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 |  My blog for the blog challenge |
| Ahem, ahem, ahem ... cough cough cough ... mememememememe ... Okay, I'm ready to write now. |
| Hey. I'm alive. Not really blogging too much these days. Been mulling ideas over in my head about the "Princess Generation" ... great thoughts to alienate and piss people off Other ideas about the generation just younger than me who can do NOTHING without reading it in a book first ... more ways to alienate and piss people off I guess I'm well on my way to being a grumpy opinionated old lady with too many cats. LOLOL |
| Well wasn't I a chipper happy camper in July ... Lol. That's the fun of blogs I suppose. One day everything is doom and gloom, the next happiness reins down from above. My moods don't usually switch that often or rapidly but I was sick with pneumonia after a long vacation which always makes me a bit crazy. After the past couple of weeks spent in the sunshine building fence and cutting down cedar trees and scraping paint from an old rock house, life seems better and hopeful. But I"m always cautious. Don't like to get kicked in the head when I'm not looking. Happens too often. |
| Fine. I'll update my blog. Here you go. Life sucks. Still. My dad is still dead. My husband is still unemployed and lazy. My mom still has alzheimer's. My so still hasn't gone back to college. I turn 51 on Saturday and I'm so depressed I don't even want to do anything for it. |
| Well I'm getting the email reminders again so here's my post. Writing groups ... I'm talking about writing groups today. I know here we are on a writing site with thousands of other writers with whom to connect and it's great and wonderful and everything ... But I found something even more wonderful to me. A group of writers to meet with every Friday night for critique, every Wednesday night for dinner and writing, and every day in the form of a private chat room. And some of the group is even more in depth involved than that ... like show up at each other's houses and sleep on the couch at 3 in the morning involved. I love them. They are me. I perfectly well understand that the group is not for everyone ... that some people would find them repulsive even or would be so so so offended by half the things that come out ... but I'm not. They are honest, creative, warm, caring, inspiring, and full of energy. Exactly what I need and want in my life as a writer (and a person). They aren't afraid to push the boundaries and walk their own path ... which I feel is exactly what every artist should aspire for. So, anyway, find yourself a great group, one you understand, one you can work with, one that embraces you and inspires you and fills you with the energy to DO stuff and hang on. The ride is worth it!! I promise!! |
| Some days are easier than others. Yesterday was great. I wrote over 2000 words on a new short story in the scifi genre, my hubby was home all day, we played a family game together for three hours, I had several chats with friends, etc ... The day before I was panicked. I couldn't focus. I couldn't distract myself from feeling vulnerable and exposed and abused. But I'm learning coping techniques and thought I'd share. Maybe they'll help someone else. 1. Tell someone what's going on - your spouse, a friend, your cat - Telling someone lets you acknowledge what is happening to you and you can't deal with it until you've acknowledged the problem. 2. Build up some activities that you know will keep you distracted from your feelings. For me they include crafting steampunk, playing a video game, taking a walk, editing photographs, and gardening. Some days it takes all of them to make it through the day. 3. Don't worry if you don't achieve what you set out to do. Healing from any traumatic experience takes time. Every day is a step in the right direction. 4. Start a private blog where you can write down everything you are feeling and thinking without danger of anyone else reading it. Sometimes just getting the thoughts on the page is enough to release them and let you move on. |
| Okay, okay ... I'll update my blog. It's the first day of a new year and I spent the morning washing cobwebs out of the past, blocking folks who've done me wrong, and prepping black eyed peas to consume. Now I'm full-on doing edits for my writing workshop team. So I guess my message to you is this - don't let anyone walk on you, treat you badly, make you feel less than human, or victimize you in any way. And if they do treat you badly, know IT ISN'T YOUR FAULT. You didn't ask for it, you didn't do anything to deserve it, and you should run away as fast as you can and tell someone else. I spent the past five months being stalked by someone. I'm not sure they're done yet but I've blocked them finally from as much as I can. I didn't at first because they found me in a hotel without me telling them where I was going to be, and even though I did the right thing and ignored them and didn't put myself in a situation where I was alone with them, it still scared the bejeebies out of me. I ended up feeling like I had been violated even though they never physically touched me. Because no one could figure out what his intentions were, and we knew from past emails and his reactions at the hotel that he could be violent, I was advised to let him unfriend me first from various sites. That's been a nightmare for me ... but he finally dropped me from Facebook and Twitter. Whew. But then he followed my author page ... so I just went ahead and blocked him from that too. I'm not so desperate that I need one more "like". And the second part of my message is this - fill your life with people who "get" you, who make you laugh, who treat you with respect, who expect you to respect yourself. Even if it's just ONE other person. For me, the healing process has taken a team of people ... but they've come out of the woodwork. My writing workshop cohorts have been fabulous and so much more than I could have ever asked for, my family has sorted out their issues for the most part to take some stress off of me, my other friends have rallied up beside me as they've found out what's been going on and been encouraging, and I'm finding peace again. I've developed coping strategies for myself that seem to be working. So, I'm starting out the New Year happy for a change. Life seems to be looking up. The fog is lifting. And I can move on. I wish you all the best!!! |
| I'm like a squirrel married to a tree. It's a good tree, big and strong, firmly rooted, never wavering. I have a home with this tree and nuts to eat and leaves to build my nests. But I'm a squirrel ... and I need other squirrels to keep me happy and to connect with and to help me feel like I'm not all alone in this world. I don't know if that makes any sense to anyone else. But I'm a squirrel ... my mind needs another squirrel to keep up with it, to run with, to explore the far reaches of space with, to jump around with, to chatter with ... It's fine to live in a big strong tree that impervious to the wind or fire or rain or earthquakes ... but the tree is not a squirrel no matter how much I want it to be or how hard I try to make it one. Problem is I've lived with the tree for so long that I don't know what to do when I find another squirrel. Maybe one day I'll figure it out ... |
| Since I kind of feel safe to post this here and feel I need to explain my absence/lack of reviews/lack of participation in contests/etc in some form ... here goes. Back in July I connected with someone that I thought would be a great writing partner. I liked his writing a lot. He said he liked mine. And we had like a million things in common. It's not often I find someone like that in life so I latched on. I'd been looking for a writing partner for some time and he seemed to be a perfect fit. By September, things were going along really well. I was inspired to get things done, to write every day, to push forward. He was making me more disciplined in my writing routine, keeping me on my toes, making me think. I was productive and encouraged and happy. But I was also putting a lot into maintaining the relationship. That was fine because it was important to me. I needed it. But between it and writing and work and life, I didn't really have time to review anything else or write extra for contests or anything. Then October rolled around and I was feeling more confident and in control of my life than I had in a long long long time. My writing partner was keeping me focused and on task for which I was/am eternally grateful. Because isn't that the mark of a good relationship? That the relationship makes you a better person than you were before? At least in my book, that's how it works. I started to find a balance and poked my head back into WDC for the first time in several months, eager and ready to participate again. I even invited this person to join the site and he did. And then everything went bonkers. All the energy and momentum that we'd put into building the relationship hit a wall and exploded like a pumpkin shot from a cannon. Bits of string and goo and chunks of flesh everywhere. What a mess. But then physics is a thing ... for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. We'd been pushing pretty hard so it really was only a matter of time before it all came back at us. Sometimes it's hard to know where the walls are until you've run into them head first and knocked yourself out. I would rather not have hit this wall. Because now ... now just sucks. I feel like I've lost my best friend and I have no idea what to do to fix it. And in the meantime, I'm still not doing much because I just feel bummed out and don't want to bum out everyone else. So, for now, I'm still scraping up bits of goo and chunks of flesh from stuff hoping something is salvageable enough to make a pie at some point down the road. And I'm trying to finish up a horror story that I have a deadline for. And I'm trying to be grateful for the good things I learned from this person and remember why I respected them in the first place. Anyone who makes you a better person, who makes you feel better about who you are, who encourages you to do better things is worth holding onto no matter how much garbage gets in the way or how many walls you have to climb. Sometimes words are not enough. |
| Started off the month of October in high spirits with high hopes, loving life, excited by new friendships, new connections, new goals. But those expectations failed in every way possible. Ending up losing not only one of my oldest and dearest friends, a woman who was like my second mother, but one of my newest and probably closest friends that I've had in a long time. I'm not sure which one devastated me more. Both losses were hard to take - a loving wise mother and a soulmate. Neither of those come around very often in life. In a way the loss of the second was probably harder. I made mistakes that I can't fix. That's the hardest part of all. To lose something beautiful and unique because of pride and misunderstandings is really really really really really really .... hard. If I could take it all back, I would. If I could start over, I would. But as I told someone else, the only hope is a miracle ... and I don't know if I believe in those any more. It was a miracle that I found this person. It's a tragedy that I lost them. To know that there's someone else out there that shares the same passions and interests and thoughts and yet to not have access to them to share, is maddening. Miracles are kind of like lightening, I've found. They happen at the rarest and most unexpected times in life. They catch us off guard, unaware. Sometimes I think we don't even recognize they've happened until ... it's too late. I have obligations and commitments that I have to keep pushing forward with. I'm disappearing in my writing. Not going to be online much at all, if any. Going to get lost for a week or month or until I figure out how to be again. Keep on, keeping on. |
| Sometimes I just want to write crap no one reads ... hahahahaha ... Never thought I'd say that. But honestly, there was a magic to writing whatever came to mind when I started down this path however long ago it was. I could say whatever I wanted and no one took offense, no one judged me by it, no one based decisions on it. I could do "dear diary" and no one would know. gone are those days. |
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