how to be ok at stuff

Been getting a lot of flak from the frosting lately, so some stream-trains. If you leave it on the doorstep, it’s going to get set on fire and stomped out for old times’ sake.

Everything’s a learning experience and every parachute is a coffin. I mean every love is a battlefield. I’m driving at the ineffable nature of the cake’s entry into everyday distractions, like it intends to cohabitate with the mundacity of breathing. Silly cake- I eat you every day.

And oh how I miss this man’s daily bursts into my life. Oh how oh how oh how? Like that.

Here’s some (I vote yes) I’ve encountered with my bad self:

A Pirate Ship With Pirate’s Island Swag!

“The Only Wholly Admirable Man in History“!

This Filthy Blog and its Filthy Home!

The Loneliness of Mornings!

A Legit Petit-ion To The Cyanide & Happiness Audience!

Tall People That Like To Tell Me I Look Like Rosie the Riveter So I’ll Flex For Them!

Enthusiasm!

That’s my cap, exclamation point-wise. Just imagine me being excited for the duration of the day. Now, back to bed with you, little girl, and to the making of things in an hour or two! (that one slipped out)

Technorati Tags: aunt mary's toaster bistro, filthy cabbage, filthycabbage, flak from the frosting, giuseppe garibaldi, inspiration, pirate ship, pirate's island, rosie the riveter, stream-trains, the filthy lapdog, the mundacity of breathing, ze frank

If you haven’t yet read Warren Ellis ad Darick Robertson’s Transmetropolitan, you’re missing out in a major way.

Hunter S. Thompson shuffled right on out of his mortal coils and on to the great buffalo in the sky in the middle of my senior year. I remember a teacher I had reading the announcement aloud from the paper, and I remember noticing, but not knowing who he was talking about, and moving on. When I finally did get my first taste of his work, he had already been dead for several years, which didn’t curb my enthusiasm for him one bit.

Transmetropolitan, as Wikipedia tells us, is an homage to the late great gonzo man himself. And oh what an homage. The city as she is constructed in the series is a glimpse of our frightening, curious, crowded future. Spider himself is at once separate from and essential to the workings of the whole ecosystem of the city. He’s the immune system for a city attacked on all fronts by its own progress toward a million different goals, and he manages to draw lines with his journalism in what to everyone else seems to be quicksand.

So if it’s been a while since you read anything gritty and delightful, pick up the trade paperbacks, starting with the first, to which I have kindly provided a link below.

Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: comic book, darick robertson, frightening curious crowded future, hunter s. thompson, spider jerusalem, transmetropolitan, warren ellis

those of you who know me, even if only to nod to in the street, probable know that i’m a former member of the Church of Latter Day Saints, or the Mormons. well, one thing i miss about the life i led when i was mormon was the constant giving my family did. we didn’t have a whole lot (not that we do now, either), but we were always making jam, or grape juice, or bottling or canning something, or sewing, needlepointing, cross-stitching, or making up emergency kits and then giving them away. the 12 days of christmas was a big deal in our house; we would prepare for it, and enjoy it, more than we prepared for christmas itself. we would gather small homemade gifts, usually useful things, or objects of creature comfort, and we would leave something on a doorstep, then ding-dong-ditch the family we had chosen for 12 nights in a row.

now that i describe it, i realize it was maybe a little creepy all around, but it was way more fun than toilet-papering. we never got caught, and we never admitted to it, to the best of my recall. that secrecy and forceful giving generated some of my best memories, and i would live off of the rush for weeks. i would look forward to it more than i did to the receipt of gifts on christmas day, counting down the days until our next “prank” as i thought of them. i miss it terribly.

this morning, i got a chance to get back a little of the magic, though the anonymity isn’t as present this time. my mom’s boyfriend is an insurance agent, and one of his clients needs some help. i’m hazy on the details, but i gather that there are two adults and a 12 year old child. they traveled up here to take care of an ailing relative, i believe, but upon arriving at the woman’s fathers house, were told that they couldn’t possibly stay in the family home, because they’re not married.

i call BULLSHIT on you, sir, and i slap your face with my flappety glove of justice, and challenge you to a duel.

what is marriage but the paperwork? what is marriage but the legislation of human relationships? marriage does not equate to love, nor love to marriage. marriage does not mean a faithful, supportive, or financially solvent relationship. marriage does not mean maternity or paternity, and it should not be used as a wedge between family members.

my mom caught flak from her born-again twin sister when my mom’s boyfriend moved in. holding aside my feelings about this (as much as i can), i find it odd that someone who shared the womb with you could cast such ridiculous aspersions on your intelligence and integrity. but i digress.

i enjoyed packing up cooking utensils, coffee, hot cocoa, salt, sugar, matches, candles, toilet paper, sleeping bags, towels, etc., for this family. and they are a family, for those of you who would challenge me. they are each others only family right now. we will be getting them started at a local campground later today. i hope to gather things for them that will give them comfort, in addition to things that will help them survive.

for those of you who’d like it, there’ll be another, (hopefully) less angry post tonight, and i’ll try to keep you updated on the family in question.

and i hope that if, before you read this, you were alienating a member of your family, that you STOP. because for shit’s sake, isn’t there enough being thrown at us without our family being catapaults?

i’m no longer a practicing mormon, but i’d like to think of myself as a practicing human. and practicing is all we can do. otherwise, how do we expect to get good at it?

so yes, giving is a rush for me. but i guess it’s safer than crack.

Technorati Tags: 12 days of christmas, camping, charity, comfort, donation, family, how to, justice, LDS, marriage, mormon, survival

Being around my father and his parents and extended family for the last two weeks (family reunion) gave me a new perspective on the depression and anxiety I have mentioned in previous posts. Having recently lost her son to suicide, my paternal grandmother sought “stress pills” from her longtime doctor. She came back with Clonazepam, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clonazepam

(Yeah, sure, I’ve gotten the spiel w/r/t Wikipedia from professors, and how nothing that isn’t authored by experts and maintained in a static form is worth a damn. But I’m particularly good at not listening to authority figures when they spout off, as they tend to do when you show them something new. Personally, I have too much faith in humanity to believe that open-source isn’t the way to go. We ants far outnumber the grasshoppers, and we don’t need to bow to their one-shot expertise any longer.)

So- back story. My grandma has had several falls in the past several of years, two of which broke both her ankles in the months before the last reunion we held at their house, three years ago. My grandmother also has a long history of being on this or other heavy-duty medication. Within the body of the Wiki article on Clonazepam, an increased risk of falls and impairments in the elderly is mentioned, in addition to the following:

An individual who has consumed too much clonazepam may display one or more of the following symptoms:

* Coma
* Hypotension
* Impaired motor functions
o Impaired reflexes
o Impaired coordination
o Impaired balance
o Dizziness
* Labored breathing
* Mental confusion
* Somnolence (difficulty staying awake)
* Nausea

Now, I don’t want to be alarmist about this, but my grandmother has been suffering from certain of these conditions for some time now, and it would be silly of me to write this off as a coincidence.

Of course, my grandmother is also part of a generation that espoused ideas like “now that it’s regulated by the FDA, everything is safe- it’s not like the old days of patent medicine and snake oil”.

News flash: The medicines of today, while there has been vastly more R&D funding thrown at them, are not too far off from the idea of patent medicines, because they are still primarily funded by corporations with a greater interest in making money than in keeping people healthy.

I’m not the biggest conspiracy theorist out there, by any means, but if a pharmaceutical corporation, under the concept of separate legal personality, is allowed, “to act as if they were a single composite individual for certain purposes. . . most commonly lawsuits, property ownership, and contracts”, then it isn’t that great of a stretch of the imagination to see the patent medicine salesman and the pharmaceutical corporation as the same oily beast, bent on making a profit regardless of the well-being of the person consuming their product. And though I may draw fire for this, I won’t accept the idea that none of these institutions are familiar with the idea of planned obsolescence and the idea of “hooking” a patient on a product to maintain their profits.

But I digress. Basically, seeing the fams let me know that my depression and anxiety are by no means something that originated in my generation alone. It’s both comforting and kind of scary to hear stories from my elders about their lifelong battles with depression- comforting to know I’m not the only one in this boat, by any means, and scary to see their progress or lack thereof towards healing and solutions to their most debilitating symptoms.

BUT

The more you know about the past, the more control you have over your future.

So I go into the future now, well-armed with my past, and a healthy dose of skepticism about chemical remedies.

Toodles for now, folks-

I’m off for a job interview at a cafe where I can interact with enough people to take me out of my head, to take an organic gardening class this weekend which will enable me to reach some earth-touching goals, and into the great wide wonderwhere, where kittens roam free and neighbor puppies show up on the doorstep, reminding me that what I need is perspective, and how to get it is by being OK at stuff.

Technorati Tags: anxiety, arming yourself with the past, being ok at stuff, chemical remedies, clonazepam, composite individual, depression, family, family history, FDA, heavy duty meds, how to be ok at stuff, kittens, oily beast, organic gardening, patent medicine, pharmaceutical companies, planned obsolescence, puppies, separate legal personality, side effects, skepticism, snake oil, stress, stress pills, wikipedia

In some of my lowest times, I have found myself unable to do the thing that, for the particular corporeal being that is me, has the power to do the most soothing without being an escape, the power to accomplish the most change without being a drastically stupid decision, the power to heal without being a placebo. My anxiety and depression, and the self-loathing and worthlessness and all-around dejection that they bring with them, have stopped me from writing, when it is in these times that to write down how I feel, and to read it back to myself, would be the quickest way to tamp down the feelings of personal inadequacy that have become so generalized and yet so unfounded that I should be able to laugh them off- but there are times when I cannot, because beneath all of my irrational fears is the idea that it’s not my fears that are irrational, but me.

So in the interest of dealing, let a resolution be made, for myself and the anyone who is reading this:

We will make every effort to be ourselves, despite the stigma that who we are (of which depression and/or anxiety are undeniably a part) is something of which to be ashamed. To be ashamed of being an anxious depressive is to give it a great deal of power it doesn’t need, as it has power of its own.

We will not listen to the voices that call us names for who and what we are, and we will accept the fact that we no longer have control over the circumstances that brought us to the point of who we are now. We will accept that having the final say in some arguments is driven by our fear of the loss of control, and will do more harm than good to ourselves and, sometimes, others.

We will accept that we have a place in the universe, as does everyone else. We will accept that our place in the universe is to be exactly who we are, and that the universe will suffer just as much as, or more than, we will if we deny who we are or try to be someone else.

We will accept that no one thing we do, or way we act, or job we have, or person we associate with, defines who we are. To try to define who anyone is, you must be that person, which you cannot be, because you must be yourself.

We will not avoid doing the things which make us happy, or happier in any way, or which we have any inclination to do which passes all the fail-safes against action that we have already installed in our beings.

And we will be much kinder to ourselves, because there is nothing we could do that would make us exempt from kindness. And this kindness that we show to ourselves, it will overflow into everything else, and everyone else around us. And if we can all do this, in any small or large way, then who knows what awesomenesses we can perpetrate? Our limits are none, and our abilities are many, and we are stronger and more beautiful than we know.

NOTE: I will be posting much more frequently. My long absence gave me material, and brought with it growth.
So be excited! I certainly am.

Technorati Tags: anxiety, clinical depression, control, depression, fear, help, irrational, natural remedy, negative emotions, resolution, shame, survival

You often discover that they’re still true. So here’s my response to one of the local columnists. I submitted it to the local paper, and they published it. He felt the need to retaliate, but I don’t remember what he said. But here most of it is anyway, for those of you who might have missed it. Evidence of my investment in the community.

“Tourism is our community’s industry, and we have to support it to support our community… We live in an area I would describe as sublime (both awe-inspiring and terrifying, at times). Yes, our area is rife with caution signs and the dangers they describe. But to focus on the dangers of any community, especially one that relies on tourism as its main source of revenue, is a beast akin to the struggles the generations before me witnessed with fear of communism, fear of nuclear holocaust, fear of poking one’s eye out with a stick, icicle, spoon, et cetera. Our community has made every effort to keep both visitors and residents alike safe from the hazards of our rocky coast, and has succeeded on an immeasurable level. So next time you’re at the beach, focus on the sound of the ocean, the smell of salt in the air, and the friendly people around you. Let the inactive part of your brain do the worrying about killer logs, and sneaker waves, and tsunamis. That’s what it’s for- to apprehend dangers instinctively, and keep you on your toes lest anything hit the fan. So don’t let modern-day scare tactics keep you away from the natural beauties our coast has to offer, and the many ways in which it can be enjoyed.”

Technorati Tags: community, fear of communism, fear of nuclear holocaust, fear of poking one's eye out, how to be ok at stuff, investment in the community, killer logs, modern-day scare tactics, natural beauties, nuclear holocaust, sneaker waves, the sound of the ocean, things you wrote forever ago, tourism, tsunamis

I am falling in multiple loves with SMBC Theater.

Technorati Tags: how to be ok at stuff, saturday morning breakfast cereal, smbc theater, susie and the internet, the internet

I don’t usually do this (who am I kidding, I do this all the time), but here’s a link to a most amazing, and pretty brand-spanking-new, webcomic. Scenes from a Multiverse already rocks. The creator, Jonathan Rosenberg, will accept your (what has two thumbs and is failing at making connections between humans? this guy (if you tape some thumbs on him)!) friend request, too. Well, he will if you are at least as cool as I am.

Or construct sentences half as convoluted and obfuscatory.

Anyway- be sure not to hop on the bandwagon so you don’t miss the boat- Scenes from a Multiverse. It shall rock ye old socks.

Technorati Tags: awesome new webcomic, facebook, jonathan rosenberg, multiverse explosion, new webcomic, rock ye old socks, scenes from a multiverse, webcomic, what has two thumbs and is failing at making connections between humans

There are times in everyone’s life, and perhaps more times in our lives (we the depressed and anxious) when we want nothing more than to be productive members of society. We want to contribute, want to have the contributions we make recognized, and maybe even seek salvation through our contributions.

But these times cannot exist if they have no counterpoint. Our desire to do and be more than what we are is, by definition, balanced by some time when we didn’t. When we were content to just be. Just be, in general. To merely exist is such an awe-inspiring event that I question those who must clutter their lives with purpose. Mankind has been searching for purpose, for meaning, for a light to guide us home, since we first splooshed out of wombs, whenever that was.

I must pose the question, then; what makes us think we are better than cats? Cats are fed, bathed, petted, loved, and they don’t have to fill out timesheets or meet quotas to earn those privileges. Sure, some cats, many in fact, remain unclaimed, unloved, unattended. But sensible souls know that for a cat to be healthy, to be in full fine fettle, it should be offered love, and physical affection, enough to eat, fresh water, and roaming room.

Why don’t we always offer ourselves the same conditions? Why, since the advent of agriculture, are we so prepared to accept UNSATISFACTORY living conditions?

And it’s a real question, so feel free to answer, though by now I’ve found my own means of coping (part of which includes building a lifestyle where I can go without a post for a month or two without being stabbed in the face or thrown down an improperly decommissioned well).

The rest of my cope-age is to revel in the awe of how amazing it is to just be.

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Dreambits. I’m going to go with dreambits for my nine-letter answer to what the clue from “Editing a Novel part two” was. Oh, just listen. I have my reasons.

Dreams are feelings you can mainline from your heart to the page. Not only are they a surefire method of tapping into your most visceral of experiences, but they’re great for when you’re stuck on a plot point, or can’t figure out a happy (or sad, or scary) ending.

And yes, people will think that you are lazy, and sleep all the time, and aren’t going anywhere with your life. But chances are that people would think those things whether or not you were getting anything done. Like right now, when I’m sure those who are aware of my existence assume me to be sleeping or slacking or generally gadding about.

But really, I’m living. And sometimes the truth is that living requires a lot of downtime, and that clear thinking is more about giving yourself time to process than it is about anything else.

Or I might secretly be half-three-toed-sloth. Who knows? My point is that you should feel entirely free, nearly compelled by my instructions, to incorporate dream-images, dream-phrases, dream-feelings (in short, dreambits) into your writing. It wouldn’t be the same without them. I know mine wouldn’t.

Technorati Tags: dream-feelings, dream-images, dream-phrases, dreambits, heart to the page

3. Reading is Key

My next stab in the dark was to start reading in earnest again. During the month of November, I had limited myself to writing and reading Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves. Having finished House of Leaves and my 50000 words, I felt an emptiness in my days, but began to take up the slack by rereading David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, one of my favorite books and a testament to another genius who died young. It’s pretty hefty, and my days, sadly, don’t consist entirely of reading, so I’m still working on it.

Between Infinite Jest and a great deal of Stephen King(including his essential On Writing, a book I think all writers should be required to read), in addition to my daily internet wanderings and absorption, I began to develop a backlog of ideas and themes that I started to record, attempting to amalgamate a document that would later help me with the construction of a novel people would read, I mean really read, and enjoy.

I can’t stress to you how vital it is to let yourself accrue ideas by reading. Without reading a great many examples of what it is you want to put out, you will be missing out on insights into the methods that work. I want to make it clear that I in no way condone plagiarism- I am simply urging you to observe the world around you, and learn from the mistakes and triumphs of others. If you don’t, you will endlessly and futilely reinvent the wheel, and the process will make you weary, might even turn you off of writing altogether.

And this accretion, it’s not an instant process. It’s not as though you can get up in the morning and say to yourself, “Today I will find and read all of the books I need to absorb to poop out a book of my own.” It takes time, and you will become impatient, yes, but the best and brightest of your flashes of inspiration will come when you least expect them. You have to maintain a sort of detached vigilance. You can’t worry about finding insight- you can only wait.

This step doesn’t take any set amount of time. For some, it might be only a couple weeks, and for others, it could be a couple years. I have found that ********* are crucial.

For the mystery crucial bit above, tune in tomorrow.

Technorati Tags: david foster wallace, editing process, genius who died young, house of leaves, infinite jest, mark x. danielewski, november, on writing, reading is key, stab in the dark, stephen king, writing

I have been sorely remiss in my posts. I won NaNoWriMo, for those of you a) holding your breath in anticipation or b) actively cheering me on. It was an amazing experience, and one that I intend to repeat next year and for many years to come.

I was fulfilled at the end of it, though not sated. There was this “and then?” feeling about finishing, and it probably had a lot to do with the ending of the novel I had written. It wasn’t totally crap, by any means. It was a great deal more tied-up than a lot of endings I’ve read (or written, for that matter), but I could feel the absence of crucial information, though I couldn’t pinpoint what was missing. And I knew that there were massive novel-shaping questions I hadn’t even decided the answer to yet. And I was aware that the whole someone-does-something-important part of the novel was fetal, at best.

So what do you do when you’ve reached 50,000 words, and it isn’t enough to tell your story?

There were a couple of stabs-in-the-dark I took at this question:

1. Line By Line, Word by Word

I printed out a copy of my novel and started going through it with a fine-point marker, making notes on word choice and deleting lines and just generally making a big mess. This did not work. I want to repeat: THIS DID NOT WORK. Four pages in of that kind of close reading of my own work and I wanted to pull an Oedipal eye-gouge and be done with the thing. It made me see my own work in the same ballpark as any book I had ever analyzed academically, and that scared the crap out of me, like seeing someone’s child run out into the street pretending to be a car. I felt small and crappy immediately.

I want to make clear that I don’t think you should never consider the details of your novel- revel in them. This just shouldn’t be your first post-ending method, in my opinion. It will turn your relationship with your novel into one where you lick every inch of your lover’s body only to find out some parts don’t taste so good.

2. Blank Slate

After I realized this (or rather, after I tasted something bad and just stopped trying), I started from the ground up, and I did the first thing I would have done had the entire work been a paper for school. I went back through the entire thing and just read it, front to back, forming paragraphs from the rough bulks of my writing sessions as I went along.

Sounds simple, but it was something I hadn’t done yet, and having such low expectations for my task freed me up to just see the things I had made visible with words, and whether or not they worked together, and how I was going to turn this pile of pages into a book.

Tune in tomorrow (no fooling this time) to read about the next stab in the dark. I swear I make progress.

Technorati Tags: 50000 words, close reading, editing don'ts, editing my novel, editing your novel, i won nanowrimo, i'm back, line by line, nanowrimo, nanowrimo winner, nanowrimo winning wordcount, novel in a month, word by word

Yeash! (this is my happy-dance, Sean-Connery-esque yes, my happy happy yes because I have made it to and through another goal day in November, the novel month, as in fiction, as in Yeash!)

So forgive my overwrought happiness. It’s a side-effect of this pursuit. Oh how I briefly mourn (before again being distracted by my outsized jubilation) all the Novembers that came before this one, and how I didn’t participate in National Novel Writing Month.

I always assumed that this sort of lightness, freeness, possibility, was what other people felt all the time, but now that I’m actually in it, I think that I am in something other people would also like to be in, feeling-wise.

So joy, and upon discovery of it, a fledgling plan for a trip to Newport tomorrow night for a write-in at SKW Brewing. Another bonus to this- there’ll be some minor socializing (at least being in the same room with humans) to come out of it.

I’m almost too jubilant (and my hands are almost too cold) to have much else to say, but I will tell you these things.

I’ve recently had the pleasure of the company of some people I used to be able to call coworker, and as glad as I am that i quit the cafe, I am doubly glad I still get to have these people in my life. They’re superdedoop, and it’s always a challenge to find, in a new or recently-returned-to locale, to find the superdedoop among us. So yes, we might just be drinking ourselves soggy and playing Rockband until the adolescent hours of the morning, but that can be a rad thing with the right people, and these are the right people.

So now that I’ve toned down the joy a bit with my Rockband interlude (I’ve conquered you, Tom Petty, but oh how the Jackson 5 elude me), I’d like to take a moment to tell you, my captive audience, thanks for being there. Even if I do have to leave you hogtied in the basement with a bowl of soft food and a matching bowl of water to get you to stay.

I am in the perfect place to finally be writing again, and it took me so long to realize it that I briefly felt like a fool, but I’ve moved past it, to the great productive ride into the sunset that I am rededicated to creating in my life.

Technorati Tags: anxiety, control, depression, happiness, help, how to, how to be ok at stuff, how to be ok with stuff, how to deal, jackson 5, keeping myself busy, nanowrimo, november, rockband, sean connery, SKW brewing, superdedoop, survival, tom petty, treatment, write-in