Haste Makes Waste Again
This didn't at all turn out to be the night off I had planned. I still haven't rearranged my room, although I thought about it a bit more, and I haven't done much in the way of entertainment or getting snacks, because of something that happened earlier. Around 4, I sat down with my camera to take pictures of my entire book. Feathertail and Pachabel have both expressed interest in seeing them, and in regards to those problems I mentioned in my previous entry, I figured they weren't any huge deal. A couple page numbers being off is nothing to fuss about, and the extra blank line is only something I would notice, so I could live with those. Unfortunately, it didn't take long for something to seem wrong with the pages whose numbers were messed up - the text of the story jumped way ahead between the two, so I opened the story itself with Wordpad as opposed to BookSmart, and sure enough, there was a fair bit missing - two whole pages, in fact. My initial response was to send a message to Feathertail telling him the pictures would take longer to prepare than I expected at first, and then I set about searching for the contact page on Blurb's site, only to get sidetracked with looking through the the book in BookSmart for any other errors. Sure enough, I found some, which then required me to go from the beginning to the end of the book filling in the blank area made by deleting a paragraph that I hadn't noticed repeated before, along with changing the sizes of some of the pictures, and tweaking the positions of some as well, so all pictures on left pages were on the left, and all pictures on right pages were on the right. Except for those that are at the top or bottom middle of the page, of course. Even now I'm not done, because I still want to go back through one last time to fiddle with the positioning of separate boxes of text on certain pages, and then I might ask Dan Skunk to proofread it for me as well, because I need to get somebody else to look it over this time too.
As for Blurb, I sent them a message, and a picture of the problem, so I'm hoping I can just get a refund. That way I'll be able to submit the book again for re-publication, except this time I'll be able to use the coupon code to get either seven or eight dollars off. It'd be nice, and I'm also hoping to be able to keep the copy of the book I have now, because then I'd have two and that would be neat. Pessimism, however, leads me to believe that they won't give me a refund without getting the first copy of the book back, and if that is the case, well, I might very well keep it. Seriously.
Still on the subject though, while I was going back through everything in BookSmart, I couldn't help but notice how much the situation I'm working my way through right now resembles the events of my story - not the setting or specific events, of course, but just the way that I have come to be different than I used to be, or have at least realized that there may be more to me than I was previously considering. The instant everything exploded into the mess that it is now, I was told "You need to get help", which can be likened to the theme of at least one other character in my story saying I should be cured with all due haste, as well as the fact that I am trying to come to terms with these new-found differences and whatnot, but only have one friend to lean on, much as Bree was the only character to care about me in Prized Possession, and in fact seem to have alienated at least two other people who I was previously somewhat familiar with. At the same time though, is it really just a coincidence that I feel like I'm living my story? What would things be like right now if I hadn't commissioned it? To be quite clear, I am more or less comfortable with where I am right now, which is once again comparable to my story, in that in there I come to be mostly comfortable with transforming / being transformed into an anthropomorphic snow leopard. I'm not completely okay with it, but it's like... this is who I am. I only wish I could say specifically what that means, but I'm still trying to figure that much out for myself. And to be quite brash about it, earlier tonight I was indeed sickened with myself because of this - I've been several different things over the course of the past couple years, and in every case that thing was something I eventually outgrew, but all the same, why should I see that as a weakness? Looking at it in another light, I have exactly what quite a few people might want - the ability to be anything. I just have to find a reason to want to be that way, and it's only a matter of time from there, or so it seems.
This is seriously really quite fascinating, and I truly do think it's only a matter of time now until I post an entry going over the signs and symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome and / or autism (high-functioning or otherwise) to write about where I see each of them in my life and the way I act, and yet even a week ago I would have gone out of my way to say "No, I will never be like that". I wish I could tell these things to somebody and get their honest response, or rather I wish I could tell somebody these things in person. None of this mess with talking in MSN or in emails and not being able to communicate the same as I would in speech without really going out of my way. I'm even starting to think about what it would be like to bring this up at work on a close with George or Manoah. I don't even care about them seeing that ugly side of me anymore. It's there - I've had lots of problems with friends in the past, and stopped talking to all of them without saying a word to that effect. What's so bad about that? Oh, sure, it's not good, but it was mistake, and if I'd realized what trying to get that close to my friends would've done back then, I'd probably still be talking to all of them to this day, but I'm not.
I need to go to bed though, before this becomes the second night in a row where I'm up until 8am. Just one commission email to send out, and then hopefully I'll have a response from Blurb by the time I wake up~
As for Blurb, I sent them a message, and a picture of the problem, so I'm hoping I can just get a refund. That way I'll be able to submit the book again for re-publication, except this time I'll be able to use the coupon code to get either seven or eight dollars off. It'd be nice, and I'm also hoping to be able to keep the copy of the book I have now, because then I'd have two and that would be neat. Pessimism, however, leads me to believe that they won't give me a refund without getting the first copy of the book back, and if that is the case, well, I might very well keep it. Seriously.
Still on the subject though, while I was going back through everything in BookSmart, I couldn't help but notice how much the situation I'm working my way through right now resembles the events of my story - not the setting or specific events, of course, but just the way that I have come to be different than I used to be, or have at least realized that there may be more to me than I was previously considering. The instant everything exploded into the mess that it is now, I was told "You need to get help", which can be likened to the theme of at least one other character in my story saying I should be cured with all due haste, as well as the fact that I am trying to come to terms with these new-found differences and whatnot, but only have one friend to lean on, much as Bree was the only character to care about me in Prized Possession, and in fact seem to have alienated at least two other people who I was previously somewhat familiar with. At the same time though, is it really just a coincidence that I feel like I'm living my story? What would things be like right now if I hadn't commissioned it? To be quite clear, I am more or less comfortable with where I am right now, which is once again comparable to my story, in that in there I come to be mostly comfortable with transforming / being transformed into an anthropomorphic snow leopard. I'm not completely okay with it, but it's like... this is who I am. I only wish I could say specifically what that means, but I'm still trying to figure that much out for myself. And to be quite brash about it, earlier tonight I was indeed sickened with myself because of this - I've been several different things over the course of the past couple years, and in every case that thing was something I eventually outgrew, but all the same, why should I see that as a weakness? Looking at it in another light, I have exactly what quite a few people might want - the ability to be anything. I just have to find a reason to want to be that way, and it's only a matter of time from there, or so it seems.
This is seriously really quite fascinating, and I truly do think it's only a matter of time now until I post an entry going over the signs and symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome and / or autism (high-functioning or otherwise) to write about where I see each of them in my life and the way I act, and yet even a week ago I would have gone out of my way to say "No, I will never be like that". I wish I could tell these things to somebody and get their honest response, or rather I wish I could tell somebody these things in person. None of this mess with talking in MSN or in emails and not being able to communicate the same as I would in speech without really going out of my way. I'm even starting to think about what it would be like to bring this up at work on a close with George or Manoah. I don't even care about them seeing that ugly side of me anymore. It's there - I've had lots of problems with friends in the past, and stopped talking to all of them without saying a word to that effect. What's so bad about that? Oh, sure, it's not good, but it was mistake, and if I'd realized what trying to get that close to my friends would've done back then, I'd probably still be talking to all of them to this day, but I'm not.
I need to go to bed though, before this becomes the second night in a row where I'm up until 8am. Just one commission email to send out, and then hopefully I'll have a response from Blurb by the time I wake up~
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