School and Hustle

It seems that I will be returning to school. I have been looking for a job for a while now and I don't seem to be making much progress. I have decided that getting a bachelors degree will be valuable for my future.

This is quite a change of attitude. I had come to the decision that I didn't need school to be successful. I finished my associates degree and went on  my way. I have worked since then at the same job and now that job is crumbling beneath me. I have been applying to different jobs but having no success. I am convinced now that I need the credentials to be taken seriously, and that means getting a bachelors degree. To that end, I have begun the process of going back to school. I am going to take the last class that I need to transfer to a four year college and then next year (the soonest I can) I will transfer as a Junior to Cal Poly.

One of the concepts that I am having trouble with is "Hustle." Let me stop here with a definition. Hustle is the act of working very hard to make your dreams come true. I am finding that I do not hustle very well. I find any number of reasons not to try things. When things are good, I relax. When things are bad, I hibernate. I need to find a way to motivate myself to get the things I want, even if those things are an imperfect version or an intermediary step. Even if I cannot achieve a dream, I must make progress to it.

What a Novel Idea

I have had a great deal of spare time lately and so I have started writing more. I know that I have written less in this blog over the past few months but this is a different kind of writing. I have had my girlfriend in my life ever ready to talk about whatever I need to get off my chest so I have had less need to write things here in my blog.
The writing I have been doing has been fiction. Novia has written the first draft of a novel and is currently in the process of revising it. While she is writing I need to find thing to do that won't distract her, so I have turned to writing my own stories. I have never had trouble thinking of settings. Places real and fantastic come to mind easily. The problem I have is creating a story arc. A conflict and a path to resolution. I am now stuck on what to do next in my story. I am at a fork in the road and I need to take one path or the other. I have started a few things and begun a few mysteries but I have yet to commit to anything past the initial premise. It is time to break out the big guns and start making the hard decisions. It is daunting but I must proceed or I will fail by default.
Wish me luck

Mead Batch 7 Part 2

Today Novia and I moved the mead to secondary fermentation. The cherry flavor comes through strong, and the yeast managed to consume nearly all of the sugar. The specific gravity reading was 0.995 which is a serious drop from the 1.090 that we began with. The alcohol percent is up around 12-13% which is about all this yeast can handle. I figured that I could add more honey to compensate for the dryness and the tart of the cherries but all I had on hand was 3/4lb of clover honey in a honey bear. We added the clover honey to the mix and tasted again. It is better with a little more sweetness, but is still harsh. I hope that time will smooth it out.

Mead Batch 7

Today Novia (my girlfriend) and I started my 7th batch of mead. We are aiming to make a medium sweet cherry melomel. We used twelve pounds of cactus honey and one pound of dried tart cherries, I am a little concerned about the cherries releasing enough flavor to be noticeable. Next time I might buy cherry juice to use instead. The starting gravity was 1.09 which means the must has an alcohol potential of 13%.  I used Lavlin 71B-1177 wine yeast which has an alcohol tolerance of 14% I am concerned with how sweet the result will be. I will have to recheck things after two weeks.

Victoria

My girlfriend and I just got back from Victoria, BC. She went to the University of Victoria, and we went there so that I could meet her friends and be shown around it was also my first trip to Canada. It is a beautiful place, sort of like a mix between San Diego, CA and Olympia, WA. The weather was clear and sunny almost the entire time but colder than I am used to. The city was an interesting mix of old and new buildings with that "college town" feel of tons of pubs and hip stores.
Meeting my girlfriend's friends was awesome. We all hit it off immediately and had fun chatting and taking pics around downtown.Vic. It makes me wish that I could live everywhere at once. I thought it was a drag having friends in the OC but that commute is nothing to the double flight required to get from LA to Vic. It also made me realize how much better I have gotten at connecting to people. I was able to enter conversations with people who were almost complete strangers and be laughing it up and carrying on in minutes. I will definitely have to make it back on a semi-regular basis. There are so many places in the world that I want to go and want to return to. One thing is certain, however, I want to go there with my girlfriend.

Cohabitation

Starting on the first I have moved in with my girlfriend. It has been an exciting process of arranging and moving our things in together. We have both enjoyed the process of deciding where everything goes and making room for each other. It is nice to be moving into a new place together and not into one or the others existing space so that we are able to start fresh.

So far things have been wonderful. The closeness is constantly great, we haven't yet gotten in each others way. We are sharing bills and time very well. I feel like it is some sort of vacation that I will have to give up. It seems so good that I keep waiting to wake up.

Failure

I got news today about the job that I interviewed for recently. It seems that they "filled the position" I guess that is soft talk for "we hired someone else." I am very disappointed that I didn't get the job, but I am also sort of glad that I get to finish out the project that I am currently working on where I work now.

The big problem now is figuring out what direction to go next. Do I stop looking for work and stay in my current job? do I keep looking for work in my field or in the field of props making? Do I look for a marketing-type job like I interviewed for? I am now faced with a number of options and I am not sure what is best for me. I know that I can no longer accept the inconsistent work that got me to this point but if I have to move on where do I move to?