Short Term Goals - Posting Challenge, Day 8

(Also be sure to follow along with Tina, Jean, Krista, and Tambo as they say much more sane and less esoteric things than me!)

Today I need to post short term goals for the month. Aside from my determination to catch up and ultimately complete this challenge, I have none. I have many long term goals, such as "find a job," "move to Australia," "meet my boyfriend," "save some money," and "have a(nother) kid." Long term goals I have out the wazoo.

Even the reason for doing this blog--"write more, and better"--is a long term goal.

Perhaps I should make one. How about "meditate daily?"

I always felt my best, my most balanced when I meditated at least once a day, and I did it for a long time. But then...I got busy. I got depressed. I became disillusioned. Time, and life, started slipping away from me, and I was too sad and too despondent to get it back. So I slid into the realm writers and would-be writers know so well, the "I'll do it when I don't have 20 more important things on my plate."

Which, of course, is code for "never, but thinking I will makes me feel better about it."

Today is the 14th--the 15th, technically, but I haven't slept yet. My personal reality holds that the day doesn't end until I go comatose. I am backdating posts, catching up from my flight and subsequent post-flight rush to take care of everything else I'd neglected.

I can't meditate tonight, if I do, I'll fall asleep. No, seriously, I'm exhausted, only the desire to write between 3-5 blog posts so I can catch up is keeping my fingers to the keyboard. It's good practice for getting back into the habit of using stubbor determination when inspiration is low. But honestly, all tendencies to procrastinate aside, I have had one of two results happen when I meditate tired. The first is I fall asleep, nulling any good it might have done. The second is I jazz up, causing a sleepless night and possibly a sleepy next day.

I get little enough sleep as it is, thanks.

So, tomorrow. If you don't see some sort of note dropped on the 15th, someone yell at me, please. I offer myself up to the shame game.

Thanks.

I'll try to drop at least one note about it each day until the end of the month, and I'll try to do so in a way that bores no one. Because, dude, who really wants to hear about my visualization where I climb through the guts of a giant snake until I exit the mouth to find myself on a field of clouds facing a man who will fly me off to strange and odd places, amIright? Boring!

Places I've Been - Posting Challenge, Day 5

I snagged links today! Also follow along with Tina, Jean, Krista, and Tambo as they say much more sane and less esoteric things than me. :)

Today's demand is a picture of somewhere I've been. Give me a minute.

I'm back.

Here you go:

 

Not what you expected?

Well, I could tell you about my life in one of five different states or around forty different cities and small towns. I could talk about the six or seven other states I have visited. I could speak of mountains, forests, scenic highways, oceans, swamps, fields, and deserts. I could talk of famous cities, of festivals and events, of clubs and nightlife, even of places that have briefly been home to me as I passed through area after area.

I won't. I'm not travel guide, and besides, you've probably already been there too. If you haven't, Google it.

I want to discuss something a little more...mythic. More surreal. Maybe even crazy. I want to talk about the place where I grew up.

Somewhere in the mind of every lonely child is a friend, just waiting to be imagined. And somewhere in the mind of every abused child is a still small place, a place they used to get away. And that a child suffering both, a creative, lonely, frightened child might create a populated world to flee to...it makes perfect psychological sense.

But it was real to me, real enough that it altered my entire life. It was a land where, in dark corners of the forest, trees bled and screamed. Where unicorns--real unicorns, not these pansy ass, horse-with-a-horn-Jesus-myth-virgin-loving-wanna-bes--were rare, beautiful, intensely magical...and were the terrifyingly vicious fighters of myth. (Seriously, I don't care how you depict a unicorn, but if you are drawing a horse with a horn, you're DOING IT WRONG.) It was a land with dangers around every corner and magic that was just a little too chaotic to be trusted, a war-torn land where children were disposable and people were suspicious and frightened even of familiar faces, and yet was also a land of incredible, awe inspiring beauty and endless, boundless potential.

I tried to write about it, in fact, spent most of my childhood locked in a battle with myself, trying to depict this inner world to my satisfaction. I eventually put that story down and moved on, after thirteen years of trying. I came to realize how difficult it was to capture, and if I succeeded in my dream, if I managed something so well that it could be published and shared but I made a mistake in that world, it would be cemented in print forever. The very thought felt like a betrayal. So I moved on to write stories about worlds that I cared about so much less. I still loved them, mind, but they weren't Home.

I suppose no one can capture the spirit of their home very well, even if they are writing pure nonfiction, and not about a world that lives in their head.

Maybe I'll take it up again, someday.

In the meantime...if you are following me through these posts, you'll recall I mentioned that I am a weirdness magnet. Let me leave you with a little weirdness that is--probably, maybe--all in my head.

But, you know? Maybe not.

15 Things – Posting Challenge – Day 1

The official instructions are to post on Day 01- A recent picture of you and 15 interesting facts about yourself.

I warned you I’d fudge the pictures.

This is a picture of me from several years ago. Digging, of course. The blue dye in my hair had faded to a rather pleasant green, I am, as always, barefoot as possible, and I am on a mission. Aside from gaining weight, not much has changed.

I’ve done these “15 facts” things before, and I always seem to say the same things. So I’m going to try to stretch my wings on this one. Let’s see how I do.

1) I’m a Florida girl at heart. Not the soulless “Death’s Waiting Room” Florida has become, catering to the very expendable cash of people who realize they can’t take it with them, and who’s voting views look no further than the end of their ever shortening life spans. No, I’m a true Florida girl, one of the ones who can remember when Florida tourism advertised itself for the state’s natural beauty and not just tourist trap beaches and hotel pools. I am swamps and bugs, beach sand and sticker bushes, hurricanes and hundred degree weather, buzzards and eagles and hawks and ten types of cranes, I am antebellum trees with hanging moss, alligators and armadillos, bikinis and bare feet.

I am the living embodiment of the memory of the state, of the land, which is slowly dying as short sighted fools build in a place with no natural barriers to stop them. Florida was once not paved all up and down the coast to the point that the only way you knew you exited one city and entered the next was a sign telling you so. You didn’t find an air conditioner in every building, and old faces everywhere you looked. Florida has been consumed by people who exploit her worse than a five year old sex slave, and like that unfortunate child, they will use her until she dies. She is dying.

I secretly root for hurricanes with high property (not people) damage. I root for fires and floods, for the unsavory reputation of death to follow closely on the heels of her name. I want people to think twice before moving here. I want them to consider other warm places, Arizona, Texas, Alabama, or half the bloody South. I want those who only care about their next breathing day (young and old, mind), and who devoid the state of opportunity, of growth, of beauty, of any reason for youth to stay, of any help to the non-wealthy farmers and laborers who daily strive to make this a state worth living in to leave. I want them to find other homes and never return.

I want my state back.

2) I have very limited reading habits, which I’m told for a writer is suicide. I read sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and a (very) little bit of romance. I also read countless fun articles, news articles and blogs online, though I’m not sure how these officially classify.

I don’t so much read non-fiction as skim for what I need, and most straight fiction (aside from select humor) bores the crap out of me. I consider most suspense and westerns as “men’s fiction,” meaning they are fast in pace but often low in characterization. I also eventually quit reading mysteries for this reason–I was supposed to care about what was going on, but I didn’t. I feel obligated to struggle through classics, though I do admit a few of them are perennial favorites. Overall, though, the daily human experience holds little thrill for me–to me, I can look out a window and see it. It’s making the impossible seem real that turns me on, so that is what I read.

On the flip side, I do read voraciously.

3) I have a strange idea of beauty. I think lush green lands are very pretty, but…postcard pretty. Uninspiring. For beauty that shakes me to the core, give me miles and miles of miles and miles. The ocean’s vast emptiness, the unfolding desert, the middle of winter when the leaves are off the trees and you can finally see the land rolling away before you. I love skies that go on forever, rainstorms seen in the distance, sunsets and sunrises that brand the sky halfway into tomorrow. The beauty I seek doesn’t have to be harsh, but it should have grit.

Perfect beauty on people bothers me too. Give my a slightly asymmetrical face, a smile too wide or too crooked, some lines, crows feet, scars, a little bit of pudge. Dolls and statues are beautiful because in them we can create a human ideal. People are beautiful because of their flaws. Anyone without flaws is also without humanity, without the imprint life leaves on us all. They are pod people, and as such are to be avoided. And screw a media that says otherwise.

4) I have found the way to discourage people from reading things is to be verbose.  So if you want to publicize personal facts without having people actually read them, just talk a lot. (By the way, how you doing in this post so far?)

5) I’m double jointed to the point that sometimes things…spontaneously dislocate. I don’t know why, but my guess is I stretch the tendons or something just a little too far. Old age is gonna be fuuuuunnn…..

6) I like long hair on both men and woman, and I think the cultural push towards ever shorter hair is criminal. I will admit, there are people who look best in shorter hair, and even I prefer them that way, but I think it should be personal choice, not a cultural no-no. For both genders. I also think there is nothing unprofessional about well kept long hair on men or women, and that with all the other things we need to worry about, nitpicking someone for long locks is just plain petty.

7) I overcooked my toast and now it’s a briquette. Hey, it’s a thing….

8) I love writing, but I absolutely hate, hate, hate the process. This was something I held as a shameful secret for years. But then, much to my surprise, I discovered I was not the only one. Some people write shallowly, and you can tell. Others rip open hidden corners of their souls and struggle to get it on paper. How hard that struggle is, I think, depends on how good a grip you have on your inner demons and past nightmares, and as it turns out, a surprising number of people don’t have a grip that’s all that good.

To everyone who keeps on plugging away anyway, driven by muses with whips who chain you to a writing implement, I salute you. This should, in the end, be a “fun” thing, but I’m not sure it should ever be easy.

9) I want to have a pet skunk, a couple ferrets, breed Scottish Fold kittens, and own a greyhound, a Great Dane, and a small dog. My perfect household will be overrun with animals. And kids.

10) I once had a cockroach in my cleavage. No, I don’t feel like sharing that story today; I just told you to tease you.

11) I have a memory of something that happened before I was born. Not telling that story today either. Instead, I’ll just link it.



12) I’m a weirdness magnet. If something is going to go strange, I tend to be standing somewhere in the vicinity, if not at ground zero. Most of the time I’m just minding my own business when it happens, too.

Wait, you want examples? Don't ask for much, do you?

Well…two UFOs (not aliens, but flying objects with zero explanation behind them, I looked), an odd experience that I can only describe as a fairy encounter, several ghost-like encounters and one haunted house, shared dreams with an ex, and a few experiences to frightening to go into. Also, there was the time I got into an exclusive camp because I wrote on a wall (they weren’t mad and it wasn’t punishment, they were impressed), twice I was stranded on the road and helped (safely) by complete strangers, survived an accident that should have killed me, and a whole lot more. Seriously, my life makes no sense, and people who’ve lived with me can and will attest to this.

Thankfully, I have yet to make a door fall off a plane, though.

13) I like caves and underground spaces. I go into them even though I suffer a touch of claustrophobia and find them uncomfortable places to be. This may go back to that whole weird concept of beauty–I think they are marvelous. I also love exploring ruins for much the same reason.

14) I am a Southern eater to the core. Sweet tea, grits, fried catfish, greens, black-eyed peas, and all those other down-home foods are my nirvana. I have had fancy food, foreign food, and things so delicious they’ll make your toes curl, but offer me a choice between those things and cheese grits and the grits win every time. However, a good red curry is a fighting second place.

15) I did this for a year:



The falling down? I did lots of that, too.

It was how I got past a suicidal depression. Needless to say, I wasn’t much fun for my teammates, and I think they were happy to see me go. But it saved my life. I can’t do it again–too time intensive, it costs too much money, and then there’s the little matter of having blown out both my ankles–but I’m glad I did it. I wouldn’t take back the experience for the world.

Duty, DONE. Honestly, I’m not that interesting of a person, and some of my most interesting bits I don’t want to talk about right now anyway. Maybe I’ll revisit it next year and see if I have anything different to say.

A Resolution, Of Sorts…

My problem with writing? I’m not doing it.

After my last post I ran to my computer files and started to write. The inspiration was there, little foreign fingers digging into my brain, clawing their way sown synapses, off my finger, and onto the page. Only somewhere along the way, the journey went wrong. My brain seized, with no idea what came next. My fingers faltered, and the words that poured forth onto the page were the scribblings of a nine year old child. I don’t mean that I felt my writing was trite, bad, underinspired, or that I was frustrated with the trouble I was having, though all of this is true; I mean I literally wrote better when I was nine years old.

This is not writer’s block. I have suffered writer’s block in the past, sometimes for long stretches, and this feel nothing like that. It’s more like a form of giving up, on myself, on life, on everything. I have good reason to, it’s been a hard year, one where I have worried more often and more legitimately about keeping food in my belly and a roof over my head than I have in many, many years, perhaps ever. Things have never physically been this bad before, and I have been in some Very, Very Bad Places ™.

And the constant, constant, constant rejections and the seemingly deliberate attempts to slaughter my self esteem by the one company who did hire me have about ended me. I find my day to day struggles are very basic anymore–getting out of bed before noon is a triumph, and getting to sleep before dawn is a miracle achieved only through use of drugs. I never thought motivating myself to get dressed would be a Thing, but it is. Call it depression if you want; I call it just not seeing the point.

I suppose it’s no shock that, mentally crippled as I am, that disability has affected everything, even my one sanity release that costs me nothing but time. And gods know on sleepless nights, Time is a commodity I have to spare.

So, I’m going to try something. Maybe it’ll help and maybe it won’t, and maybe I’ll finish and maybe I won’t, but it’s worth a try. I am going to undergo the 30 day blog challenge. I’m going to write bits and spurts of nonessential data about myself just for practice. Just to get back in the groove. Just to see where it takes me.

One caveat–I hate pictures. I will fudge every demand for photos. You, my readership of three-or-less, will deal. However, I will promise to make what I do give in photos worth your while. You’re welcome.

Sharp-eyed folks may notice the time stamps getting a little fudged, but the posting on the right days. I make no apologies. If I get a job interview, have to take a cross-country flight (which I do soon), or simply have a nervous breakdown, I will be in no position or possibly frame of mind to post. I’ll make it up.

I hope.

I haven’t much faith in anything recently, so asking me to have faith in me is a little much. I will do this without faith, and see where it gets me. Hopefully writing better than the ghost of my nine year old self. That’s all I really ask for.

For those who want to know, this is how 30 Days of Me will go:

Day 01- A recent picture of you and 15 interesting facts about yourself.
Day 02- The meaning behind your blog name.
Day 03- A picture of you and your friends.
Day 04- A habit that you wish you didn’t have.
Day 05- A picture of somewhere you’ve been to.
Day 06- Favorite super hero and why.
Day 07- A picture of someone/something that has the biggest impact on you.
Day 08- Short term goals for this month and why.
Day 09- Something you’re proud of in the past few days.
Day 10- Songs you listen to when you are Happy, Sad, Bored, Hyped, Mad.
Day 11- Another picture of you and your friends.
Day 12- How you found out about blogging and why you made one.
Day 13- A letter to someone who has hurt you recently.
Day 14- A picture of you and your family.
Day 15- Put your iPod on shuffle: First 10 songs that play.
Day 16- Another picture of yourself.
Day 17- Someone you would want to switch lives with for one day and why.
Day 18- Plans/dreams/goals you have.
Day 19- Nicknames you have; why do you have them.
Day 20- Someone you see yourself marrying/being with in the future.
Day 21- A picture of something that makes you happy.
Day 22- What makes you different from everyone else.
Day 23- Something you crave a lot.
Day 24- A letter to your parents.
Day 25- What I would find in your bag.
Day 26- What you think about your friends.
Day 27- Why are you doing this 30 day challenge.
Day 28- A picture of you last year and now, how have you changed since then?
Day 29- Your favorite song.
Day 30- In this past month, what have you learned

When Practicality IS the Dream

It’s two weeks until Christmas and my blog is snowing. No, seriously, there is a snow GIF on my blog. I’m not sure how I feel about this. It’ll all melt off by January 4th–about the time that, I am told, snow will fall for real in my neck of the woods. Maybe by then I’ll have a job, so I can buy snow boots. Otherwise I’ll have to trust to thick socks and flimsy cloth sneakers.

I am looking once again down the barrel of my writing. The strange creatures that haunted the pages of my comics are calling to me again, wanting to give birth to themselves from the corners of my mind.

I’m not sure how I feel about that, either.

In the midst of a crisis of confidence--or perhaps a four-on-the-floor depression, who the hell knows?–I decided my writing was…well…bupkus. Utter, total, and complete bupkus. I was a hack, a wannabe, with all the writing talent of a squid, and I’d be better off investigating a real line of work, like, say, my local 7-11.

So I stopped. Completely.

But the ideas won’t go away. They flirt on the outskirts of my mind; tiny black-winged figures in the distance, soaring over the trees, somewhere between threatening and begging, waiting to be brought screaming to life beneath my typing fingertips. I find no joy in creating them, no joy in the process of making them coherent in the plot-line, and some pain in that they won’t tell me what they’re up to! I only have the vaguest, most frustrating idea.

But there is a perfect beauty to their flight, their menace, the way they can destroy and mutilate lives, then disappear without a trace. There is a terrible wonder in the way they devour others, and something inspirational in the heroes that oppose them, though they barely know what it is they’re up against. There are so many story threads here that I need a chart to map them–brother to sister, brother to friend, sister to friend, friend to friend, friend to lover, lover to lover, lives blown apart by the deepest connections, ties severed and wounds flayed as only the closest of friends can do, now in desperate need of mending before the darkness comes for them all.

And still, I’m writing a blog post instead, putting off the damned struggle of herding and wrestling all these ephemeral cats down onto the paper and pinning them in place, my collection of feral, furry little butterflies. I’m dodging the scratches to my psyche, the claw marks in my hopes and dreams, the little teeth biting viciously through my self confidence and tearing it away in chunks. I avoid the specter of my own failure by failing to try, and while that accomplishes nothing, at least I still hold the dream that I could have succeeded. You know, if I really wanted to.

You ever wonder how it is we can so easily lie to ourselves, even when we know what we’re doing is a lie?

These days I sometimes wonder if that’s all any of it is, a lie. I will never get a job or unemployment, but run out of money and be kicked out of my home. I will lose everything I own and roam the streets begging for a little compassion from a cash-strapped and increasingly hostile country, hoping not to be raped or murdered by people who see how vulnerable I am. I will never go overseas to meet my one true love, but break his heart and my own with false promises I can never keep. I will never see my son again. I’ll be seen as a shameful influence and a fuck-up by his parents. And I will never, ever, not in a million years, write my bestselling novel.

So why even try?

Sometimes the answer “because I need to eat and maybe keep warm” is the only one that keeps any of us going. It’s certainly a good enough one for me. So I will try again, for god and country and a desperate need to eat.

And who knows, maybe I’ll get lucky.