My aunt and I get really excited about office supplies. This is one of the reasons we work so well together. To us, a trip to Staples is like a kid’s trip to Toys R Us. New Post-its, Sharpies, notepads, and tape make us entirely too happy. So tonight, when I go shopping for a printer that I’ve waited four years for, the office supplies high will be intoxicating.

Ah, Staples.

I have finally started on that series of short stories I wrote about two years ago. I mean, I started a couple of them around that time, but never really got into them and never wrote much beyond a couple of paragraphs. Right now, I’m working on a story that I dreamed a few nights ago. I’ve only ever written a story based on a dream I had once, and never finished that story. This story is starting to look like it might end up a novella, though, so I’m going to have to be really careful.

I’ve decided that this series is going to be a series of six stories (instead of ten), all about six different characters living in Tent City — which was a section in the woods behind the railroad tracks near where I work where homeless people lived in tents. I read a newspaper article about it two years ago, and was fascinated by the idea of it. Supposedly, according to the article, the city ordered Tent City dispersed, but there was never anything else about it in the paper (that I saw, anyway). I have no idea whether it still exists or what became of the people living there, but it definitely lives on in my imagination. Reading about Tent City made me realize just how big of a homeless population we have here in Waterbury. I truly hope HUD helped these people like they said they might in that article.

My plan for these stories is to submit them to different writing contests so that I can build up credibility, and then take them to an agent to have them published as a book. When I was doing research for grants and fellowships, I read a testimonial from a woman who had done the same thing, using the grants to fund her submissions. I’m not sure I’ll actually get a grant at this point, but I think what she did was pretty smart, so I’m going to mimic her and hope for the best.

Aside from doing a little writing and making plans regarding my writing, I’ve been thinking about buying a bike. Most likely it’ll be a mountain bike, and I’ll probably ride it around my neighborhood because there are no close bike paths, and I don’t have a bike rack (nor do I feel like buying one and attaching it to my car). I’m thinking the bike will be an incentive to get outside and get moving, because:

• I used to really like biking when I was younger, especially the summer I spent with my uncle in an Amish town. Lauren, Mindy, and I biked on this path out to this huge, beautiful field every day. There’s nothing like that here, but I still miss biking.
• It’s exercise that doesn’t involve me trying to talk myself into running. I ran once, and never again, because I couldn’t talk myself into doing something that hard again.
• If I spend $100 on a bike, I will have to use it, or else I’ll feel guilty and will be mad at myself for a long time for wasting that money. I can say, “Self, you just spent $100 on that bike, so you’d better get the fuck up from in front of the computer and GO RIDE IT!”*

Makes sense, right?

Tomorrow is my last day at work before my vacation starts, and Friday I’m hopefully going to the beach with my aunt and a few other people in our family. We’re going to create a social media marketing schedule for one of our clients while we get some sun, that way we can have a beach day and have a schedule ready for our intern to take over while I am on vacation.

Friday is also the day that my cousin Mindy comes from Pennsylvania. She’ll be visiting for a little over a week. I’m so excited!

So tell me, is there anything coming up that you’re excited about?

*Yeah, I talk to myself — entirely too much, actually.