Tag: balance

Balance

I’m getting better at balancing.  Not good, but better than I’ve been.

The big deal always seems to be that I’m a self-concerned (to put it mildly) person with things that he’d like to do … who wishes to be a good person and was trained (by accident or design) to be willing to sacrifice his own convenience, comfort, or even happiness to forward that of others.  Worse, somewhere I picked up the misapprehension that to do so was a mark of Virtue, and to be sought after.

A moment’s thought reveals the issue with that concept, but for those who are challenged with a moment’s thought:   Continue reading “Balance”

Ides of November

They flowed over us, those dread ides and the week that followed, a dark tide with currents strange and vast, and bore us we knew not where.

Life this week has been extremely life-like, and I’d like that to stop. Shannon’s workplace began to eat her alive, and she bore this with characteristic passivity (like, “Back the hell off or I’ll impale you with your own grandmother’s still-bleeding spinal cord!”). About the time the distemper shots kicked in and she was calming, my workplace rose up and began to eat me. I saw a doctor for a moderate ailment, and had several new experiences associated with that event, some of which (if I am feeling horrid and foul and want to hurt folk who’ve done me no harm) I may share with you all in great detail later. Last night, hot on the heels of this, we stayed in town and helped Lee & Dorothy set up for Orycon, which we will begin to attend today.

Through most of this I have kept my words flowing, but day before yesterday was only 300 words and yesterday was naught but work and sleep, and was sufficient. Words may or may not happen this afternoon; I favor “will”, but will only hold me to moderately super-human standards.

I’m getting much better about that. It’s making the writing process remain fun, which was one of my goals for this year. Good.

And. Still on track for first draft. Also good.

EDIT: Better than on track. The goal I am shooting for is between 80k and 90k words (short novel length). If I perform two 20-minute stints with Dr. Wicked each day, I will be done with the first draft two weeks ahead of time.

I’m okay with that.

Crossposted from Epinephrine & Sophistry

Master of the Obvious

Step #8 of keeping my writing flowing required me to vacuum and call Jackson County Circuit Court.

I’ve known that distractions are … well, distracting, and that the gradual torture of being nibbled to death by ducks  can keep me from doing what I want to do, living how I want to live.  And I still manage to forget this on a regular basis.

Currently, I have overdue projects at work (not my fault, but still my responsiblity), papers to file with the court to make certain we don’t lose a third of my income, a snake rack to finish building without the most basic tool needed — a workspace — and the usual little duties that go into living.  I have been unable to get a firm grip on all of those things.  I have not been sleeping well, or enough.  I have, in fact, been degrading into an utter mess.

Saturday, Shannon declared that, while I was writing letters to the court, she would vacuum and clear the table of mail-drifts.  A magic thing transpired; with each broad sweep of the vacuum, clean carpet appeared and my mood (very slightly) lifted.  The floor was clean; all things were possible.

That’s a lot of weight that was on that floor.

Uplifted, I wrote letters.  Letters written, I helped reclaim table and more floor.  Reclamation complete … you get the idea.  Each quanta gave slightly firmer footing to reach for the next quanta, and more feeling of having done something to keep my life and my choices mine.

I still have not written (there are more things that Need Doing), but I’m getting there.

S’okay, kids, learn from me:  When event-maelstrom whirls about you, do one thing, however petty, to commit order against life’s vortices.

Crossposted from Epinephrine & Sophistry

Anti-heroism

Dinner with Cera & Ken was lovely.  Cera and I have been entirely failing to have time to talk for about a decade, so that was nice, and we knew each other when I was crucifying myself to demonstrate heroic love for someone that didn’t appreciate or believe it and she was having difficulties of her own.  We agree that we are both astonishingly more stable and happy now, and blame a large part of that one Ken & Shannon.  Love feast all around.

Of feasts:  the food was OMG!!!11!BBQ!!111BVDs good.  I had wild boar nachos, Shannon’s carne asada and tequilas (one of which was amazing) and bites of Cera’s tongue (the meat on her plate was tongue, you pervs) (dammit), all of which were extraordinary.

So, good.

Today I was cruising the intarwebs looking for a suitable writing prompt –

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What I did for me today

I was becoming moderately toxic at work, so I took me to lunch.  Lunch was a confection made of blended ice and dark chocolate from Euphoria Chocolate (much better than it sounded; there may not be a faster way to absorb chocolate without an IV and an enema) with take-back-to-the-office chocolate from Moonstruck.

Yes, I become stereotypically premenstrual under stress.  Cope.

By midafternoon I was becoming toxic again (too much chocolate loses effect).  I handed off the phones for ten minutes and took a micronap/short self hypnotic vacation.

Dinner was not cooked by me.

Drinks.

Lisa McCormick.

I’m much, much better than I was.  I call this a good day.

Crossposted from Epinephrine & Sophistry

Hive Mind

Yesterday there were three micro-naps through the day, and by the end of the second one my brain was largely back to what I will loosely call normal (but actually mean at median functioning for me).  My posture improved, my energy was soaring in small fits, and I was optimistic again.  All was well, as well as all could be, with the exception that the rash that had broken out under my arms was still present, if improved.  I voiced these observations to Shannon, who was driving us along a road lined with fields of clover.

“…so it’s all much better except for the armpit hives.”

The moment sang with a crystalline chime that I hadn’t heard for ten days, and I was beset with visions of what an armpit hive must be like; I pictured skeps on legged platforms, clustered at the corners of the fields, armpits (sans shoulder, sans arm, some hirsute, some shaven, one with a tattoo) hovering industriously over the clover, buzzing to and fro.  I saw armpits back at home base, shaking and spinning in tight circles to communicate to the other armpits where the deodorant fields in flower might be found.  There were pitkeepers (not apiarists, but axillarists) with hooded coveralls and cans of smoke coming round to harvest the hives.

It’s lovely to be healthy again.

Crossposted from Epinephrine & Sophistry

Ch. Ugh. Ga.

Nothing is resolved, all things are colored panic-bright and ominously hanging (think Damocles at Christmas-time), but motion is ocurring and it appears to be focused in a single set of directions that will, I believe, result in me standing in a place where horse-hair strung doom is not swinging over my meat and drink.

The legal issue, for instance, is not resolved, but I understand the options available to me clearly, and know what steps to take to prevent the situiation’s worsening.  That is, I think, the best one can hope for when cleaning up years of mess.

The too-many-rats issue has been defined to all parties, clearly and succinctly.  It has resulted in no action whatsoever, but I intend to push that a bit (like, “go make a list of rentals and look at two today”).

Sleep is still not really working well for me.  As quickly as I understood the legal issues (and my mind went ohthankgawd) my attention turned to the umpteen things I’ve to do, all with deadlines of one sort or another.  The professional ones will be cleaned up about 10:00 Monday, if I go in around 6 … the furniture making ones (yes, that has a deadline) have been defined, each problem separated from the others, each one provided with resolution that can take place in sequence … exercise will simply have to be done in lesser degree for a while, and I’ve a plan for that … writing needs a whole brain, but Shannon and I have discussed a plan to get me through this week in fit shape to engage the 24-hour-writing contest next weekend.

So.  Perhaps not the chugga chugga chugga of the indomitable Catie (anybody see any idealization there?  I should send her a pedestal), but I’ll be up to full chugga soon enough.

Crossposted from Epinephrine & Sophistry

Hooky

I’ve taken a day off.  There is no occasion.  No one required me to go to the DMV, nor to move things, or save the world from creeping socialism or galloping capitalism or stationary halitosis.

I am, in point of fact, taking this day off because I can and I feel like it and I’ve been getting all duty-struck again, and want to stop.  

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Leaving Martyrdom By The Tracks

Today was terrible, horrible, no good, and very bad. I overslept. There was no coffee, and when I found things for breakfast it was a bad bran muffin that I never got to eat and a mushy banana that I only got a bite of by almost-lunch. Then I didn’t get lunch until 1:00 and it sort of sucked so much that I finished my mushy banana so that if I died the sucky lunch wouldn’t be the last thing I ever ate.

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