NaNoWriMo 2014

I've said it before but I'm doing NaNoWriMo despite my terrible track record with starting and never finishing with 50,000.  Regardless I am happy with the work that I've done for NaNo in the past and I'm happy that I found the time to let myself be creative for however many words I did accomplish.

This year however I'm planning on taking NaNo down and claiming 2014 as my first year as a winner.  I've been working on various things related to my "idea" for the last month.  Yes, I said "idea" instead of "plot" because I didn't have a plot to begin with.

Not only have I been planning with characters and plot stuff but I've also designed some NaNoing tools I'll be using to make things easier on me than it was in the past and keep myself motivated to keep writing.

These tools are seriously nothing new than what a lot of others have been using to accomplish NaNo for so many years now.  I'm talking about new notebooks, a prompt jar, special handmade calendars for word count tracking, character cards, and my favorite, spread sheets for all the things!  Spread sheets in all honesty aren't going to be that useful once November 1 gets here because I'm not going to flip between tabs all that much.  It was just a great way to get characters organized when I first started.

Speaking of characters I did something new with the planning of those this year.  I actually planned the majority of them out, or at the very least most of them have names!  It took me a few days but I compiled a pretty extensive list of names and paired first and last names together (cue my spreadsheets) and then as I thought about my plot I filled in some of the missing stuff about them.  My NaNo this year has a lot of characters, major, supporting and minor and I knew that when I first started.  In times past, though those NaNos were quite smaller in regards to characters I would still get hung up over characters and their names and personalities and everything.  Having so much planned on the characters' part is so great because I have a broad foundation to start and I can develop along the way!

My working title was "Paging Dr. Drama" but that changed within the last hour to "Living Thought, the Last Request" which sounds like it's apart of a series...but I like it much better than the first because it actually grasps at part of the overall theme.

Currently my synopsis is as follows:

For the attendings at Lynnhurst Memorial Teaching Hospital life is about to be thrown upside down.  The chief of staff's brother just showed up out of the blue taking over the emergency room with no approval from anyone.  Mrs. Bluff, a hospital donor and board trustee, has showed signs of liver failure and has made her hospital stay hell for everyone in a ten mile radius.  The most daunting thing that the staff and students of Lynnhurst are facing is the closure of their prized teaching facility by their own hospital board.  The only one they can count on one hundred percent is the unruly patient in liver failure in room 501, Mrs. Bluff and that option is getting even grimmer as the days pass...

Whew, lots of words! Thought I'd at least hit on some of this stuff now before NaNo starts so I can have something to look back on during the final planning stages before the month long event happens.

I'm going to try to update every Monday here with my word counts and maybe my favorite lines and/or scenes.

For all those doing NaNo, best of luck!

I'll be participating in NaNo stuff on Twitter, follow me here.
And of course, my profile at NaNo HQ.

Go Boldly

The amount of time I find myself spending in Target is kind of astounding. Like I'm constantly feeling like I'm overwhelmed with things to do and then I'm just roaming Target.  Maybe it's a way of relaxing while I get my walking in for the day or maybe it's just my way of procrastinating and scoping out my next 'big' purchase at the same time.  If you're wondering, I'm eyeing a new desk that would look fantastic in my room.

Today's quote is from one of those canvas things in the decorating area.  One of these days I'll actually buy one for my wall.

The first thing I thought when I read this was along the lines of "Yeah, that's right!" And then of course I had to snap a photo and send it to Insta so I wouldn't forget such wonderful words.

This is one of those quotes I'm adding to my "everyone needs to live like this" list.  Imagine if more people decided to follow their dreams.  I'm not saying it has to be something dramatic like calling your mom, telling her you're dropping out of college and  then move home the next day because I actually did that a year and a half ago... The point, doing something that moves you closer to that goal should make you feel great, yeah?  Why aren't we doing more of those things?

School Update: Halfway Done

I was actually pretty nervous about starting this semester off.  The last time I took a full load of classes I struggled to keep up with all the homework.  I was also very active in several organizations that took a lot of my time.  I didn't know how to balance things and I definitely didn't know what time management really meant.

This semester, like I mentioned in this post, I'm taking five classes which equates to fifteen credit hours.  I honestly can say that I've learned a lot from this semester already and we're only half way done!  I've learned how to prioritize things, streamline certain activities, how to say no to extra shifts that would put my academics on the back burner, and most of all, that I am capable of great things.

This Is The Stuff

This past weekend was one of my craziest weekends and also one of the most stressful ones I've had in a while.  My parents left early Friday morning for Hays, Kansas because my grandmother had just been transported from a Dodge City hospital to the one in Hays for treatment.  I had the house to myself for the weekend (the only exception was our three fur babies, of course).  But the weekend took the exit for Crazyville and Stress City.

I get call from my lead instructor at school about the Midwest Beerfest event on Saturday that I was going to attend to help promote our school and our hospitality and culinary arts program.  I was told that I needed my chef's coat.  I knew exactly where my chef's coat was...hanging in my room still dirty from the last event I had to wear it to a few weeks ago because life has been too crazy to go to the laundry mat and get it washed.

My post Midwest Beerfest selfie.

No big deal, I thought.  I'll go to the laundry mat and wash my chef's coat and my work shirts. Plenty of time to do it and there's ample time to work on the mountain of law homework I hadn't done during my "free" week.  Except I had no cash and the debit cards I had in my possession I did not know any of the pin numbers so I couldn't get cash out of the ATM. Which meant that I couldn't go to the laundry mat. My Plan A was scrapped.

I started to panic.  Leave it to me to panic about something so small.  I think because I was home alone with no direct supervision from my Ma to make sure I got things done right I was freaking out more than I should have been.

Dry cleaners! Those were a thing!  It's one in the afternoon on Friday and I roll into a dry cleaner's in Derby with my chef's coat and a serving shirt.  They tell me their turnaround is like three days, that their company does do same day service.  I asked if they knew anyone who did and they looked at me with blank, pitiful eyes.

I sit in my car for a few minutes on my phone searching for dry cleaners in Wichita.  I pick one at random and call them.  By the way, I hate making phone calls so this shows how desperate I was.  The guy at this dry cleaners was super nice and gave me answers to all my basic questions and told me they could have my items ready the next morning at 9:30! I wasn't supposed to be at the event until 12 noon!

West Wichita is like a whole new city to me because I basically eat and live on the east side.  On my long drive (it was only long because I didn't know where I was going) a song popped into my head as I was driving.  The song of course, after I started to sing it, made me laugh and smile and I was feeling ten times better.

 

 

What is your song that you end up singing when you're feeling stressed out?


I'm linking up with Emmy for Music Monday, again!

 

 

If I Wasn't Afraid...

Just the other day Ashley and I were talking via Twitter about taking risks and doing things that we might be afraid of.  Since then I've been really giving myself a pep talk, internally of course, I don't want to sound too crazy to my coworkers and classmates, about just doing things.

Today this quote has me thinking, what would I do if I wasn't afraid of failure or messing up big time?

Photo: SoHo Hotel, London

To start off with, I wouldn't be dragging my feet with the process of applying and interviewing for a hotel job.  I mean, I'm a hotel management major and that means I sort of need to work in a hotel to gain real work experience.  But of course, the Anxiety Monster makes it way out of it's hiding hole I shoved it in for the last few months and here I am.  Dragging my feet.

In all honesty I don't know what's holding me back.  I would like to think I great personality, I put my guests first, I'm not afraid of hard work, I'm a good team member, I'm willing to learn.  What's the big deal?

I find it ironic that I'm an introvert that wants none other than a job in an industry that revolves around talking to people, especially people I don't know.  Maybe I'm afraid because if I start to get interviews lined up and applications submitted that means I'm on way to a daily interaction with hundreds of people?

I think I'm reading too far into this.  I think really I'm afraid because it means that I'm becoming closer to the career that I'm so madly in love with and that means I'm becoming an adult.  Wait, what? Jess an adult? Yeah, I'm nearing 21 now and I still don't consider myself an adult....

My parents had little to no idea how a hotel operated when I made the announcement that I was considering a career in lodging and hospitality.  To be honest, I knew the basics but that was part of what drew me in.  I recall having a conversation with my Ma a few months ago when I was finishing up my course on leadership and management in the hospitality industry.  I remember confessing to my mom that I was utterly scared poopless that in a couple of years if I went on to finish my bachelors at a larger university I could very possibly get a managerial position after graduation.  I remember telling her that I wasn't ready for that yet.

"You're still learning.  No one expects you to be able to run a hotel yet.  There's still things to learn and do."   Folks, my mother was right again.  I've been over thinking everything and making myself sick over it and that's only fed the Anxiety Monster.

"Count to five and do what you've been afraid of." That was the advice that Ashley gave me.  So, this is me counting to five, taking a breath and doing because I'm tired of staying in the same place when I could be doing something great.

What's one thing you would do if you weren't afraid?

Boys of Fall

This past Friday was my little hometown's homecoming.  My bestie was home for the weekend and even though I had a terrible day, my back was killing me and I was not keen at the idea of sitting on metal bleachers in the cold (and possible chance of rain) to watch a sport I had little to no idea how it was played I went to the football game.  I'm so happy I did because I had such a lovely time chatting my best friend since kindergarten who is literally like my sister (I call her parents mom and dad and I claim her brothers as my little bros).  I even figured out a little about football!

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Alma mater homecoming game with the bestie.

View on Instagram

A and I watched the halftime homecoming ceremony reminiscing our senior year homecoming football game in October 2011.  For the first time in high school I spent most of the football season standing on the fence watching my classmates play their hearts out and appreciated their hard work.  The memories I made in the bleachers senior year are ones that I love to revisit each year around this time.  Usually it happens when I hear Kenny Chesney's Boys of Fall.  Without fail this song takes me right back to those home games we looked forward to.

Now I feel the need to watch Remember the Titans!

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I'm linking up with Emmy for Music Mondays!

Your Servers Are People Too

One of my favorite bloggers, Ashley from Forever Ashley posted yesterday an experience her and her husband had while dining out at a local sports bar in Atlanta.  She shared with her readers about their server and how wonderful this young man had been and how he thanked them for being so great.

Photo: from WaitersToday.com

This post reminded about the total opposite of what this young server could have endured instead of the lovely conversational guests he had with Ashley and her husband.  I don't know how many stories I've heard from my classmates that also work in the food service industry and their horror stories of sorts of guests who are, let me just put it this way, less than desirable to deal with.  Even in fast food I've seen my fair share of guests who have gotten angry at a coworker or even myself for something trivial or out of our control.

The thing that I want to point out is that people who work in food service may not be doing it because that's what they want to do in life.  Think about it, most people don't want to spend six or seven days a week standing for eight or more hours, walking, carrying trays, lifting things, busing tables, standing over a grill, etc.  They are most likely doing it because they need some sort of income and that job is probably just a transitional phase.

I feel like this shouldn't need to be a public service announcement, but your servers are people too.

Even for people like my classmates and myself who want to be in this industry there are a lot of jobs we have to suffer through to make it to where we want to be.  We do it with a good attitude and give every day our best effort.  I'm pretty sure no one is seriously out to ruin your meal/day so that we can not get tips and you know, pay the bills.

Now take a moment, think about the last time you got frustrated with your server.  Was it something that the server was in control of? A lot of frustration that comes from guests in the food service area, it seems, are things that the server can't control, like running out of caramel cupcakes in Ashley's case.

It aggravates me that there seems to be this idea of giving inferior treatment to those who work in the hospitality industry.  Yes, this is a service industry but we're all humans too.  Can we not forget that when something goes less than planned?

Okay, my ranting for the evening is finished.

Riser

I have been known to impulsively buy an album with little to no thought about it.  Most of the time the music I buy I listen to on Spotify for weeks before I finally decide to buy from iTunes.  My impluse buying tends to be when I'm shopping at Target.  So maybe my impulse buying isn't really an impulse but just a tradition?

My most recent trip to Target that involved "impulse" resulted in adding a new favorite to my list.  Riser by Dierks Bentley.

Track List:

1. Bourbon in Kentucky
2. Say You Do
3. I Hold On
4. Pretty Girls
5. Here on Earth
6. Drunk on a Plane
7. Five
8. Riser
9. Sounds of Summer
10. Damn These Dreams
11. Back Porch
12. Hurt Somebody

My Favorites:

1. Riser
2. Damn These Dreams
3. I Hold On
4. Drunk on a Plane
5. Back Porch

My absolute favorite verse comes from Riser.

"I'm a riser. I'm a get off of the ground, don't run and hider.  Pushin' comes to shove, hey I'm a fighter. When darkness comes to town I'm a lighter; a get out aliver, of the fire. Survivor."

It's been a while since I've been able to find an album that isn't more than fifty percent of tracks that are fast paced or have more of an upbeat tune that I really enjoy.  Of course, when I find an album I love as much as this one I play it all the time. 

What's the last full album you've purchased that you just can't get enough of?

I'm linking up with Emmy for Music Monday!

September Favorites

The last month since I posted last has flown by.  This morning I thought I would sit down and throw some words out on my screen to at the very least let you all know I'm still alive.

I've come up with several things I wanted to blog about but today I felt like I needed to do something lighthearted and maybe even a bit fun!

Basically this post is just stuff I've found in the last month that I like and that I want to share.

A few weeks ago I got the opportunity to tour the Hyatt Regency in Wichita for an event my class is planning.  The tour sparked a bunch of questions in my head, one of which was what did it take to turn a ballroom over?  This video of time lapse of just that at the Omni Forth Worth hotel was an awesome answer.

I follow several different hotel brands on Twitter to keep up with industry news.  One of my favorites has been Hyatt. They have a special team devoted to tweeting at their guests and it makes me feel so happy that they've taken this stance on Twitter.  You can find them @HyattConcierge

Hyatt had tweeted this photo and I've since shared it to all my social networking sites because I love it so much.  For me this goes for both people who are traveling and for those to explore their own city.  I think it's super important when traveling to do things the locals do and eat where the locals eat.  How else are you going to really experience the culture if you only doing the touristy things?

I think this speaks for itself. I just love it.

Slowly this is becoming one of my favorite quotes.

This article titled 8 Things People Who Hate Confrontation Understand was basically written to explain me as a person.

I found this a couple of days ago and I'm still laughing.  Pig In Australia Steals 18 Beers From Campers, Gets Drunk, Fights Cow.

9 Reminders from Famous Women to Follow Your True Dreams. #2 is my favorite.

Hopefully it won't be another month before I'm back here, but I can't promise anything.  I'm pretty active on Twitter still, you can follow me here.