I keep dozing off at my desk today, waking up with my chin on my chest. I did not have a big lunch or high carbs–mostly veggies and fruit and walnuts. What’s up with this? Could be spring fever, nice warm day, cool breeze, sunny wiht flowers. I’ve taken a walk today to get my energy moving again, but every time I blink, it’s harder to open my eyes.
I think it’s anxiety. When I am feeling anxious–like about the end of my contract and the new, unfamiliar things I am doing to find my next venture–I want to sleep, to hide under the covers. Sometimes I go into dream-sleep almost with the blink of my eye so that I am in a different world for a few seconds until my head drops, or I hear a noise, or I realize that I am still typing, but what I am typing does not make any sense with the scenes I am seeing.
I am brainstorming about a flash piece I want to work up for the work blog about the robotics training we are offering. The guys who teach the robotics are very busy, and their schedule doesn’t gee-haw with mine. I hope I can get a short video of the actual machines working, but if not, maybe I can cobble up an animation.
The good thing about being sleepy is that I get flashes of ideas…like a machine that opens up student heads, pours stuff in, and then screws the heads back on. Not an original idea by any means, but I see it in a nice, flat vector style that would be easy to do in flash. But the next scenario is more like I dream of Jeannie.
I have to get a handle on this and get some work done today. I have a new web client, and she will need the works. So, time to dream up a new domain name and all that.
I am escaping the J.O.B….at least one job, and opening to the possibilities of a new life. Right now I don’t know how things will work out. I’m looking for new work, listening to myself and making the effort to change the negative feelings of fear and shame into new perspectives of how I can thrive, keep up my obligations, and begin to work my dream.
I’m not sure what working my dream means. I know that I have always wanted to be a writer, but like many wannabe writers, I have not written. Writing is fairly easy for me, until I try to see what the story will be. But I can see beyond the academic rehashing of others’ words and putting spin on descriptions so that they are emotionally loaded with appeal.
Ironically, the last critique of my novel said that it did not express the emotions of the characters, so I am doing another rewrite. I hope the first book is the hardest, because I have others to write, and so far, I have not really started them. I had hoped to have a rough manuscript of the sequel nearly finished by now, but I did not focus on doing just that.
Focus is the key, picking one direction and taking a step at a time, on and on in that direction until I see where it is taking me. Will Rodgers once said that if even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
The good news is that, unlike a train wreck, I can get back up and start moving again even after being run over. There is a kind of freedom in knowing that a long time job is ending, the end of an era, the beginning of something new.
The last time this happened, I was also getting divorced and remarried. I did learn something that time…I’m single this time, with only my own baggage to deal with. My daughter is grown, though she lives with me right now; this may give her the momentum to launch with more focus into her dream of being an artist.
To freedom, to life, to abundance, however it comes.
I was told last week that I was allergic to gluten, dairy, chicken and egg whites, and that I needed to lay off sugar. Since those foods are pretty much what I have been eating for the last 55 years, I guess I’ve developed an intolerance for them. Anyway, I’m very pleased to report that for the last 7 days, I have not eaten anything made with wheat (and relatives: rhy, barley, bulgar, etc, or oats), sugar, milk, cheese, chicken, or eggs (how can the yolk be good for me if the white and the chicken are not?) .
I’ve had a few moments of self-pity and frustration, but I decied to start looking at what I could eat, and I added back to my diet things that I had been avoiding due to fat, such as nuts and beef. I’ve eaten some fish–I do best when I cook it, and I have never been a fry cook. I bought amaranth and quinoa today to learn how to cook with them to have a few carbs in my diet along with the veggies. I was also told to cut back on the amount of meat that i have been eating…not much other than chicken.
It really hasn’t been too hard yet, but my first lesson is to remember to look at what is good for me, and not what is bad. It really makes a difference where you look. I’m learning to go to the produce section in the grocery store (thats SC for supermarket) and then dodge through the flower department to stay out of the deli to get whatever housekeeping supplies I need. There really isn’t much food in the food market these days.
I do miss cheese, and after I get used to the idea that I can live without it, I might try some of the soy substitutes. I don’t like drinking soy milk (or cow milk for that matter) and it is almost always sweetened. Same thing with soy ice cream and other such. I’ve been amazed how sweet fruit is when I am not full of sugar myself. (Southern women often say “sugar” because they are too nice to use the other common s-word expletive.) I have no idea if I have lost weight, because for once, I am NOT dieting. I am LIVE-IT-ing as Richard-the-diet-guy says. I can even go to Golden Corral and overeat, yet avoid my problem foods.
This is very liberating in a surprising sense. I have not been successful in staying ona diet for any length of time since I was first married in my twenties, first time cooking and housekeeping on a tight budget. I never knew how low my weight went, maybe down as low as 130-140 lbs. My size 14 dresses were much too big for me.
But, now at roughly 2.5 times that much, brought on by neglegence and addicitive behaviors towards food, I am able to eat comfortably with lots of alternatives. The emotional outlook is the primary challenge, and my friend, Life Coach Patti Thomas, is helping me with EFT sessions and general counseling. her website is at http://www.clearsky,com. I am not her affiliate–she is a great coach, and anyone who is in the upstate SC area might want to contact her. She offers a free 5-minute phone consultation if you sign up for her newsletter.
My neighbors are happy again. My ”little” brother (over 6′2″ and 230 lbs.) moved all my dead leaves from the last two years to the edge of the road last week, a herculean task, and the city vacuumed them up this week. To celebrate, I bought two garden hoses (called hose pipes here in SC) to replace the leaky ones I have been using since I moved here 8 years ago. I also got one of those copper spinning sprinkers with a cutout of a dragonfly in the middle just for fun. I love the way it looks when it is spinning, and it really does water most of my largest garden. There are hosta, ferns, trillium, solomon’s seal, astilbe, camellia and azalea, and anything else I can get to grow under my huge oak trees. They like to be wet now and again.
Some ofthe azaleas died, or nearly so, since the winter was so dry this year. I neglected them as much as I neglected myself. I plan on all of us having a comeback.
After being online most of the last two years. I forgot how much I like getting my hands dirty. I planted a few varigated vinca plants…some of which are creamy white with no green at all, and some small blue flower bulbs from the hardware where I bought the hose. I got everything watered enough, I think, so that when the thunderstorm came through with pea sized hail, the water was able to soad into the flower beds instead of just running off the dry dirt. I hope some of it went into the ant holes and soaked into the ground there.
I’m not a practical gardener. I’d rather plant hosta than tomatoes, although I would like to keep a big pot of cilantro growing outside my kitchen. I haven’t had a lot of luck with herbs, except for a very hardy rosemary that is threatening to become a bush. I need to move the containers further out in the driveway to get more sun. But then, if I watered them every day, and then remembered to cook and use them….
A friend brought me a fairy godmother wand this morning, made of paper with golden and wooden celtic designs, fuzzy yarn and beads. I love it. She asked me if I had been to http://www.thetoymaker.com , so I went there immediately.
Marilyn Scott-Waters’ site has dozens of toys, gift boxes and dolls that a person can print out and assemble. She is both an artist and a writer, so she has books for sale as well as her free designs. She has the idea of giving some of her wares to build value for her books. The site too reflects her art–it is all congruent with her persona. Her blog is at http://thetoymaker.livejournal.com/ and the most recent entry is about an art project by William Hessian: http://www.williamhessian.com/arttour.html
The designs are downloadable PDFs with beautiful colors for printing on cardstock. One I particularly liked was a fairy gazebo, a place for tooth or other fairies to hang out when they are off duty. Her work reminds me of the punch-out-and-put-together toys I had as a child…castles, paper dolls and other build it yourself cardboard toys. I loved making the models, even though I wasn’t much interested in them once they were finished. It was the joy of assembling them that was fun.
Marilyn the Toymaker has very practical ideas, such as special boxes for a small gift or a card for a friend. Her artwork makes each piece special, and the downloads give a pattern for making a project one’s own. Her blog too features her artwork, making it personal, whimsical and a lovely break from hard edges and shouting headlines.
I have to go now and see what else she has…including a time-out system for happy home life, and to see about her books. She’s given me some ideas about how to market some things I do know how to do.
I made a list as well….some titles are representative of the author as much as the book itself, as sometimes it is the author’s body of work that was the influence, not just the author.
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
The first Heinlein book I read was Starship Troopers, my first look at science fiction, and I loved it, especially the line about women making better starship pilots than men. I was eight or nine. But the philosophy of Stranger in a Strange Land reflected to me the American culture that increasingly seems driven by hype and spin–and this was a long time before Jim and Tammy. Heinlein was science fiction’s answer to Mark Twain.
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
What Heinlein did for politics and religion, Heller did for war. I read this in high school, and it convinced me that war in general was wrong. I had been a hawk before, but I saw the absurdity that war creates as more detrimental than the so-called good it does. Sometimes there does not seeem to be any other choice, but I’d reallly like to see some other way…chess games or gladiator contests or maybe they should just take them out and see who can piss the furthest.
Little Women (et al) by Louisa Alcott
Jo….what little girl of odd size or shape would not want to be Jo, a writer and then a teacher of wild boys? I envied Jo her hair, as mine was stringy, but she is the reason I wanted to be a writer, and perhaps why I settled for teaching.
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
The setting of 19th century England was as far away from reality for a North Carolina redneck girl as the corridors of a Moon station. Most girls go through a horse stage, but this book was about how people treat each other and how they think as revealed by how they treat animals. Sentimental, probably, but again, I was seven or eight when I read it the first time. I loved the insights into the foreign world and the lack of horse sense most of the people exhibited.
Grandmother of Time by Z. Budapest
Beautiful goddesses modeled by women of substance, the divine Feminine, and the earthy stories of real women discovering the Feminine in themselves. As a father’s daughter, I came to accept my femininity late in life.
The Spiral Dance by Starhawk
How to do ritual, how to conjure, how to be the goddess and live in the world. She gave me practical tips that got me through widowhood, bankruptcy and isolation of being single and over 40.
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
One of my English professors caught me carrying a copy of Rand, and began to fuss at me. I told him it was okay, that the book was for a philosophy class. I have often wondered how two people with diametrically opposed world views could learn to negotiate withou either of them being evil…of course, fiction tends to work better if there is a Good Guy and and Bad Guy. This was yet another view of industrialist as evil, the military-indeustrial complex Eisenhower (I do remember IKE) warned us about. …..HELL-OOOOO????
The Internet Business Books 1 & 2 by James Brausch
I found James Brausch form a post on Randy ingermanson’s blog, and began reading it, then bought both books, and severl of his products. I was in the intern program for a while, and that too changed my life and my view of myself. I passed my copy of The Voice Said Obey to my brother, who is now looking to learn how to operate a computer and start his own music business.
1984 by George Orwell
A frightening future, and all too close to what I see around me.
The Joy of Cooking by Rombauer and Becker
Hey, even I can cook! Great quotes and humor about food lore. They quote Mark Twain on the subject of watermelons, saying that the fruit Eve ate was not watermelon, as she repented!
Thud by Terry Pratchett
I continue to learn from Pratchett how to take pop culture and make entertaining literature from it. Thud in particular follows one of Pratchett’s best characters, and shows how many levels a book can plumb. His use of the same plot device for two books at the same time (The other is A Hat Full of Sky) is most instructive. Pray for his health to continue.
And last, one I almost forgot….Teaching as a Subversive Activity by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner
I started teaching in 1973 in a South Carolina school that experienced race riots the year before. The entire English department was first year teachers, except for one who was two years away from retirement. That district and the others where I taught needed some serious subversion of the dominant paradigm, where I was told by my principal, “Keep them in their desks and keep them quiet. You aren’t going to teach them anything anyway.” I went back years later, beaten by the system to see if the concepts of teaching real life rather than facts was just some dream I had. I still agree with many of their ideas, and I think all first year education students should read this book.
My academic portfolio went to kinkos today for binding in leather–does sound a bit kinky. Another name for graduation is commencement, a new beginning. On this dark moon Saturday, I consider the last two years of my life and the changes of perspective that have come with the ups and downs.
From the top of a roller coaster, you can see the whole park, that is, if you are not too scared to look out across the area. If you are focused on the next corner or the impending drop, you won’t see a thing. Sometimes the roller coaster moves you so fast that you can’t focus on anything, and sometimes it takes you into the dark where you can’t see anything, especially if your eyes are accustomed to brilliant sunlight.
I feel like the rider in a middle car, when the ride is near the end. It’s been fun, and there is a bit of a let-down while I wait for the bar to be released. I think about the glimpses of the wider world that I have had in my cross-country travels, which makes my present life seem small indeed. I think about the bone rattling turns and twists of reorganization at work, my desk in a new location with a new job title every time I returned from the far left coast. I chuckle to see the similarities of the small college where I work and the smaller still college where I will commence, even as I mutter imprecations about them.
What I am sure of at the end of this ride is that I don’t want to stand in line any more to ride a pre-determined track that brings me right back where I started every time.
I am different. I can’t put my finger on how, but there is a restlessness to be doing something different, to see some results of my efforts. To feel that the developing changes are worthwhile, as valuable as the cost of time, effort and student loans.
But as I always say, if learning something doesn’t change your whole word view, you haven’t learned much.
Map Your Mind is back up to a hefty $25. I decided that I would keep the price low until I get a few more princess points.
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I’m doing a lot of “going within” to choose a direction for my next effort, and I’d like any suggestions you might have for a solution to a challenge. It’s always easier to see how to fix someone else’s challenge.
Just today I heard myself tell someone else about tracking her time and money for the new eBay business she wants to start. I’ve done a bit of eBaying, but just don’t like it. She’s a “thrifter” and loves digging through the detritus of Goodwill and the Salvation Army (yuck!!!) before it is distributed to the stores. I hope she has a great time with it, and makes a fortune.
It’s not that I know so much about doing eBay. I only wanted her to think through what she would be doing and see if that was what she wanted. I know that she is very organized and she stresses about things. When I saw the light in her eyes about how she could think about how to make a plan to track time and money, how to decide what kind of return she wanted, I knew I had said the right thing. Her smile was the sunshine on this wet, soppy day.
Sometimes we need someone to tell us that we already know the answers…even if that someone forgets it herself.
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I’m working on the WIP today, focusing on my antagonist character Fiona Silverthorne, Fairy Godmother Superior. I have been told that her emotional content is lacking, and that it’s not clear why she decides to do some of the things she does to the protagonist, Maven. I want to dissociate her from Shrek’s Fairy Godmother with her polluting industry and Oompa-Loompa slavery of her potion-making minions, yet the same sort of manipulation seems to come with the job–power corrupts.
So, today I will crawl into her head, perhaps riff-writing, as suggested by Elizabeth Lyon in Manuscript Makeover. A truth about antagonists and villians is that (unlike in the cartoons), they think they are the heroes. They feel justified in taking the actions they take for the higher good, even if it’s just good for themselves.
I intended the story to be about a struggle of opposition and perspective, rather than good and evil, but I chose the wrong genre for that. Fantasy is always about good and evil, usually clearly delineated and often over-simplified. The Great Sauron does not even have a cat, like Dr. Claw, to soften his all-destructive evil. After all, what does he plan to do to Middle Earth after he conquers it? Lay it to waste.
I did not write Fiona to be evil, only authoritarian, rule-bound and traditionalist, where Maven has issues with authority in general and with traditional fairy tale patterns in particular. Hence parody.
Originally, I saw Fiona as similar to the chief of police in detective TV, where the wise-cracking detective is always in hot water, but never in serious trouble except from the bad guys–Lethal Weapon in gossamer– although I usually think of Maven more like Peter Falk than Mel Gibson. Fiona would have told me that wouldn’t work.
Still, to make the story work, Fiona must be as well developed as Maven, and that’s the task for today, to begin to locate and revise the scenes written from her point of view, to show her thought process, which Maven does not know, of course, and to justify her actions, at least from her point of view. Those around Fiona see her as calculating and emotionally distant, but there has to be a heart in her somewhere for her to have the passionate rages that strike fear into most of Faery when she is around.
“But Evil’s still Evil,” according to Don Henley, so today I am studying Evil. Wish me luck.
Map Your Mind
