So those of you who follow my blog on a regular basis may have noticed that I don’t post very often. The reasons for this are twofold. 1. I’m busy focusing on my book. 2. I do most of my ‘blogs’ in my own personal journal.

I received my first journal when I was a freshman in high school. It was more like a diary I suppose as all I did was write “I love you x”, “I love you y”, “I love you z”. I would write one paragraph to the girl I liked that day, then a paragraph about something happening in the news, then a ‘lastly’ with something about sports or family or whatever. It was just a little book so I may have written about 100 words per entry. And that was what I kept for most of high school. More of a diary. I still have it stuffed away somewhere in the basement.

Then I got to college and decided it was time to upgrade what kind of diary/journal I kept. So I bought a small black book that wasn’t much bigger than the high school diary, and would write about the girls I met and the dates I went on, but also details about classes and teachers. It was a diary in some respects, but blended into a journal with details about issues bigger than just those relating to myself. My favorite entry from that journal was the one where I detailed my ‘to conquer’ list of every kind of girl I wanted to sleep with. Haha I didn’t come close to fulfilling that list, but it still makes me laugh to see my mindset at the time.

Then in 2005, I decided it was time to upgrade again and I bought an 80 page college rule notebook of the sort that is typically used for taking notes in class. By this time I was very used to writing essays in college classes and so I decided to try more of an essay format for my journaling. And boy did I grow to love it. 4 pages for most entries. 10 for one about my college overall. But yeah, I was loving the amount of journals I was burning through with essays about everything from my high school experiences, to my college experiences, to hurrican katrina, to my favorite video games, to sports, to just about everything under the sun. You name it, I probably wrote about it during the 2005 to late 2007 time span. I wrote 5 full 80 page journals during that span, and that’s not counting the side journal I kept for my work related thoughts. If it sounds like I’m boasting there’s a reason for that. During this time frame I was all about quantity, and now when I read some of those old entries I see I passed up on quality. Sure it was nice writing 2000 words per entry, but it’s meaningless unless it is backed by genuine quality.

Fast forward to today. I started journaling again back in October of 2011, and almost every single entry is now 500 words, 1 page only. I now know that quanity does not equal quality. I may be at fault now for compressing way too much information, but I do feel like I now get what I need to get out in a limited number of words. I’m happy about my entries now. And other than the occasional mention of a girl who crosses my path, it’s mostly about major issues relevant to what’s going on in the wider world.

And lastly(remember that?), I want to mention that the book I’m writing now is entirely in journal format. 1 page, 500 words per day. Sometimes I’ll combine a couple of entries to make it 900-1000 words an entry, but I feel that to maximize creativity in my book, keeping things compressed is a much better way to go. And you know what I learned back in college writing classes? “Write what you know”. Well I know Final Fantasy 1, and I know journaling. So I’m currently writing a story based upon the Final Fantasy 1 storyline, and doing so in a journal format. I’m enjoying every minute of it.

So that’s it. This is my personal entry. I would like to mention that I’m currently reading Temple Grandin’s book ‘Animals in Translation’. I don’t know why the Amazon site isn’t working, but that’s what I would have put up there. Thanks to my new friend @boulderchristina for recommending it.

Now how about you? Do you keep a diary or journal? Is your blog here on Xanga your creative outlet?

So I was a little bored and killing time on youtube when I came across this video of someone playing Paperboy for the NES. Did any of you play this game? I think it was one of the funniest games. You definitely don’t have to watch the whole video, but if you make it halfway through at least you’ll see the grim reaper make an appearance. I was a substitute paperboy back in high school and if the grim reaper ever showed up on one of my streets I would have thrown a paper at him and yelled, “Don’t fear the reaper!” EDIT: You don’t have to play the video to see the grim reaper! Here’s right there on the default picture. Ha ha!

This is to all the college kids out there(and everyone who is still searching for who they are). Just Be baby. Just be.

I was lost
And I’m still lost
But I feel so much better

You can travel the world
But you can’t run away
From the person you are in your heart
You can be who you want to be
Make us believe in you
Keep all your light in the dark
You’re searching for truth
You must look in the mirror
And make sense of what you can see
Just be
Just be

They say learning to love yourself
Is the first step
But you take what you want to be real
Flying on planes to exotic locations
Won’t teach you
How you really feel
Face up to the fact
That you are who you are
And nothing can change that belief
Just be
Just be

Cause now I know
It’s not so far
To where I go
The hardest part
It’s inside me
I need
To just be
Just be

This afternoon I was watching Apollo 13 with my Mother and Brother when we(my Mother and I) started talking about family history. During the course of this conversation I learned that my grandfather had two other sisters that I knew nothing about. I knew he had one sister because she’s at all the family gatherings and I know her quite well(she’s a major trekkie). But until today I had no clue he had two other sisters. The story behind one of them left me quite shocked that something that terrible had happened in my family’s history. I won’t say what it was, but let’s just say it was treated very differently in the old-time days. Laws are on the books now that weren’t back then that would have helped her.

But the point of my post is this: I learned something brand new about my family today that has me viewing my family ancestry in a different light.

Have you ever had a momemnt like this that just made you sit back and say, “Wow, I didn’t know something like that had happened in my past”?

I thought I would share what I think is the most attractive thing I have ever seen.

It took place on a dating game type of show. It wasn’t blind date, but it was something along those lines. I can’t remember as this was about seven years ago. The format of the show was that a guy or girl would go on a date with three guys or girls and over the course of the different scenes would whittle the three down to one, which they would take home for the night.

So I used to watch this show to get an idea of what to do and what not to do on a date. At the time I thought I was getting some great ‘advice’ through the show, but now I just think they were all trying to appear ‘cool’ on camera and none of what I saw was genuine. There was one single moment though that I do think was completely genuine and I still consider that moment to be the most attractive thing I have ever seen.

A guy was on a date with three girls and at the time they were all in a pool. The guy was relaxing with his elbows up on the side of the pool and the three girls were at various positions around him while they talked. One girl was to his left leaning back against the edge. While the four of them were talking about whoknowswhat the guy, with his right hand, reached over his left shoulder to grab at his drink that was sitting on the edge of the pool. He wasn’t paying attention to the drink, he was just reaching for it, but it was just out of his reach. If you looked close you could see his fingers moving around trying to find it. The girl who was to his left saw this and took his drink and moved it a little closer and the guy’s fingers found it and he took a drink. He never looked in the direction of the drink, he never asked the girl to get it for him, so all she did was pick up on what he was doing and move the drink within his reach.

That little act is still the most attractive thing I have ever seen. I thought about what I would do if I was on that show and in that guy’s position and I maintain that it would have been this; I would have broken the contract of the show that would have had me go through the motions of whittling down the competition to just one girl and said right then and there in the pool that, “You two seem nice, but I’m taking her home.” I would have registered then and there(if I picked up on the fact that she had moved my drink closer to me) that this was a girl who could be much more than just a one night stand. She could be someone I could develop real feelings for. In a way, IRL I did because I still think about what she did for that guy. I don’t remember her name, I do remember she was wearing a nice black bikini(which always helps in my opinion) but that’s about it.

Obviously I still think about that moment. What about you? What is the most attractive thing you have ever seen? Was it what a special someone wore? Was it something someone did? This is one to fill up the comments section with so feel free to share as much as you want!

I will no longer be publishing any information about the novel I’m writing. This means that the four of you Xangans who have read the first two ‘chapters’ will no longer get any more of them. This is not a reaction to any that has happened, it’s just me being protective of my intellectual property. No one except my family was all that invested in the novel anyway(it was just the prologue and chapter 1 afterall) so this is just a minor announcement to you. To me though, it’s kind of a major announcement.

You see, I had planned to release each chapter on its’ own upon completion to those who were on the mailing list, and perhaps via word of mouth I would eventually get ‘noticed’. This is how it worked on a music site(ctgmusic.com) for a lot of people. They would post their work for all to see, and they would gain a small group of fans, and perhaps one of those fans would have connections to a major label and then BAM, their work would show up on an album. This was my intent here on Xanga. Release a sample of what was in each chapter and gain s small following, and in turn follow other bloggers/writers, and perhaps get noticed one day down the road and BAM get published.

I’ve decided the risk is too great that someone out there will see an idea or two from what I’m doing and…remix…it into their own work and take credit for it. I would have no grounds to sue as it would have been my own fault for divulging so much information about what I was doing. So there you go. Call it a preemptive strike or what have you.

So my guess is that you thoughts are something along these lines:

1. Most Likely – “That’s nice and all but I don’t really care about his crappy novel”

2. Somewhat Likely – “That’s nice and all but I hope he gets his novel published one day”

3. Perhaps Just – “That’s nice and good luck to him”

So my only question for this evening is this: Have you ever worked on a novel, short story, poem, sonnet, or song lyrics and had your intellectual property stolen? If so, how did you recover from that experience? If not(like me) I hope you never go through that. I don’t use the word ‘Hate’ much, but one thing I would Hate is to see someone take one of my songs I created back in 2005, Remix it without my consent, then have that remixed version be consider better than the original. That would really, really piss me off.

Have a wonderful evening!

Dan

I absolutely love this song so I thought I’d post it(Not that Tiesto needs any more recognition than he usually gets).

So the idea for this post came to me from one of the respondents in my What’s Your Passion post. She said she was a foodie and when I asked her a question about what would be her last meal, she listed a meal for morning, noon, and night.

So my question to you, dear reader, is this: If you were on death row, what would be your final meal?

Now think about this question, and think even harder on your answer. I believe the answer to this question will place the label of ‘Foodie’ or ‘Non-foodie’ upon you. Not from me, mind you, but from other respondents. I would guess that if you would potentially list Kobe Steak with your grandmothers mashed potatoes and homemade green beans, you may be labeled as a foodie. If, like me, you simply would enjoy a good old Pepperoni Tombstone Pizza, you may find yourself labelled as a non-foodie.

So now that you’ve answered that question and maybe have seen other comments, what(if you’re a foodie) is your opinion of those who are not. And what(if you’re a non-foodie) is your opinion of those who are?

My answer as a non-foodie who observed the aforementioned foodie’s comment is this: That she must have a great deal of experience with various foods and that, even if I’m not interested in what she listed, she has my respect.

So now it’s up to all of you. Foodies and Non-Foodies alike, what do you think?