On resuming writing after a major hiatus

It's been a while.  You made some rookie mistakes.  You forgot to put the speed to fast/ draft / ink saver and had to get more ink in a pandemic.  Forgot to put in page numbers for the first several chunks.  Forgot to print in reverse order.  You did finally use up a lot of that case of paper you accidentally bought, what, 15 years ago?

Seeing this stack of some of the things you blogged from 2009-2017 (even though there is so little after 2014 when I moved for real), you feel inspired.  Organize them.  Connect them with clips.  Read them in chronological order, a time machine to a decade ago.  Look at all these things you thought about, crafted into a rough shape, and launched.  Some of them are even good.  Look at the pile.  Just look.

And do it again.

what I want to do for my birthday

she asks what do you want
to do for your birthday, and I don't answer
for days because I am composing lists
in my head of all the impossible things
I want to do on my birthday

bask in a hammock in the warm sun of early summer
not drive anywhere
take a bath

read a book,
a whole book,
and not be in too much pain
during and afterwards

make delicious food without pain
eat foods I like that make me sick
and not get sick

enjoy time with my friends without stress and pain
talk to my sister without mental illness getting in the way

write without pain
walk without pain
rest without pain
laugh without pain

sleep deeply and well without pain
wake up refreshed and alert without pain
live one day without pain

she asks what do you want
to do for your birthday, and I think about how much
I want to finish something, anything, today

but then I think maybe that's not the most important thing
to do today, maybe instead I should
start something new with or without pain
as a new year of my life begins, and that is something
I can and will do on my birthday

dream books

when I took the medication to sleep,

I think I dreamed of a book series

never written yet outside my dreams,

and I awoke wanting desperately

to re-read it in the waking world

the blessings of blogging

How amazing it is
that when I will be reading
my work in public, even if
I have been in too much pain
to write much for months,
I can come
here
and find
so much wealth
to plunder.

Prometheus

• Creator
• Future Seer
• Present Doer
• Fire Bringer
• Savior of Man
• Defier of Gods
• Consequence Sufferer
• Helper Even In Chains
• First Civil Rights Activist?

when living in the darkness

She talks about how there is no
faith tradition for evangelicals
to follow in the times when one
is living in the dark.  True.
Disciplines and rituals aren't
for evangelicals.  Emotions are more
important and true than
"smells and bells", and where
does that leave those
deep in dark depression
who feel
nothing?
Nowhere
alone.
False.  This
is why it's important to tell true stories
of our times in the darkness,
for truth is light and hope, and hope
in the midst of darkness is
sometimes the only
gift of love we
can give
each other.

thoughts at the end

Today
was for writing
for reminding myself that
even though it was not my best year in any other way
I still wrote more
than the year before,
and if that is not a success,
what is?

small victories? a (terrifying) glimpse into my head on a bad day but at least not on a pike or anything

Missing a deadline because you are not sleeping well and thus are terrible at adulting is really irksome.  I felt like I was a plastic bag on a windy day getting blown around from one thing I needed to do to another and then all of a sudden there were no more days left.  (However, I did manage to exercise enough self-restraint to keep myself from replying with a number of mean things to a guy being a(n incorrect) grammar/writing jerk to one of my friends on Facebook.  That was a heroic effort today.)  These are the times I think I will never really be an "author" instead of a writer.  (This is not actually an awful thing because I'd rather be a writer even when I am not sleep deprived and scattered to the four winds.)  I already have no desire or motivation to get my work out there like one is supposed to do, but when a call for entries that seems tailor-made for my work comes, and I am a space cadet due to sleep deprivation for a couple weeks and miss it, it's frustrating, and I want to wallow in self-recrimination (which would be easier if I didn't keep getting distracted by everything in the world), but I also know that melodramatic wailing and stressing out is something I need to avoid (it's really bad for me because it kicks up the pain that leeches the sleep that scatters my brain all over the walls of the house that Jack built).  Did you know that sleep deprivation by itself causes symptoms that look almost exactly like fibromyalgia?  They did studies (that are totally illegal now) once upon a time.  (Seriously, Blogger, I promise fibromyalgia is a real word.  You and certain members of the medical community who also don't believe in it are not helping.)  I'd love to promise to do better next time, but if I'm honest with myself, I'll probably be sleep deprived next time because I am always sleep-deprived to a varying degree, and I just want to throw up my hands and give up, but that's not good either.  All of this thrashing makes me more tired, but the pain makes me not sleep.  I LOSE NO MATTER WHAT I DO OR DO NOT DO.  Therefore, I am going to go read a book, so the day is not a total loss.  Here's hoping I have the self-control to stop reading book at a reasonable time in order to not make things even worse . . .

Part 2 of some ramblings in honor of 6 years of blogging (yes seriously, technically)

It's kind of fun for me to read back through the years.  Some times are more fun than others, for sure, but mostly the super non-fun times are the silences, the spaces in between posts that sometimes stretch on and on.  (Or sometimes I was sacrificing all my creative energy to gulping down the entire catalogs of certain authors, so silence does not necessarily mean rough seas.  It could also mean selfish ones. : )

There was a thing Blogger offered once where you could get a print out of your blogs like a book, and I think I would really like to do that some day.  All the typos that got through would hurt my soul deeply, but I want this more-recent writing to be available to me so that in the rare chances where I see a call for submissions that I am actually drawn to, I can look through my 450-page monster thesis to see where I was from 2003-2009 and then continue looking through the blog pieces I've written since I started in 2009 without having to stare at a screen and scroll for days (which basically makes me want to stop looking).

I love weaving together readings by combing through what I've written and searching for strands to draw together and braid into some kind of story.  Right now, that story I can page through ends in 2009.  (Someday electronics might rule the world and be able to emulate this to my satisfaction, but that day is not here yet.  I hope it comes soon-ish and is accompanied by anti-gravity bras and other useful technology.)

With that, it's obviously time for bed.  : )  Cheers!  (And thanks for reading, faithful ones.  You are the cherry on top of the sundae.)

Part 1 of some ramblings in honor of 6 years of blogging (yes seriously, technically)

In honor of my 6th blogging anniversary and because I felt compelled to write every day again, I challenged myself to blog here every day for a month.  I more or less succeeded (with some instances of cheating), but there were 30 blog posts in 30 days, and I don't want to stop, even to get back into the discipline of just trying to do 1 blog post every day split up among the 4 blogs I have, so they are all updated regularly.  Forward momentum is powerful, and I don't want to hobble it by setting arbitrary rules.  All that's to say that if you are one of the few family members and friends who reads here regularly, the flood will not be abating for a while.  (You're welcome.)

I recently wrestled the haphazardly unpacked stacks of my notebooks from over the years (starting my second year of my MFA apparently), and there was so much drafting in them that never made it onto a page for even the cursory editing efforts I put forth here that I could seriously post one every day for several years before I had to start coming up with new material.  I totally want to do that some day.  But I also want to leave room for the NOW, so this can serve as more of a record again, a slightly humorous (when possible) way for the limited folks I've told about it to know I'm still here, still thinking too much, and still really obsessed with teeny tree frogs.  (I sort of think they're my current muses but not actually really at all.  They're just cute in an ugly way, and they can hang in there with the best of them.)

these small acts of self-sabotage

Why is it that I seem to be most compelled

to write when I am in more pain and know

that writing will make the pain worse?  I am

so ornery sometimes.  Are these small acts

of self-sabotage or attempts at redemption?

A Very Good Day

It was around this time last year that I was

sitting in the Homeowner's class before going

back to my roasting hot apartment where I

got to hear the shouting and fighting of

all my neighbors. 

                                             Now, I am sitting

in my quiet home watching snow fall on

the evergreens outside my study window.  

I have turned on my Christmas lights,

and I am writing.   Later, I will be at a pub

singing Christmas carols and seasonal songs. 

For these blessings, I

am truly grateful. 

Amen.

About that Christmas letter

I should be writing my Christmas letter, but it's cold, and I'm tired because I overdid it at PT today because the pool will be closed for a week and a half, and I already missed the restorative stretch and strengthening class earlier this week because I was supposed to have a big presentation, which I remembered to dress up for (which apparently crowded out the memory of the need to bring gym clothes and then the presentation got rescheduled anyway.  The pain has been flaring up lately, so that was unwise, and I could beat myself up over it and many other failings, but the Christmas lights are on in my new home, around  the window and my crooked, fake, tiny tree, and the humidifier and furnace are combining to make white noise music, and I am tired, but there are no neighbors shouting at each other or their kids, and  I am in my chair with a blanket, and I am writing until my hands tell me it's time to stop for real.

why I love readings

.

feeling full and drunk

on literature again

good reading tonight

.

Lies my fortune cookies told me

You are strong
and sensitive.
                                                    (possibly in a parallel universe)

You believe in
the fundamental goodness
of people.
                                                    (only in dreams, fortune cookie)

Others recognize
your sweet nature.
                                                    (when they see it hiding at its
                                                     vacation home in Switzerland)
You have an excellent
capacity for making people feel
at home.
                                                    (if said people normally make
                                                     their homes alone in
                                                     claustrophobia-inducing,
                                                     book-lined caves, not that I
                                                     could possibly judge them
                                                     for that)

Trying to do too much (never enough)

Maybe you can't
help them all, but
wouldn't you rather
be the child saving starfish
than the child stuck stopping
the flood with a finger?

If you're happy for other people and you know it/them, buy their stuff

Isn't it funny how excited we get when people we know get famous or recognized or well-known?  It's not like we did anything, but we're so happy and excited that we want to tell everyone, "Hey, I know this person!  You should support them by buying their stuff!"

Just today I found out that an upperclassman I had a little interaction with in college published a book this year.  I wanted to buy it sight unseen just to support him.  (It's actually an interesting topic to me, though, so it's not like I'd be wasting money.)  I'd been keeping an eye on his career at one of the major publications in our area of interest, and I cheered when he got to write big articles, when he won an award, and now when he has an ISBN number!  I'm just so happy for him!

A band with a few members I went to high school with has a new single that's been getting a lot of airplay on the two radio stations that play their music in my area.  This is exciting because it's rare for their music to have serious cross-over appeal on both adult contemporary and rock stations. It's great because there's a xylophone involved.  It's also exciting because the music video is much less cringe-worthy than some of their others.  :)

I am very happy every time one of their songs comes on.  (It did get a little ridiculous the week I heard them played 27 times in one week [the record was the day I heard them 5 times in a 24 hour period when I was only in the car listening to the radio for a total of one hour].)

I bought trade magazines when they had features on the band.  I got ridiculously excited when I saw a guy wearing one of their t-shirts at my retail store far away from their main original fan-base in Ohio.  I was all smiles the day I read some really positive professional critic reviews online.  I bought their albums before I even heard any songs off them because I wanted to support my former classmates, and I was really pleased with their third album (my favorite so far), but I liked that one so much I haven't spent much time with #4, and #5 just came out this year, so I'll have to give those some serious consideration soon.

Piece of trivia: the lead vocalist started out as the drummer and was teaching himself/learning the piano by the time we were seniors because he was so serious about the band.

Did I mention it makes me giddy when I hear them on the radio.  :)

I like it when people work hard and get rewarded.  I like to rejoice with people.  

Am I the only one who gets excited like this?

the will of God (5)

sometimes the dark part
of the moon can be clearly
seen beside the light

A little allergy-inspired poem

Sometimes it's hard to tell
whether it's dandelions or
cottonwoods drifting
until you sneeze.

Do you love a good job interview?

One reason I enjoy job interviews (yes, I'm a freak) is that, at the good ones, I always learn something about myself, in addition to learning things about the job.  At my second interview the other day, I finally figured out one of the reasons why I really want to teach college composition instead of the creative writing classes all people like me are supposed to want to teach.  Comp is one of the few interdisciplinary classes first-year students take, and I love interdisciplinary stuff.

Comp isn't interdisciplinary in the same way as a class that teaches, say,  history, art, and philosophy at the same time, showing students how the three happened in relation to each other.  It's more like comp is an interdisciplinary tool to teach people how to observe, analyze, and communicate no matter what discipline they're in.  Anyway, I figured that out during the interview, so it was a worthwhile interview in my book.  :)

Have you ever learned anything unexpected about yourself during a job interview?