Twinkle

I’m going to be doing the Blog All About It blog challenge by herding cats & burning soup. If you like to blog, it’s not too late to start!

It’s the last month, and the only thing the prompt makes me think of is a screenshot I found on Pinterest of a Tumblr post.

a poem that floats around Pinterest, from Tumblr

It reads:

twinkle twinkle, little star
why is art so fucking hard

up above the world so high
i can’t draw the other eye

twinkle twinkle little fuck
dammit
what the
i give up

tumblr users sweetmotherofhandgrenades and yumatsukomo, per the screenshot

Why does this bring me such joy? I do not know, but it does. I’ve seen extended versions, too, I swear, but can I find them at this moment, when I’m writing this last, mandatory blog post of the year?

No. No, I cannot.

But this is my contribution to the world. Please, enjoy.

I was thinking…

I was thinking about trying to write more next year. I had a heck of a lot of fun (as I always do) writing this November (when I finally got around to it — when life settled down enough to let it happen) that I want to keep it up.

Of course, that feeling might wear off.

It seemed like a really good idea, though, after the Last Minute Marathon our region hosts every year for NaNoWriMo, where I wrote at least 23,000 words (maybe 25,000? I didn’t keep track as well as I’ve done in the past), and I wasn’t even writing hard all day. I had moments of writing hard, of course, but part of the day I had to be at home with the kids doing parental things.

The day was not easy – don’t get me wrong. But I’m blessed to be a relatively rapid typist, especially when I’m writing things I enjoy.

And I usually enjoy writing so much. I enjoy the stories I create, and not enough of them see the light of day, off my computer and in places where people beside me can enjoy them.

So I was thinking about writing more next year. It’s 2020 – the start of a new decade. A leap year, even. It’s a nice, “pretty” place to start a goal like this.

1,000,000 words for 2020.

2,740 words per day. And if I bumped that up to 3,000, I could take an entire month off.

I’d write with the intent to publish everything written no matter how silly, or bad, or whatever (after editing to make it the best silly, or bad, or whatever it can be, of course), and also attempt to get things created with those 1,000,000 words published before the end of the year.

I’d only count fiction words, not blog words as I’ve done in the past.

And, the most critical part in this, is that I have a partner willing to do it with me.

Because I’ve tried such things before. In 2017, I wrote nearly 300,000 words, and it was powerful. I published 10 short stories (about 45,000 words) under a pen name that year, and I still earn a steady $2+ every month or so from those stories. Imagine what it could be if I kept writing and just didn’t stop.

A partner gives me someone to cheer who is on the same path I’m on. A partner will be someone to be accountable to who is trying to do the same hard thing I am. A partner will know how hard it is and will have the same stories about squeezing in words when there doesn’t seem to be the time.

So. What’s the point, right?

I really like the stories I write quickly. They end up a little silly, and maybe a little rambling, but they’re so much more me than anything I take more time on. I’m silly, I’m rambling. I like that about myself. When I write quickly, I don’t have time to self-edit, I just get it done. Sometimes I get stuck and I take a wrong turn, but I usually find something fun along the way, and I can always edit the really bad stuff out.

So that’s the plan. Write 1,000,000 words in 2020 with a friend, counting/tracking fiction words only, with the plan to publish every story I end up with whether it’s under my name or a pen name (and it’s not required that I publish 1,000,000 words, because I have a feeling I’ll lose some to editing).

I’m so excited.

Thankful

I’m going to be doing the Blog All About It blog challenge by herding cats & burning soup. If you like to blog, it’s not too late to start!

I am thankful for Bliss Kiss’s nail oil. It does a really good job of healing my cuticles (which I have a tendency to bother with until my cuticles are a hot mess) when I remember to use it regularly.

I am thankful for my family. Despite my significant lack of self-confidence, I am raising two good kids with my husband. We do good. My kids are awesome.

I am thankful for my furbabies. They are buttheads sometimes, but they’re cats. They’re supposed to be. They love us and they’re even warming up to my husband who wants them to like him but isn’t around as often as it takes to get them comfortable.

I am thankful for how hard my husband works to support our family. He’s taken on additional hours to help get us on-budget to get out of debt. I know it’s hard on him but I am more grateful than I can say for what he does.

I am thankful for the upcoming holiday season. I am slowly working out how to make Christmas joyful again for me instead of the positive-energy-suck it’s been for the last several years. I’m working on it.

I am thankful to realize I don’t have to keep liking things I don’t like anymore just because I used to like them. That means unsubscribing from RSS feeds of comics I don’t like anymore, and un-Patreon-ing people whose content I don’t enjoy anymore. If I’m sticking with a thing out of guilt, that’s not the right reason, and I’m going to be happier without it 95% of the time.

I am thankful for the uncluttering I have done in my life. I am freer for it, and I look forward to doing some more in the coming weeks.

I am thankful for my friends. You know who you are. Thank you for sticking with me even though I’m basically Eeyore inside a Tigger facade.

I am thankful for the times that motivational stuff resonates with me. It doesn’t always (like right now), but I greatly appreciate the times my headspace allows it in because I feel so much better when it does.

There’s so much else I’m thankful for. Mostly, I’m so very thankful that sharing my gratitudes is no longer uncomfortable. It felt very “woo-woo” for a very long time. Uncomfortable. Cheesy. Something Not To Be Shared. But now it’s not, and that’s very helpful to me.

CREATIVE THINGS

Here’s a quick update on the Creative Things I’m doing lately.

It’s just #Inktober2019

  • October 1, 2019 – Ring
  • October 2, 2019 – Mindless
  • October 3, 2019 – Bait
  • October 4, 2019 – Freeze
  • October 5, 2019 – Build
  • October 6, 2019 – Husky
  • October 7, 2019 – Enchanted
  • October 8, 2019 – Frail
  • October 9, 2019 – Swing
  • October 10, 2019 – Pattern
  • October 11, 2019 – Snow
  • October 21, 2019 – Dragon

I’m really enjoying it. I end up staying almost on track – right now I’m behind 1 day so I’ll catch up when I get home on yesterday and today. My version of #Inktober is lettering with doodles since that is the amount of drawing I enjoy. I can draw some things, and we could always end up with a month’s worth of horses, since my skill there is moderate. But I’m enjoying this. I’m getting better at judging my available space, and with the exception of Husky (for which I could think of nothing to doodle so I just kept writing the word over and over), I like everything I’ve done. Pattern is my favorite, Enchanted is a close second place, and only a few people are going to “get” the Bait reference (and boy, they sure did, and quickly).

So none of the other creative things I enjoy (or have enjoyed in the past) such as writing, cross-stitch, knitting, or painting are happening right now, and I’m okay with that. I’m enjoying this, and playing Minecraft (could be argued to be creative, I suppose), and watching movies.

And I’m surviving. Dealing with the random jumble of my mental health (great some days, severe on others, moderate almost 35% of the time) and my family and my job.

It’s enough.

Shiver

I’m going to be doing the Blog All About It blog challenge by herding cats & burning soup. If you like to blog, it’s not too late to start!

The temperatures are finally in the range where I wish I’d planned ahead and worn my jacket in the morning, but still warm enough that I’ll forget that jacket in the afternoon.

It’s cool enough that yesterday, meeting a friend to exchange greetings (and dinner), my knees shook as the rain misted us and the temps failed to reach 60.

It’s not quite cold enough that I need multiple blankets to avoid freezing at night, and (hopefully) no one has yet turned on the heat in the house. I’m pretty sure we still have some trapped heat from summer inside our walls.

On a slightly different note, I watched a horror movie last night called Hell House LLC. Apparently it’s a series, and there are two others to see still. The thing is, though, is that I don’t like horror films. My level of scary movie is zombies and Resident Evil. World War Z is one of my favorite films (the book wasn’t as good). I enjoyed many seasons of The Walking Dead (but I didn’t finish it) and the first couple seasons of Fear the Walking Dead.

So why did I watch Hell House LLC? Someone I follow on Twitter said it was so good, and there were two others, and the film’s description made it look like a documentary.

I like documentaries.

I had to wash the taste of that film out of my head with The 12 Dates of Christmas, and I realize it’s ridiculously early for holiday romance films but it was absolutely necessary. I still found myself thinking about Hell House LLC about 5 a.m. when I was trying to go back for a few extra minutes of sleep.

That’s all I have for this month’s post. At this point, I think it might be more than enough.

…shiver…

Anxiety/Frustration

Frustranxiety? That might work.

I’m anxious. And frustrated.

I want to craft. I don’t want to be behind a computer.

When I have time to craft, I just want to be behind a computer.

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, BRAIN.

I don’t like this.

I want to craft.

I don’t want to be behind a computer.

Thankfully, the feeling will pass in about eight hours.

*sigh*

It’s not working (Writer’s Group, No Writing!)

My writing group isn’t working for me. It’s not even a writing group like it was when we started. When we started, we got together and were quiet for giant swaths of time as we wrote, stopping to ask a question, get it answered, and move on. Sometimes we talked at length about someone’s story – asking questions, probing, learning – but it seemed to always be about writing.

But the group evolved and changed, as things do, and now it’s a social group. I like everyone who comes. They’re my friends. I like talking to them, learning about them, etc.

But it’s no longer a writing/editing group. It’s a group of writers who may occasionally happen to be able to get some writing in (usually by attending earlier than the rest of the group, thus avoiding the lure of conversation by eliminating other people to talk to).

When I want to write, everyone else wants to chat. When I want to chat, everyone else somehow manages to bury their heads in their projects.

That happened last night. I went and just wanted to write a blog post. My Chromebook battery was low – I hadn’t charged it fully the week before and hadn’t pulled it out of the bag to recharge it this week. My writing goals are meager these days. All that was on my plate was my response and ponderings about the amount of water I’ve been drinking lately.

And I got drawn into a conversation. Maybe I even initiated it after someone made a noise, I don’t remember. I enjoyed the conversation. I learned new things. I’m excited about what I learned.

But I am so fucking frustrated that at a writing group meeting I couldn’t even write a damned blog post. I’m frustrated that the things I want to say are so fucking fleeting that I can’t hold on to them after I get interrupted. I’m frustrated that the time for writing that I need isn’t there anymore because I can’t manage my time.

I’m frustrated. I don’t know how to “fix” this, or if there is a solution that doesn’t involve me ceasing to attend this event filled with friends. That’s a possibility, to be honest. One I’ve considered quite a bit but hesitate to mention out loud because of Reasons.

Well, at any rate, something needs to change. I’m a writer who doesn’t write, which essentially means I’m now just a gamer who doesn’t get paid for Netflixing while playing Skyblock in Minecraft. I write because of the potential to let my words pay for my life, and to free myself from the constraints of being someone else’s employee.

Maybe that reason isn’t good enough anymore.

Thoughts.

Water, floating

I learned a thing from the Internet (so please don’t take this as gospel) that you’re supposed to drink 1/2 your body weight in oz of water every day. (Have I mentioned this before? Please forgive me if I have.) So I’m giving it a shot.

At first it was really hard. I felt like I was floating and I wasn’t even halfway to my goal. You could literally (in my imagination, perhaps) hear the water sloshing around in my stomach, and I was in the bathroom every 30 minutes.

Really hard.

And I kind of gave up. Excuses were easy – my water bottle makes my water taste funny. If I don’t remember my water bottle, I go through entirely too much plastic with the single-use bottles at work.

I don’t really need all that water, right? (That’s another excuse, if it wasn’t clear.)

But I kept hearing the thing (because I keep listening to podcasts by the same person), and I don’t know – I decided to try again this week.

I didn’t realize – maybe you have – that drinking more water regularly makes it easier to drink even more water. Is that a thing? I mean, is it a stomach-stretching thing? I’m not sure (and I’m not really looking for an answer right now), but it was a surprise when I found it easier – like a lot easier – to drink more water this week. In fact, yesterday I managed to get 4 of the 5 water bottles down before going to bed. And today, I managed 4 bottles a heck of a lot earlier than I did yesterday. So it’s entirely possible that I’ll get the entire 5 done before I head to bed tonight.

I’m still in the bathroom all the time – that side effect just makes sense. But I’ve also noticed (after merely two days, y’all, so it’s entirely possible that this is unrelated) that I’m more awake. Have you ever read the thing that says you get tired when you’re dehydrated, so try drinking water? Me too. But I’ve never experienced water actually fixing the tired. I haven’t been getting more sleep. I haven’t changed anything else. But I’m so awake right now! I didn’t fall asleep during a kid appointment (which I have done before). I woke at 5 a.m. and could keep my eyes open! (Shortly thereafter I closed them again because I hadn’t gone to bed particularly early and I wanted the extra sleep, but still!)

At 300 lbs, drinking half my weight in water means I need to drink 150oz of water every day. That’s 5 of my 32oz water bottles (more or less).

That’s a lot of water.

Y’know, I had more to say, I’m sure. I’m going to rant about the loss of what else I wanted to say in another post.

For now, I’m just gonna finish off the last couple ounces of this bottle.

CRAFT, sleep, lack of caffeine, and other things flying through my head at a million miles an hour

How much of that blog title will make it into the site URL, I wonder?

I need to craft something. Usually I get this urge in December after writing hard during November, but it’s here now. I want to cross stitch or embroider (I don’t know how to do that, by the way), or maybe figure out perler beads.

Painting would even do it at this point.

I’ve not been drinking caffeine lately, and I feel amazing. Here’s what happened:

I gave up caffeine. I went to bed at 9pm every night, woke at 6-ish. Felt pretty good.

But then I was doing laundry and the mini-fridge was stocked with Mtn Dew, so I grabbed one. And we had a bunch at home, so I had another. I brought one for lunch, I had one to wake up on the weekend, and I was feeling tired, and groggy, and so darn sleepy in the afternoon.

So I connected the dots (again – this is not the first time, but it is the first time it feels easy) and decided I liked feeling good in the mornings and I liked not yawning away my afternoons and I like how I feel when I’m not drinking the soda (specifically Mtn Dew, but any caffeinated soda will do).

So I stopped. Again

Maybe for good? It’s hard to tell with me.

I worry that I only write because I think it’ll be some big money windfall and that’s never going to happen, so why am I doing this again? I posted something on Twitter about it yesterday.

https://twitter.com/nivixious/status/1171103639437500417

Ali clearly wasn’t talking about me in her thread, but OMG – what if that’s why I write? What if the only reason I keep trying to write is because I have it in my head that with hard work and constant publication, I too can get some of that giant cash wad? What if I don’t actually like it?

I have had this argument with myself about other things that I don’t think I have conviction with. It’s a thing.

I haven’t been writing lately, I’ve been playing a lot of Minecraft – Skyblock on Wabbit – and having a whole lot of fun there, so I’m going to ride it as long as it lasts. At some point I’ll get tired of it and move on to something else.

Like crafting. I need to f*ing craft something.

Header cow photo from freestocks.org by Pexels via Canva

Crunch

I’m going to be doing the Blog All About It blog challenge by herding cats & burning soup. If you like to blog, it’s not too late to start!

Spicy Doritos

Taco Bell #10

That piece of random something in the hot dog that shouldn’t be there

Overcooked pork pot stickers

Chocolate pieces in Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia

Beetles under your shoe

Bumper meeting bumper

Autumn leaves on late September mornings

Popcorn

The spine of a new book

Good celery, cucumbers, and apple slices

Gravel

Dry toast

This pointless, rambly bit of nonfiction is brought to you by the letter Autumn. Have a lovely week!