Before They Were Night Vale #9: An annotated to-do list from 2007

Welcome to "Before They Were Night Vale", our feature in which Night Vale creators Jeffrey and Joseph share writing from before their Welcome to Night Vale collaboration, along with commentary. Come explore their early writing, both good and bad.  

Looking through my old writing folder for pieces to share with all of you, I stumbled on a file just labeled "Do". It was dated 12/19/2007, which was my final year of college. I was living in Goleta, California, at a house I shared with three roommates and two pitbulls. And I was miserable and desperate to have a career in the arts, but I didn't know how to even begin doing that. I thought this to-do list was an interesting snapshot of where I was at 21, long before Night Vale would upend my life forever. Below is the list, with commentary from present day me.

  To Do. 12/29/2007

Finish and send Onion Application

This was one of many writing avenues I was chasing at the time. With all of them (this one included) my samples were good enough to get me to the second round, but never past that. I had a phone interview with an editor at The Onion, was asked to send in a few sample headlines, and then never heard back. 

Write up and send book ideas

I'm not sure who I was sending these to. I never wrote any of them.

Clean kitchen

This one was marked done! Good for me.

Do other cleaning for half hour

This one was not marked done.

Practice music 1 hour

Music has always been a hobby for me, but I never have the dedication to get much better than a hobbyist. I'll write notes to myself like "practice music 1 hour" and then maybe get five or ten minutes in.

Look for jobs and places to live 1 hour

I would eventually move to New York City, where in the wake of the 2008 crash, there would be no jobs at all.

Type up band ad

Because I liked music, I thought maybe I could start a band and find artistic success that way. I met with a few people, but nothing ever clicked and I just did not have the dedication needed to do any kind of thing with music.

Decide whether you’re going to party

No idea what party this refers to or why I needed to put this on a to-do list.

Brainstorm SA ideas

At the time, I was writing for Something Awful, which was always a tough job. Coming up with idea for a regular column is hard enough, but when they're supposed to all be funny, it's especially desperate.

Edit Cambodia for 5 hours

This was a book I was writing at the time. It was a novel grappling with the legacy of the Khmer Rouge in modern Cambodia. As you might imagine, I had no business writing a novel about this and the whole project was soon thankfully abandoned.

 Read 3 hours 

Exactly how many hours did I think existed in a day?

No more than ½ hour internet crap

Ah, at least some things never change.