Make Money!

So it’s been quite interesting being back in the United States of America since I spent about 5 months in Taiwan. I’ve came back to an almost dead town where I don’t really have any close friends, nothing is open later than 10 pm except for Kwik Trip and the good ole’ 24/7 Super Wal-Mart, and there is no gym that is worth paying for.

This has almost made me go crazy since I ask myself… “What is there to do?” Other than spending most mornings 8am – 12pm in a local Internet Café so that I can job search, I have nothing else to do. Except that I have a million things I need to do. I think it comes to that point where I have so many things to do, that I just don’t want to do any of them. I have about 4 books that I need/should finish reading, I’ve always said that I need to get better at playing guitar (which I have a very nice giant guitar book and a Guitar Chord Bible*), practice and learn new words in Chinese so that I don’t forget this awesome 2^nd language, and my current goal… learn how to play the piano. I’ve always have had this passion for writing and creating music, but I never acted upon it since, well… I couldn’t (still can’t) sing, back then I couldn’t play any musical instrument and never had time because of sports or [in college] I just partied way too much.

So at the moment I’ve been looking for a very cheap but decent keyboard so that I can start to practice learning piano since I pretty much have nothing else to do. Also I’ve picked up a notebook and some color pencils so that I can practice drawing/doodling. This hobby is important because it compliments one of my most fatal flaws of having to multi-task everything I do. Like this very moment, I am writing a blog post and watching a movie (Prince of Persia). It has dawned on me [since I’ve been here] that I cannot just do one task. I always have to do multiple things except surprisingly I can read a book for hours. Weird, I know. But usually, I multi-task by watching movies/tv shows with surfing the web. I’ve been trying not to spend so much time on this MacBook, and have been trying to spend more time on productive things… or at least things that I think are worthwhile, like: guitar, drawing, Chinese, reading books and writing. It’s been surprisingly tough. I didn’t think that I was so addicted to surfing the web/[let’s be honest] Facebook.  Even though, I do practice my Chinese on Facebook by writing to my friends overseas only in Chinese. But still, it’s FB.

Since I have no job and no income what so ever, I have had to turn to desperate measures. Donating Plasma. Today was the first time, and in 2 days I will have my 2^nd appointment for the week. I found a coupon where the first two times will give me a whopping $100. Rock On! Anyways, this process is the weirdest thing in the world. It sucks out your blood and separates the plasma and blood for 5-6 minutes and then it reverses the process and pumps back the blood into you. This goes one for about 45 minutes and then at the very end they pump an IV back into you, since plasma is made up of mostly water. Having the IV pumped back into you was the worst/weirdest part. I could honestly feel the IV being pumped into my arm, then into my heart, and then being pumped down my left side. It was the weirdest feeling. The feeling was a little painful just because it was so much colder than the blood in my body. I felt a little lightheaded but nothing too bad as I drank a lot of water before hand and the night before. But it’s all worth the great $40 I made and I’m sure next time it’ll be worth the $60. The only thing right now that I’m thinking about is to keep continuing this process. After this week it’ll only pay $20/40, respectively. But then again it’s kind of like free money. Except for the fact I give a little bit of myself to some stranger.

In the end I can always say… A little bit of me will be in whomever I save…. Creepy

Well until next time,

Cheerio & Rock On

Alastar Swift

P.S. * the Guitar Chord Bible… Funny story, my old roommate let me borrow his Guitar Chord book since I was playing guitar almost every day. After a while the time went by and I forgot about it and he forgot about it. Then when it came to me moving out [so I could go to Taiwan] we realized we had two books. He never bought another one and I never did either. So for some weird reason that house has the power to create stuff out of thin air. That’s what I call, Skillz!

P.S.S.  Speaking of creating things out of thin air, have you seen the 3D printer that is out there?!? I can’t wait until that technology gets 10x better.