The Business Plan

Phew, February already. My schedule's gotten so monotonous I feel like time's just sneaking by me. I practically slept walked through Valentines day. Couldn't even remember to be depressed for it seeing as how I'm alone. Last year my boyfriend at the time and I drove up the coast and had a beach picnic. Out north though it's really a lot colder. I'm in Colorado and there's snow everywhere and as a resident of California I can say I never thought I could get sick of so much white, but there it is.

Last time I was talking about starting up a transit business to get money, and I've been working it for a while. Got all the way to Boulder by picking up some hitch-hiker's on the way, but I'm thinking of making this more official. If I do there's some hurtles I'm going to need to get past, like how do I avoid picking up people who'd want to hurt me, and how can I run a consistent business if I'm traveling around. I've had a lot of time to think it over, and this is what I've come up with. 

I'm going to start compiling a list of runners in need of transport or who might be in need of transport in the future, and I'll be operating off of that list initially. That way I won't accidentally pick up a murderer. I'll also base my travel schedule around the locations of the runners. I'm going to put up an application for services, and I'm going to ask for an initial $10 prepay to get on the list. 

For the record the services provided by the transit will be:

1. Transportation to anywhere in the U.S.

2. Emergency pick ups provided I am in the area. 

3. Over night lodging in the van for extra pay. I have a mattress, very comfy back seat, and more quilts than I know what to do with. Also in winter weather like this, my van is a good place to warm up and hide for a while. 

For compensation, all I'm asking is that you pay what you take up in gas plus an extra $5 for every night you spend in the van. If I need to drive you from L.A. to New York city, you'll be paying more than a drive up the block to the post office.

I'd also be open to accepting donations from anyone interested in supporting this business. Who knows, if this goes well I might be able to hire some other drivers or something. It'll also be a good way to get around and see if anyone knows what happened to Mom and Corrine.

The application and list will be going up in no time at all.

Stay posted, 

-B ✿

Eureka!

Oh this is probably the best I've felt in months!

Sorry for disappearing. I need to work harder on that resolution to keep this blog going. Unfortunately my life has been pretty uninteresting as of late, or maybe I've just been depressed I don't know.

My schedule has been pretty dry. I wake up, I drive, I get gas, I drive, every couple hours take a break to get out of the car and breathe, smoke a cigarette, (yes I see the irony) and let Scuba run around and stretch her legs and exude some energy, get back in the car, drive, break, drive, break, find a parking garage to spend the night in, sleep for two hours, wake up, drive to another parking lot, sleep for two hours, rinse, repeat. That's kinda my day at the moment.

The Shadow is always right on my trail, so no matter where I am I can't stay still for any longer than two hours. I've timed it. Right at the 119 minute mark I can feel it start seeping up out of the ground and the sky, right on the dot. Makes sleeping really difficult, and money's been pretty tight so I can't caffeine binge the way I'm used to. Gotta conserve it and my cigarette's too.

This weekend though, I encountered my first crisis situation. I had officially smashed open the piggy bank to find there wasn't anything there, and I had maybe a half mile of gas left in my tank. I have the misfortune of riding around in a van, which gets about 15 MPG on a good day. It's part of why it's been taking me so long to get out of California. I've been riding around on fumes. I should get something smaller, but that would also mean getting rid of my mattress and sleeping in the truck, and I know i's going to be bad for Scuba to be in a cramped environment. If it comes to that I'm going to have to drop her in a shelter which would honestly kill me. I know, fuck me, she's a dog, but she's about the closest thing I've had to a friendly companion in almost a year, I need her.

But so anyway, I roll into this gas station and I'm literally looking at nickels and pocket lint to pay for my next tank. And I'm thinking, "Shit, I'm going to have to sell the van and get another car in less than two hours, it's all over for me," when out of nowhere this guy comes running up out of the woods into the gas station, looking really shaken up. He had a few bruises and scrapes, which made me nervous cause I don't really do well with blood. He said his car crashed, and I asked him if he needed me to call an ambulance or the police or somebody, but instead he hands me this wad of money and asks me to drive him.

I'm not an idiot, I know this guy was probably in some kind of trouble with somebody, but on the other hand, if I just took him where he needed to go I'd be able to keep myself going for at least another month. So I filled up my tank all the way for the first time in like, three weeks, and I took him where he needed to go.

Turns out he was a pretty nice guy. I gave him my number, told him to call me if he never needed a ride again.

The important thing however is that this ordeal got my brain turning. Lots of you runners out there need to go places but don't have the means of doing so. Well here I am lucky enough to have a van and in desperate need of cash. I'm thinking about starting up a runner cab service. It'd give me something to do, and I'd have a way of talking to people who might have known what happened to Mom and Corrine.

I still need to work out some details but until then, I am excited. Haven't even smoked in two days. I'm feeling awesome.

-B ✿

Beth's List of New Years Resolutions

So I'm bad on not following through on my New Years resolutions. I mean, who isn't right? Something like 92% don't keep theirs up. However, this year I plan on finishing every one or die trying. (Ha.)

1. Find Mom and Corrine, (Corrine being my older sister. This is the big one, and so far I'm a little uncertain, they've all but vanished off the map. Maybe there's a chance someone in this Runner community might have seen them. I really just want to know where they went by years end. )
2. Run a blog. (Already doing this and going strong with my one post so far. It was nice to meet a few of you in the comments section.)
3. Quit smoking. (Bit more conventional New Years one this time. It would suck to make it out of all of this alive and then die five years later of lung cancer. Plus smoking in the van is bad for Scuba. In 48 hours I'm doing...Ok.)
4. Read some more. Get some kind of activity. (I spend too much time sleeping and being lethargic. Isn't good for me. I need something to occupy my time during all this running.)
5. Figure out some way to do good. (Been reading through some blogs. I feel like I have resources to help others in this situation. Might be a good way to meet some people too. I'm getting cabin fever, or van fever, I guess. Mainly I need to cut down on my free time that isn't spent driving away from the Shadow.)

Five items, and I think that's the most I can handle at the moment. It's a good list of resolutions, I can do this. I have the power!

-B ✿

Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot

I envy people who can come up with killer opening lines to their stuff, but I'm not really sure I'm one of those people. 

If you’ve ever written a paper before you know grabbers and that shit are pretty important in terms of getting your reader's attention. You pick up something by somebody like Eliot Weinberger and read the first line and it’s like, BOOM, you’re hooked. Unfortunately I’m better to talk to in real life then on paper, so I can’t promise anything all that spectacular or memorable. I’m not William Wordsworth, and it’s really all I can do try and to even record all of this, I don’t know if it will stand out from all the other blogs like this one.

That’s weird isn’t it? Writing what might ultimately be the last account of your life and hoping it’s not cliche. Like a hundred years from now the historians of the ages will be leafing through their virtual text books of people who went missing during the horrible fear reign, and they’ll find mine and be like “Standard, put it in the archives,” and that will be that. Kind of a depressing thought, after all, the only real immortality is in being remembered. I think that's why I decided to start writing this thing. At first I wasn't really ecstatic about the idea because again, I'm not much of a writer, but the thought of just kind of vanishing into the night without so much as a trace? Are people going to remember me? I hope people do. But I’m getting ahead of myself and assuming you all know more than you probably do.

Here's a quick list of the things you need to know. 

1. My name is Beth. Or Powers, Beth Powers, if you like Sean Connery (which I do.) I'm 25 years old as of today. I know, New Years baby, crazy. I officially have just hit the quarter life mark, and unfortunately I am spending my birthday alone because . . .
2. My family, that is my mother and my sister are missing. It's been about ten months since I last heard from them? I don't know where they are, though I suspect it has something to do with . . .
3. The Fears. A hodge-podge of abominable eldritch stalkers who have confirmed for a few people that there are things in fact that live under your bed. (Honestly if you haven't had experience with them you're probably operating under the assumption they're like UFO's or Yetis and they're just something a bunch of teenagers thought up, which, yeah ok, I'm not here to convince anyone otherwise. If you haven't had any run ins with them, you're not going to get it.) But in the term of ten months, my mom and my sister have gone missing and there's been this...I don't know exactly how to put it? A shadow chasing me? For all intents and purposes I'm calling it the shadow. This being stalked by a supernatural entity that gets in my head and dreams has caused me to now be . . .
4. On the run, or a runner, or a whatever. Point is I'm living in a van. Granted its a very nice van, I gotta mattress and some homey stuff to make it cozy, and my baby is here. (My baby being Scuba, who is not a baby but a Border Collie and basically my last friend...and my baby.) It's the two of us, which...is not what I'd call an ideal situation but it is what it is. We've been traveling around since I left home (in events pretty much unrelated to Fears but also maybe related I guess? To quote my Facebook relationship status, "it's complicated.") Right now we're in Northern California, ripping wifi off a Micky D's and watching the New Years broadcast in Time's square. Kind of a tradition with us, which sort of brings me to the point of this whole blogging thing.

This last year has been shitty, for me but for a lot of people too. I think when New Year's comes around every passing year just seems shitty and nobody likes shitty years, so we all get pumped for this new chance to finally do those things we've been telling ourselves for decades we're going to do. 2015 however, I don't know, for the first time I've been kind of dreading it. It's unnerving when you look at a year and think that this might be the one that gets printed on your grave. Which ties it into the blog thing that is happening right now as the year is starting up. I'm going to try and make this one count, and I mean that because this could be it. I've got my list of New Years Resolutions all ready to go. It’s been ten months of fear and paranoia, and I’m not sure where that got me. I’m still scared, I’m still paranoid, but it’s 2015 and I need to find something to do or I’m going to go crazy.

So starting a blog like this, reaching out to some of those other people out there so I don't vanish, that's item 1. And here I am, five minutes after midnight and getting it done. So here it is, as of now, the functioning last testament of me, Beth Powers, and I'm not being overdramatic with that, that's what I'm calling it. Header title, Vagabond, because I have no fucking clue where I'm headed, but goddammit I'm going to get there.

So cheers to new friends.

-B ✿