Tag: Euphoria

It Was I

Thursday and my last day in the office for this week, and then it’s a three day weekend after I finish work tomorrow. I am looking forward to the rest, frankly, and a chance to get caught up on things. I started feeling better about my writing yesterday–I always forget how not writing always impacts me psychologically, even if the writing is poor. When I don’t write, I start doubting myself about everything and that makes me procrastinate more which makes me doubt myself more, and you see how the mental spiral goes. But I paid all the bills yesterday and made groceries on the way home from work. I have to get the mail today, and have to swing by another store to make some more groceries that they didn’t have at the place I went last night (unusual, it’s usually a better store than where I regularly go). We are also going to Costco at some point this weekend, too, and I definitely need to get that list made. Tonight when I get home I need to put the dishes away and fold the laundry. So much excitement, right? I need to make a to-do list for the weekend, so I don’t forget all the things I need to get done this weekend. What would be lovely would be to get stuff done over the weekend and take Memorial Day itself as a “do-little-to-nothing” type day. I think we’re going to watch Dune Part 2 this weekend, and probably finish Euphoria. We started the second season last night and it definitely opened with a bang. I’m really enjoying this show a lot, and Zendaya kills it as Rue.

And this weekend I am going to kick it into gear and start trying to finish this y/a novel. I need to figure some things out with it first, but I definitely want to get back to writing it and making it into a novel from a novella. I think that sense of accomplishment will carry me through the rest of the year with writing, to be honest. I have two short stories I want to write for submission calls, one story I need to edit and revise to get it into one that’s due at the end of the month, and I need to finish revising these other two stories that are in progress and get the collection finished once and for all.

It’s kind of nice to feel excited about writing again, even if I haven’t actually done any in a while. I just hope this enthusiasm carries me through into the weekend…but then again, one never knows, does one? It is so weird that I feel so much more energetic and rested the further in the week we go, isn’t it? I don’t know why this has been the case, but it has been ever since I changed my medications. I hope to make it through the day and through my errands with the ability to still get some things done after I get home…but I also don’t have to get up early tomorrow, either. Yay!

And at least I am feeling optimistic again, you know? I don’t feel like my career is over or that the well has run dry; I just had to take some time away and now everything is a little rusty, and I need to retrain myself to focus again and lose myself in the writing.

An old man can hope, can’t he?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday–and I may be back later; one never really knows with me.

Goodbye Jimmy Goodbye

Here it is Tuesday, and I am feeling okay this morning–awake and rested, if a little creaky (which is every morning these days)–and my coffee is really tasty this morning, which is lovely. I slept pretty well, other than the occasional sniffing/clawing/biting from Sparky, and I could have easily stayed in bed for another hour or so, but that’s okay. Functionality is perfectly fine.

We watched more Euphoria last night, and I have to say, we are really enjoying it. Nate is a monster, played beautifully (see what I did there?) by Jacob Elordi; but as wild and over-the-top as the show is, it’s also marvelously queer–and also shows the difference between a miserable existence that is completely a lie (Nate’s dad) to Rue’s unabashed, unquestioned bisexuality, and of course there’s a marvelous trans character as well, who is just as developed and three-dimensional and has an interior life as much as the others, which is terrific. Represent, HBO! I’m also a bit surprised that this show hasn’t been targeted by the right–drugs and sex and drinking and teenagers, oh my! But they never came after Gossip Girl either; selective outrage is never consistent, after all.

I did write some last night; it was all garbage, but at least it was something, right? Even as I was typing the words as they came to me, I knew it wasn’t any good. I had the voice completely wrong, and the words, which I’d intended to create a dream-like kind of mood (the way Megan Abbott does, so effortlessly), weren’t good either. It’s just a prologue, and it’s not the actual book I want to write quite yet, but at least it was something–and it was in my mind so much I couldn’t really do much of anything else until I got it out of my system. It’s only about 1500 words or so, and needs to be redone, but I can work on that while I work on these other stories I need to get taken care of. There’s a lot that has to go into this book, which is probably going to wind up being shorter than I had really ever thought about–it kind of needs to be, kind of quick and nasty and dreamy.

Now that I’ve finished Where They Wait (more on that later), I am going to go back to something I’d started before my trip, and then I have some others I’d like to get through relatively quickly; but I do have a three day weekend to look forward to; so hopefully I can get some other reading done, too. I know we are going to Costco this weekend–I need to make a list–and I also need to make groceries, but I’ll probably swing by the grocery store on my way home from work tomorrow since it’s Pay-the-Bills Day. I also want to get a lot of the apartment taken care of, so I can take books to the library on Saturday and I can also drop off the dry cleaning, which will be a lovely start towards making the living room look like a living room and not a fraternity dorm room.

I do continue to keep tabs on the Noah Presgrove case in Oklahoma; his autopsy report was finally released last week (why did it take eight months is another good question), and it’s brutal. I knew it was bad, but Jesus. He literally was beaten to death, and the injuries are horrific. I also became aware of another case yesterday–Tom Brown in Canadian, Texas–which is also weird, is also small town stuff, and Canadian isn’t very far from Comanche, Oklahoma…although I doubt the cases are connected, despite the proximity; poor Tom disappeared on Thanksgiving, and his remains weren’t found for almost two years. Skin Hollandsworth had done an eight-part series on Tom for Texas Monthly, which I will probably read over the course of the weekend. It also occurred to me last night that I have become obsessed with the murders of teenaged boys in rural America lately. But how many cases like this are there, where a teenaged boy (granted, Noah was nineteen, but that still counts) is murdered in a small town where everyone knows everyone, but no one knows who the killer/killers is/are? Come on, now. I’m not buying that for a second.

There’s no corruption quite like small town corruption, is there? That’s also uniquely American, I think, and tells quite a different story than all the “real America/Joe Sixpack” right wing bullshit they try to sell us, where every small town is Mayberry and good American values are still appreciated. Well, in my experience every small town is either Twin Peaks or Peyton Place, and if that defines America….well, we need to rethink that.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably be back later.

Endlessly

Monday morning and it’s back to work for one Gregalicious. Memorial Day is this coming weekend, which means a lovely three day weekend for me, which will be lovely, and is even more lovely to contemplate. I didn’t get a lot done this weekend, which is NOT a good thing, but I can live with it. I feel rested and ready to go this morning, which is the most important thing to come out of a weekend in my humble opinion. It’s nice not to beat myself up over taking down time, you know?

I finished reading Where They Wait by Scott Carson, and loved it (more on that later), so I don’t consider the weekend a complete wash. We also started watching Euphoria yesterday. I’m not sure why we never watched in the first place, but damn–I thought Gossip Girl was over the top, but Euphoria is a whole other ball of wax, isn’t it? But I also love the way they tell the story, with Zendaya’s character narrating the story and filling in gaps about the other characters in the story, to give the viewers a better understanding of who they are. But whew–all the drugs and sex and drinking and porn watching and so forth–things are a lot different now than when I was in high school–although I do think this show might just take things to extremes.

It does kind of give me pause, though–my books about teenagers are nothing like this. I’m not even sure I could even write something like this, to be honest. But then again I always tend to come down on the side of innocence when it comes to teenagers…even if I do depict high school as an endless hell for the students. As I am not a high school student, my grandnieces and nephews are very religious so this wouldn’t be them, and I don’t know any high school students to ask, I will simply have to continue wondering. But I am sure that kids with access to money and so forth probably party a lot harder than we did when I was in high school (for the record, I had only had alcohol once before graduation–yeah I was one of those kids; incredibly innocent and even more naive; Dad still regrets letting me skip a grade to this day), and I sort of touched on that with #shedeservedit, but I think my next book with teens will go into more detail.

I didn’t write at all this weekend; the motivation was simply not there, which is actually shameful. It is AMAZING the excuses I can some up with to not write; I’m also beginning to think talking about plans to write instead of talking about having written is perhaps not the ideal way to go. I do feel good this morning; I don’t feel like I slept all that well last night, in all honesty, but somehow I am alert and have energy–that will undoubtedly flag a bit this afternoon before I go home. But I do hold out hope for a good week, as always.

We also tried Manhunt, the Apple series about the hunt for John Wilkes Booth and his accomplices after the Lincoln assassination; the first episode was a bit slow, but I do love Tobias Menzies and we’ll probably go back to it once we’ve finished Euphoria. I’m still not sure what the deal is with the rest of the episodes of After the Flood, but for whatever annoying reason, we only have access to the first two episodes, despite a Britbox subscription. (Note to self: see what all we are subscribed to, and cut the cord on the ones we never watch; in some cases it might be easier and cheaper to simply buy or rent the shows we want to watch.)

As you can tell, this weekend wasn’t much. Not much done, not much accomplished, and I pretty much just laid around the whole weekend, other than running to the grocery store (twice) and picking up the mail twice. I also don’t feel in the least bit sorry about it, either. I know I need to get back to writing and making some breakthroughs on things, which might engage the writing muscles again and get me back to writing, but I am really not feeling all that motivated anymore. I think a lot of it has to do with the overall inability to ever get caught up on the house. Sparky of course is no help whatsoever; he always seems to be wanting attention when I am doing anything, and he’s just too cute to ignore–even when he is attacking me with fangs and claws unsheathed. Especially then, really? But I really need to get back to writing every day, even if it’s nothing more than a couple of hundred words here and there. Every word written brings things closer to being finished, and if I have to work on multiple things at the same time, so be it; I’ve done it before and it worked, so it would work again–at least in theory.

And so on that note I am heading into the spices mines, trying to get everything onto a to-do list, which may help in some ways. I may be back later, you never know; there’s lots of blog drafts that need finishing.

I Wouldn’t Beg For Water

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas weekend; I have another paid day off today since Christmas Eve fell on Sunday. I’ve been up already for a while and went to PT this morning, so am alive and on an endorphin high that feels most excellent–which is why I didn’t reschedule this 7 am appointment once I remembered that today was another holiday and therefore didn’t need to have it; I’ve not gotten up before nine this entire weekend and so figured it would be an easier way to ease back into the week by keeping it, and by getting up this early I would be raring to go and should be able to get everything done that I need to get done.

Or not.

It was a nice long weekend of getting rest and slowly starting to put the apartment back together. Everything has slid around here since my surgery, and I was hoping to have the energy and time to get a lot of it done this weekend. I didn’t get a lot done, but I made progress, and I always count progress as positive movement, you know? I have a lot of stuff here that I need to take back to the office, but some of it can wait until next week. Yesterday we watched Saltburn, which I really enjoyed; I know the reviews are mixed, but I enjoyed it a lot. Barry Keoghan is going to become a big star, and I’ve enjoyed him in everything I’ve ever seen him in, starting with Dunkirk. Jacob Elordi is just ridiculously beautiful–we are now thinking about diving into Euphoria–and Rosamund Pike is also terrific. We then started watching the television series War of the Worlds, which is kind of ridiculously well done. I also read the latest volume of Heartstopper, and have some thoughts about that I will most likely share at some point. I made a turkey breast in the crockpot for pulled turkey (which was really good), rolls, and Stovetop stuffing (don’t judge me, it’s just the two of us and homemade is both too much trouble and makes too much), which was nice. I have a mess to clean up in the kitchen this morning, but there are worse things. I got to spend the holiday with Paul and Sparky, who is getting so big! What better way to spend a holiday than with those two?

It’s also a bit cold this morning in New Orleans, and I have to say our new heating system is phenomenal. I can tell it’s cold outside but it’s temperate inside; I’d have a space heater running in the pre-new system days, and would also wrap up in a blanket on the couch. Mardi Gras is right around the corner, and will be here before I know it. Paul already got a copy of this year’s Arthur Hardy’s Mardi Gras Guide, the local Carnival Bible. I also picked out my next read, The Drowning Tree by Carol Goodman, which I hope to get started on today, once I get some things done and run some errands. Of course, tomorrow it’s back to the office, but that’s okay, too. I do need more structure to my days, and my job does a really good job of that–otherwise I lose track of dates and days; the medical leave time I never had the slightest clue what day of the week it was, let alone the date.

I also have spent some time learning how to use the microwave properly, and it’s so nice to know how to heat things the right way! Yes, I am a moron who never learned how to use a microwave properly and so messed things up a lot when I tried to do anything other than simply reheat something on high. One of the reasons I never used my Instant Pot was because I never took the time to learn how, and maybe that’s a goal I should set for the new year: learn how to use appliances properly.

Well, this is a rather tedious entry, isn’t it?

Which means it’s time to head into the spice mines, isn’t it? Enjoy your Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you later.