That was a bust

I'm house-sitting in Long Beach again. They have a mold problem. They did in June, too, but it's gotten worse. The house was built in the 50's, I believe, and apparently things such as making the cement portions of the back yard flat, or at least sloping away from the house, weren't so important back then. I can believe that things have settled, but everything slopes toward the house now, and they just had a survey done before leaving for South Africa: the mold in the walls & crawl space on the bedroom side of the house is 10x worse than outside. So I'm having a bit of difficulty getting comfortable because I can't use the fan, and it's still warm & humid down here. It reminds me of when I was at school here - moving into the dorms, starting classes, taking 3+ showers a day to keep cool because there's no AC.

Now to the point. I did some research this weekend. I was thinking of going back for my master's degree. Actually, an MFA - Master's of Fine Arts. I looked at University of Montana - Missoula; Cal State Long Beach (my alma mater); University of Edinburgh & University of Bristol (where my professor-friend grew up). The results were discouraging. It's expensive; twice as much if you're going overseas (about $10K/yr in the US, and $20K/yr in the UK - not counting living expenses, health insurance, travel, student visas, etc). The entrance requirements are transcripts of course, which would not be a problem, and I think I graduated w/ the necessarily high GPA. There is a personal goals statement that is optional in most cases but wouldn't be too hard to write. But the clincher - of course, they're writing programs after all - is a portfolio. About 20 pages of short fiction or 30 pages of poetry, or some combination of the two.

-- And actually the Univ. of Bristol only has a literature program, so that was really a bust.

Here is why it's discouraging, in addition to the money, although I think I could have found a way around that. I can't find hard copies of any of my writing... well, I have a couple pieces, but I had everything on a disc, which I thought was safe. And that disc was very suddenly wiped clean in February - I even lost my resume. But everything I wrote in college - research papers, stories, poetry - all of it was gone. Some of it was drivel, but some of it I was very proud of and at the time I was very disheartened by the loss. Now even more so because I have nothing to submit, and would have to put off my applications until I had enough writing worthy of submission. And even then, the programs are so elite that my writing would have to be very good, and I haven't written in a while. Usually 200-300 people apply, and 15-30 are accepted, in the fall term only, depending on the school.

So I've set myself the challenge of starting to write again. And about as soon as I made the decision, I was stumped. The reason I haven't written in so long is partly because I don't have any inspiration around me. I get up early, I go to work at a lame job that I don't really like - although I like most of the people very much - and then I go home. Occasionally there are little blips on the radar that shake things up (like a show), but for the most part, I'm stagnating. So writing about what I know (as they say) would be a total bore. My family's recent drama might be a good place to start, but I'm not sure I could do it without a certain sense of sarcasm.

Am I being too tough on myself? I don't know where to start. I took a class in college with something already written.... I used to write all the time... now I barely keep a journal. It's frustrating.