It's a new dawn...

It's a new day... it's a new mother-effing-August.

I could rattle off a litany of reasons why this month and I get along about as well as Severus Snape and Harry Potter in books one through six, but I'll just stick to the basics: August hates me, and in its (so far) ten year history of making my life hell, I have come to hate it.
It sucks a bit because two of my best friends were born in August, as were several members of my family. Still, this month more than any other (even March, which I have grudge matches with almost every year as well) seems to save up all the crap that could be hurled at me during the course of a year and dump it on me all at once. Like the manure truck that Biff drives into in Back to the Future. Only on a daily basis -- or at least that's how it typically feels.

Thus, like several other years, I look at the date on the calendar today and whilst pondering what horrible events might await me in the next thirty one days, I also start to ponder what I can do to cope with a life destined to be made of fail over that period of time. Unfortunately, due to recent spinal issues and a raging migraine, my mental capacity is sorely reduced right now.
I am open to any and all suggestions.

A Lannister Always (verb)s His (noun)s

Winter is coming to my office... well, really it's already here. Three of us fell victim to the siren song of Game of Thrones when it began airing on HBO. One more joined our clan out of a desire to understand what the hell the three of us were talking about all the time.
Now, the three have undertaken the task of making our way through all the novels as our patience will not allow waiting for the series to complete production and air in the spring. We want winter to come. We welcome it and all the tales it brings.
We also make ridiculous in-jokes (see title), geek out about casting rumours (I'm starting to chant a list of actors I want in the series each night the way Arya chants her list of those she wishes to die), and drool over Game of Thrones foodies offering delicious recipes inspired by the books.

And we feel Peter Dinklage not only deserves the Emmy nomination he received, he deserves to win.

Also, the books series is as enrapturing as the show. I cannot remember the last time I plowed through a 1000+ page novel in three days.
Can you?

Pin Me!

A couple weeks ago I got sucked into a new online world.
No, not Google+ (still working out how worthwhile it will be vs. how worthwhile it could be).
Pinterest.
Explaining Pinterest to the uninitiaed is rather difficult. You can't really explore it until you join, and once you join you can't really understand it until you explore. A lot. It's a very experiential site -- the more you dive into it, the more you become one with it. It may sound very zen, and a tad creepy, but I have never found a 'fluff' (or as professionals call them 'social networking') site that makes wasting hours of time on it feel so useful. There's not much in the way of creating connections beyond a very surface level. There's no witty banter about life, politics, the weather, or CARMAGEDDON! There's no constant stream of outside links to click, videos to watch, or Farm games to play. It is, simply, a giant bulletin board of awesome/inspiring/pretty things. The users are a collective of people who like to create, express, explore, design, craft, inspire... and gaze at pretty things.

I'm a quote whore, and the number of amazing quotes I have found in exploring Pinterest astound me.
For example, I found this one this morning.



Remind you of anything?
"Sometimes I get nostalgic for the time when this massive universe called The Internet did not exist, nor was it so easy to create a stream of words, thoughts and ideas and then delete them in a flash.
Sometimes I want a physical record of my creations, not just a glorified collection of electric pulses and digital code translated to 'my work.'"

That, in a pin, is why I love Pinterest.

I'm Baaaaa-aaaack

Trying this new concept of typing an entry in Blogger's post field, as opposed to whipping something up in Word or Google Docs, because, well, neither of those have been inspiring to me as of late.

What has been inspiring is writing.

No, not this. This action of pressing keys with my fingers and having electric signals travel through the keyboard to the PC hard drive to this site and onto the screen -- this is not inspiring as of late. It's annoying. It's a blank canvas with the ability to erase whatever is composed too easily. It allows me to be fickle, to procrastinate, to delete thoughts before they truly form.

Which is why what I've written lately has been actually written. Physically. By placing a pen or pencil to a sheet of paper in a book and watching as my own hand creates words as they flow from my mind, directing myself in a physical action to create something that cannot be so easily destroyed as type on a screen.
I'm not about to get all high-horse and say that the physical act of writing is better than typing on a computer (or a typewriter if you're lucky enough to own such a device). Technology has afforded us a grand new method of creating and spreading ideas (and far be it for me to get snobby about writing). Still, sometimes I get nostalgic for the time when this massive universe called The Internet did not exist, nor was it so easy to create a stream of words, thoughts and ideas and then delete them in a flash.

Sometimes I want a physical record of my creations, not just a glorified collection of electric pulses and digital code translated to 'my work.'

Still, I feel the pull to write more and the readiness of this method, along with the ease of sharing, calls on me to return to the technological front...
Doesn't mean I won't occasionally run back to the physical creation.

Life Finds a Way

I haven't written here in a while. Until earlier this week I hadn't really written anything, anywhere in a while. I could chalk it up to stress and busyness, to overwhelming amounts of work while trying to get my life together, but that stuff happens all too frequently and I still find the time and energy to write a bit here and there.

Admission: it was fear.

I began fearing that I could no longer write. Then I began questioning my ability to write at all. Dark, heady thoughts overwhelmed me. My writer's block became an avalanche of negativity collapsing in on my writer's mind and suffocating any spark or glimmer within me to write.
Yet I knew through all of this that I wanted to write. I needed it. It's as vital to me as breathing, which may sound hyperbolic but anyone who writes knows the feeling. To lose belief in your ability to write starts to affect any belief in your being.
I'm not sharing the secret of what dug me out of this pit (though it didn't dig me out so much as pierce through with a brilliant blue light and haul me out), because it’s not what gets you out so much as the realization once it happens that you can and are meant to write. In one day I wrote (physically wrote, you know, with a pencil… on paper… in a book… like the olden days) twenty-five pages of material. My brain has been afire with the writing twitch all week, and while it isn’t for projects already in existence or new projects I believe will go anywhere, the mere act of writing again – and profusely – is overwhelming in the best possible way.









Whether you’re plugging away at a project you feel had stagnated, are stuck in the depths of writer’s block, or write everyday without fail and yet feel unsatisfied: I know it’s rough. If you need encouragement, I will be happy to cheerlead, or chastise, or help in any way I can.

If there’s one thing I’ve realized over the past few weeks it’s that wallowing in your frustration alone never produces anything. Even the smallest bit of progress is still progress, and when that moment of inspiration hits, grab it, hang on by the tips of your fingers and go along for the ride. You can make up hours at work, reschedule social obligations, and postpone a great many things in life (I’m looking at you, giant pile of laundry. I swear I’ll get to you soon…), but you can’t reschedule ideas when they hit. When the concept hits, when it overwhelms all your other thoughts, get to the nearest writing implements and just write – it’s not always true but generally speaking, life can wait and inspiration never does.

Oh, my beautiful idiot...

"Then you stole me... and I stole you."
"I borrowed you."
"Borrowing implies the eventual intention to return the thing that was taken... What makes you think I would ever give you back?"







He calls her “Sexy.” He strokes bits of her and sweet talks her while also banging her parts with relentless and seemingly reckless abandon. He stole her, and she allowed herself to be stolen. They traveled for hundreds of years together and never spoke... until she was ripped from her home and crammed into a fragile female form.
Talk about innovation.

“The Doctor’s Wife” may eventually rank among the best ever Doctor Who episodes for sheer inventiveness alone. That and the brilliance that is Neil Gaiman.

While I am insanely jealous of this literal outside the bigger-on-the-inside box thinking, it is also inspiring. It fires some of those dormant, struggling synapses within my own writer’s mind, begging me to re-examine some of my own projects. They call to me, requesting that I Gaiman it up a bit --- to think of the maddest things imaginable, the seemingly impossible twist, and write it.
I’m not what one would call a true worshipper at the altar of Gaiman, but I may have just become a convert. Any writer who can do something entirely new with the Whoniverse after its nearly fifty year history deserves more than respect. He deserves adoration, accolades, and genuine gratitude for his innovative and inspiring ideas.

The brain is aching. The fingers are twitching. The soul is yearning for something new. I’m ready to leave myself unlocked for the mad thief of inspiration to rush inside and take me for a ride.

"Weakness is tiring, but strength is exhausting."

"I am tired of being strong."

My life, it seems right now, is a series of snippets mashed together. There is no linear progression from task to task or day to day. I go through the same procedures yet the feeling is one of constant interruption and chaos. Long, novel experiences and thoughts are suppressed beneath layer upon layer of brief interludes. Some thoughts and feelings and experiences are pleasant; some are reflective or inspiring; many are stressful and exhausting. All seem fleeting and inconstant. This does not sit well for someone who, though adaptable and capable of eternal juggling, requires a certain level of consistency and stability. Not a lot, really, just a bit to keep me tethered to a plane that resembles reality.
There’s too much shifting, too much uncertainty. Too many good ideas without a home and too many depressing and/or stagnant thoughts which arise and fester.

To put it succinctly:
I’m in a major funk with no semblance of how to rise out of it. I’m outwardly trying to hold on to the calm while inwardly feeling like a ship being ripped apart by a storm with no break in the weather or rescue boat on the way.

I have brief periods where something inspires me, and then am bombarded with an avalanche of negativity from varied directions and those fleeting moments of possibilities are quashed by the heavy burden of reality. I know it cannot remain like this forever. I know, even now, there is hope left… but I cannot see it. (Yeah, been retreading a little LotR).

I can’t even watch films properly right now as everything only settles in increments of a few minutes. The greater picture is lost while the few moments of true emotion I try to cling to are soon overcome by more confusing and aggravating ‘real life’ occurrences. Not being able to escape blows.

To use a current, popular yet crude, analogy being tossed around my office: I need to get the cock out of my mouth, but I can’t find it right now. I need someone to help find the cock and possibly help get it out.

And this is my life right now…

Emotastic

And yet not... because it's quasi-hopeful.

Ever find yourself swirling in a never-ending sea of thoughts and emotions, moving at such an intense speed that you can barely keep your head above the water long enough to take a breath before being shoved under again and held against your will? And every time you break free you lose another piece of your soul, which has been desperately clutching to reality, to the swells and crushing black oblivion? Yet you keep treading, keep fighting, even when you don’t understand why you’re fighting anymore -- because you know, somewhere inside you know, the day will come when the swells will break, the storm will cease, and you may once again see light on the horizon?

Yeah, it’s like that right now.

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.

Yesterday morning ushered in a new era in dream fascination for me. In the darkness of pre-dawn this morning, I awoke with fading visages of a certain actor-come-timelord from an earlier dream. As I clung to these pleasant thoughts, I rose up the ten inches I must strain to gauge illuminated digits on my clock. Realizing I still had over an hour until wakefulness became necessary, I settled back onto my pillow, facing the ‘no serious thoughts’ side of the bed* and drifted back into slumberland.
I dreamt of a rich court in high season, as an observer not a participant, though I felt that I myself was of noble descent. It was a bizarre Inception sort of moment, feeling like I watched a dream within my dream (when my dream itself felt like reality). The occurrences in this lush scene of aristocracy were of great import, emotion and measure, though I could not recall later the specifics.

The palaces of crowned kings--the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons

I ‘awoke’ in this dream to an elaborate funeral procession, capped off by the reigning monarch’s son acting as pallbearer-of-sorts. After the seemingly traditional pyre on the beach, the son raced down the dunes to the water with a torch, heaving it into the water to the applause of the crowd.
My relationship to this young monarch was unclear in absolute specifics yet obvious in emotional attachment – from both sides. After the wake we retired into a library or drawing room or some such large, secluded, grand room like the royals have (or I dream they have). We conversed, I consoled, and he confronted me about his father’s past and life. Apparently in this dream his connection to his father, though his only son and heir, was distant to the point of never really knowing the man. Information had only been disclosed to me since his father’s death, which I had not passed on to the son as of yet, out of want to spare him greater stress during the time of mourning. Especially since the father was a decidedly ignoble ruler, and man. Rather than understand, or even respect, my position (and our relationship), the son went on a tear – a torrent of emotion.

The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them;

This is where the dream took on a decidedly Merlin-esque quality as it then became apparent that magic was a very real force in this realm. As the son’s emotions stormed, books came flying off shelves, papers flew about the room, furniture overturned, all with mere gestures from him. He then turned to me, eyes full of despair and pain – not even rage – as he uttered a spell. This spell somehow bound my lifeforce to his father’s spirit so the son could will the father into existence long enough to confront the man.

All earth was but one thought--and that was death

I shit you not readers, I felt this ‘spell’ as I have never felt any dream in my life. I half-woke to feeling as though my essence and half my internal organs were being ripped from my body. Within seconds I was awake, though barely conscious as the pain still reverberated through me. I was actually crying.
And yet… I felt tied to this dream. To the extent that I willed myself back to sleep to find some reconciliation to this physical and mental horror.

The father emerged, detailing his reprehensible exploits to the son and begging not only for forgiveness but for his son to remedy the mistakes made by his father’s rule. He then went on to chide his son for using the magic he did to conjure the father because of the damage it was wreaking on me. When the son finally turned to look at me again, his look immediately released the spell and he began to cry. Rushing to my side, he yelled for the court magician. Once arrived, the son continuously begged the magician to heal me, to save me. The magician explained that the spell used was too powerful to allow anything to heal me at the present. He then also chided the young ruler on the perils of using magic out of anger and pain and the damage it could cause. He warned that because of this damage not only might I never fully recover my former self, but I may never forgive him for exacting such pain on me – his best friend and his betrothed. The last bit that I recall as actual dream was the young man crying, apologizing in the most animated language for his betrayal and professing his true affection for me. The magician then sent him out of the room so I could be tended to, and at that point I was awake yet still continuing the story in my head.

I have never, ever experienced such a physical, visceral reaction to a dream... and damn was it terrifying and exhilarating. What can I say? I'm a dream masochist.



*Yes, recently I have needed to designate that when facing a certain direction while in bed, no serious life thoughts are allowed. This has become slightly successful and led to marginally better sleep patterns. Sometimes. Ish.

Culpability

March is over -- and this is my 100th post. WHEW!

Can’t say April is anything to sing about yet, what with the insanity of moving and taxes and all, but having the beast of burden that is March behind me (and the hell that is August well in front) lightens my spirits a bit.
I did not ‘win’ NaNoEdMo, however I hit just over the halfway mark and am damn proud of myself. It’s amazing what 25 hours of editing actually feels like. Feels like climbing a never-ending mountain of perils and doubts with your bare hands is what it feels like. Thus, even reaching the halfway plateau gives you a damn good view (so long as you don’t keep glancing upward at what’s still to come).
In related writing news, I attended another worthy ‘coaching’ session this past weekend which, even with the ‘AHHHHHHHHH!’ of moving hanging over me at the moment gave me another healthy dose of confidence, measurable goals, and a list of to-dos which seem pressingly daunting right now – kind of like the boxes piled up around me in my abode, looming over me as I continue to pack more of them. Yet the list also gives me items to be accountable for and goals to work toward that, while intimidating, never seem out of the realm of possibility (especially when talking with my excellent coach).
Though I’m hanging back on many of these tasks until after some of this moving insanity is wrapped, some of them even incorporate into moving which makes moving seem a little less like a futile exercise in attempting to grow up and carve out new sections in my life, and more like a way of expanding some of the things I love doing and creating a newer, better space in which to do them.