Tag: blogging

Abracadabra

I wrote yesterday.

I don’t know if all writers have the same fears that I do, but chief amongst them for me is that the words will stop coming one day. I know, I often will have fallow periods where I don’t feel like writing anything, or that the well needs to be replenished before I can draw from it again. Since the surgery I’ve been trying to write, and not succeeding. The brace was a problem, the loopiness of my brain was another problem, and of course the correct medications at long last also relieved me of the stress/anxiety, which naturally I worried my anxiety might be the seed and root from which my writing sprang. But last night when I got home from work I was determined, and I sat down and started writing. I had been trying to work on this short story for quite some time, and over the last few weeks the form of the story began taking shape in my head. I decided, once I got home from running errands, I was going to sit down and work on the story. The most I’ve ever been able to do at a time since the surgery is a couple of hundred words here and there, and a great day was getting more than three hundred. I had started the story last week, got about five hundred or so words in, and then….not much. But last night, I sat down and added almost twenty-five hundred words to it in one sitting. And it felt amazing. I’m sure they aren’t great words and more story and editing is definitely required on the story, but I hadn’t had a writing day like that in a very long time–so long I’d also reached a point where I was worried that the words weren’t going to come anymore.

It’s so nice to know that isn’t the case, and that the magic is still there.

And it feels even better this morning. I just needed one day of that, apparently, to get my confidence back. Hopefully, tonight I’ll finish that story and tomorrow night after work and PT I can start another.

I was a Festival widow again last night–Paul not getting home until well after I went to bed–but last night was, of course, the final episode of the three-part reunion for The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, which was kind of disappointing, given all that had been promised. Ironically, reality television (or at least the kind I prefer to watch) has become so scripted and produced that surprises–like the ones this show delivered–are very rare (and you also have to wonder, still, how much of it was produced and created), and so they get a lot of attention and publicity and are all over the zeitgeist (Vanderpump Rules and Scandoval, anyone?), and of course, ratings are the most important thing. Anyway, I did spend almost two hours watching that and even the Watch What Happens Live that follows, which I never watch (I loathe Andy Cohen), but that was it for me; once the credits rolled I went to bed and had another lovely night’s sleep.

It feels, in some ways, like my life is starting to come back together and fall back into what it was before 2023 again, which is kind of nice. I’ve felt like my life has been out of my control for a very long time now (and yes, I’ve accepted finally that such control is actually an illusion; we have so little control over what happens to us and in our lives, really), but I kind of feel like I’m starting to get a grasp on everything again, and that’s nice. It’s amazing what a difference it makes when I actually am writing something, isn’t it? I feel so much better and at peace with the world and centered. Life provides enough drama as it is, so why seek it out? I find myself checking Twitter less and less now; I do miss the people I used to engage with there, who are now scattered over numerous other platforms, and having to check more than one and try to be active on more than one (and let’s face it, both Twitter and Facebook were more than enough for me) is more than I have the bandwidth for, let alone any such desire to maintain all these different social media accounts. I do seem to spend most of my time on social media blocking people more than anything else, and I don’t know that that is a productive use of my time on social media? Looking for people to block rather than to interact with? Really no, and it’s just more negativity.

Because that’s what I need more of in my life: negativity. Please.

And on that note, I think I’ll go ahead and head into the spice mines. I may be back later or it may be tomorrow; who can say for sure? But whatever happens, have a lovely middle of the week Wednesday, Constant Reader.

I Get Excited

It’s Thursday morning and it’s not as cold as it’s been; it’s barely below fifty degrees, which feels like a heat wave after the last few days. I didn’t sleep deeply last night, but I do feel rested today. I suspect I will hit a wall this afternoon and crash really hard, too. I have to get up early tomorrow for PT before my work-at-home duties, and after that I am hoping to dive headfirst into some writing. Parades are literally around the corner, and that’s going to be ridiculously stressful for me…although it may be interesting to see how my new meds affect parade stress. This weekend is more of the Bold Strokes Book-a-thon, which means I won’t have as much free time as I ordinarily would, either. But I’ve been feeling very clear-headed these days, which is lovely after all that time with my brain clouded and clenched into a fist of anxiety. I’m still not as much on the writing horse as I want to be and need to be, but I am hopeful this weekend I’ll kick back into gear.

I was tired after I made groceries in the cold after work yesterday, so once again spent most of the evening ensconced in my chair with Sparky sprawled across my lap. I watched this week’s dose of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, which was one of their most entertaining episodes in a very long time, and then Paul came down and we watched an episode of Lupin, which I am really enjoying, and now I kind of want to read about Arsené Lupin, too. Le sigh. So much to read and so little time.

Remember yesterday when I talked about how Tuesday I had kind of spiraled, despite the new medications? I just figured that sometimes it just might not be strong enough to do the trick or something. Anyway, so yesterday morning I didn’t have time to take my daily morning meds so I put them in a little plastic container and brought them to work with me. Around noon I went into my backpack and saw the little plastic container, and thought oh, I forgot to take them I’ll do that now but just as I swallowed them I saw another plastic container on my desk and realized I had taken the pills for the day already, but clearly had forgotten them in my bag on Tuesday…and it all clicked into place. So yes, I took a double dose of everything yesterday and I was in a great mood by the time I left the office to make groceries in Mid-city. But by the time I got home and unloaded the car and put everything away while also being out in the cold? Ugh, exhausting. I did finish folding a load of laundry and started doing another load I’ll have to finish tonight–along with the dishes; I want to clean the kitchen as much as possible so I don’t have to do any of it tomorrow or over the weekend. I also will have to swing by the postal service on the way home tonight, but that’s my only errand so I should be home relatively early and thus able to get those other chores done, possibly some reading, and even some writing in addition to quality kitty time. I’ve become quite attached to Sparky since he came home with us a few months ago. My arms and legs and chest and back are covered in scabs thanks to his Freddy Kruger-like claws, but that’s fine. I used to call Skittle Satan’s Kitty for much the same reason. I do love that he likes to sit on my shoulders, which is very cute. It’s also kind of fun to wonder what kind of havoc he hath wrought in the apartment every day when I come home–and it’s getting better every day. I think maybe that has more to do with me being better about leaving things out on counters and surfaces instead of him learning anything–he really doesn’t–but I’ll take it. The apartment is also slowly starting to come back together, too.

Last year was a bit of a whirlwind. Lots of ups and downs and a lot of brain frying, to be completely honest. It’s difficult sometimes to remember when you’re going through tough times that–hard as it is to see while you’re dealing with it–that eventually you’ll see what you learned from it. Sometimes I do need to be hit in the head with a sledgehammer, but eventually I do see it. What does 2024 hold in store for me? I don’t know. I don’t even want to hazard a guess!

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I’ll see you again later.

California Dreamin’

Thursday and a work-at-home day for me, which is nice. I slept really well last night–deeply, only woke up a time or two (once was because Scooter was purring and making bread on me)–and it’s been lovely feeling rested lately, really lovely. I’ve been doing a lot of contemplation lately; thinking about my life, ways to get things under control, and what I should be prioritizing as opposed to what ultimately doesn’t really matter in my life; funny how the unimportant stuff always tends to wind up causing the most stress and eating up the most time and energy, isn’t it? It’s also amazing to me that my identity; how I see myself, is almost entirely wrapped up in being a writer, and yet it is inevitably the thing I devote the least amount of my time and attention to, which probably has a lot to do with why I always feels so off-center and disoriented and discontented; really, the only time in my life where I actually do feel content (okay, that’s an exaggeration, but roll with it) is when I am actually writing. I love the act of creation, of putting words and sentences and paragraphs together in order to bring characters and their story to life on the page–and the dichotomy of my always having to force myself to do something that brings me enormous joy and satisfaction (much like going to the gym and working out) is something I’ve never been able to get to the root of, even with the assistance of a therapist asking probing questions coming from things I’ve said while riffing on why I have such a tendency to be so self-defeating.

Case in point: I still haven’t made that to-do list I’ve been needing to make all week.

I guess my old standard for to-do lists holds, and the first thing I need to put on it is make a to-do list.

We’ve been watching a lot of terrific crime shows lately that we’re really enjoying/enjoyed: Mare of Easttown, Cruel Summer, the latest season of Line of Duty (I love this show and hate that this is the final season), and we’ve been bingeing our way through all the seasons of The Sinner, going backwards since each season is relatively self-contained; the character of the detective, Harry Ambrose (not sure if it is Harry), played brilliantly by Bill Pullman–his narrative arc as a person is so secondary to the primary crime story he is investigating that it doesn’t matter if you watch the seasons in the proper order. We watched the third first (because MATT BOMER), then the second (Carrie Coon was brilliant), and now are watching the original with Jessica Biel, and we’ve greatly enjoyed them all. (I will say that in this first season we are in the midst of, there’s more emphasis on Harry’s personal story, and it’s not as interesting as it could be and really pulls away focus from the crime investigation, which becomes more complicated and complex with each episode.)

I’ve also not been reading much lately, other than the occasional non-fiction (I am nearing the end of Barbara Tuchman’s The Zimmermann Telegram, which I am enjoying) and have also taken to just opening up her A Distant Mirror to a random spot and immersing myself in the calamitous fourteenth century.

I’ve also been trying to figure out the point of this blog, and if there ever has been one. When I first started keeping one years ago–December 2004, to be exact–it was because I needed to do something, anything, to start writing again. I also was very naive; I never really thought of it as being something other people would find or read–this was before even MySpace, for God’s sake–and I do recall, back in those heady day on Livejournal, that it was a way for me to write about things I felt passionate about; the things I wanted to write about that no one would ever pay me to write about, to be completely honest. In the first entries I was trying to find my way, trying to figure out what this blog’s other purpose, besides just making myself sit down and do some writing every day again, after a lengthy fallow period following a personal trauma…and it really took off, somehow, after Hurricane Katrina–as I wrote out and processed the darkness and emotional trauma (on top of all the others from the period I’ve always referred to as the Time of Troubles) I was experiencing, the highs and lows of every day, the grim and gritty determination to hunker down and get on with life, somehow keep going. As social media became more and more popular in the years that followed and writing a blog became almost passé (I remember someone mocking me–kindly, or so I thought at the time–for having a blog on 2009 by saying something like “Oh, how 2002 of you”–yet here I am, twelve years later, going on with it), I kept plugging away, in my ADHD way of scattershot “I read the book or movie or TV show” or “why am I struggling with this book” or the utter mendaneness of my daily existence; whether slept well or the house is a mess or I have a lot to do and errands to run and on and on with barely a thought as to whether I was providing content that would draw people here every day or so; and whether or not I wanted this to be that sort of thing. I don’t want to now–never have–turn this into a thing where I feel stress or anxiety about whether people read it or not; I’ve never cared about that, nor have I ever cared about whether things I post here will get people to buy my books or turn them away from my books. (It really is a wonder I have a career….)

And now back to the spice mines. Happy Thursday, everyone.