Wow. *Draws a face on the dust that has collected on her LJ*
Well. I think that was quite a long time away. I barely remember how to blog.
The last month has been spent doing mostly three things.
1. Hanging out with my family
2. Job hunting
3. Writing/Reading
Job-hunting:I have never filled out so many applications in all my life. Been doing around 20, sometimes more, each day for a month and I only ever got called back by one place. One. That ladies and gentlemen, is evidence of how horrible the job market is right now. Geez. It's not even a job involving what I spent 5 years at a university studying. But with student loans on my hear, I'm not feeling all that picky, at
all. A full time job that pays me weekly? I'll take it. In the mean time, I'll keep working on my translator's and mayber even teaching certification. I think I shall be esctatic to not be broke anymore. It's been a while since I seen a paycheck. Even if it has to go away in bills, it'll be nice to see one again.
Family:I have always enjoyed my family. We are a crazy lot of people. I know everyone thinks their family is crazy, but I honestly think mine is clinical. There's just something in the Torres blood that makes air like crack to us. It's been so much fun to hang out with everyone and find my inner Torres again. I think Temple tried to massacre my Torres spirit, or I've been away for too long. Or a combination of the two. Because something weird happened this summer.
When I went to Puerto Rico and also here in Florida, there have been days that I've felt out of place. That's never happened before. It's a very strange sensation, made more real by the fact that several of my family have told me that I feel different. I'm pretty sure that's do to three years away at a school that made me feel miserable.
I graduated from Temple now, and I feel much better, but not completely well yet. I still find myself not wanting to do the things I usually would want to with my family. I go because I know I should
want to go, and usually by the end have enjoyed myself even if I didn't feel like going at first. But the fact that I find myself thinking on whether or not I wanna participate in an activity is simply
wrong.
In my family, the planning of an activity usually goes something like this. Someone starts suggesting: "Hey, ya wanna--" And before they even finish, someone else has already answered: "LET'S DO IT!!!" while doing something ridiculous like thrusting their fist at the air. That's the correct Torres response to activity, motion, plans, stimuli in general. Lately, my usual reaction has been hesitation before reluctant acceptance and often not wanting to do something at all.
Over the years, I've gotten used to being alone, and I think I have developed coping mechanisms that are now desayudánome more than anything else. When you're alone all the time. There's lots of things you do to help you ignore the loneliness. You develop a schedule and habits structured around helping you forget your loneliness.
Now I'm with my family and not alone anymore, but I still find myself using the habits and schedule of my lonely times. I almost feel that I've unlearned the conversation and sponaeity and togetherness that defines la familia Torres. Desanimada, has become the word that most describes me, and I'm finding it difficult, and sometimes uninterested, in changing that impression. Hmm.
Writing/Reading:One of my favorite coping mechanisms I mentioned before is reading and writing. It's something that has equally become a passion, and I spent every minute of my free (and a lot of my non-free ^^;;) time doing it. Bookworm doesn't even begin to cover it. I have been itching to visit a library, but most of my family wouldn't know where to find one if there life depended on it. Somos películeros to the max. I am also a películera as much as the next Torres, but I hold literature and its creation on an equally high pedestal, which to the rest of my family is just bizaaaarre.
Lately, I've been RPing a lot again. Tis so much friggin fun. I'm surprised I've been able to get so into it, seeing as I'm the type of writer that needs everything to fall into place five years before its conception. Sometimes I find it difficult to fly by the seat of my pants the way RP tends to require, but its a lot of fun. What I've enjoyed the most about it though, is anticipating character's reactions to different situations.
I've really gotten to like not being able to control all the characters of a story. It makes the writing a learning process. I find myself wanting to learn about the characters, and often crafting a situation where their reaction will teach me something new about them. It's my nature to torture characters in a story, in an almost systematically sadistic way and RP has only made that habit worse. So much worse.
I also have been receiving a lot of random emails concerning Reminiscence. One that nearly made me fall out of my chair in shock was from a young Japanese woman who asked permission to translate the fic into Japanese.
.
.
.
Wow.
I did not think, ever ever think, that anyone would like anything I wrote enough to go through the trouble of translating it. Translation and Linguistics is what my Bachelor's degree says. It's not a job for the faint of heart or the lacking in patience. I like to think of translation as a labor of love more than anything else. To transfer something from one language to another, and do it not only correctly, but without loosing the essence of the source language is a task that is so difficult that it can't not be a labor of love. And a headache. A big fat, possibly fatal, headache.
That someone would like something I've written enough to go through all that trouble, is to me the highest compliment ever. Thank you to Ms.Ota for making my friggin year with that email.
Things to do this week:1. Get a car
2. Get more office clothes
3. Finish that damn vacation log
4. Re-edit and polish current Rem chaps
5. Write more fiction
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jamminbison 
