Tag: Levi Gene

BLOG: Procrastination Station

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Wednesday. At home. Not feeling the best today. Yesterday was worse, but at least I was able to solve the mystery of this random obsession that has seemingly popped up overnight.

You see, being who I am, and having the set of life experiences I’ve had (especially recently), my new policy when it comes to my attractions to men is essentially to talk myself out of it every time it happens. Why? Because there’s no point in having feelings for men. They just lie, cheat, steal, drain your energy, and then disappear into the void. Pointless venture.

So clearly, I’ve spent the last few days trying to talk myself out of whatever this weird feeling is that I have developed for my neighbor. Here are my conclusions:

  1. This is clearly a proximity issue. This never would have happened if he didn’t live right next door to me. I never would have met him. I wouldn’t even know he existed. Our paths literally would have never crossed, like, ever. He has his own little local Island life that I will never be part of, and I have my own little expat life that he will never be part of. We don’t hang out in the same places. Based on the pictures I’ve seen, we would never hang out with the same people. I’m not sure if we even have that much in common, actually.
  2. This is just hormones making me crazy because that’s what they do. This is very apparent from the heightened sensitivity to all the smells he’s producing. Let me be clear: these are not bad smells. All of these are very good smells, and now they have all been magnified about 2000x, and that’s the part that drives me up the wall.
  3. This is basically just caveman shit, right? There’s not a lot of deeper thoughts going into whatever this is. I tried to explain this to my friend last night. I said, “I’m not sure what happened. I’ve been living here for 9 months. I was ignoring him for most of them. Then… I don’t know. I guess one day I came home and he was cooking himself dinner and I was like, ‘Okay, okay, I smell what The Rock is cooking!’ And then later he came outside in some ridiculous t-shirt with the sleeves cut off so I had a front row seat at the gun show and… apparently that was enough for me. I’ve been going crazy ever since.” That’s all it took, I guess. Definitely NOT deep at all.
  4. I like hot jerks. Who doesn’t, amiright? He’s definitely hot and he’s definitely been acting like a jerk. 100% sure it has nothing to do with me. I think he just has some stuff going on he’s not disclosing. As previously stated, this man is living proof that the literary trope of British men hiding ugly secrets in their attics is a real, actual thing, not fiction!
  5. He’s an actor. He’s easy to write about. The words… look at how they flow onto the page so naturally! I don’t even have to try! They are just there. Cannot resist the Muse Energy!
  6. Also, I think I might secretly be jealous of him??? Maybe??? Like, he lives here. His family lives here. He has friends and a community and he doesn’t have to worry about visa paperwork. He just gets to party it up and then travel all over the world to attend more parties. Yet, when I see him, he always looks miserable, or he’s in a bad mood, or he’s complaining, or he’s yelling at me. I think I’ve only seen him smile a handful of times. Mostly, it’s a scowl. I don’t get it. I wish I had a family that loved me, a community, a home. I don’t have any of that shit, and it’s not for lack of trying. So I guess I’m not really understanding what his issue is.
  7. He’s so judgmental of me! So now I feel like I have something to prove, which makes no sense to me at all. Why the fuck would I care about what some fancy Englishman dressed up in all white sitting all high on his hill looking down at me thinks about anything? The Colonial Era is over, bro! I don’t have to take this shit from you anymore! I’m American! Annoying! Yet somehow… it’s really doing it for me? Why? How? Something, something, Fireworks in the sky? Idk!
  8. This is an excuse to put off writing my book. He is just the latest stop on this trainwreck. Welcome to Procrastination Station! Have a set of Mardi Gras beads for your trouble, y’all. Then again, writing something is better than nothing!

So as you can see, I have effectively talked myself out of this situation, which is why I’ve just written close to 800 words about him in one go.

Meh. Only 800 words? That’s nothing! You should see Andrew’s bookS (there are two). Talk about writing about people I don’t like IRL!

Still can’t figure out what happened there. It will forever remain a mystery; hopefully one that will stay buried under the sands of time, especially now that I’ve paid $50 HKD to a witch under a bridge to “curse” him. Not gonna lie, pretty sure he would love that. That’s just how his character was.

ANYWAY WE ARE NOT WRITING ABOUT ANDREW ANYMORE! NO ANDREW ALLOWED! He’s been banned for life from my books. He’s definitely not in the latest one. No Andrew, no Bloody Mary’s, no Mad Dog. In my mind, I left them behind at the bar in the town. I already told that story. They’re not part of the specific story I’m trying to tell now.

You know who did end up in the book? Levi Gene!

LE GASP!

He’s not a major character. He makes like three appearances in the beginning in order to assist me with blowing up my life and then I go on a journey across the world. Good for him. Hopefully he’ll read it and finally send me that gift basket he owes me for helping him get divorced. That would have been the classy thing to do, bro. I know it, you know it, everybody knows it. It is what it is.

I’m definitely putting off writing this book right now. Ugh. Okay, I need to go make a sincere effort to be productive now instead of obsessing over Mr. Next Door, who is literally hiding from me right now. He’s pulled a complete disappearing act in the last week and a half. I wish I could say this improved the situation for me, but it didn’t, because now all I’m left with is the smells, lol. Somehow… that’s WORSE!

Okay, off for real. Farewell!

BLOG: I Wrote A Book!

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Thursday night. Here I am at the Cantina. I was going to go to the pizza place for their party but it was too hot and there were no tables available. So now I am here.

I did not go out with that random guy last night. Good for me. I made a good life choice. Sure, I had to coach myself through it, but in the end I decided it was best just to ghost him. I just don’t think anyone who wants to go on a first date to The Wolf is going to be someone of quality character. It is what it is.

Instead, I went to the health cafe and got myself a salad and a juice. I sat there and wrote for awhile, then went home to watch Emily in Paris. It was boring, sure, but I woke up bright and early in the morning with my memory fully intact and no regrets about the previous night. Well done, me.

The heat warning was crazy today, so I did not leave the house. I stayed in my cozy little studio cave, hacking away at my manuscript. I charted out the plot the way I learned to do at the Paris Writing Workshop. Now I’m sitting here trying to make some creative decisions about the characters and major plot points.

Yes, it is based on my life, but I also have to be willing to cut things that don’t fit into the neat little journey I’ve neatly laid out on the page. It does need to be commercially viable. Sometimes that means cutting out things that aren’t going to be relatable or just don’t quite fit into the story I’m trying to tell.

This is why I keep an Island of Lost Guys. Who is going to make the Final Cut? They can’t all be in there. Not all of them are relevant to the plot. Some of them were just one night stands! Like the Russian. Look at us over here desperately grasping for straws to make this guy someone of interest and substance when he’s nothing more than a fuckboy sailor with girls in every port. Who cares if he can wrangle a crocodile and ride a motorcycle? It’s not important to the plot!

There’s one guy very early one I’m debating cutting right now: Levi Gene. I feel like it’s too much. It’s not really necessary to the plot. Like it’s a whole side show that can be replaced by a magical plot device called “a check for $50,000 magically appears out of nowhere.” Did this happen in real life? No. Does it move the plot along without adding this unnecessary clown show that I’m not actually proud of to distract us from the main point? Yes.

Levi Gene is the Tom Bombadill of this novel. It’s an interesting little side show in the bigger story, but when it’s time to make the movie, he’s going straight to the cutting room floor.

I am actually trying to write this as if it will be turned into a Netflix show one day, so I am going to take a lot of liberties to make it commercially viable. It needs to be vague enough to be relatable. Sometimes, a lot of times, most times, I do a lot of dumb fucking shit that normal people can’t relate to. This has to be a story people can see themselves in. They have to be able to put themselves into the shoes of my character. That means she has to be relatable to bored housewives, corporate career women, university students, bartenders with a degree from the School of Life, and everyone else in between.

No pressure. I was built for this. I’ve trained my whole life for this. This is my Destiny. This novel was meant to be written. Everything I’ve ever done leading up to now has been all for this moment. I can totally do this.

No pressure at all.

See? This year was not wasted! I got a whole novel out of it! That’s exactly what I said I would do when my first HK job didn’t work out. I said, “Okay, the universe is clearly leading me in a different direction than I intended. Let’s follow the path and see where it takes us. In the end, I’ll write a book about it.”

And now here we are, writing a book about it.

It’s always been my dream to live and write abroad. And I did it! I finally did it!

I don’t need anyone else to be proud of me today. I am proud of me today. I am out here doing the goddamn thing.

I did it. I really did it. I lived abroad for an entire year and now I’m writing a book about it.

I can’t believe I finally did it. And I’m celebrating like this? Nah, fam! We definitely need to throw a bigger party this weekend.

I never, ever, ever thought in a million years I would ever get the chance to live in a place like Hong Kong. Wow. I truly feel like the luckiest girl in the whole world right now…