As I’ve mentioned, my life’s a bit up in a heaval these days. I’m looking for steady work while I take on small jobs and temp gigs, and with things being as they are now, it does make it tricky. There are literally THOUSANDS of other people, who are in dire straits like mine, who are competing with me for some of these jobs. I’ve polished my resume to a shine, I’ve customized it as I can, and I’ve applied for jobs with a gleam in my eye and a hope in my heart.
My biggest concern is making enough money to keep my daughter and I in our home, save a little, and pay for the therapies she receives. She’s absolutely thriving, and aside from an upsurge in her Pica, her progress has been miraculous. No matter what challenges we face, my daughter is the biggest blessing in my life, and I will do all I can to give her the best life possible.
To that end, I’m trying to work out how to pay for graduate school (and the GRE) so that I can complete my MLS and fulfill the dream of my bibliophilic heart: becoming a professional librarian. I’ve often regarded libraries as temples of literacy, and the library, even in our push towards electronic books (and electronic everything else), plays a very important role in the community. It is a resource that anyone, regardless of income or social class or melanin level or anything else, can use to improve their lives.
Meanwhile, I’m improving my photo manipulation, video editing, and audio editing skills, little by little, by working on a couple of projects.
The first project is making videos set to Martin Page’s music in order to get more people to listen to and appreciate his solo work. He can be found on facebook, myspace, and his personal website, www.martinpage.com (I’ll let you know right now, though, that it works best on IE–firefox, chrome, and opera get XML errors, but they’re working on fixing that so that his site can be enjoyed on any browser). Martin Page is the artist who wrote and performed “In the House of Stone and Light” back in the 90s (from the album of the same name), and he’s a pretty prolific songwriter. His music has a quality that moves me in ways I’ve never felt before, and I feel as if it’s something that the world needs to hear. He also put out a second album in 2008, called “In the Temple of the Muse,” and it was absolutely amazing…and didn’t get the attention it deserved. He’s working on a third album, and I have hope that people will watch my videos, listen to his music, and be as eager to hear his third solo album as I am.
In addition to being talented, he’s also very intelligent, funny, and cares a great deal about preventing cruelty to animals. I’ve also heard from fans who have met him that he is a very gracious, humble person, which is a refreshing break from the artists who need a separate jet for their egos or treat their fanbase like crap–in fact, in the past, Martin’s taken the time to personally respond to messages left for him on his myspace page, usually through his assistant/webmistress (he hasn’t lately, but he and his assistant *have* been pretty busy lately).
The second project is something I’ve been working on for my father. When he was younger, my dad was in graduate school for Mass Communication, and the university discovered that my dad’s resonant bass-baritone and excellent diction gave him a perfect radio voice. Unfortunately, my dad had some rough personal times, gave up grad school, and went back to working menial jobs, first at a factory farm and then at a foundry. He eventually became a lab technician for a building company, but after he had an accident that shattered his shoulder and the economy started going south, he was laid off.
What I am trying to do for my dad is to help him go ahead and rebuild his voice profile. To that end, I’m putting together videos featuring his narration. From there, I plan to create an account for him on youtube so that we can upload the videos and give him an online profile to off…and (I hope!) help him get back to doing voiceover work. He’s got an amazing voice, and he’s a good actor, so I have hope that his voice will get him the recognition he’s craving…if he’ll do the recordings for me. He hasn’t finished them yet, but when he does, I’ll gladly use the materials I have to make him some videos, even if it’s just text on a pretty backdrop.
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In addition to those online projects, I am growing my own pineapple plant. I’ve potted a pineapple, and it seems to be growing nicely. My dad’s dad had a pineapple plant, too. I can’t remember if it grew any fruit, but I’m going to do what I can to try and help mine to grow some.
Speaking of growing things, the indoor and outdoor gardens are progressing nicely. The tomatoes have fruit ripening on them, the red malobar spinach is growing like mad, and the herbs are coming in nice and strong, especially the wintergreen. My roses aren’t doing so well, but my brother’s rose bush has had to graduate to larger and larger pots because it’s doing so well.
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Weirdly enough, I’ve been inspired to write new poetry. Whether it’s any good is a matter of personal taste. I’ll probably start posting it here as well. I typically write in free verse, but I’ve found myself needing to polish what I write–it’s still free verse, but I hope that it’s *better* free verse than what I’ve written on the fly. I want it to be as worthy of my Muse’s regard as I hope to be.
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All of that being said, I hope this makes up for my lack of regular posts.