30-Day Blog Challenge: Day 13

Day Thirteen: Goals

I’ve never been really big on New Years resolutions. As a kid they just always seemed like an annual tradition that no one took seriously. However, for this year I really do have some goals in mind and it makes me very excited to tell you about them! They are not resolutions, but it just happens that in December and moving into January, these ambitions really took shape in my brain.

New York, Baby!

Time Square

Plan A is to move to New York before the end of the year. Ideally I’m thinking third quarter, August-September-ish. Why? It’s my lifelong dream to live in New York, and everybody I have talked to about it says “go while you’re young and unattached.” So it’s time I took the plunge.

Naturally I want to experience theatre in New York, but that’s not why I’m moving in that direction. I love the city, and my career in web welcomes many opportunities up there. I want to wear a suit everyday, meet with clients, critique their big fancy websites and tell them how to improve their strategies. That’s ultimately what I want to do full-time, and once I’ve locked that in I’ll test drive the theatre scene to see what the Big Apple has to offer part-time.

I have a lot of prep work to make this become a reality: first and foremost I have to do some financial calculations. I have to determine what my cost of living will be, and make sure I’m only seeking out jobs that would cover my expenses. I do not intend to just shoot up there blindly. Secondly, and equally important, I need to update my resume. It’s been about a year since I touched it, and so if I’m going to get a “better than entry level” position, it’s going to take some diligence to upgrade my papers.

DVD Audition Tape

I’ve not abandoned the idea that I’d like to get paid to sing and dance and act. I’ve got a very pronounced passion for musical theatre, and I would like to see what kind of opportunities are available to me around the world. Since I cannot easily travel on a whim to New York, L.A., London, etc to audition for the big shows in person, I want to produce an audition reel of past shows and solo exhibitions that I can then put in the mail to various casting calls, namely on cruise ships and overseas. There isn’t much left to say about this…

Vicarious Living

There have been some days when I think to myself “next time I’m in college, I’ll make a better effort to ______.” I have to remind myself that this isn’t a video game. It’s real life. There is no second chance to do college over (unless you count grad school). So one of my long-standing life goals is to find my God-graced Juliet, marry her, and raise a family. I want to instill core values into my children, raise them in the church, and hope that they find their life’s passion sooner than I did. I want to watch my kids live out their dreams with the courage and gusto that I’ve never had.

Christmas Play Dream

I dreamed last night that for some reason, I was back in Forsyth for my old church’s Christmas play. I wasn’t in the play, but I must have gone back to see it. Apparently my friend Abbey Hufstetler was in the play, however. I think it was less a play and more a choir concert. But instead of watching it from the congregation (yes, my church is old school and calls it a “congregation”), I sneaked “back stage” to find a better view… as if my church was large enough to have a bad view, HA! This church was tiny and so it didn’t really have a back stage, it just had two small rooms on either side of the pulpit that we called “choir rooms”.

Anyway… so Abbey noticed that I was sneaking into the back and gave chase. I crawled up into the attic above the choir (this space does not exist in real life) in search of a nice view of everything going on. This attic was very rickety, however, and it didn’t take much of my weight to cause it to start collapsing beneath me! Adventure!

About the time I’m chest deep into the attic floor, Abbey emerges from the ladder and sees my plight. She grabs my arm and tries to help me hoist myself back up to stable floor. I give her the coldest, most dangerous glare of warning I can remember giving anyone in recent history, and advise her through gritted teeth to “please just get back and let me do this.” She shrinks back to the corner as I slowly hoist myself out of the hole and back up into the attic.

She’s already begun climbing down the ladder by now, and I catch up with her in the stage right choir room. I grab her before she can exit into the sanctuary. I turn her around to face me, her eyes watery from the sting of bitterness that occurred just moments before. I embrace her and apologize maybe 6 or 10 times, admitting that I was panicked and behaved harshly out of concern for her safety. She sniffled and sputtered out this statement with a very confused tone: “I thought that’s what you wanted, I thought you liked me. I just wanted to help you.” I’m caught off guard by all this, having not realized that she had feelings for me more than friendship, and now very worried that I might’ve ruined what I had indeed been wanting for some time because of one moment of accidental insensitivity.

The End.

Crappy ending, I know! I’d love to make up a happy ending and pass it off as legit, but that’s really how the story dissipated in my dream. Maybe there’s a Part II coming my way tonight. I’ll let you know if it happens! :O

Random Story About Gloves

Haha… so a friend told me today on Skype, outta the blue… “tell me a story.” This is the chaos that followed:

  • [9:50:17 PM] Daniel: Once upon a time…
  • [9:50:21 PM] Daniel: in a faraway land…
  • [9:50:29 PM] Daniel: there lived a boy.
  • [9:50:41 PM] Daniel: The boy liked gloves…
  • [9:50:47 PM] Daniel: he liked gloves alot..
  • [9:51:04 PM] Daniel: Every day he’d wear a new pair of gloves…
  • [9:51:21 PM] Daniel: and every night he’d wear the same pair of gloves that he’d worn for 14 years
  • [9:51:27 PM] Daniel: because they were very special to him.
  • [9:51:57 PM] Daniel: Then one night as he slept, a raccoon broke into his house
  • [9:52:14 PM] Daniel: and stole one of his pairs of gloves!
  • [9:52:32 PM] Daniel: The next day he awoke, and the raccoon waited outside, anxious to see his reaction
  • [9:53:00 PM] Daniel: But the boy set off to his daily chores, seemingly oblivious to any missing gloves.
  • [9:53:14 PM] Daniel: That’s because since he wore a new pair every day, he never accounted for the pairs he’d already worn.
  • [9:53:29 PM] Daniel: So the next night, the raccoon broke in a second time.
  • [9:53:49 PM] Daniel: This time he stole ALL of the boy’s gloves, thinking that surely this time he’d flip his lid.
  • [9:54:09 PM] Daniel: But again, the boy went on about his day, not noticing that his glove drawer had been emptied.
  • [9:54:32 PM] Daniel: Infuriated, the raccoon waited for the boy to fall asleep a third time.
  • [9:54:53 PM] Daniel: On this night, the raccoon intended to steal the boy’s nighttime gloves.
  • [9:55:15 PM] Daniel: But of course, as usual, the raccoon found the boy WEARING the very old & tattered gloves.
  • [9:55:34 PM] Daniel: The raccoon thought to himself, “How can I manage to get these gloves off the boy without waking him?
  • [9:55:59 PM] Daniel: The raccon could think of no feasible way to leave the boy undisturbed…
  • [9:56:22 PM] Daniel: so he resolved to nibble away at the gloves until they were torn to shreds all over the boy’s hand.
  • [9:56:48 PM] Daniel: Then the raccoon returned to his perch outside the boy’s house and awaited morning.
  • [9:57:09 PM] Daniel: But when morning came, the boy emerged unhindered by the damage to his gloves.
  • [9:57:54 PM] Daniel: Utterly dismayed, the raccoon pounced on the boy and demanded “Have you not noticed that your dearest gloves are torn to shreds?! Why don’t you care?!”
  • [9:59:06 PM] Daniel: Confused at the raccoon’s passionate demeanor, he simply responded “What, do you think you’re the first raccoon in 14 years to do that?” and went skipping along his way.
  • [9:59:08 PM] Daniel: The End.

World of Warcraft and a Damsel

Was it about a girl? Or was it about World of Warcraft? Well, it was actually a mix. This is a fairytale dream that I had last night. The girl’s identity will remain undisclosed.

Imagine real life as if it were a game.

I was walking along a mountainous, snowy highway picking flowers up from the side of the road (farming herbalism, for you WOWers out there). Suddenly a girl jumps out from the woods that are roadside and barrels into me! She is terrified! Of what, however, remains unclear. I calmed her as I stare in disbelief because I know this girl. I have not seen her in a very long time. She looks beautiful. And she is frightened which is great, from a man’s perspective, because it is an opportunity to protect her from the bad thing that threatens her and win her heart through battle.

So I hold her hand and keep her close behind me as we step into the woods in search of the thing that so badly affected her. Only there is nothing around.

Suddenly she FREAKS out again that something is right behind us and goes tearing off deeper into the woods. But there is nothing chasing us. So desperately I try to keep up with her and fight off this invisible foe. Gosh, she is so so beautiful. Dillusional, perhaps, but unmatched in her beauty.

I finally catch up to her and tackle her, right in front of a cave entrance. The cave is a single massive room of stone with lava pits and a wide stone staircase of steps descending right down to the middle of this boiling dungeon. So much for invisible foes, for this cave is a city of golems and ogres, inside and out. She begins to run again, this time heading inside (for whatever reason she chose that direction, I have no idea), but I quickly grab her arm and keep her close as I swing my sword (apparently I have a sword) at the ogres that have now approached (“aggroed”) from behind us.

Cut scene. (For non-WOWers, this is where the gameplay is interrupted by a cinematic video that you get to watch, usually relevant to whatever your character was doing right before.)

The ogres are defeated, I have proven to the girl that I am a warrior, and we are back inside the house where I am staying. It is not my house, but a friend’s house in the mountains. Apparently I am visiting. My friend and his wife are gone, at work I presume, and so I invite the girl to make herself at home as I head for the shower. I don’t want to upset my friend as he returns home to find his carpet caked with dirt and molten lava, after all.

But the shower… well it is in the center of the main room of the cabin, and is made of glass. For whatever reason, I forget about the conspicuous nature of this shower and jump right in.

A few minutes later, after the glass is all fogged up by the hot water, the girl slowly peeks in from an ankle-high ventilation hole near the floor (don’t question why the shower was designed that way, I’m just telling it as it happened). This time I am the one that freaks out. “Strange girl!” I am thinking to myself as I frantically cover the hole with my foot. She jumps back and I exclaim “what are you doing?!” “You can see right through!” she responds.”Well you’re up next, so get used to it” I say as I turn off the water and wrap my towel around my lower half. I step out and she steps in. Then I wake up.

No seriously, I promise I really woke up. I’m not censoring the story. LOL

THE END.