Mind of Migg

I failed completely in my first attempt at NaNoWriMo last November.  I barely completed two chapters and maybe a few thousand words.  Actually, let me see how sad my word count really was…still looking…saved them as separate documents…there it is…3024.  I also wrote three chapters, not two.  Still, a sad performance.  But I loved the idea of trying to write an entire novel in only one month.  After the poor first showing, I felt the need to redeem myself.  What better way than to return to the familiar – screenwriting.  Yes, it’s time for Script Frenzy!

Script Frenzy follows the same idea as NaNoWriMo, only the goal is to write an entire screenplay in one month instead of an entire novel.  Difficult for some, easier for me.  Okay, let’s be honest, a script rough draft is easier to spit out than a novel.  There’s less pages in a script and the more white space on your page, the better.  Does that really make it easier?

At first I thought it would.  Then I remembered exactly what I enjoyed about branching out to fiction pieces the last few months.  You can wander more and feel your way around a longer piece.  Nobody flips to page thirty of a novella to see if there’s an act break.  Writing a script requires some form of outlining and structure.

Unfortunately for me, I didn’t get into much outlining.  I’m going to wing it.  I focused more on my new writing playlist than I did on my plot points.  A mistake?  Only time will tell.  I have two characters, a mood, and a few ideas.  And a shade under two hours before April 1 to OUTLINE LIKE CRAZY.  We’ll see what happens.

Two days is a long time to go without meat, let alone two weeks.  Violet and I decided to try it anyway.  We finished up a two-week period with no meat in our diet (save one exhausted night where I failed to associate a can of tuna with meat and mixed it in with pasta and vegetables, but that doesn’t count).

Why did we do it?  The basic idea was that we want to reduce the amount of meat in our diet.  Don’t get me wrong, I love meat.  LOVE IT.  But we’re making an effort to follow Michael Pollan’s general rule, “Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.”  Too often, when we don’t have meat available as the centerpiece of a meal, we opt to go out instead of creatively throwing vegetables together to make a dish.

We wanted to try some new vegetarian dishes and get used to less meat.  The first week was a lot of fun.  I made risotto, butternut squash chipotle soup, and eggplant Parmesan.  Violet made an awesome meatless chili with cornbread.  Then I got the new job, we didn’t go grocery shopping over the weekend, and the second week turned into a long craving for our meat on Saturday.

Being a vegetarian requires some thought and prep to have filling food available.  Mixed greens don’t cut it, especially from fast food places I ended up going for lunch in my first week at work.  I didn’t necessarily eat healthier, but I think my stomach adjusted to smaller portions and I realized that a veggie burrito isn’t all that terrible.  We had Indian food multiple times.  It was the easiest place to go with vegetarian food that wasn’t just a salad or mixed vegetables.

Finally, Saturday arrived and my mouth watered imagining the steak I’d be eating at Victor and Gen’s wedding reception (sidenote – awesome wedding.  Had a blast.).  Before the meals, there were appetizers, so my first taste of meat after two weeks was actually some grilled chicken on stick.

It was fantastic.  The first thing I noticed was the texture.  I’d never had an appreciation for the texture of meat.  The flavor was great.  It was like eating a special treat.  And that’s the way we’d like to keep it.  Not only is it healthier, it means we can afford to buy meat that’s organic and all natural.  Our plan is to have higher quality meat only two or three times a week.  We hope this helps in building good habits for better food in general and healthier eating habits.

On a related note, there is a new show out, “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution”.  It airs Friday nights on ABC.  I turned it on by chance and instantly became hooked.  The basic premise is Jamie’s desire to teach children about food and healthy eating.  You can watch him outline his wish at his TED prize talk here: http://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_oliver.html.

And we’re back.

It’s been a while.  I blame my friends.  Click on those links to the right.  Slackers, all of them (except James).  It’s hard to stay motivated to blog when all my friends have let the dust gather around their own blogs.  Granted, my google reader is full of other blogs that I should make a bigger effort to read regularly, but that’s beside the point.

The lesson here, and we can all learn from this, is: never go to Vegas while sick – you’ll lose every time.  Getting a fever down to 99 a few hours before leaving does not qualify as being “healthy”.  So that’s what happened.  I was getting sick and I made matters worse.  I kept working, I went to Vegas, I kept working some more, and then I collapsed for three days straight.  It was the best rest I’ve had in a long time.

That was a week ago.  Since then, I’m healthy again and have a new (old) job.  Yep, I’m recruiting again.  It’s easy, I seem to be good at it, and it’s a real full-time grownup paycheck.  Forget the soul sucking cubicles, I really need that paycheck.  That, and there’s still some cool people who work there that I’ve kept in touch with.  It was like a mini reunion on my first day back.  The old Cutco salesman part of me even enjoys the recruiting.

Not to say film and writing things aren’t happening.  On the contrary, things are progressing forward more now than they ever have.  But those things take time.  A whole lot of time.  Nobody will ever confuse the movie industry with a fast-moving…anything.

Things are moving forward, I have a normal job and a normal schedule to write around in the meantime, and my cough is almost gone.  Not bad for an extended break from blogging.