Oh, hello

Here have this photo of my dog from when he was drugged after a vet visit and I put his sweater over his ears!

Anyway so I've been writing a lot I guess. Pretty much daily. Well, yeah, daily. For a week straight! Let's see how long this lasts! (Forever.) I'm about 14,000 words into this new novel I'm working on, which I'm enjoying a lot more than I thought I would. I was super excited about it at first, and then I got really unexcited, but now I'm excited again. Mostly because it's dialogue-y, and I love dialogue, and I'm having much more fun with the characters and space ship settings than I had predicted. Hurray! My goal is to finish the first draft by this fall, but I'm not sure that will actually happen. Fingers crossed.

In other news, there's not much other news. Greg and I bought an elliptical, which I've been using daily as well. My goals are: elliptical for at least 30 minutes every day, and write at least 250 words every day. I've been reading while I exercise, which makes the time go by pretty quickly, thank god. The worst thing about straight cardio is that it's boring as hell. At least when you do strength stuff you can grunt and be like, "Just... one... MORE!" while doing curls or something. I finished Austenland, which was very fun and cute, and am about halfway through The Shambling Guide to New York City. Loving it. I need something light and funny to read while I do the elliptical (ellipticalize? What's the verb form of elliptical?), otherwise I'd get too distracted by how sweaty I am. Ugh sweat.

Otherwise life is as it always is. I feel like I'm waiting for something to happen, something to catalyze a change -- either in the world around me, or in myself -- but I don't know what, specifically. I'm probably still getting used to Salt Lake. Will I ever become accustomed to this city? I think, even if it weren't for the overtly religious culture that reigns supreme, I wouldn't like it here. Is there even a culture in SLC, other than LDS? It seems so bland to me, but maybe I've been ruined by Portland and London (the best two cities around, obvs). Also just recently I learned that we're going to have to stay here for a lot longer than I'd expected. 

I don't know. I feel like I don't have an anchor and I'm just sort of drifting forward, letting life happen. And I don't like it. I realized that for basically my entire life, I've been working on something with a goal in mind. I was always in school, or saving up money to move to Portland, or applying to grad schools, or preparing to move to London, or studying and working on my masters degree. I was always waiting for life to happen. And now life is happening, and I'm just like... "Okay? Really? This is life. Well, okay. And when does it start again? Oh, it's... it's already started, you say? Ah. Wow. Okay that's cool I guess."

And it SUCKS, because life is awesome, objectively! In little isolated pockets, it's amazing. Like when I'm hanging out with Greg and we're laughing together. Or when I'm standing on the balcony watching the trees being pummeled by wind and rain. Or when I'm cuddling with my dog, listening to music. But overall it's like these things aren't connecting right, and the great tapestry of Meg's Life hasn't fallen into place yet. 

I'm trying to make it better. I'm being more social, which is always hard for me, even though I crave it. And I'm making an effort to exercise and write, which always makes me feel less like a failure and a useless lump. But... it's just not... there yet?

Shit, I don't know. Maybe I need something big to work towards. Like, hmmm, finishing my second novel?? Publishing my first one? But it doesn't feel like enough. And I don't know what "enough" is. Will I spend the rest of my life feeling like I'm not living it right? That there's something I could be doing to make everything more incredible? Someone tell me how to fix it. Someone tell me what to do.