Just a quick and dirty update before bed, because hey it’s been forever since I’ve posted to this thing.<\/p>\n
Holy crap, this last week was CRAZY for my family!\u00a0 Youngest sister got married, middle sister had a baby, and oldest sister…well, I’m not at liberty to discuss that yet.\u00a0 But congratulations to all of you!<\/p>\n
It was fun to get out and see everyone, but now that I’m back, man I’m looking forward to the next month.\u00a0 Wrote 2.5k words today in ITND, only two more chapters and an epilogue to go.<\/p>\n
And strangely enough, I don’t feel like the project totally sucks.\u00a0 Usually by this point, my fingertips are bleeding it hurts so much to write.\u00a0 But no, even though this is a rough draft and it needs some major story level edits, I don’t feel that it totally sucks (knock on wood).<\/p>\n
Now, whether that’s a sign that I’m maturing as a writer, or simply self-delusion …your guess is as good as mine.\u00a0 Probably better, actually.<\/p>\n
One thing I’m really wondering about, though, are my post-summer plans.\u00a0 Originally, I was thinking of taking a year to teach English someplace where I could earn enough money to live off of until I break in with my novels.\u00a0 Now…well, I’m not so sure.\u00a0 I’d love to go back to the Middle East, or maybe someplace like Georgia on the TLG program<\/a>, but Korea…I dunno.<\/p>\n As some of you know, I’m in a local Provo band.\u00a0 Right now, we’re just writing music, but it’s coming along quite well, and we’re hoping to start putting on shows in August.\u00a0 Except…that’s when I’d be leaving, if I were going to Korea.\u00a0 For a year.<\/p>\n Also, I’d miss out on some prime opportunities to build my writing career, like Worldcon<\/a>, and that seems rather foolish if what I really<\/em> want to do is be a writer.<\/p>\n The TLG program looks interesting because 1) it’s closer to the Middle East, geographically and culturally, 2) it’s much shorter, and 3) the program isn’t quite as rigorous.\u00a0 In short, it seems like a great way to test out whether I can juggle a TEFL career with my writing, whether I’m suited to TEFL, and whether dropping everything to travel for a while is really a good idea.<\/p>\n Trouble is, the program doesn’t pay much, so I wouldn’t be any better off financially once I get back to the states.\u00a0 Also, if I sign up now, I’d still be there through much of the fall, cutting me out of band stuff.<\/p>\n But if I do decide to stay in Utah for the medium term, I feel like I should at least get something out of it–like, say, a master’s degree.\u00a0 In something.\u00a0 Not sure what yet, but I’ll start looking into that ASAP.<\/p>\n Man, I can just imagine my parents cringing as they read this…<\/p>\n But I still haven’t nixed Korea as an option.\u00a0 The applications are still going through, and I plan on completing the online TEFL course this month.\u00a0 Perhaps finishing the course will help me find out if this is what I want to do.\u00a0 I don’t know.<\/p>\n But what I really<\/em> want to do (besides go back to the Middle East) is write.\u00a0 And I’m not going to lose sight of that, no matter what happens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Just a quick and dirty update before bed, because hey it’s been forever since I’ve posted to this thing. Holy crap, this last week was CRAZY for my family!\u00a0 Youngest sister got married, middle sister had a baby, and oldest sister…well, I’m not at liberty to discuss that yet.\u00a0 But congratulations to all of you!… Continue reading Where will Joe go?<\/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":[44],"tags":[335,89,133,495,149,599,148],"class_list":["post-4951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ds","tag-adventure","tag-career-decisions","tag-family","tag-teaching-english-abroad","tag-the-middle-east","tag-thoughts-reflections","tag-travel","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-1hR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4951","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=4951"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4959,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4951\/revisions\/4959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}