There is this platonic ideal of our lives, inside our heads. Looking back, I know what I SHOULD have been doing at any given time. It’s rarely what I was actually even close to doing. And it’s not that I didn’t want to do it as such. It’s…. other things.
Yeah, I have this fantasy that if I could only send my mind/knowledge back in time, to say when I was 18, and known how things would hit, particularly Indie publishing, I’d be so much better positioned. Or blogs. Or…. you know?
But it’s not that way, is it?
I mean, if I could send my mind back in time, and I weren’t submitting stories, because I needed to sell, because baby needed shoes, what would have happened? I probably would have let the world and the daily necessities overwhelm me, and nothing would get written, and 2011 would come around, and nothing in the drawer ready to publish, plus a whole lot of not-learning-to-do-it. Unless I’d managed to send “craft” back with my mind, too.
The truth is I know perfectly well what I’m supposed to be doing right now, to fulfill my prime directive: write a lot of books, get more readers, get worlds out of head, make money for our retirement, money to help the boys, etc.
I should be writing. 9 to 5. Like a real job. And Saturday I’m supposed to do publishing/recovering, etc.
Unfortunately life happens and I’m not an automaton.
This year has been a lesson in “life happens” and the machinery of — mostly — grief. Though stress too. Look, it turns out grief can make you ill, and repeated hits can make you depressed…. and….
And even when nothing big and metaphysical is going on, there is other stuff, like–
Last night, we went to bed, and I realized my PILLOW was wet. No, really. It didn’t really smell, and was wet with clear liquid and… Yeah, Val cat is having kidney failure. She doesn’t concentrate her urine really well. BUT she knows if she pees on my stuff enough, then I will leave, and she’ll have Dan all to herself. Senility and kidney disease, basically.
Well, we had sheets and pillow cases, but the pee had gone all over (though most of it stayed IN the pillow, yay me) and we had to clean the mattress and dry it, and it was 3 am by the time we were in bed, upset and cranky and having trouble sleeping.
So today…. is as you expect.
I know what I’m supposed to be doing. Plus I need to clean the back porch so I can paint it in the last above-freezing days we have. What am I doing? Oh, yeah. Sitting here, trying to think.
I swear it’s been like this every day for three years. Only, other reasons. The sort of thing you look back and can’t even remember, either because so many of them, or so seemingly minor.
Perhaps this is the way G-d makes sure each of us doesn’t take over the world (And leaves it strictly alone.)
It’s more really, that we are not pure minds, interacting in a world of thought and archetypes. Plato’s cave is cold, it smells, and there’s something dripping down the back of my neck, and a spider just nested in my hair, so who is paying attention to those shadows on the wall? Much less trying to direct them?
Here’s the thing though: You get up, you get dressed (my goal is to do this before 1 pm, today) and you try. You TRY.
Maybe today you’re so sleepy/sick/depressed that all you manage is to put up one of those covers you rendered, that are waiting to go up. Or maybe all you do is typeset the redarn Christmas collection. Or maybe– 500 words, which might get ditched tomorrow. Come on, give me 500 words. In something.
YOU TRY. You do just this one little thing.
And the same way that a year — or ten — can go up the spout in a flurry of “today the cat peed on my bed; today I have a blinding headache; now I need to fix the vacuum; today I painted the blinds” the same way the little things you did “Hey, I wrote a short-short; hey, I did a new lettering on my cover; hey, I typeset this thing; hey, I researched fishing in the middle ages” eventually can lead to something huge that you never saw coming. Like starting a blog you barely kept up for publicity, eventually turning into a whole community. Like the book you wrote in a month, because no one was buying anything, and you had to do something for your own sanity, eventually 13 years later winning the Prometheus, like your dreams of being a writer actually coming true, despite you being ADHD AF and incapable of coordinated action to save your life, let alone to have a career.
Here’s the thing, looking back, all that flailing around and uncoordinated movement did get me somewhere. Maybe not optimally and heaven knows I never had a storied career, but for someone with no contacts to get published at all in trad was rare. To get published and have a 20 year career was almost impossible by the time I broke in. Particularly if you’re ESL and with no contacts and with weird politics.
BUT it happened. Because when I could, I did a little thing. And then another little thing.
The trick is not stop.
No matter how broken, how beset, how incredibly tired, how depressed: Do a little thing, when you can. When the rain lets up, go and do a tiny thing. Most of the day might be a waste. But do a tiny thing. And then another tiny thing. And then another tiny thing.
You’re doing great. Just keep putting a foot in front of the other. And don’t kick the cat. Even if she deserves it. Just. One foot. Then the other. Don’t stop. Aim for your objective, and keep walking.
You’ll get there. We’ll get there. It seems like we’re standing still, but we’re not.
We’re only human. But that’s enough.
Keep walking.
According To Hoyt 
Take care Sarah.
Right now, I’m fighting my rage at the world and idiots as well as fighting that Black Dog.
Same here too.
Getting hit with grief for my brother at unexpected times. Like trying to write the Christmas letter qnd having to put that in. And growing anger at the antisemitic &%$!! out there. I was looking at some college crap online and found myself saying, “Here’s my finger, and you know which one.”
But writing a paragraph here and a paragraph there,and knitting a little, and getting by.
I’m so sorry. This year has been bad.
The black dog needs a good dose of paint gin wars. In neon.
If you have no other reason, then do something pleasant and/or productive just to spite the bastards.
And smile at them as you do it.
“Do right in spite” is kinda twisted, but it can get you through until you come up with better.
Look how much they hate happy families. Happiness in general. Joy, contentment, and all the rest of that. Their only positive emotions are false, like dancing on the graves of good men and women and spiteful pride when someone they hate falters.
And they have a lot of hate.
Happier you are, the worse they like it. So find ways to put joy in your life. It pisses off the bastards like nothing else.
Heh. That sounds about right. Like the (former?) Stazi lady at the museum in Germany. We all smiled and had a wonderful time despite her being a jerk. It made her so mad.
looks around at scattered project fragments she’s (successfully! But slowly) dragging together between homeschooling, meals, and 5am-child-vomiting-sessions you know… think I needed this. Thanks!
Next right thing.
SO weird that Disney put a depression hack in a kids movie.
And in exactly the character that would need it, too.
For anyone needing this in singing computer animated character form:
I had come to nearly the same words in the past year without consciously recalling it, though having seen the movie it was percolating about in there somewhere – mine when asked how I was doing with it all, I said I wasn’t doing it all, I was just figuring out and then doing the next thing.
And if you really can’t do it, and nobody is listening– you have us.
Maybe we can’t do anything directly, but if you get a private line — folks here will listen if you go no, really, I can’t do this, I need help.
It’ll probably be “just” a second person to be going “OK, let’s see what actual help we can find, networking with the group”– but that’s something you can’t do on your own.
You guys are good listeners. And also pretty darn good at encouragement, too.
260 words yesterday, after having the HVAC guys over until ~9pmish. Apparently the heater has died. We’re getting a new one. Yay? (The AC has been wearing out for a while, and we did bid a replacement a couple years back, but decided to wait. Price tag was “what do you mean there’s no inflation?” yay…)
I’m realizing I’m stuck because I don’t know how the organization he’s infiltrating is actually structured. Oops. More reading / thinking / speculating time. I’ll probably count that as my words for the day: the last planning session was 300 words of ‘because this then that’.
Make notes. Then make notes again, to clarify your mind.
I KNOW everything ahead, I just don’t have a brain.
This accurately describes the last few months. For me at least.
I posted a chapter last week anyway. Still don’t quite understand the readers, but they seemed to like it. Fixed a buggered passage in the new chapter, turned a corner in the plot. Got three-ish big events that will drive more plot in the nearish future in scraps of notes.
But to get there takes following the path. Just have to cut the path now, but I can see landmarks in the distance. I hope for five hundred words today. May not reach that. May not even get anything else done.
Sometimes, the stuff inside just vomits out onto the page almost faster than I can type. I actually had to learn how to type faster to keep up. Now it’s pounding out letters like cracking stone. Stress of a certain type gums up the works.
All I need is one more inch. One inch of a page, call it. One sentence, one plot-phrase at a time. It may not be any good. It may stink wildly bad. But it’s worth finishing, for no other reason than keeping my word.
If I may make a suggestion, Steven Savage has a book on Organizations and Worldbuilding (and some stuff at Seventh Sanctum .com) that really helped me figure out which questions to ask about how different organizations and institutions worked and worked together that may be helpful to jog your brain loose.
Yeah, have a ton of notes. This here is, I know how this segment ends, and what the local antagonist’s goals are, but I forgot to figure out the details of how they got there. Kind of completely managed to gloss over the fact that the main character now how what was a minor character bolted to his head, and has to navigate the structure the antagonist doesn’t actually care about. So I need to know who they are and how they serve the story.
Oops… More building time
It’s often the path between here and there that can get interesting. I absolutely didn’t plan on opening up the world by stumbling into the mad scientists’ lab. And giving the MC more stress nightmares because of it.
But there it is now, out in the world. Sometimes the path between here and there can be a squished down story with mini three act structure within it. I kinda did that by accident a time or two. Awesome when it works out, though.
Sigh. Just one thing at a time. Then another thing.
I’m trying not to look around at ALL THE THINGS that need doing. Just the first thing that comes to hand.
tell me about it. But we’ll get seven little things out of your way, soon. (And yes, I know it’s bittersweet.)
I needed this today. Thank you.
Gonna go have a stress cry now.
Stress cry makes a lot more sense than stress cow. Which is what I thought I read.
Take care. Sometimes a good cry is what is healthy and needed.
Well, maybe Orvan was stopping by? Though I believe moose also have cows…
Because of the fact both SheSellsSeashells/FoxfireFancies and I like playing the Tauren race in World of Warcraft–think minotaurs–we have named our house Casa Cow. And my original blog about WoW was “Achtung Panzercow,” because my main was, and still is, a tank (the guy in a party that gets hit in the face so the others can do the killing).
Tanks in MMO parlance have another name. “Chew Toy.” Had a guy in one raid that modded a squeky sound in for when he got hit.
Almost lost the raid to the first miniboss because of that. MH couldn’t stop laughing. Miniboss SLAM! Squeak-oo! Miniboss multihit! squeakasqueakasqueak-oo!
My mains have usually been tanks or healers for most of the time I played. But that one raid was memorable for more than one reason.
There’s the party tank in the Isekai anime Konosube.
She’s a not so covert masochist.
Also, I’m reminded of the weapons that dropped in the “Good King Moggle Mog” fight in FFXIV. Imagine a large battle axe that squeaks “Kupo!” each time you swing it.
^^;;
Well, I derive a great deal of stress relief from a properly done sirloin. But that’s just me.
me too.
I refuse to begin to ponder speculation as to the nature of a ‘stress cow’.
Wise. That is the point I should have stopped at, too.
Stress bull::Stress ball
Easy typo.
I went to Williams College, whose unofficial mascot is the purple cow.
So I actually HAVE a “stress cow”. 😀
Good to get it out sometimes.
I needed this today. Thank you.
Gonna go have a stress cry now.
yup… keep keeping on and next thing you know you’re someplace! I’ve got my little projects and being retired don’t really need/have to do anything much. So, my internal alarm clock goes off at 0700 and I go “oof… morning?” and get up. Thus starts the day and I do the bathroom, get dressed thing and pup dog (who is also really big into patterns and schedules) and I go out for “personal affairs” and a walkie as the day begins. This sort of always “doing” and having patterns and schedules for daily events has been a very good thing for this old retiree.
One and all – despair not as you really are getting somewhere even if you only are thinking about it. Each day and minute within gives you the chance to “do” what needs to be done and allows you to make progress. Sure, it may not be what you want right then but think of it as housekeeping and/or prep for the day so what you want to be doing will happen.
Never surrender, Never give up! 😉 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ2hJezvd2I
Well, semi-human….
As one gets older one learns to just solider on and not worry about it. Trouble is how much older one needs to get before, varies from folk to folk. I think I started to get the hang of it, just doing and stop worrying about the I should be doings and even the I really really need to be doings instead, when I got around eightyish.
No wet pillows, as I have no cats nor do I much drooling. Yet.
So pillows fluffy and dry but alas, my Pignose Amp died yesterday! The one I play my electric taishōgoto through.
& dang, I was just getting Cockles and Mussels down to the point where if I did have cats and dogs they wouldn’t be cringing and howling in pain in accompaniment to my playing!
Oh well, solider and solder on. I just finished a quick schematic and parts list to build my own Pigbutt amp (I’m sure if I called it a Pignose I’d be violating copyright, patent and/or 37 written and unwritten but understood by all rules of the universe.).
Hum, wonder how Carmina Burana will sound on the taishōgoto played through my Pigbutt.
Add this to the “not a smidgen!” file:
https://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=406882
Apparently, (D)umb@$$es got caught stuffing ballots in a city primary for mayor. Surely, nobody with a brain said, surely they wouldn’t do that in a major presidential election against the guy they’ve had a frothing at the mouth hate boner for? Surely they wouldn’t go that far, would they?
/s
It’s Bridgeport. Bridgeport makes Chicago look like a pillar of moral rectitude with respect to voting behavior and has for all my life. The amazing thing is that they found a judge who didn’t just cover their eyes and go screaming ‘la la la la I can’t hear you” back to their chambers…
It was a Dem primary, and not the General Election, so…
I think it might be because the defense got sloppy. Judges do not like being made a fool of. Or rather, they really don’t like being shown to the public that they were made to look like a fool. Sounds like it was egregious enough that it couldn’t be swept under the rug.
We’ve been saying for almost a decade here now that the (d) party is deconstructing. They feel like they have to keep pushing and pushing that envelope, not at all realizing that they’ve become caricatures.
How many times in the last decade or so have we seen formerly solid liberals waking up as if form a nightmare and being shocked- shocked I tell you!- to find pedophilia in the schools, violence from their protected classes, and corruption in the system?
The fever dream of socialist liberal democrats is dead. We must survive its death throes and the wicked things that will rise up in its wake (because such things will, as political nature abhors a vacuum- that’s why they’re so dirty).
Rashida Tlaib actually put, “From the river to the sea!” in a campaign poster. And allegedly accused Joe of “genocide,” for not forcing the Jews into a ceasefire. Speaking of wicked.
Good LORD
She also claims that it is not a call for genocide of Jews, although the term was coined in 1948 by the invading Arab states seeking to destroy Israel that their goal was to push all the Jews into the sea and kill them all.
The fact that the Democrats refuse to condemn her for genocidal Jew hatred tells you everything you need to know about the Democratic Party as an institution.
Zo, ist zis ze new slogan of ze ‘Democrats’?
Don’t be stupid, be a smarty, come and join the Nazi party.
Ein Partei, Ein Volk, Ein FICUS
I understand her last name is the same cognate as Taliban….
If Israel is supposed to have been committing genocide against the Palestinians for the last 75 years, they’re not very good at it, are they?
Considering the Palestinian population has at the very least doubled, no.
Judge Rose Trellis of the Enchanting Vistas, from The Vortex Baster.
If you find election fraud everywhere you look, the trick is to not look. 😦
Gee, guess what the Democrat policy on election happens to be….
(but you knew that…)
Gee, guess what the Democrat policy on election fraud happens to be….
(but you knew that…)
Among other annoyances, apparently banking institutions are suffering some kind of “difficulty”. Augh.
But with any luck in the next 2 weeks I’ll pay the last big bill of the year, and can then work on paying back debts. Argh.
And I have the latest bit of the Colors draft printed, so… time to go write some more of it.
I have no idea how I’m going to find the right cover for MC getting isekai’d (more accurately, isegye’d) into a magic-laced version of 1618 Northeast Asia… but that will be a problem for later.
Put a dragon attacking an airliner on the cover? That communicates pretty clearly that this is either “something from our world transported to a fantasy world” or “something from a fantasy world transported to our world”. That gets you the announcement of the genre, which is what the cover art needs to do. The specifics (1618 Northeast Asia) can be filled in by the back-cover blurb. Well, Asia can be announced by the style of dragon, but there’s no way to put the date into the cover, of course.
I seem to remember the dragon isn’t exactly local, though– but if there’s something like a scaly nose attacking the wing, maybe?
Or were-sharks around a plane crash with some Korean junks in the background?
Ooo, those sound good if I can find a way to get that done for a cover….
Dragon is an Out of Context problem for the locals – it’s a Western Dragon, in East Asia, and nobody’s happy about it!
But that is an Idea. 🙂
Not really related but floated up yesterday.
Overheard between muslim father and son(20s) in the doctors office.
Dad, the IDF tossed the babies in the fire then beheaded their mothers just like they accused Hamas of doing.
Indistinct murmer.
Reply of It says so right here!!
Louder…Pictures?
Pause…no….buts its Israel….
I was goign to ask where he read the report but got called back
A few weeks earlier a female muslim friend told me that a guy in a pickup truck was yelling and swearing at the women outside her mosque. I figured it was a glowie.
Yesterday, I learned that one of the local Kingdom Halls of Jehovahs Witnesses had a man dressed in fatiques with a gun trying to get in. There are several kingdom halls in the area most with glass doors. He picked one with steel doors. I figure it was another glowie.
No conclusions just data points
Per the BBC, and Times of India, some nut case in India (with a non-Subcontinent name) set off bombs in a big JW meeting and killed 10-12 and injured dozens more. The police said that he claimed to be a former Witness who was protesting something about the group.
I’m starting to wonder if all the “WWIII” and “Is this the End Times?” stuff is starting to bring nuts out of the woodwork.
So sorry about the cat. Oh, those cleanups that take you to the still wee hours of the morning, with that extra high humming in your head, and a feeling that you cannot rest because another emergency is going to pop up as soon as you doze off. It’s rough. Hope you can take a nap today, or get the rest you deserve tonight.
Getting older sucks. It used to be I would have a project in mind, estimate is should take me X hours to do it and know I should budget twice that. Now? I should still only take X hours, but I need to budget in days rather than hours because other things come up, or my dopey body decides, “Ha Ha! You ain’t doin’ squat today.”
Oh, yeah. Takes me forever. Sigh.
Here’s my horrifyingly accurate method of predicting how long a programming project will take.
Figure out how long it would take in ideal engineering hours, with no interruptions, no mysterious compiler messages, nothing overlooked in the analysis.
Multiply by 2 and switch to the next higher unit of time.
So a project that should take 1 hour will take 2 days.
You are an optimist.
I would WAG a number of hours, then 3 or 4x. That is just with me on the project, each person added? +1/person multiplier. Then divide by 40 -> # of weeks. Or 160 -> # months. Yes, by this standard a “1 hour fix/change” is a minimum of 4 hours. Oh, if something was new tech/concept/tools? Double it, again. This was called the *DIIKWAG multiplier. Never made marketing’s deadlines. Always made mine (at least when it actually mattered. Last job, deadlines weren’t a thing. Hours bid to bill for changes outside of maintenance or fixes, yes (if missed that, oh well). But not a deadline.)
((*)) Dam@ if I know. Wild ass guess.
Your method is way more optimistic than mine.
A “1 hour” job would take 2 days by my calculation, not just 3 or 4 hours.
True. But those were odd balls from my last job. “Please add this option for sorting/selection.” Seven section lines of code (very formulaic code), test (unless something went really wrong 4 hours was over estimating), ship it, send email. Of coarse just because it might only take “4 hours”, actually getting to that ticket on my list was a whole different issue.
We’re still both optimists 😉
Most of us aren’t named “Brain”, so we’re not allowed to try to take over the world anyway.
500 words? Okay. That puts me about halfway through a seat of the pants tale.
Fall had come again. The season of colored leaves drifting down on the wind. The wind smelling faintly of mold and composting said leaves. First frosts icing the grass, and forcing us to clear our windshields each morning. Filling the game tags to stock the chest freezer with meat, especially since the prices kept zooming up in the grocery stores. And putting away firewood to keep the home warmer than our meager use of the fossil fuels we could barely afford.
Nature is a wonderful thing in this world. There’s a bit of magic, and our druidic religions do a fair job of earning money encouraging crops to grow, and tweaking the ecosystem to make things easier for people. But sometimes you have to do the job yourself because there aren’t as many druids as there used to be. Too many Christians and Buddhists running around, and while they are peaceful folks, they can’t make a rose bloom worth a damn.
So here I was, a bright Saturday morning, looking at the yard and deciding I needed to remove that big weeping willow tree that was threatening to stop up my septic system. Willows are a pain that way. But my problem was a bit bigger than that. You see, this particular willow was both rotten and treantish.
Now when I say treantish, I don’t mean like the treefolk that British guy wrote about, or the ones you have in role-playing or computer games. You know, that go striding around the countryside walking and talking like people with a bad case of chlorophyll? No, ours tend to move about a foot per day at the fastest. They grow their way toward things and the roots apotheosize behind them. Except for aspens, those things don’t die back, they just keep expanding into multi-acre groves. Pain in the butt for folks out West.
While they don’t walk, treantish trees do move. They move fast. But only the branches, and the smaller the faster. If you’ve seen weeping willows, then you know those long trailing branches are thin like wires, and they can move them like whips. They can also use them to grab.
I keep a fairly well stocked tool crib in the basement. Nice sharp axes, machetes, wedges, and a couple of chainsaws. And I have the usual chaps, heavy gloves, goggles and helmet for doing lumberjacking jobs. What works for plain old trees works for the magical kinds too.
With willows the first thing you need to do is prune back those whippy branches. Usually grab a handful and whack them off with the machete until you can get to the trunk. Then you can use the chainsaw. This willow of mine had other ideas. When I went to grab a handful, the damn things grabbed back at me, which was fine, I just swung the machete to cut them off. Didn’t work out as I expected. Bugger let go of me and grabbed my machete away.
Now things were downright dangerous. As in armed and dangerous. Willow was holding onto that machete and swinging it at me worse than some jihadi. So I scrambled back out of range and stood there looking at it and wondering what the heck I was going to do now.
Sounds like it’s time to break out the flamethrower. 😀
Or strap a stick of dynamite to a dead chicken and toss it in.
Do NOT strap a stick of dynamite to a live chicken. Just…don’t. Ever.
And definitely don’t strap it to a live homing pigeon…
It’s almost 2024.. Election Year…. time to dig out my ‘Put a Brain in the White House’ shirt.
I pull out my, “Darth Vader for President- if you’re tired of choosing the lesser of two evils,” button.
Why settle for a cut-rate Cthulhu?
Hear Hear Fnagh!
Nah. Cthulhu. When you’re really tired of the lesser evils.
Warner Brothers would never allow us to use Brain’s image for that. They’re far too woke.
See, this shirt was made Back When and they can’t do a DANG thing about it now!
Some years back, there was a bumper sticker that said, “Adelai Niska for President. A Candidate with a proven reputation.” As a Firefly fan, I couldn’t argue with that statement. Wouldn’t vote for him, though.
(Singing)
Tie some yellow detcord round the willow tree….
The pithiest, and most useful, advice my Dad ever gave me: “Keep punching.”
It’s hard to live up to.
VERY
The gorilla punk singing that is still the best cover. 😀
This one, from the Sep 21 2001 undisclosed location no audience concert broadcast, is still my favorite.
Note how the directors avoided Tom Petty’s eyes every time he sang the title line, as I think they were afraid the murder in them might damage the cameras:
Here is a blog piece from the Times of Israel that has the right attitude:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/dear-world-i-dont-care/
…………………..
Maybe theirs is a lost cause? How about maybe those marching for Hamas are monsters? These people need to learn that there are consequences.
Excellent.
Oh, well I know the elderly cat issue. We had one point where “going to bed” included removing and checking all medical bed pads strategically placed on the bed and making sure there was no overspill. (Machine-washable medical pads are useful things. We even have one under the portable AC.) And of course we’ve got a demented kitty who, while still young, apparently has something break in her brain every so often and she’ll pee on the bed. AWFUL behavior, that’s when she gets the title “the Worst.”
One thing in front of another, and… how did I end up with 5 novels / 10 stories published? Right, one word at a time. With wailing and whining and dramatics to friends, and support and encouragement of said friends.
With spite for some stories I’ve read that were just that bad. (Spite’s not the best motivator, but spite and stubbornness will be there for you when the finer things in life fail.)
It would be better if several stories didn’t attack me at once, then fall silent, but we go one, word by word, logicking our way through where inspiration fails, until it comes back.
A boss once introduced me with “No matter what I throw at her, she handles it.” He meant it as high praise, and I guess it is? I just figured that was the curse of the competent: more and harder work, and rewards to go with, because somebody’s got to do it.
7 novels. I can count, I just can’t type?
The Reader has enjoyed all of them. Please don’t stop.
Ditto.
Agreed. I’m reading Dust in my free(hah!) time when I can grab an hour or so.
Particularly if you’re ESL and with no contacts and with weird politics.
I think in the end the combo of weird politics and not hiding them saved your career.
If you’d let them turn you into the minority woman victim who here would have read you? Could Shifters or Dyce have even survived much less made it out (speaking of, what is it with multi genre writers and not finishing detective books…Dyce from you and Latham from Sawyer were promised new books this year).
Could the Darkships books have happened?
If not, none of us could either. And without us Left Hand done right couldn’t (and, no, everyone will not hate it …I’m waiting for it).
I KEEP TELLING HER THIS. HER HUSBAND THINKS IT WILL BE HER BREAKOUT BOOK. AND YET SHE REMAINS CONVINCED “NOBODY” WILL LIKE IT.
ahem Pardon me for shouting, but as her editor, I would like for her to be flooded with stridently anticipatory requests for the damned series. Yes, the entire series. Because me wants it!
ME TOO ME TOO ME TOO!
I’d just be happy with the next 100 pages for now.
I’ll admit it took me a minute to realize what it was, but when I did she got an email at about 3am my time.
I woke up and was “that’s it”.
Look, it turns out grief can make you ill, and repeated hits can make you depressed…. And….
Amen, sister.
This week has no new griefs (although stress for yet another forced move a year after moving in here) but today would have been Talina’s birthday. Tomorrow is the first year anniversary of letting George, Our Little Man, go.
But life goes on. Angus has taken to the woods here like I know George would have even though Angus was afraid of outside at the old place. I hope what we find will have woods for him.
BUT it happened. Because when I could, I did a little thing. And then another little thing.
The trick is not stop.
The last couple of days in ICU I watched a lot of YouTube late at night from being slept out.
Among them was a video where a woman (keep wanting to type girl despite her probably being 30…I’m turning into an old man) talked about walking 20,000 steps every day for a month. Towards the end she suggested an audio book, The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson, to listen to while walking. I knew I needed to get back into daily walks so I figured “why not”?
Now, this book isn’t anything new. It’s basically about doing little things and not stopping. The author’s way of putting it is the difference between moving ahead and moving back is every day (or at least most days) doing those little things that are easy to do but also easy not to do.
Like I said, nothing new, but his way of putting it clicked in a way nothing had before (maybe the brain chemistry just never went back to normal even when the blood chemistry did). Since late September I appear to have found my keystone habit (getting the dishes unloaded from dishwasher/drying rack first thing in the morning and then loading/running the dishwasher and doing any hand dishwashing before bed…after tomorrow the chain will be 28 days) and now some others, like walking everyday and writing everyday are 4-6 days a week.
So, yes, just keep going. Even if the black dog is chasing you. Squirt it with Dawn while doing the dishes and out walk it (humans are the ultimate pursuit hunter).
Oh, and WordPress delenda est.
This should have been a reply to the whole post…as I said, WordPress delenda est.
Yes!!!!!!!!
The Reader votes in favor. Gotta keep his habit fed after all.
So… Six weeks ago my 80 year old mother tripped while walking around the neighborhood. Split her lip, so my fiance brought her to the E.R. about 11 P.M. They thought her numbers were a little off, so kept her overnight. Midmorning the next day she was talking to a cardiologist and stopped mid-sentence. Was her normal exuberant self to the end.
Next morning I was going through her cell phone calling people. Got an incoming call from the local Police, Sgt Cop wanted to talk to my mom. I responded that I’d love for that to be possible, but life sucks. He stated the my mother was the medical proxy for Yolanda (that was the only name he gave) and she’d been in an accident and was in the hospital. 74 year old woman with a compound fractured femur and a couple broken ankle bones. She was trying to return some of my mothers library books so they wouldn’t get an overdue charge and was run over by a minibus. Guy didn’t stop. Video caught the whole thing.
Got to the hospital, gave them her name, and they said “Who?” Um, cops said she’s here, and really messed up. An hour of runaround and we found the cops used one of her middle names as her surname, and misspelled it to boot. I walked in the room and she pointed at me and said “Him! He’s my proxy!” She has no surviving family members.
I’ve been dealing with cleaning up my mothers affairs, as well as helping Yolie as much as possible and taking care of her two cats and her house. I’ve not much me left at this point, but been doing what I can every day.
Some days that’s changing the bags in the Litter Robot. Today I managed to get her car reregistered and insured, so I can get my car in the shop for some TLC.
Just haven’t had the spoons until now.
But every day, something. I cannot do less than she would have.
Having taken the other path, the artistic skills atrophy. There’s no time to practice, because practice has to be done for the career which pays the bills. There’s the other time wasters that nibble life away. Life will always have unexpected challenges and delays.
And now, today’s off topic happiness comment:
People who build airplanes at home say that to finish the project, do something to work on it every day. Even if it’s only releasing some clamps, it’s progress. That holds true for any other project, of course. Do something every day to move the project forward, and one day you’ll realize that it’s done. It may not be much, it may even be very, very little, but it’s progress. “Never give up, never surrender!”
back I did programming (for a living…) sometime something would LOOK immense… so break off a tiny piece and deal with it. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. “It’s done already?!”
100%
Every. Single. Project.
This. Especially in programming deconstruct until you get pieces you know you can handle and then just head in. Orvan is a VERY smart ox…
Yep. I did a project for copying [too many] folders of MP3 files to automotive USB sticks. (When a trip to town is a 45 minute drive, I prefer my choice of music–gave up on talk radio after Rush passed away.)
Deleting all the details, I found I wanted to use a language I haven’t programmed with in over 20 years. So, baby steps. RTFM for the relevant sections. Get the program to read the index file. Write one album at a time, figure out how to get multiple albums in place. Get it to work, writing to a test directory. Finally, getting it to work on USB sticks. Perl rocks! (No, this dinosaur doesn’t want to learn python.)
So now, I have half as many folders and even the older audio system doesn’t get indigestion. And, if I add an album, it’s easy.
Small pieces for the win!
The Reader is interesting in why you don’t want to learn Python. He is considering it.
It’s not a slam at Python, though the only time I tried to modify a Python program, I ran into issues. That was possibly how the files and library were set up), but for this project, I could draw on my Perl experience and recover enough of the skills fairly quickly.
I’ve been retired since 2002 and my programming needs are simple. My customer is myself, and prior to this project, I was writing and using small shell scripts. Not that this project was big; after optimization, it ended up at 120 lines for the main program, a dozen or so lines for a config file, and [too many] lines for the albums to get copied.
If I were going to do more complicated work, and if I had more programming projects, yeah, I’d consider Python. I think I see the advantages (though in my career, I programmed in C, never needed C++), but for my purposes, I don’t need it. (More common projects around CasaRC are construction; carpentry, metalworking, and (shudder) concrete.)
So, go ahead with Python. I just don’t want to cross that river.
Perl: the Model 1911 of programming languages.
Syntax Error: Perl Jam
Indeed. I had a boss the onced that was so terribly awful the worst thing I could wish on her was that she had to live with her own personality for the rest of her life. My coping mechanism was to get one thing done that was less awful than her, every day.
That it happened to be my most productive fifteen months two weeks and four days is no coincidence.
By small and simple things are great things brought to pass.
Sometime during Covidiocy Days I wanted to go to a patriotic event. In looking at the map (I am constantly in need of finding myself) I noted that it was just around the corner from St. C’s, so I determined to attend Saturday evening Mass before said patriotic event. On my drive in I had been lamenting the endless failures and missed opportunities that litter my life. It felt, as so often before, that I have nothing else to offer. It was Trinity Sunday.
St. C’s turned out to be one of these big airplane hanger modern churches. The priest shuffled out early, a big, fat guy with a Taliban beard, a cane and fuzzy slippers. I’d never before seen a priest vested in fuzzy slippers. He was not a real prepossessing fellow, and a real slow mover. But when it came to the sermon it was immediately clear that this guy had it going ON with the Celestial Emperor Who Rules Above the Highest Heaven. It did yield a moment of insight which has been a game changer in my understanding of The Plan.
https://camagacoalition.com/doing-the-will-of-god/
He announced that he would be hearing confessions after Mass, and I joined the queue. So I rattled off the usual nastiness, receive a penance and absolution. Then, without reference to anything I’d said, he looks at me and says, “Don’t despair.” Right. Between. The. Eyes.
Surprising how often I recall that evening’s events.
“Let not your heart be troubled.”
Like He knows us or something.
Sometime during Covidiocy Days I wanted to go to a patriotic event. In looking at the map (I am constantly in need of finding myself) I noted that it was just around the corner from St. C’s, so I determined to attend Saturday evening Mass before said patriotic event. On my drive in I had been lamenting the endless failures and missed opportunities that litter my life. It felt, as so often before, that I have nothing else to offer. It was Trinity Sunday.
St. C’s turned out to be one of these big airplane hanger modern churches. The priest shuffled out early, a big, fat guy with a Taliban beard, a cane and fuzzy slippers. I’d never before seen a priest vested in fuzzy slippers. He was not a real prepossessing fellow, and a real slow mover. But when it came to the sermon it was immediately clear that this guy had it going ON with the Celestial Emperor Who Rules Above the Highest Heaven. It did yield a moment of insight which has been a game changer in my understanding of The Plan.
https://camagacoalition.com/doing-the-will-of-god/
He announced that he would be hearing confessions after Mass, and I joined the queue. So I rattled off the usual nastiness, receive a penance and absolution. Then, without reference to anything I’d said, he looks at me and says, “Don’t despair.” Right. Between. The. Eyes.
Surprising how often I recall that evening’s events.
Sometime during Covidiocy Days I wanted to go to a patriotic event. In looking at the map (I am constantly in need of finding myself) I noted that it was just around the corner from St. C’s, so I determined to attend Saturday evening Mass before said patriotic event. On my drive in I had been lamenting the endless failures and missed opportunities that litter my life. It felt, as so often before, that I have nothing else to offer. It was Trinity Sunday.
St. C’s turned out to be one of these big airplane hanger modern churches. The priest shuffled out early, a big, fat guy with a Taliban beard, a cane and fuzzy slippers. I’d never before seen a priest vested in fuzzy slippers. He was not a real prepossessing fellow, and a real slow mover. But when it came to the sermon it was immediately clear that this guy had it going ON with the Celestial Emperor Who Rules Above the Highest Heaven. It did yield a moment of insight which has been a game changer in my understanding of The Plan.
https://camagacoalition.com/doing-the-will-of-god/
He announced that he would be hearing confessions after Mass, and I joined the queue. So I rattled off the usual nastiness, receive a penance and absolution. Then, without reference to anything I’d said, he looks at me and says, “Don’t despair.” Right. Between. The. Eyes.
Surprising how often I recall that evening’s events.
@ Sarah > “Keep walking.”
It’s hard to top Rodgers & Hammerstein.
Well, wordpress says I’ve already posted this, but clearly I haven’t. Since I’ve been up for two hours with yet another night of insomnia (three weeks today), I thought I’d try again. So without further ado, life advice needed from the good folks here (start paste now):
I feel like this is the right place to ask life advice. I have been divorced for 14 years (or so). My ex started doing drugs and it became too much so, after four years of jail, theft, etc, I divorced her. In 14 years I’ve not met one woman I was particularly interested in.
About a month ago I met a woman while doing a bit of volunteer work, enjoyed chatting with her and asked her out. We went out to dinner and spent 3 1/2 hours talking. I kissed her at the end of the evening, which I’ve never done on a first date in my life. I also asked her on another date that same evening, again something I’ve never done. We went out two times more, and I invited her to a Halloween party at a friend’s house. She said yes, but then later told me that she had social anxiety and was a bit worried about it, then cancelled the morning of due to illness. Since then she’s turned down two offers, suggested a time herself and then cancelled that, claiming exhaustion, and has not responded to my texts in the last four days. This is someone I am very interested in. I am comfortable in her presence, we get along extremely well, I find her attractive, etc. All of her indicators were that she was equally interested in me, so this seems like it might be the social anxiety at work. I don’t know where to go with this. How soon do I ask her what is going on? I am willing, at this point, to do what it takes to make this work. I don’t, however, want to pile more pressure on her, I also don’t want to just give up and let her walk away.
I wouldn’t normally spew my feelings all over an internet blog but I feel like you guys are a group of people I’d trust to be helpful. I am a wreck right now, probably just because it’s been so many years since there’s been anyone I’m interested in that I’ve settled into a very self sufficient and contented routine. This has turned that upside down to the point that I’m having trouble sleeping. Not where I wanted to be but I think potentially worthwhile for a fulfilled life. I might be overthinking it. Your thoughts welcome.
May well be she’s scared (and maybe scarred) of reaching out. You may be two wounded souls.
All I can suggest is patience. It took six years for my beloved and I to twig to what was going on between us and the years of friendship probably made the marriage stronger.
And we’ve got folks who also have social anxiety, which can help.
I’d suggest something like “You did warn me you have social anxiety, so I am trying not to trigger that, I understand being worried. I enjoy spending time with you, and want to keep doing so. What will work for you to build up this friendship?”
Now, you know her better than I do, I don’t know if she’s one of those who has an allergic reaction to the friend word. I married my best friend, and he had to cluebat me. 😀
Thanks Dorothy. Thanks Foxfier. Appreciate the feedback. Patience definitely. Communication, definitely. I needed that reassurance and feel a bit better knowing that I’m not the first to go through this. Things I probably knew but sometimes need to be told.
Also, learned the word “cluebat” which I love.
Appropriately enough given the open genocidal hatred of Jews that the left is expressing these days, Powerline’s Week in Pictures is called the American Kristallnacht Edition.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/11/the-week-in-pictures-american-kristallnacht-edition.php
For some reason, Word Press doesn’t recognize the word Kristallnacht and wants to change it to Walpurgisnacht. Methinks those who created its spell check dictionary share the leftist hatred of Jews and want to erase the memory of prior persecutions of Jews.
Someone reposted a video from a number of NFL and NBA players. They were sending birthday greetings/condolances to a young man who came home on 10/7 and found his whole family had been killed. The messages are a little awkward, but sincere and heartfelt.
Couldn’t watch the whole thing. Was choking up for some reason watching all these big, burly black guys wishing a Jewish kid well.
Walpurgisnacht would be a lot more fun (although given how cold it still is on top of the Brocken on April 30-May 1, skyclad is not going to happen!)
In full disclosure, one of my patron saints is St. Walburga/Walpurga, so I giggle a little at the folk-lore. She’d probably mutter something about “And this is why Saxons can’t have nice things,” although she was about 60 years before Otto I and Otto II had to keep chasing Saxons away from old sacrifice sites around the Brocken.
“Do the next right thing” is powerful advice. A slightly longer version is “Do the next right thing; and if you don’t know what that is, DON’T do the next WRONG thing.”
I’ve had moments where I’m at a loss for any “next right thing” (beyond the utterly basic like brush your teeth, take a walk). But, from experience, I always have a vast menu of known “next WRONG things” to NOT do, from the banal to the possibly life-shattering.
Probably just a different take on “the first rule of being in holes.”
Useful arrow in the quiver. And more arrows = more better good!
Kindly attribute the multiple posts to my mouse’s newfound spastic palsy.
Were I of a poetical turn of mind I might be tempted to write an epic poem titled “The Brambiliad”
I started the next Elect novella yesterday. And sang a huge concert (huge by local choral standards), and have to Familiar Generations novels done and waiting for edits and covers. I’m doin’ my bit. Even though I”m still not sure how I managed to write the last book, since somehow I never found time to do much work on it.
“Familiar Generations novels done and waiting for edits and covers”
Will you need beta readers?
The “Familiar Generations” books (like the entire related series!) just keep getting beta and beta!! Looking forward to two more! And I thank you for many many hours of reading enjoyment over the years!
Thank you Sarah. I needed this. This has definitely not been the year it was supposed to be and sometimes I get down on myself for making so little progress on things. But some progress is not no progress.