how to be ok at stuff

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

NSFW/ not safe for work if you work somewhere uptight. If you can work from home in stretch-pants/undies/nothing, totally safe for work. If you don’t care that your boss knows breasts exist, safe for work. If you’re human, you will have at least one reaction to this. Mine were too numerous to count, so I’ll chalk it up to sensory overload, does not compute, processor needs time to process.

…

How do I enjoy thee? Let me count the ways. But let me do it after I watch this Nick Cave awesomeness.

Technorati Tags: does not compute, grinderman, grinderman 2, heathen child, nick cave, nick cave awesomeness, nsfw, processor needs time to process, sensory overload, your boss knows breasts exist

These guys. Every time.

It makes me deeply happy that I am the member of our affianced duo more likely to poop the floor and think it funny.

Or am I? Jupe wouldn’t save his floor-poopery for after we officially get hitched, would he?

3 Things I Am Not Actually Worried About:

1. Jupe and Floor-Poopery.

2. How this video will affect your opinion of me.

3. Not having enough silly in my life.

You think that’s a dysfunctional human interaction? Check this one out. Debate-driven humor makes me laugh while I cry. In every shitstorm, there is hope for logic. But don’t take me too seriously- I sometimes wax philosoraptor about my humor consumption.

(I’ve been away from my Google Reader for a while, so there was a stoppage-uppage of SMBC theater madnesses in my junk-trunk.)

Technorati Tags: 3 Things, affianced, Consumption, debate-driven humor, floor poopery, Funny, Google, Human Interaction, humor, humor consumption, in every shitstorm hope for logic, junk-trunk, jupe, Logic, philosoraptor, Poop, Shitstorm, smbc, smbc theater, Stoppage, stoppage-uppage, Uppage, Violence, wax philosoraptor

This, this! This I find in the midst of my quest toward more full self-ness. And what wonder it brings to my heart and my eyes, my ears and my soul, and my mind!

I love it. It is a thing I love. I love the mind that brought it to me, so again I offer thanks to you, Ze Frank. You wonderful man, you’ve been changing my life for the better for years. You opened the door for others to change my life, too. Life is change, change is life, everything is flexible when you were a gymnast as a child. And thanks go from me to Jupe, too, for the room he gives me to open my eyes, and my lungs, and my heart.

I love this moment. I am learning, every day, how to better love myself.

I am more comfortable being alone now, in this me, than I have been in years. I am growing all the time.

Alone people scare people. Sometimes they scare themselves. They are too strong to be mortal, too real to be of this earth. I am not a person who is alone all of the time. But I do treasure moments with myself. When only she and I are in the room, or on the street, or in our head. The I that is a We even when alone, that’s me. It’s a glorious thing to be so excited about something that you don’t have to tell anyone else. You tell yourself, and are satisfied with the overwhelmingly appreciative response. Alone isn’t lonely.

Tell me about a wonderful time you’ve had alone, and I’ll give you a story in return. We won’t be alone in that moment, but there are others in which we will be, and I am excited.

Technorati Tags: alone isn't lonely, andrea dorfman, Ears, Earth, Gymnast, Heart, how to be alone, Lonely, Love, Lungs, Midst, People, tanya davis, Wonderful Man, Wonderful Time, ze frank

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

I decided to participate in National Novel Writing Month this year, and I’m already enjoying the journey. I’m using a tool called Write or Die see http://writeordie.drwicked.com/, that is kicking my ass in the good way that makes words come out of it. I’ve had so much success with it already that I’m thinking about buying the desktop version. If you think pooping out fifty thousand words in a month sounds like an excellent idea, it isn’t too late to get started- see http://www.nanowrimo.org/.

I’m in love with the community of people doing this internationally, the idea that people can set goals like these and meet them, and the concept of having birthed a novel by the end of the month (even if it might be born with its eyes closed and a thick sheen of placenta hanging over it). Not to mention the addiction of the numbers- how many words today, how many words tomorrow, how long did it take, how long will it take, are they writing more in Russia or in China, and will I win?

I can’t tell yet whether this idea is to me and I am to this idea like a kid in a candy store, a bull in a china shop, or the light at the end of the tunnel and the long-trapped miner.

I’m going to try to keep my Write or Die widgets updated, and as soon as I get around to it, I might put up a NaNoWriMo widget as well, so that you can check out my progress and, hopefully, be motivated to progress yourself.

Many woot-woots, and a tired but satisfied goodnight.

(Mommy, can I make every month such a goal-filled month?

Yes. Yes, you can.)

Technorati Tags: anxiety, depression, help, how to, how to be ok at stuff, how to be ok with stuff, how to deal, keeping myself busy, nanowrimo, natural remedy, november, november is for novels, positive, positivity, survival, write or die