A Change is Gonna Come...

OK, yesterday's pity party over. I just needed to get that out of my system. 
A short while ago, I was directed to this short post regarding committing the first 90 minutes of your 'work day' to your passion project, for 90 days (allowing time for it to become habit, rather than a challenge to be met).
I started earlier this week doing what I need to get more 'real job' ducks in their proverbial row. I made it two days before I wanted to give up and cry. Because as necessary as this process is, it's incredibly tiresome to repeat day in and day out. However, the alternative (having my soul die bit by bit every day I'm in this dead-end job) is worse. So while it may not be my passion project, I'm not going to have passion for anything if I don't change the manner in which I spend a 'work day.' And yet...
After three days of reassessing and editing resumes and cover letters, submitting to new sites, applying for 30+ positions, I need a day off to actually live up to the challenge and work on my passion project: writing. As disorganized as my job search efforts had become, my writing is in an even worse state. The chaos of life and other distractions has left me with more unfinished projects and rough idea outlines of projects-to-be than ever before. The act of just writing escapes me. Planning and scheduling have become a joke, not for lack of desire or commitment, but due to the overwhelming fear that to finish something may only tick off that work as 'done' on a checklist and never go any farther.
I've become afraid of the force of my own imagination. I've had my inner puppy kicked so many times it hides in the corner now any time I call its name. The true point of the 'challenge' is to work on your passions first, and the rest of the work later, and the truth is I've been afraid to do so. There has to be a balance for me, in making job searches a passion project of sorts to improve every aspect of my life, not just the creative ones. However, spending too much time focusing on everything that isn't writing is what put me in this depressed slump in the first place. Thus, writing needs to be given priority in this scenario. Now that my resumes are more in order and I've joined more job sites, I'm relegating the job searches to two days/week. The other days are for writing. Period.
It's been a tough week, but a productive one. If it's done anything, it's exposed how easily I can focus on projects if given the freedom and allowance to do it -- and how sometimes you have to give permission for that freedom to yourself because you're the one holding you back.

Weirdus Interruptus

Today's standard post will be replaced by the new "Weird Al" video, because... well. He kind of says it all.

The Blog Has Risen

Whenever I return to a blog after a long absence, I feel the need for two things:
1) To exclaim, "I'm not dead yet," like that plucky old man in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

2) To offer up explanations for my absence, even if no one cares because I feel obligated to give reasons for what really comes down to either: I've been busy and told myself doing this blog wasn't productive (which is a lie), or I've been caught up in my own mind in a manner that kept me from doing what I want and need to do in favor of engaging that monster of Depression and letting it win for a while (which is very true, and not an excuse, but a reason -- sadly).

What really matters is that I'm back, and to anyone still paying attention to my little corner of the internet, thanks for sticking around. I've got a plan and a schedule to resume posts shortly (as in this week), so tell your friends (internet or IRL ones, or both) to watch this space for updates soon.

I'm am returning...

I know... it's been a long time. I wish I could say many important, cool, exciting, and/or life-altering things have occurred in my absence, but that would be an utter lie.
However, in the next few weeks I plan to resurrect this blog as a place to air some creative/life grievances and offer some opinions and silliness and fangirling and ranting over the upcoming fall season of new (and returning shows.

First up: Dracula Bingo! (Or, Why I'm Going to Need Gallons of Alcohol to Survive This Show)
Coming really, really soon...

(Working Through) Discouragement

This marks my 150th post... wowsers. I feel like I should have written so much more.
One of the perils of the internet age: oversaturation.
I have a facebook, a twitter, two tumblrs, no less than three emails, google +, livejournal, linked in, this... it becomes difficult to digest all the incoming social data, much less find a way to maintain your own presence across multiple platforms for multiple purposes.
Yet I made a goal this year to write more often here, at least once every three weeks, and I would like to hold to that.

So it's a new year. January already gone. I find myself with goals, but little focus. Hopes, but little direction. Even typing this up feels off -- as though there's a switch that's been disconnected which usually forms the pathway from thought to word, deed, or action.
It's not an unfamiliar feeling, and occurs both with reason and without, but it is one that gives me cause for concern.

Therefore, here's brief list of things i have accomplished so far this year and/or am grateful for:

Updating resumes
Making segmented lists of goals
Talking with people about said goals
Unabashedly working on writings which may not net me anything besides experience, but give me pleasure to create
Finding more free / uber-cheap activities to attend in Los Angeles
Getting more creative with food
Ripper Street
Figure skating
Good friends, both near and far
Tea

In the coming weeks, I am determined to make more progressive strides and already have some very specific appointments made with the express purpose of doing so. Yet still, I am realistic in my thoughts that these feelings of discouragement and confusion will not easily be pushed aside. They need to be worked through, dealt with, and nurtured with better emotions and experiences.\

Hopefully everyone else's year is getting off to a better start than mine, but if not we can take solace in not being alone, and perhaps promise each other to work through the poorer times toward the better ones.

There’s loads of boring stuff like Sundays and Tuesdays and Thursday afternoons.

From a little blog post I did on another site regarding this day:
Thursday is my least favorite day of the week. That’s right. Not Monday, when (if you’re cursed with a standard day job) you must return to the blinding fluorescent lights and windowless cubicle world for another five days of torture. Not Sunday when, just like as a child, you dread the upcoming return to the cubicle/classroom environment. No, it’s Thursday for the win. 
Thursday dangles the weekend before you yet stands as a constant reminder that you’re not done yet. People tend to be more testy, more easily riled, and more frustrated with the universe on Thursday (at least most of the people I know). Thursday reminds you that all those deadlines you set for the end of the week and haven’t achieved yet are imminent — and you’re probably not going to achieve them. Thursday afternoon is the most interminable three to four hours of the whole work week. Time actually does move backwards. 

There's been a lot happening in my little 'verse lately, and yet not so much that I feel as though a lot of progress has been made. I think it's a pitfall of spending so many years in theatre that I yearn for an immediate response to projects which are completed start to finish in a matter of months. Setting deadlines to complete a work that's been in progress for years... my patience just wears thin.
Still, I'm trying to avoid the pitfalls of wanting to move on to something else because damnit, this year I am going to finish something. More than one something if I can stick to the deadlines. 
I just have to work through the low days, including every wretched Thursday...

When Journals Lose Their Magic

Writing, the act of actually putting a writing implement on paper, seems to be becoming more antiquated by the day. Yet there are still those out there who require at least some of our time spent writing to involve this act. For myself, there are times when not only is typing inconvenient (I have an outdated, though reliable, laptop that does not accompany me everywhere, nor any tablet device -- but I ALWAYS have a pen and a notepad), it lacks a certain connection to the material I create.
I've always been a hands-on creator. I draw. I paint (very poorly). I play piano (or could, once upon a time). I make jewelry. I put together shelving units and desks with the 'help' of the horribly illustrated diagrams of do-it-yourself furniture. I cook -- and while I don't always enjoy getting my hands seeped in ground meat, or chicken guts, or sticky doughs, I understand  and accept it's a part of the process of crafting meals.

The difference between crafting in those other mediums and writing, for me, is that when I get a notebook or journal to write in, I'm not only picky about the ingredients (as I am with any creative project), I also reach a point where those ingredients which shaped my need for the journal lose their power. The whole journal loses its power and ability to spur on my writing. In short, the journal loses its magic.
Yet I cannot bring myself to simply toss aside the book as if it were remnants of silver wire, or a broken cerulean pencil, or an extra wing nut that doesn't fit onto any conceivable part of the rolling shelf unit. I know many who use journals and sketchbooks feel the same. The desire to hold on to the physical evidence and memory of what once inspired you is too strong to discard.
However, this time around I've used the same journal for just over three years and while there are still probably 80 usable pages remaining, I noticed a couple months ago that every time I reached for it, opened it, any creative impulse I had disappeared. The book itself lost the power to draw me into it and furiously write down my inspirations in an encapsulated red-covered parcel of paper. It infuriated me not just because I don't like wasting paper, but because I felt that I had betrayed this loyal companion.
This books contains notes from my time on the Artistic Management Committee at my theatre. It's got the first piece of fanfiction I began that doesn't make me feel like fanfic is a derogatory form of writing. It contains tax calculations, shopping lists, career coaching notes and oh yes, dozens upon dozens of pages filled with writings from two of my (currently) four in-progress novels. How does something that contains that much of your life, that has been the keeper of important notes, dreams, creative bursts you never imagine, suddenly transform one day into a dull collection of pages where each time you set your writing utensil to a sheet of paper all your desire to write melts away?
There's likely some psychological time+overuse=meah-related explanation for it that relates to the amount of time and energy you invest into it and one day your brain just no longer relates to that object as the receptacle of such things. I, however, surmise it thus: one day the magic dies -- whatever you wrote in that journal still carries import, and always will, but the days in which your mind pours itself onto those particular pages is over  -- and until you accept that, put the journal to rest, and find a new receptacle, your ideas will become stagnant and uninspired (if the ideas ever deign to come at all).

So yeah, the other day I posted about my brain missing. And it is still, to an extent, but I have had to force myself to come to terms with the idea that part of my lost mind is due to going far too long without physically writing. I need that type of release for my thoughts and ideas, and by clinging to a magic-less book for too long I allowed that part of my mind to run off in search of I know not what.

Here's to my red journal. I found it in a Borders on clearance for $6 in the early spring of 2009,  and it has served me ever so faithfully. Within it are words I might never have written had I chosen another journal at the time. It grieves me to let go of something that once inspired my mind in new and exciting ways. A part of me will feel lost without it. However, a much larger part may lose itself forever if I do not accept this loss and endeavor to rekindle the magic in a new journal.

Stay Tuned!

New, interesting, thought-provoking, occasionally ranting, sometimes fangirling posts coming REALLY soon. 

Just as soon as I find my brain.

Which will be very soon.

I hope.

I mean, it was here recently. I have a dim recollection of having amazing ideas for posts, and articles, and the drive to complete them.

Enter debilitating invisible illnesses rearing themselves for a week and POOF! my brain went into hiding. I now have the attention span of a four year old on pixie stix. I can barely finish a coherent thought let alone...

Have you noticed how incredibly hot and talented and all-around-geeky Tom Hiddleston is? Classically trained Super Actor who refers to Loki as 'cray cray,' gets himself memed all over the interwebs (Loki'd!), and will either rap Will Smith's "Miami" or recite monologues from Henry V on command.

Oh, and then there's this:

What was I talking about?
Ummm...
Oh yeah, I'm going to see APOCALYPTOUR in less than a week. Which might help get songs from Holy Musical, B@man out of my head... or just embed them deeper. *shrugs* Still doesn't make me regret having Supersnoop saying "You got a phone call, motherfucker," as my ringtone.

Wait... that wasn't what I was talking about...

Oh. Yeah.

Brain missing.

Hopefully not for much longer...

A Story a Day? More like a Pain in my Ass...

In a moment of blind enthusiasm for something that might bust me out of the writers’ funk I’ve had going on, my brain went, “A story a day for a month? Why the fuck not?!?” 
 Now, no matter how many times I give reasons for ‘why the fuck not,’ it keeps pushing back with ridiculous drivel about how I need to be committed and accountable for writing something and this provides it to me. 
Stupid brain.
 You make me want to go drink until I can’t feel feelings anymore. Feelings like unadulterated fear at the prospect of having to craft and finish not one but MANY stories in a single month.
Yet I’m going to do it… so the brain wins this round.

Also... new blogger layout is new. Not sure how I feel about this yet. I find change disquieting.

Omm-ing

Taken from my first experience using the Omm Writer for Mac (it's astonishing what programs actually work when one updates their operating system...):

The epicness of this is not lost on me. The screen is white, save for a few sparse trees, their branches bare. Chimes ring steadily in the background as a little chirp accompanies each click of the keys. This is the typewriter of the internet age. Take out the real distractions and just bloody write.
I cannot click on another tab to distract myself with facebook, twitter, or any of the dozen other go to distraction sites. Everything is wiped from the desktop, leaving me alone with my thoughts... and these chimes.
All right, in all honesty, the chimes could be a little less new-agey. Then again, I'll take a bit of new age chiming over the draw to drift to some other distracting destination.
I don't even really know how to get out of this. I just opened the program and this is what appeared to me. I may very well have to go typing into the night until my eyelids droop and I just let the computer go to sleep. I mean, sure, I could pause in this typing exercise and go looking for something to get me out of here, but that would defeat the initial purpose.

Then again, I can only take so much of these chimes. Those at least I need to figure out how to change...
Oooh. New chimes. These are deeper... still new agey, but more like windchimes plus a singing bowl than something you'd hear in the background of an Enya track.
Third series of sound is... melodic. Ish. If you like music that sounds like it's been filtered through water and the lovechild of Phillip Glass and Danny Elfman. Yeah. Not for me.

I got the font to change to something more akin to my style. The background can shift as well to either all white (far too daunting for me), or a light shade of grey. That will be good when I go into a dark mood, but for testing out the program, I rather enjoy the winter-esque landscape. Must be the Stark in me. (I'd like some Stark in me, IYKWIMAITYD...)

Ahhh.... so I CAN minimize this little bugger (and put it on silent if I want my own theme music while writing). That's good, overall. What I'd really like to be able to do is set a timer and/or word count goal on here so the program won't minimize until the timer runs out/I hit my goal. That, in my procrastinating little mind, would create an ideal program.
Even with the odd new age bells.

All in all, for a program that's designed to keep you focused on writing, the Omm Writer does a pretty good job. Though the minimize and close icons are still there if you wiggle your mouse, they are well off at the top (and on the opposite side one is used to) and therefore the temptation to drift away, while still there, is not so easily accessible. The free version lacks a few features I'd like to have, but for someone starting on the path of distraction-preventing software, Omm Writer and I could become fast friends.

What is this place?

How did I get back here?

Well, I'm glad you (the interwebs) asked. Though the more appropriate query might be: why did I leave?
It's not you, it's me. There. I clichéd.
However, that is pretty much the reality. Just like I'm one of those folks with a tendency to not respond to someone about anything and then the guilt complex enters in for not responding, and then I just get so guilt ridden and ashamed I ignore the issue entirely unless it comes back to bite me in the ass... well, yeah, that's basically it.

Then, eventually, you have to pry yourself away from the Self-hate Spiral of Suck and start functioning again.
This lovely blog post was an enormous help in getting me back to the blogsphere. I am this person. Number fifteen, about the books... it's like the guy has lived with me my entire life.

So yeah, I'm a crazy writer. Nutters. Off my rocker. Gone 'round the bend. Koo-Koo for Cocoa Puffs. I'm not alone, though -- much as the isolating voices in my head and natural introverted personality try to convince me otherwise.
I can't blog the crazy away, but I can invite others to jump in the crazy pool and drown with me.*


*I can't swim. So by my logic, we're all drowning.
See. Crazy.

NaNoWriMo Year Five: The NSFPureMinds Version

Or: What in the name of all that is sacred or profane am I doing?

There's something participating in National Novel Writing Month does to you, year after year: makes you fear for your own sanity.
Much as I love it, and proudly wear my writing geekdom with pride, and encourage (faithfully and truly) other people to participate, I acknowledge the mind-shattering marathon that is attempting to write a novel in a month. It is a crazy idea.
It's also a fantastic one.
It's magical.

(Yeah, I got caught up in the leprechaun nonsense of GLEE last night. I'm a sucker for blue eyes, a cute brogue, and a stunning voice. No apologies for it.)

Every year within the first few days I experience the trauma of the OMGWTFs. It can paralyze a writer to start contemplating the 'what ifs' and the 'why the hell am I doing this-es' and the 'everything I write is crap so why bothers' of it all. It can paralyze you at any time. The added pressure of thinking you have to complete something as massive as an entire novel in one month can daunt you into a fear spiral so dark it causes the worst possible black hole: the 'I can't do it so why even bother' hole.

You know what?
Fuck that hole.
Take a giant phallus of words and plug that hole up good. Show that hole the plot it's been missing. Use that hole up with great big sentences inspired by writing prompt, plot bunnies, song lyrics, and everyday objects like carrots and long glass tubes and staplers.
Screw that hole good by showing it you know best.
Then walk away from that hole, satisfied in the knowledge that you fucked it so well it exploded into the brilliant light of inspiration.
Then keep writing. All month long.

And THAT is your pornographic NaNoWriMo analogy of the week.

It's also about 300 words. That's a powerful amount of foreplay for starting work on your novel today.

Just to complete the inspirational mental screwing, here's a picture of Arthur Pendragon, wet, in front of a waterfall.

Yeah, you KNOW you can write something about that.

L.A. Strangetown

Or: How I learned to start worrying and wonder whether or not this world has any idea who I am...

I'm in the midst of major writer's block. Trying to get the writing brain started after a period of editing is providing soul-crushing levels of difficulty. Part of it is not feeling like I have a good place to write (as in, a physical location conducive to writing). Part of it is exhaustion/my own stupidity. Part of it is having told the writer mind to shut up for so long that it decided to go on an extended vacation and leave me in the arid silence of a wordless desert.
Part of it is a lack of validation for my writing, critically and, to be blunt, financially. I hunt gig postings like a hound for something other than corporate babble, SEO BS, or 'copywriting' (read: do everything related to writing, editing, and publishing our newsletter/blog/magazine/paper without all the benefits and money that go along with it), and find nothing that makes me even want to put together a writing sample. I know my capabilities as a writer. I know I can crank out corporate crap ad nauseum if I'm getting paid for it... I just would really like, for once, to be able to write in my own voice and have people accept that enough to toss a bit of dough my way. And I know anyone who desires writing as a career has these feelings, as do actors, designers, crafters, etc. We all want to put our own little stamp on the world, in our own way. Instead, far too many of us find ourselves trapped in a cubicle, or off on writing assignments which bear no resemblance to our actual interests, or scraping together rent from a myriad of 'creative' gigs -- because we 'chose' this path.
(Note use of quotations. Anyone who accepts and embraces a life in a field which relates to the creative, cultural and/or literary arts should recognize the flaw in stating that those fields were ones we chose of utter free will. Art chooses you. Those of us who know this realize how simple, and painfully dull, life would be if we just settled for accounting...)

Thus, I hold this inward struggle to attempt writing without foreseeable profit. It's need which drives me, and right now the need is not enough because even that itching in my fingers, that throbbing in my head, cannot coerce me into actual creation of material.

Then, the universe comes along in all its mighty cock-uppery and says, "Hey, you need money from a creative endeavor? We can totally give that to you. As an 'actor.'"
What.The.Hell.
Granted, my ass is sore with getting itself kicked in the financial rear so much the past, well, always. Ergo, there's No.Way. I'm turning the opportunity (read: money) down. Yet is it so much to ask that I get a little cash for an endeavor I really care about? I have dozens of actor friends, many of whom would probably kick me for a) getting this opportunity and b) rail me for hours on how unfair this business is when they can't get work doing what they want, and I have the gall to be selected for something I only auditioned for to help out a friend. (Though I'd be willing to bet if they were thrown a desirable, for me, writing gig for this kind of money they'd take it.)

I'm happy about the gig. It'll be fun times with friends doing silly work for awesome money. I'd just feel like less of a tool if my writing garnered me similar work.

Kicking Brain Puppies

Editing is hard. Just getting that out there for any and all aspiring writers. Slashing words you've grown accustomed to, and in some cases even grown to like (possibly A LOT), does not lead to great joy until you get yourself in a headspace capable of knowing what you do is meant to make your work stronger. Once you wrap your mind around that and accept it, it can make you stronger, too. After a while you begin to feel that just by deleting passages and correcting spelling and grammar issues for clarity, you have done what is necessary to make your work better.
Oh no, sweets.
There's more.
It's called re-writing.
And it's a pain in the ass.

Your editing mind has finally come to terms with its existence and you have a symbiotic relationship. You cut things out, and change some structural issues, and feel better about yourself, the process of editing, and your work as a whole.
Then you must go back and look at the work as a writer again, to fix plot holes, clarify and/or strengthen characters and relationships, add layering details... and your writer brain hides in a corner like a punished child, neglected by time apart from it and weakened and afraid from having the editing mind push it away while Editing Mode trumped all other needs for the work.
It's malnourished, depressed, and confused as to why you're seeking it out again with such joyful energy when three weeks ago you banished it in favor of the bullying Editor Mind.
Editor Mind doesn't care. It's happy to hang around and wait until you need it again (because it knows you'll come crawling back soon enough). Writer Mind, however, looks at you with plaintive eyes and quiet whimpers of sadness. You coax, you bribe, you get down to face it on its level and ask oh so sweetly for it to come back to you. It's wary, though. You wounded it and it hasn't recovered yet. It remembers screaming to you, wanting to be released while you had it locked in a closet when working with Editor Mind, pleading and begging to rewrite passages. You didn't listen. You needed to edit. You didn't want to shut away the Writer Mind, but you exist in a world of deadlines which Writer Mind doesn't understand. Editor Mind does, though, so you needed its help. Editor Mind is damn good at telling Writer Mind to STFU and mind itself. So good that Writer Mind has just been likened to an abused puppy for an entire paragraph in hopes that giving it the treat of extended metaphor might coax it out of hiding.

*le sigh*

This is one of those times I know I need to be a writer. It drives me, feeds me, pulses within me. Without it I am utterly lost. That ain't to say it's easy, though. Easy right now would be to chuck it all aside and turn to something that is... like knitting, or playing piano, or becoming an expert marks-person. I can't do any of those. I have a puppy to coax out of a corner so I can finish my novel, start writing query letters, and then have myself and my puppy kicked an inestimable number of times until someone coaxes us out of a corner...

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. ~Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith

Vacating

August is almost over, for which I am grateful. Yet today is shaping up to be the most Monday-like Monday I've had in quite a while. I'm on edge. My skin is almost tingling. Every time the phone rings I just want to pick it up and yell, "WHAT!?"
I need to write, but Writer Brain is buried under Editor Brain. I can't write so it makes me more stressed. I'm stressed, so I can't write. Cyclical bullshit of the psyche that makes me want to curl up in a ball with a mug of tea and a stack of books and ignore everything for a solid week.

I revert back to this post from last year:

"Adults need summer vacation.
When you're a kid, no matter how long or short your summer vacation is, it provides you with freedom and opportunities to be expressive, creative, social (or not), occasionally spontaneous and more carefree than you ever realize at the time. Once you hit high school (or if you're lucky, college -- in which case you have no idea how lucky you were/are), you get summer jobs and much of that freedom dissipates. It's still there in smaller doses, though. You're also still more free to travel -- even if it's with your family -- and goof off, because your responsibilities and ties are relatively small.
Then, you 'grow up,' get some form of job, and vacation is typically reduced to a couple weeks at most which you have to plan out in scary detail, usually not take all at once, hope that all of your plans work out, and in all that chaos actually find time to relax.
That is wholly inadequate. Pardon my language, but it's just bullshit. 'Maturing' into an adult does not mean you need less time to decompress, to be free in thought and action, to explore the world around you, to express your creativity or lack thereof, to be a social butterfly or a hermit... if anything you need more. I believe the problems with stress so many people experience in adulthood, especially in this country, stem from the de-institutionalized human need for time to deal with ourselves and our problems. Everything must be done faster, better, more efficiently, even coping with our problems and personal inadequacies. Work Harder has replaced Work Smarter and in that we have lost the time, the ability and the PERMISSION to take time when we need it. We steal cigarette breaks and long lunches where we can. We use a vacation day to deal with doctor appointments, bills, family issues and the like. We try not to use sick days (if we are lucky enough to have them) unless we're at deaths door. Why? Because jackasses creating corporate models have instilled in us that this is how we become better workers. It's not. It's also very much not how we become better people.
Even if you have a non-traditional job that is more flexible than most, you still need time off and not scattered for a week here or there. We all need actual breaks -- at least 2 weeks of solid time off, SEVERAL TIMES A YEAR -- to truly be productive, rational, sane individuals."

I don't claim to have much sanity to begin with, but what little I possess is currently on its own vacation with my mental equilibrium, patience, and ability to process information and daily life occurrences without wanting to scream.

Un-Wall Me...

I posted the below in my more personal 'blog,' but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it's not just applicable to personal events and emotions -- because whatever crap you deal with (or avoid dealing with, more typically in my case) affects your creativity and the productivity of all creations. I'd like to believe that hermiting away to shun external (and internal) issues helps fuel my passions, but that's just another mask I put on to fool myself into thinking I can be really and truly depressed and still be productive.

I'm tired all the time, and while I think part of it is not taking care of myself I'm really coming to think it's more not listening to myself and trying to hard to be the best I can be in front of other people and in so doing feeling like I'm failing myself. Yeah, it's all emo up in here, and by the seven do I hate that... I hate being a shell. It's just hard to break out of the shell when you've built it around yourself to keep the bad from getting out. You don't realize you're walling in the good as well.


Interesting thing I've learned about myself just writing some of this out: I don't do well with other people trying to help me come upon revelations. It's just not how I'm constructed. Once I hit a revelation, though, I love help. But I won't directly ask for it (this is true of just about everything important to me). I like rowing the boat on my own, and if you climb in to help me you better strap yourself in and lash your hands to the oars because I'm liable to push you off after a bit. I just won't believe you're really in it with me until... well, you're really in it with me. As in, I fall overboard and almost drown; you pull me out, drag me to the shore, give me CPR and put us both back on the boat to continue rowing. Great strategy for entirely self-sufficient hermits. Horrible for anyone who even occasionally wants real, deep, meaningful interactions with other humans.

We all have ways of blocking other from helping us, and in turn ways of blocking ourselves from being receptive to help from any source. When the walls go up, even if it's to block others from seeing the bad, those walls create a divider of all energy and emotion. The longer they stay up, the harder it becomes to access the good, the desire, the passion, and even the necessity.





I am woman... hear me SMASH!







So there's your personal insight moment for the week...

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.

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.