Freedom!

YES!!!  Exams are over!  Finished them just a couple of days ago, and now I’m at home back in Massachusetts.  Ah, sweet freedom!  No school obligations, no stresses for papers or projects or grades or anything!  Lots and lots of free time!

…and with that free time, I’m going to undertake something almost ridiculously impossible: finish Genesis Earth 1.0, the novel I started (but never finished) last year for English 318.  The one I was going to write over the summer but never really finished.  The one that got all caught up in clumsy rewrites and edits even before the rough draft was finished.

But that’s ok, because Jurassic Park just came on on Pandora, which means that I can do it!

Seriously, I think I can do this.  If I can ramp up the wordcount to 3k a day and totally immerse myself in this world, I think I can finish it.  Plus, I already know where I want this story to go.  I’ve already discovered most of the main ideas and I know how I want it to end (at least loosely).  Now that this miserable semester is over and I don’t have to worry about it anymore, I can focus on this stuff.

Blah blah blah.  Yeah, I think I’ll be able to do it.

I’m at home now: had a very interesting trip out here.  I was originally going to go to my cousin’s wedding in Washington D.C. with my parents, then drive back to Mass with them, but two major snowstorms are hitting the East Coast this weekend, and my parents don’t feel comfortable driving nine hours up and back in whiteout conditions.  You know, they’re getting older and all, so they don’t have energy for that sort of thing.  Honestly, I don’t blame them.

I had thought that I was going to have an exam on Thursday afternoon, so I had Pop book me for a red eye flight that left at midnight Friday morning.  There was a connection at JFK, but I cancelled it and bought a train ticket from Penn Station, New York.

So I left Utah at midnight, tried to catch some sleep on the flight (it was really hard…not the  least of which because of the TV shows you could watch on the inflight screen, like This American Life!  Great radio show, great TV show!), then caught the subway at 6:00 am and rode it to Manhattan.

This is when I realized just how insulated I am in Utah: I stepped onto the subway car, and everyone was black!  After living in Provo for so long, that was something of a shock to me, but I got over it before too long.

So I had a four or five hour layover in Manhattan before my train left, and…no, I didn’t do anything really cool.  I did walk around a little bit outside, bought breakfast from a street vendor, checked out the Empire State building from where I stood…but didn’t really go anywhere. Boo.

I would like to come back and spend some time in New York City, though.  My friend Steve wants to go there after he graduates, and it would be a cool place to spend a few years.  I don’t know what I want to do for grad school yet, but I wouldn’t mind living and studying in or near NYC.  Plus, that’s where most of the publishing world is, so it would be easier to make contacts and hit up the conventions if I were in this area.

The layover at Penn Station was long and somewhat miserable, but not too much so.  Got some breakfast and lunch, napped a bit, and caught the Vermonter up to Springfield.

I love trains!  They are so much more comfortable and relaxing than airplanes, even if it does take longer to get from place to place.   The chairs were so wide, and reclined back so much!  Must more restful than the airplane.

I did a little bit of work on my novel while on the train.  Basically, I’m trying to catch myself up to the point where I left off, so that I can pick it up and start writing tomorrow. You’ll notice that all of the wordcount meters are dismally low right now–that’s because of exams and general end of semester craziness, not to mention this huge shift in direction.  It won’t be down so low for much longer!

So then, met up with my dad outside of the station, rode home in the blinding whiteout of the storm that’s raging outside right now, enjoyed dinner with my parents, and now I’m getting ready to FINALLY get some sleep.  That’s what I’ve been up to all day.  It’s a dramatic change of scenery from just a week ago, but I think it will be good.  Very good.