e-hiatus, day 2

The results are encouraging: I finished reading Transgalactic and got started on a book that Miss H's mum lent me, Race to the South Pole by Roald Amundsen. This will be interesting. I've read Sir Ranulph Fiennes's Race to the Pole, which details Robert Scott's Antarctic foray, and thereby learned about the English perception of their Norwegian competitors; this new book will be the other side of the coin (from the man who actually won the race). 

I didn't touch my phone. I watched the second half of For a Few Dollars More (I watched the first half yesterday to reward myself for knocking 20 pages of my novel out). I checked Facebook, but didn't do anything, except reply to a message from a dear friend whom I don't want to keep waiting for a month. I made a few calls and took a few (one from Helen, our recruiter at ESL Park, who told us that we still don't have all the paperwork we need for a Korean job, and that furthermore no positions will be opening until late February or March). Miss H and I have been in communication via e-mail (due to the ban on texting), and it's strangely exciting: suddenly, instead of microscopic blurbs of information, we can put down our entire thought process and convey a complete message, with salutations and loving farewells attached. It's almost like we're separated by some incalculable distance and are keeping contact through love letters. I never thought e-mail would strike me as a charming way to connect, but due to my submersion in texts, I couldn't gain perspective. This hiatus is already yielding startling and unforeseen revelations.

The only bummer about today is that I had to fork over a good portion of my life savings to the bank. I hate bills. Things are becoming desperate. I'm fine for next month, but the month after that might be troublesome. I applied for a bartender's position with the parks & rec district in the next town over, but I've had no word from them yet. All I can do is lounge around in my bathrobe and wait for a miracle.

I busted through two more chapters of the damn novel, trimming, cleaning, snipping, and making general improvements as well as a few major edits. The thing is streamlining nicely. I also cracked open a new book: Get Published, a volume I've owned for some time but never perused at length. Should help me jump-start my writing career, I hope. I can see now that I haven't started yet. I could be submitting articles to High Desert Magazine or the Daily Press (despite my sordid history with that latter organ). I don't have to wait for a book deal. I could get started on this crap now. I think I will tomorrow.

But for now, Clint Eastwood, Lee van Cleef and hot buttered rum shall sustain me.