Frustrated

Kind of frustrated today. I've reformatted the hard drive on my laptop, reinstalled Windows XP, and was generally looking forward to getting some things loaded and rolling. That's when I began wondering where my sound card for the laptop was. I looked high and low in the lair, and then it slowly began to dawn on me that it's very likely it was left in the box I brought my music goodies to St. Pete in. If so, that was foolishness on my part. We started dumping loose papers into that box while it still had stuff in it. I dug out my microphone, but I don't remember digging out the sound card. And since I can't seem to find it ... well, there's a natural assumption there.

If the sound card was in that box of trash and got thrown away, that was a damned expensive mistake. One that I could not afford to make. $150 down the drain, and no way to replace it. It also represents an end to my efforts. There's no point in trying to put the Amplitube 2, Ampeg SVX or GigaStudio software on the laptop if I can't get sound out of the damned thing. I haven't given up hope yet. For all I know the sound card is floating around and I just have to figure out where it is. So we'll see.

Another thing that kind of kicked me in the chest was finding out that my bank account is $167 in the hole. Holy crap. I didn't see that one coming. As usual, it's a few small charges, and a whole bunch of big overdraft fees from the bank. That kinda took my breath away. But I don't know what I expected. I couldn't just sit here on my ass and expect that those few bills wouldn't catch up to me sooner or later. I guess it's about high time I got off my ass and started trying to sell all those things that I've been wanting to put on the chopping block. I don't know what the hell I've been waiting for. Maybe I've just enjoyed being able to hide from reality for a little while.

In more upbeat news, I started tinkering with Dramatica Pro today. I mean really tinkering with it. Not just looking it over. I've started structuring a short story that I'm liking more and more. It started with just one line of dialogue, and now, with the help of Dramatica Pro, it's starting to shape up into a potentially interesting story. I haven't finished with shaping the story yet, but already the program has helped me flesh it out in interesting ways. I suspect that my assumptions were true, in that Dramatica Pro might help me offset my lack of formal training. It's certainly helped me structure this story in a very useful way. So who knows? Maybe in the long run I might be a writer after all.

In the meantime, I have to figure out a way to plug that hole in the dike. And that means soon.