<\/em>Which immediately begged the question: Why am I not in space right now? \u00a0Seriously, I would do just about anything to go up in space. \u00a0Thinking about the Pilgrims made me think about colonizing other planets, and how the difficulties may be similar and yet different. \u00a0It also made me think about my latest novel, Into the Nebulous Deep,<\/em> which (I’m hoping) is a colonization story set in space, and how I can use some of the stuff from the Pilgrims in my own work.<\/p>\n Speaking of which, the writing has been going very slow recently. \u00a0A lot of it has to do with interruptions from the vacation (which frankly are more important), but it also has to do with my growing frustrations with the current project. \u00a0I’m about 15k in the rough draft of ITND, and…it just doesn’t seem as good as my other work. \u00a0Of course, it’s just a mental thing–none of my rough drafts has ever been any good–but man, it’s tough to get through.<\/p>\n To complicate things, I’m going to have to find a job for the Christmas season, at least to tide me over. \u00a0I’m really hoping to get that wilderness job, but the training starts January 13th, and I don’t have the funds to spend all my time writing, like I have this past month.<\/p>\n I’ll know for sure the first week of December whether I’ve been invited to the training–and if I am, it’s going to throw a real kink in my writing routine. \u00a0Each job shift lasts a full week, during which time I’ll be completely unplugged, living in the wilderness. \u00a0I might get some time to work on poetry or short stories, but no novels.<\/p>\n The upside is that I get six days off completely free to do whatever I want, but I’m worried that it’ll be difficult, at least at first, to regain sufficient momentum in that short time. \u00a0I’m sure I can get used to it eventually, but for the first few months, it will probably be tough.<\/p>\n For that reason, I want to get as far in ITND as I can before January 13th, perhaps even finish it (HAHAHAHA!!! \u00a0As if that’s<\/em> going to happen). \u00a0So the fact that I haven’t progressed from this one scene for like a week is really killing me. \u00a0Throw in a temporary job for the Christmas season, and I’ll probably go crazy.<\/p>\n That’s what my writing angst says, anyways. \u00a0In other words, everything is fine and life is great. \u00a0Now I’m going to get some sleep before driving across the freaking country all day tomorrow and Sunday. \u00a0Night!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So for Thanksgiving this year, I drove down with my sister and brother in law to have Thanksgiving in Houston with my other sister’s family. \u00a0It’s Friday night, and I’m about to hit the sack to get prepped for the long 24+ hour drive back to Utah, but let me say, this vacation has been… Continue reading Thanksgiving report from Texas<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[460],"tags":[88,133,42,46,172,147,395,482,337,481,423,599,290],"class_list":["post-3481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hn","tag-doubts-and-fears","tag-family","tag-frustrations","tag-goals-and-plans","tag-interplanetary-colonization","tag-momentum","tag-money","tag-nasa","tag-road-trips","tag-thanksgiving-2010","tag-wilderness","tag-thoughts-reflections","tag-vacations","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-U9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3481"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3489,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3481\/revisions\/3489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/3\/3b\/Mission_control_center.jpg\")
Besides family, though, one of the coolest parts of the vacation was visiting the Houston Space Center and seeing mission control and one of the original Saturn V rockets. \u00a0That’s right–see that room in the picture? \u00a0I was there. <\/em><\/p>\n