship for my Luis Bunuel film survey, and I finally finished reading Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.

• Regarding Ender's Game. I grew up reading Card's short stories but never read his novels. This one, Ender's Game, is a classic and its reputation for being brilliant is well deserved. I keep wondering what the hell is wrong with me, though. I don't understand why it's taken me this long to get around to reading it. What is my problem?

• I'm done with my History of European Art DVD lectures. It's taken a while (a total of 48 lectures at 30 minutes a pop) but it's been a wonderful overview. My next set of DVD lectures will be about The Long 19th Century, history of Europe between the late 1700s to the early 20th Century.

• I'm still not going to regular movies as a way to save money (except I Saw The Devil, see recent post). I've found there are very few films I need to see on the big screen though I love the cinematic experience. There's a ton of movies I haven't seen yet, including many Oscar films.
  

• As I've mentioned to a couple of my friends I worry that I'm overloading myself with all this brain food. I do need fuel for writing and engaging in all these different interests really makes me happy but I worry about it all the same.

• I'm attempting to try out a self-publishing model using my weird story FailSafe as an experiment. This will entail setting up my own website, creating a pdf of the story, writing additional side stories, and getting FailSafe into hard copy. It's been a slow start, mostly research on what others have done, but I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes. The point is not to sell FailSafe but to go through and learn from the process. I may ask a couple of you good readers to take a look at and comment on the website, pdf, hard copy, etc.
  

• I still don't have a job but I'm looking for one. Blah, blah, blah.