You'd think I'd get tired of always being right.

Ok, so when I started all of this, I knew in the back of my head, despite all of my good intentions, that this would likely fall by the wayside in no time. I knew that I would be gung-ho about blogging, about writing in general, and about sharing creative space with friends and family. We actually all kept it up for a while, much to my surprise. I suppose life gets in the way, though, and other things become a priority.

That's the thing, though. For most of the last year, I have had little to no priorities. I had no job, no relationship, no life, pretty much. I sat around, watched a lot of tv, searched the same few job websites way too much, and just generally did nothing. The logical person would assume this meant lots of time for blogging, writing, journaling, and creativity in general. Sure, being laid off did afford me time to do all of those things, but I couldn't bring myself to blog about my life. Here's how it would have gone:

Got up at 10 today. Ok, maybe it was 11. Had some lunch, surfed some job web sites, watched Gilmore Girls.

That's seriously what a typical day looked like for "Lay Off Sandi." Who in their right mind would ever read anything like that? Why would I want to write it? To make myself feel worse? No, I decided that until I had something to write about, I was not going to write anything at all.

Isn't it funny how I could make that rule and stick to it, but "Stop eating junk food" falls by the wayside after a day?

I don't really have a huge lot of things to write about, because with the one exception of getting a job, my life is pretty much as boring as the above statement; I just get up much earlier. I had signed up for a Creative Writing class at MUN, and was really looking forward to getting those proverbial creative juices flowing. I knew I had some good ideas, I just needed a little prodding to unleash them. The class was cancelled due to lack of interest. Come on, wannabe writers! There's got to be a few more of you guys out there somewhere!

In lieu of the class, I vowed to write something every week. I gave myself homework, as it were. I would either journal, blog, or work on some stories. So far, it's been going pretty well. I have started a short story, I've at least re-read a few I've already started in the hopes I'll pick them up again, and have even written some haikus. Don't look at me like that. Haikus are fun.

I was talking about this with The Friends, NL Edition, AKA, Tracey and Dave. They are not to be confused with The Friends, Ottawa Edition, or Susanne, Frank and Paul. Tracey and Dave have also shown an interest in blogging and writing, so we three decided we would write something and get together semi-regularly to present it and discuss it. Well, we gave ourselves our first assignment, but have sadly not been able to get together for the review. I have four pages of a short story to show them. If it doesn't totally suck, I'll post it here.

As well, I've toyed with the idea of a personal blog. I love the idea of it, and it will be fun and cathartic to write about what I'm feeling or what's happening to me, but I am really afraid it's just going to be a whiny complain-fest, and no one wants to read that. I've got a few entries written, though, and I like them so far. I'll update this blog and Facebook with details if I set this up.

Here's a haiku, just for fun:

Go see my new blog.
I swear it won't be whiny.
Hopefully, you'll laugh.

All I Have To Do Is Dream

I always used to be so envious of those people who remembered their dreams. I mean, it isn’t as though I didn’t sleep enough to have dreams! Everyone who knows me knows I’m quite a fan of the late-morning lie-in. I just never had those dreams where I would wake up and think, “Hmm. A unicorn flew down from heaven and gave me a jelly donut. What does that mean?”

If I did remember my dreams, they would be quite literal. If I had an exam, the night before I would dream that I missed it, went to the wrong room, studied the wrong subject, or something similar. I would dream about work, or watching tv or something like that. I actually have had dreams where I was sitting at my work desk, my phone rang, and I answered it. A customer would ask me for a serial number, I would give it to him, and that would be it. Imaginative, no?

I had friends with dream diaries and dream books so they could decipher what the various strange details of their nighttime reveries meant. Who was the strange man in the corner? Why did they go through the red door? It all had some hidden meaning. Me? I got customer calls. I don’t think the dream book had much to say about that.

Lately, though, I have been having strange dreams. I don’t always remember them, but details do stick out in my mind. I had one dream recently, where 5 numbers kept flashing in front of my eyes. I don’t know what they meant in the dream I was having, but you’d better believe I played the lotto that week. Needless to say, I didn’t win anything, but it certainly was worth a shot. My theory on that is that 6-49 and Super 7 requires you to choose 6 and 7 numbers respectively, so after playing my 5 supposedly prophetic numbers, I would have to play other numbers at random. Which ones do I pick? It’s a bit of a conundrum.

Last week, I had a dream about a web site I created. Yes, I know, yet another exciting and obscure dream. I dreamt that I created a web site where people would submit their writing to me, whether it be poems, short stories, general musings, and I would post them. I would contact publishers or the publishers would contact me and we would work to get them published. I saw the website in such fine detail, it was weird. I had such a great feeling about what it represented and what I was doing. Since I have been thinking about doing something like this in real life, there’s no surprise I dreamt about it.

I’ve been wondering a lot lately about how it would be to work in Publishing. It would satisfy my crazy, Grammar Nazi ways as well as nourishing the writer in me. I would love to be a part of making someone’s dreams of becoming a published writer come true. So, you’re saying to yourself, get off your arse and apply for some publishing jobs, Stupid! Well, sure, that only makes sense, but I do lack certain necessary qualifications for said publishing jobs, like an English degree, or any experience in the industry. I don’t see my in-depth knowledge of Corel product part numbers as helpful to me in this endeavour.

So, I’ve been thinking about turning our humble blog into some sort of hub for my writer/photog/artist/musician friends. I would love for it to become more. I don’t know what the ‘more’ means yet, but I would love it to be something akin to my dream, where we could turn our writing into actual published work. There are many details to consider and work out, but I think it’s worth a try. A few of us Noseworthys have written blog posts about the lack of creative jobs and having to consider ‘regular’ jobs and be a writer on the side. Well, we could also take matters into our own hands and make something happen. No one’s going to come knocking on our door unless we put ourselves out there.

Soon, I’ll be emailing friends and acquaintances who would have something to offer our little blog, and hopefully, we can begin to post their work here too. I’ll get the siblings to do the same, and maybe we can start our own little community of creative people. It seemed to work in my dream! Hopefully I can make this one dream come true.

I also have this recurring dream where a very close friend of mine shoots me in the head. What do you think that means? Look that one up in your dream books!!

Not This Time, Dammit!!

The blog's been up for a little while now, and I think that the honeymoon's over, in a way. After an initial flurry of posts, we've sort of tapered off. My worry, because I'm programmed to worry, is that this will be like my guitar-playing, or Bob and Geoff's guitar-playing, or Lauren's foray into ballet or soccer refereeing. That is to say, that we will be gung-ho about the blog to begin with, but will slowly let it die. I couldn't think of an Allyson reference here. Maybe she's better about sticking with things than the rest of us. But, again, I do worry that we will not follow through and make this what it could be.

So, Noseworthys (and Terry and Declan), keep the posts coming. Let us know what's going on with you. Post some short stories or photos or illustrations. We have a good number of people on the Facebook group, and people do actually read this stuff from time to time, so let's keep up with it.