The night I saw my third roommate.

This was a regular Sunday night. I remember Sunday because I usually do laundry and watch Game of Thrones. I usually wait until the last day before work to get all my cleaning done.

So I have a roommate his name is Daniel, and we’ve known each other for over 15 years but really been good friends for the last five years, and I wouldn’t be where I’m at without his influence and I hope that I have influenced him as well.

Daniel was in his room, close to the entrance of the apartment, watching a show or a movie with his girlfriend. The center of the apartment is the living room and kitchen itself along with the dining room and a balcony at the end of the living room. I’m walking from my room to the kitchen, taking dishes, and empty water bottles and what not.

Across my room is the guest bathroom and to the right in between is the laundry where I’m walking back and forth while doing loads and hanging clothes.

I feel like I need to explain my room layout as well for you to get a grasp of how I saw my third roommate. So my bed’s at the center of my room to the wall, there’s space to both sides from the bed around 3 feet wide. On one end there’s a window and on the other is the closet. Across the bed there’s quite some space for whatever I need, So I have a corner computer desk across the bed with two monitors and a chair. When going into my room this would be directly in front of you and most likely the first thing you would notice.

My computer chair is a gaming chair, it’s red and white in the center and the rest is black. with arm recliners that can be lifted up or down depending on preference. I’m sitting in this chair right now as I write this.

So this is what happened that Sunday night, as I walk back from the kitchen towards the laundry I go by my room which is on the right side, the door is open and i take a quick glance in my room and in my chair is someone sitting, who’s looking at the monitor but turns around and looks at me. The best way I can describe this person is he was pale white, unreal white, a male, they had a white shirt, and his skin was extremely white, whiter than the shirt. but he had dark hair and black eyes, No mouth or nose.

So I turn around and continue walking towards the laundry and of course all of this is happening in the span of 1 second and my brain is trying to process everything and when it does… I stop what I’m doing and I lift my hands up to touch my head, fingers between my hair, chills going down my arms and spine and I shout. “Okay, holy what the hell, what was that!?” And I turn back around to look in my room again, and of course now it’s like it was supposed to be in the first place. I shout more profanity trying to make sense of what I saw.

I’m a logical person, and I don’t believe on things that can’t be proven. And the most logical thing I could think of was that my brain made this up, some kind of optical illusion it played on me based on how things were arranged in my room at that point in time.

But another part of me thinks who was that? A ghost? Someone I knew? A 4th or 5th dimensional being that I can’t usually see but that is here, right now, standing behind me? My gut tells me it was me for some reason, it was me looking at myself, from the past or from the future, maybe from an alternate dimension.

Maybe he was watching some kind of video on the computer, and saw someone walk past towards the laundry, extremely pale white, whiter than his shirt, with black hair and black eyes. And looked at him and continued walking. If this is the truth then I can’t imagine how terrified that other me felt.

 

Hey I built a computer!

I was missing but I’m back now

I was sick for a month, had a constant headache for a week, nothing major though. I’ve been working full time and on the weekends I usually spent time with my girlfriend. I do have a bit of time but usually I’ve rested or been guilty of playing a game.

Oh yes of course, because I built a computer, how cool is that? I know everyone does it nowadays, but I didn’t have a great idea of how to, I had no idea what a motherboard was or how to install RAM. I did a lot of research on that too, about two weeks learning about components, safety, tools, reading reviews, picking and repacking the parts for my computer.

It was a thrilling experience; one of the worse parts was installing the CPU in the motherboard, which is like implanting a brain in a body, though the latter would probably be way more complicated. It was easy, it took me one minute to place it in its spot, but when I place down what held the processor, it made this sand dropping sound which was terrifying because the thing was worth 200 dollars, and without it, the computer would never boot. So I was in the dark for a couple of more hours not even knowing if my computer would actually boot.

When done I was proud of what I’ve done, and even though the cable management wasn’t so great because of the lack of space, it was fair. The case has four fans which keep it nice and cool. I did get a beast graphics card though, and games look amazing on it and play at the highest settings. I took a good look at Skyrim and that game looks beautiful, though I really haven’t played it much because I’m burnt out on the RPG games.

My other computer’s hard drive was wiped when I sold it to my uncle, so all the stories I had there were deleted, so that was a downer also.

I’ve been working on translating a show, it has 95 episodes and I’m a moderator of it, so that’s taking a while, when that’s done I’ll link it here for everyone to take a look, I’m excited about this because it’s such a great show that I love and can’t wait to have it translated for a broader audience. Also because it would look great on my translating resume and because I’m leading a team of translators, segmenters, and have followers that are relying on me.

Well I have much work to do, translating to do, writing to do, I’ll try to blog more maybe when I work and have free time. I also have that Final Element story to write, but I’ll have to write the chapter outline again (Damn computer wipeout) I think I’ll be fine though ;)

– Zogyark

The Roof – Journal

I had such a workout yesterday. Instead of my regular sleep-in late Saturday, I woke up and got ready to work again. But instead of dressing in a fancy suit, I dressed in old jeans, ripped working shoes and a regular long sleeve shirt. My father, brother, and I were ready by 8 a.m. and so we went to work with my cousin Diego.

At 9 a.m. we started working. The roof was tall and slanted; I knew I wouldn’t get up there. I’ve never been fond of heights however when the roof is sort of plain I make the effort to help up there, but not this time. I didn’t feel so useless however, as the other four people who could do roof work got up there.

At first my brother and I watched the guys climb up there like spider men, then as the trash went down the roof we watched that, we helped as we could bringing tools, materials, and drinks to the pros. After they got down with one side, the amount of trash was much that it covered the grass. We started picking it up, big pieces first and left everything else on sailcloth to pick it up later. For hours we did this, it was longer than I initially thought. After we were done with one side we went to the other, however we had to take trips to the trash dumpster this time. And with time the trips got tougher, our legs were giving out, I can feel the numbness of my legs now as it’s hard to walk, every time we go roofing though I can expect this.

It’s a terrible feeling when you see someone fall from such a height, while my brother and I were on break, we sat on a bench and watched the guys work. Two of them were stepping on the same 2×4 wood that was holding them while they walked on the roof, and the thing gave up on them and broke. Incapable of holding anything they both fell down as we watched from a distance, impotent and useless, we seemed so slow when trying to run to see if they were okay. A few scratches and back pain it was, and they both were okay, but the scare was enough. It’s nothing like the movies, usually things like that are never like in the movies, more like in books though, when you read it on a book that you’re into you feel it more. First thing you hope is “I hope they are conscious” then you thinking “I hope they didn’t break anything”.

Well apart from that we carried some shingles onto the lifting ladder that takes them to the roofing people, who then carries them on his shoulder through a ladder that is actually lying on the roof (sounds crazy) and places it across the roof for easier retrieval. We finished at 8 p.m. and our whole body ached, we had arm, leg, back, chest workout in every way. I bet if you get someone to do that every day and drink their protein shake at the end of the day they would bulk up in no time.

–          Zogyark

The Final Element…

The Final Element… Wait…

Currently reading: Under the Dome, pretty cool book.

It’s a story alright, that’s been on my head for quite some time, actually first story I’ve ever thought of and story I have never written. I think it’s the beginning that gets me and I’ve figured that if I could finally manage to decide on how things should start the rest will write itself. I can’t tell you how many times I started on it, get about 5,000 words and just scrap it all. I feel like I want to make it just too epic, is there such a thing. A story that has you hooked all the way.

So I’ve been busy alright. My part-time has been slowly but surely turning into a full-time. Also I’ve done a couple more translation jobs along the way and leaving that out the way I also have gone out for a few days leaving little to no time to have some free time. I’ve worked on the quest line for the game Robin is making, though I haven’t seen him in a while I’m waiting on him for that. I was also offered to write news and articles for an online gaming site, but sadly I haven’t been able to attend any of the trainings because of my schedule.

Last time I had some free time to do anything I tried playing this game called “Two Worlds II” which was okay but didn’t really get much into it, haven’t touched it since. Besides all that I’ve spent some quality time with my girlfriend, and also the less I write the less the ideas come to my head and the worse my writing gets. But I’m decided to change that today. First things first though. I have to get some Chapter Outlines done on my three stories and my other story, The Final Element. I figure this will help a hell of a lot in writing and getting creative in each chapter. However this means that I won’t write much until I’ve outlined plenty of Chapters, also I will probably stop posting a story on my blog when I’m like 5-10 chapters in depending on how long it is. For personal reasons you know, I mean someone can easily take your work online and make it their own, it’s possible and scary in a way.

I almost took a writing job on a freelancing site, it dealt with ghost writing a thrill novel, chapters outlined and all, I submitted a proposal with some writing I’ve done in one of my stories (won’t say which) and it was to their liking. Then I asked myself: Am I ready for this? Well I wished I was; I wanted to jump in and write it all. For a novel with almost 100,000 words, in-your-face style of writing. I would’ve had to give up my job to write it, the job I just got. Of course it would pay more, a lot more, but I had to do well or I would’ve been out and lost both ways. And after that who can say that I would’ve gotten more jobs? I decided I wasn’t ready yet, you just sort of know when you are, and until I’ve written a couple for myself I don’t think I’ll be able to write one for someone else, actually I sort of really don’t want to, I want all the stories I write for me.

– Zogyark

First Job as a Freelancer

A month or so ago I applied to a freelance site called http://www.elance.com I had been out of school for about half a year and out of work for even longer. After applying and failing to get any jobs for the past 6 months I couldn’t take it any longer and decided to look for “something” online. My girlfriend suggested http://www.snagajob.com, which seemed good at the time, until no one ever called me back. I filled out every single position I could: Manager, Assistant Manager, Cashier, Server, Dishwasher, Cook, Bathroom Cleaner and when I never got hired in one of these jobs, I realized that the lack of jobs in this country really is bad.

So I looked online, and call it greedy but this blog is also one of the works in progress. Don’t get me wrong I love writing, but I also want to make a living out of it. My dad has always told me throughout my life “Whatever you do chino (I’ll tell you the story of my nickname another time), do what you like. There’s nothing worse than a man going to work and do something he doesn’t love. If you do what you love, you’ll be successful”. It was until lately that I had really started to do what I like, because I wasn’t quite sure of what it was.

But because it’s little hard to get recognized by writing, there’s just so many people that do it because its right there, in your room, you just need to get the will to do it, a will I lacked the last couple of days.

It’s not unexcused though, I frankly had no time to write. Last Wednesday I started my work at the bank, and Monday I went back to work. When I first started this blog I was out of a job. I started strong, with so many words. The everyday practice of journals and stories were keeping me together in writing, and then I also got my first freelancer job.

For those of you who don’t know how some of these freelancing websites work I’ll tell you. A client posts a job they need done. A contractor “bids” on the job and submits his proposal, completion time, and price. But wait, it’s not just one contractor… IT’S MANY. Any freelancer will tell you the mean competition there’s for online jobs nowadays just like regular jobs. So I offer my services as a translator, I speak Spanish perfectly and can write it well. I thought it was the best chance. However it’s not a guaranteed job, English-Spanish-English translations are one of the most bids jobs on freelancing websites. There’s literally people, refreshing the page waiting for a translating job to be posted, after a while you know who are going to be your main competition.

Signing on this site wasn’t easy though. Its not like I signed up and applied right away, no sir. There was a procedure to go through, I had to edit my profile, create sample work, confirm my telephone number, add where my funds would go, take a test understanding the terms of agreements in the jobs, i had to take a translating test! And on top of that I didn’t have the job guaranteed, it really was a long process.

So after a month of bidding for jobs I finally got one, my first online job as a freelance translator. $80.00 for a simple job that would take a day or so. It’s not so bad, to do it from the comfort of your home, taking breaks when you want, working on Microsoft Word. It’s as close to writing to get paid as it gets. The problem was, The job was due on Thursday, and I only had Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday to do it. Any other day this would’ve been fine, but I had just got my job. So I had to work from 7-4p.m. get home at 5p.m. then work for about 4 hours on my translating job.

I ended sleeping at 12 a.m. and getting up at 6a.m. to get ready for the bank again. This was really affecting my health. Lack of sleep, headaches, the turnaround was a little too brisk for me. I went from not working for months to working nonstop for days… No good. AND on top of that I got a cold on Tuesday morning. I felt like lightheaded, cold, with a runny nose which wouldn’t stop running. And I still had to get home and work, there was no break. During this time many things happened, ideas for stories came, from real life too. Things like a drunk man on drugs yelling outside in the neighborhood at 12.a.m. saying how he was going to kill himself and reciting the Declaration of independence word for word. The cold also gave me awesome new ideas for my Zombie story, which I’m editing, which is a mess at the moment but I’ll get around to it. I also got to hear how surgeons talk, what a hospital cafeteria is like, I imagined the hospital empty and I sitting by myself and I got another idea…

Oh another reason why I haven’t been writing much on here is that I have a little project going on writing the quest line for a videogame someone is in the process of making, however since it’s top secret I can’t let loose of them on public, not like many would read it anyway. But it’s cool, I like that part, I want to write this text and look back someday at this game, if it ever makes it on the market, and say: “Hey, I wrote the quest line for that game” That would be awesome.

However back to the freelancing job. Thursday morning came, when my client sent their review and loved my job and I got my $80.00, oh man did that feel good. I felt like doing it all over again. I guess the lesson is after trying hard enough things will come to you. And sometimes they will come out altogether at you, and this tests you if you can take the pressure or if you’re going to break out and fail. But you don’t want to fail, you want to succeed and you do everything in your hands, give away your sanity, your sleep, your time in order to do so… Sometimes it’s the only way.

Anyways I wrote this because I feel to let out of somethings, to let my writing flow because I need my practice back, to be able to move on with my stories and quests and jobs. I shall get back to this blog good this weekend, of course unless I get another job, which I hope I will, because I’m really into the whole freelancing too. So many things it’s very exciting, the only thing that’s not so much is this cold, I can’t wait for that one to go away.

– Zogyark

January 21, 2012 – Mr. Dr. Professor Landon

When I turned in one of my first papers in my English Class. Mr. Landon looked at it, then made into a little paper ball and threw it in the trash basket. Then he said “Write it again, this time go straight to the point.” so I did, and the story suddenly was more readable after skipping boring introductions and pointless descriptions. “See how better that looks?” he said.

I guess this is my theme when I write nowadays. In whatever I write, I try to go straight to the point, avoiding details and descriptions of the characters. It’s not just about going to the point, but if you can describe and give details as the story moves along it kind of flows more nicely. I hate when I’m reading a book and in the beginning I’m being thrown different, irrelevant things such as the shape of some building, the color skin of some people, the background or fictional background of someone much irrelevant to the plot. It seems that many writers do this to fill up space and add words to their count. I remember I won a book in an English Contest for top 3 writings of the college. The book choice was minimal, about five books, with authors I didn’t know. I don’t blame them though I know few authors, I’m more of a writer than a reader.

It’s hard to draw some people in the story, specially if you’re not very popular like Stephen King or James Patterson. I read the book, I tried my best, but after the 30th page I thought. I think I’m done with this story, whatever it is about. I closed the book and never read it again. It’s still gathering dust in one of my shelves, it had a nice cover that’s how I picked it. Make sure your book has an interesting cover and people might pick it.

Jeff Landon was my English II teacher, and he was good at what he did, and probably still does. The man would give you English puzzles, writing scenarios to work with, random stuff. He threw three words at you and said “Write me a story about these three things.” Some stories came around good, some not, others were funny, I liked the funny ones. But to me funny stories are just two or three pages long. The man had a good sense of humor, he was funny and could come up with some funny stuff, something I’m not so great at.

Landon published a few stories and poems. He wasn’t no one, he had some skill, he was good. There was this guy in this class, funny dude. He would always call him “Mr. Dr. Professor Landon” Sort of as to make him seem like some godly teacher. He asked Landon if he ever wrote a novel. Landon said he had tried, many times, but at could not get past a point. I remember this well and hope that this curse doesn’t stay with me, since after some point I want to move on.

I got three stories I’m working on now, and I think that should be plenty to keep the creativeness going. Now I just need to fill in the gaps and whichever I’m in the mood in I could work on. I like variety because when I stick to continuing only one, i sometimes get bored and can’t come up with anything goo.

I haven’t seen Landon in years, but let’s hope that this post helps me get in contact with him again, he’s a good teacher to have.

Pizza and Movie time for now, a break is sometimes necessary.

– Zogyark

January 19, 2012 – Limitless

Writers, if you’ve never seen Limitless you have to see it… Now.

Movies are always good. Watching movies often will improve your writing skills. You watch a scene and you think “Hey, I could make more of that.” or “I would’ve done this instead” It might not seem relevant at that moment but it will be in the future, in the near future I hope.

I often write about my day if I have nothing else to write about. But who wants to read that right? I’ll write about anything that I can get a hold of. Oh yeah, so why is Limitless a writers movie? Well I’ve been reading through some posts, and I often catch some writers get that infamous writer’s block. When your mind goes blank and nothing comes up, and whatever comes up seems so stupid you just want to quit altogether and eat something, play a game, or do whatever other things you do to pass the time. Limitless is a story about such a writer who seems like he’s going nowhere.. until he finds a little wonderful pill that we all wish we had, and would all probably try it regarding the side effects.

My favorite part of the movie (and I’ll try not to spoil it too much) is when he starts writing, when everything is clear, when the words are flowing through the screen. If you’re really passionate about writing and have written stories, you can tell which moment that is. That’s the moment that you just type, and type, and don’t stop. You don’t want to stop or get interrupted, you’ll miss phone calls, not open the door, not want to eat. Because that moment may not come back soon. All the words come together into nice structured sentences and all the commas and periods fall in the right place. A writer’s dream is to be able to write this way, everyday. If you can do this, you can get far at it, you’ll have hundreds of thousands of words in a few weeks and out of so much words, something good must have come out of it. Unfortunately for most of us, half of the time its not like that. I for example can write a lot sometimes, but more often than not I make grammatical mistakes. Then I have to go back and edit once I’m done and that holds me back for a while from writing the next great chapter, or starting the next great story.

What the movie teaches us, is to use up every minute of our time doing something productive, anything. Go out, learn things, write, apply for a job, talk to people. All of these things will help you. If you find yourself searching on google… What to do when you’re bored. It’s time to change that. And by the way, when you’re bored you can search things starting with what, how, why, when or who and see what the top most searched things are, you’ll have a blast with what you find. Not that I do that, but I’m just saying.

Anyways, I wrote just a little today, There’s always something else to do, chores to attend. I wrote Chapter 2 of Syphon Soul, I think it’s an interesting name for a story, I bet no one’s used that one. I edited that and Chapter 1, though I’m sure there’s still some mistakes. I finished Chapter 1 of The Bond, but I got lazy and didn’t edit that, maybe Mr. Landon could help me out, best English teacher there is, take it from me. I’ll write about him next time maybe unless something else comes up, he’s the man that inspired me to take writing more serious.

I’ll be spending time with a special someone this weekend so I won’t write much unless I have the chance or unless there’s something brilliant that I have to write then I’m sorry for her. I’ll be sure to write at least a post a day, they help a lot, I can see the words in my head just waiting to be released to this page like in the movie.

– Zogyark

January 18, 2012 – First Day as a Teller

I woke up at 6.a.m.  I washed my face ,I dressed, and I washed my face some more. I helped my 7yr-old brother with his sentence structure homework, something like… El Matador taunted the bull with his red cape. Lately his homework has been doubled by his teacher so he ends up not doing half of it until the morning. Some people would be nervous at their first day of work as a teller. But I’ve done enough to know better than to show lack of confidence at a job, or at anything for that fact. Doubt is a mean enemy that you don’t want on your side. 

To be honest, I didn’t do much for my training. I tried to do as much as I could and offered my help. My first jobs were something like: put this there, cut and print these papers, put these papers in envelopes, put those envelopes in that box, etc. etc. Pretty much a helper boy, it was my first day of training. at 11:30 we played some jeopardy about Christmas (awesome huh?)  and i got 2 out of 10 right, almost three but I don’t know why I picked octopus instead of oysters. What would any of those two things have to do with Christmas you wonder? Take a good guess.

at 12:00 we had lunch break, so I got some exploring to do. You see I work inside a hospital, and my bank is the smallest bank unit I’ve ever seen. It’s a little smaller than a double mobile home. I found the cafeteria and asked my way around on how things are done there, I used to be shy of asking such things, but not anymore. Go figure if you don’t ask and just stand around you’ll look even like a bigger fool. I took my hour and a half break (ehem, I mean hour break) and returned to the office at 1:30. I went inside and my co-worker started teaching me the basics of the computer system that I’d be using. After a few easy jobs, I would watch as they took customers in at 2:00p.m. Yes the bank opened at 2 and closed at 5. So I watched how they did stuff, but these guys were fast. I mean fast as like the skill of a Piano Player when he knows how to read sheet music like if it’s nothing and may place any piece at any time, or the skill of a call of duty player that’s been playing since the first game came out. These guys have had over 7 years of experience and it will be a while until I start catching up with their speed.

Once we were done, I said my farewells and went home. I won’t have work until Monday so I’ll have time to continue on my projects or start a new one since I tend to jump from topic to topic. I noticed the change though. I was busy all day, I came home hungry, tired, with a headache and time went by just like that. I still want to do a lot, I want to write (or do i mean type?), I want to continue searching for online jobs, but I also want to give in and lay down and fall asleep like normal people for once. The average person is said to fall asleep in 7 minutes, bullshit I thought. But today, just for today, maybe they’re right.

– Zogyark

January 17, 2012

Every time I write the date this year it feels weird, just at the end. 2012 – the year that many people have talked about and the year when all of us will be blown away by an asteroid, or get some fatal disease, or some awful natural disaster strikes the continent. The theories are many and do I believe? Frankly not, but I do not know much anyway. I don’t really get out of my way to research the accuracy of the theories and their claims. If I did believe then I’d go with the Mayan theory that the world ends in december… eh yeah sometime.

I got this blog started today and I see good progress, If I keep this up I will reach 100,000 words by the end of this month, who knows if that’s good or not but at least I know that the work will stay unless the site closes this down then I’ll really be mad. I had to format my computer last month because some virus killed my files and what-not and after trying for hours on saving the bunch of data I had, I decided that it was not worth the hassle and clicked “Yes” when asked if I was sure about it. My computer was as if brand new and my firewall suddenly was renewed (Hey!) though I think that was not supposed to happen.

After reading what I wrote I realized what’s wrong with my writing, which is a good thing. My vocabulary seems very limited, my writing is more like some writing directed towards teen more than professional writing. In a way I don’t feel bad because I don’t want to confuse people with over-complicated words that sometimes makes something hard to read. I also realize that I make many errors in grammar and sentences and crap, it’s been a while since I’ve taken a writing class so whatever skills I learned have temporarily disappeared  from my mind. But will come back slowly… hopefully.

It was a good, productive day and that was good, I went to JcPenny and got some clothes for my new part-time job that we’ll see how long it lasts, after a long time of looking for a job I finally get something, and hopefully I earn my full-time place. I’m not really a dress-well type of guy but if i have to I will, I feel different with these new clothes and not in a bad way. I feel like I have more class, more power, more confidence.

I will end this here, I still have stuff to do, things to get ready, and try to get some sleep for the big day tomorrow. Good Night.

– Zogyark