Epic

Gods, I'm still swimming through murk. Maybe I need to write or immerse myself in an epic fantasy where the heroine has to fight her way through unbelievable darkness before breaking into and winning the light. I am still in Mirkwood, or Mordor or something. I don't have a magical ring or a fellowship or a Gandalf. All I have is my little, barely functioning, broken self. I do have friends, but they aren't on this journey with me and I don't know how they can help.

What tools do I have? My ability to write: this blog, my novel, my journal, anything else that comes to mind. My ability to draw: sketch, color, illustrate whatever I see or think of. Cognitive therapy skills: I'm not sure how to use them on this, but this uncertainty could simply be a symptom of the depression, not letting me see how to use a powerful tool. Exercise: which I haven't been doing but which could change my brain chemistry at least for 15 minutes at a time. Medication: I really don't want to meddle with my meds right now.

What other resources do I have? I'm persistent like a kid sister. I'm brave, when I remember to be or don't notice. I'm stronger than I think. I'm smart, or used to be at any rate. I'm imaginative, creative, and articulate, which are the swords that cut in both directions. I have an intelligent and creative therapist. I have a stable home.

What are my hindrances? Years of being depressed and anxious. Years of being sedentary to the point of motionlessness. The helplessness that comes from long-term unemployment. Lethargy. Fear. Crumbling self-confidence. Years of giving in to the depression, lethargy, and shyness. The habit of hiding. I'm so the broken hero!

In an epic, I'd have to overcome all my personal hindrances, while battling the monsters as well, to get through the dark places and win the day. The unemployment is like the thousand-foot cataract: I have no control over the people who decide whether or not to pursue me after reading my resume. I can try to paddle to shore before the water falls over the cliff; I can grab onto a passing giant bird; I can hastily manufacture a parachute. Or I can simply go over the edge in my bark canoe and hope I don't drown or smash against the rocks at the bottom.

I like metaphors. I know this sort of thing doesn't work for everyone, but my imagination has in the past helped me through difficulties in my life. Maybe my not using it much for too many years has contributed to this morass I currently inhabit.

Perhaps I have my magic sword, my wand, my string of charms, my book of spells. Now I just need to figure out how to use it, whatever it is.

Damn, Damn, Damn Depression!

I'm sunk in the stupid pit again. Why? Hell if I know. And it's not just depression, although that is an overriding emotion. I'm crabby and antisocial. I'm terrifically stressed and anxious, to the tune of taking an extra 1 mg of Xanax each of the last two days. (So far today I haven't taken any extra.) I took a four-hour nap yesterday and still slept for 9.5 hours last night … and still didn't want to get up this morning.

I'm really tired of being "the sick one", the one people have to ask "how are you doing today?" I have no idea what I'm doing wrong or what I'm not doing right that keeps dumping me back into this debilitating space. "Functional" might as well be at the top of the highest glacier on Mt. Rainier, it seems to impossible to reach.

You can't get there from here.

I'm trying. But I've been sleeping so late (thanks to this great melatonin-based supplement my psych recommended) that I feel if I don't get up NOW then the day is fucking OVER, so I haven't been journaling or trying to meditate or visualize. And when I do try to meditate or visualize, I haven't been able to achieve the levels I was at back before I tried the Abilify (which I've been off of all this month).

In therapy yesterday, Michele asked why I feel I have to get up and start my day as soon as I wake up. What will happen if I put it off for another half an hour while I journal or meditate or something? If I stay in bed even later, I feel as if the entire day is over, wasted. I feel like a complete failure for the day. I feel judged and judging.

We also talked about writing. And drawing. About how I used to do them all the time virtually every day, from the time I was quite young. How somewhere in my 20s, I stopped doing them much and they became fraught with difficulties and issues. And yet, I need to do them. Writing and drawing are parts of me that need attention. When I do them I feel better. I feel like myself.

Who Am I?

Just got back from therapy a little while ago, a session that was basically a rambling, tangled talk about how I no longer feel as if I know who and what my authentic self even is, much less how to find her.

I articulated my ideas about self (well, at least I tried), and Michele provided some other ways to view self. I rambled over how much I hate that I am still in therapy, almost 30 years later; how I am afraid to "follow my dreams", not even being sure what they are anymore and being afraid of following them and being poor and insecure; about choices I've made in the way of relationships with men that where less than beneficial for me and why I might have made those choices; about feeling so many emotions and how they affect me physically and how I wonder if all my meds are messing me up and I wish I could go off them …. It was a turgid, tangled mess.

Sometimes I wonder if therapy is even helping me anymore, if I'm beyond the point where it could help. I wonder if I can every be functional again, or if I am now stuck in this mental and emotional tangle forever.

In therapy, I posited that we all have a basic (right now I'd say "essential') self — the person we are when we are born. The core of our personality, perhaps. And that we gain layers as we grow, and maybe we get twisted around our core self, or get too many layers between our authentic self and the self we have become, obscuring our authentic self. In this schema, I no longer know who I am when I'm authentic, what my core self is like. Is it the child I remember? The woman in her early 30s who went to Britain alone for a month, who published a story, who applied to and was accepted into a competitive six-week writing workshop?

Or am I the pleaser, the one who has a puppy-like need to make others like me, who makes herself as "normal" and non-threatening as possible, who doesn't make waves?

Michele's concept is that we have a central personality who is the kind of overseer of the sub-personalities. Our sub-personalities — the rebel, the responsible adult, whoever else one may have tucked in there — are kind of like board members of a corporation or organization. And that I, as the central personality, can have dialogues with the various sub-personalities of me. This concept has intriguing possibilities. However, it doesn't answer the questions of who am I? What is my authentic self like? And how do I know what my "dreams" are that I should follow?

I pointed out to her that she didn't give me what I wanted, which was a clear, pure answer. She was understandably amused.

A Body at Rest Tends to Stay at Rest

Inertia. Newton's First Law: a body at rest tends to stay at rest, unless a force is acted upon it. And I haven't been enacting any force upon myself since I arrived in Seattle. Well, not much.

As a result, I've lost the muscle tone I'd gained by doing exercises in the apartment. I have barely blogged at all. I haven't even been doing my therapy work, and I did my therapy work in Houston even when I was at my least functional! I have disappointed myself. My confidence has ebbed even lower than when I was in Houston.

However, I've had one phone interview for a full-time job and have another scheduled for next week. (According to my friend who works there, they screen very thoroughly so they get people who will work well with the team.) I think I have a shot, as long as I can convince them I am technical enough.

I've also acquired a part-time freelance job! They contacted me out of the blue: they'd found my profile on LinkedIn, then through that found my web site, which was unfortunately unchanged since Houston and they could only access one link to my work, but they still contacted me and by the time we talked in a two-hour meeting, they had decided upon me. It pays lower than a for-profit company would pay, naturally, but the work is very meaningful, challenging, and varied. Not only can I feel good about my contribution to this organization and the work they do, but I will not be bored and I will be stretching myself. Just for your info, this organization facilitates collaborations between researchers at small to large companies and institutions with other institutions and large pharmaceutical companies to address neglected diseases in the developing worlds and poor populations the world over. These diseases are not high-ticket items in terms of money-making, so the big companies don't pursue them. But the big pharmaceutical companies who have joined this consortium are committed to providing information — even about their compounds — and expertise to other researchers in this sphere. It's amazing!

So, this week my new therapist and I addressed my inertia. She asks good questions, such as when did I live my life more like I wanted it, when was I happier, when was I more active. We went all the way back to childhood for the answers. Among the answers we found was that I need to create for my mental health. I used to write and draw and paint all the time as a child, and even in my 20s. It began to taper off in my 30s, especially as my depression worsened. I developed the thought that I needed to write toward publication, rather than simply write the stories I want to tell. After taking my Scientific Illustration courses and doing beautiful work, I seemed to feel that I could no longer just mess around with my drawing and painting like I did before, but that I had to create at that same high level, so I stopped drawing and painting at all. And I really haven't crocheted a lot since creating a very intricate and difficult doily for my Grandma (which I now have framed).

Falling In and Out of Love

My love affair with Houston has been waning, as many of you reading my blog have already surmised. I don't have many friends here and none of them are close friends. I don't have work. And it gets too hot and humid for too long for my taste in the summer. And it has giant roaches.

That being said, I have a terrific therapist and psychiatrist. I am involved with an interesting non-profit for which I do both volunteer and paid work. Rarely is there snow and ice in the winter.

I know that the friends part is due largely because I haven't gotten involved in a lot of things. I have gone to professional meetings and networking lunches and met a couple of women there, but they have drifted away. I'm involved with the non-profit and enjoy the people I know through there, but only a couple of them socialize with me and that is rarely. So I guess I have tried.

I think I'm noticing this more since my trip to Oregon. I got to see several friends (and was perhaps busier than was necessary for a vacation). I got to see the ocean again, which I love. I even imagined the sound of gulls my first morning back in Houston. 

The Story of My Life - Part 1

There is a type of therapy called Narrative Therapy where you rewrite portions or all of your life highlighting different aspects than the ones you currently highlight. For example, these days I describe my life mainly by highlighting all the things that have happened to me where I was powerless and bad things happened. Wonder why I'm depressed and anxious?

But talking with my therapist this week, we discovered that I have other aspects that I could use to describe my life. For example, remember when I talked about not being self-differentiated from my mother, aka still having the uncut umbilical cord between us? Well, in another conversation, we discovered other stories where I had differentiated and done things that carry you on into independent adulthood.

By talking about how differently I can describe aspects of my life by what I choose to highlight, we got on the subject of how I could write a different version of my life and remind myself of all the good and powerful aspects I've shown in my past. It hasn't all been bad choices and powerless tragedies. So I'm going to do that. But first, here is the way I currently tell the story of my life, to myself and to others (well, some of it I only tell to others I am close enough to trust).

I Wrote A Novel!

I've been writing my own things since I was seven years old, when I wrote my first poem that wasn't an assignment for class. My father took that funky little poem with it's not-always-exactly-rhyming lines and called each of his six siblings and read the entire thing to them over the phone.

This, I thought, was powerful. This is what I want to do. Nothing else I did ever brought me that kind of reaction from my dad or my mom. So my future was chosen.

Of course, I mostly wrote short stories growing up, and the beginnings of novels. In college it was all short stories and expository pieces. When I went back to school to get my technical writing degree, what I wrote was even further removed from my dream of writing a novel.

Rockin' the Words

I'm writing a novel! I started on Feb 8th. I don't write daily, but I have written approximately 20,200 words. I'm in my third chapter (it feels like it should be chapter 3 at any rate) and I've got so much going on in the story now.

It's Deb Blake's fault. I told her I had no ideas for what to write: no characters, no scenes, no bits of dialog. So she gave me two lines, two weird little lines and there I went. 

It's still not easy to write after not writing for all these years, but it's getting easier. And the story is taking shape in my head as I write. I am getting background and information as I write and as I think when I'm not writing.

Today I started early and wrote 2153 words before breakfast. Before breakfast! Deb is keeping my spirits up by telling me I rock and that the story is hilarious and that she loves it but now I can actually say to myself: I rock! My last novel attempt was a romantic suspense, or at least an attempt at romance, and I got to 45,000 words after working on it off and on for over a year. That's a lot more than this but none of those words came this comfortably or fit together this well. Every one of those words had to be hammered into place. I gave up with the thought that it was taking way too much force to turn it into an actual story.

This story is the opposite. It's fun to write; it's urban fantasy of some sort; the words work together. Sometimes I have to stop and think, but the story moves and flows organically. I'm already aware of continuity issues and all kinds of other revisions that I'll need to address, but I'm able to stay in creative mode and simply ... create. It feels so good!

I am writing and I am rocking it!

Thanks, Deb.

Who Am I?

I was chatting with my BFF recently about the whole damned mental health issue:

Me:  Why does getting better mentally, at least for some of us, have to be like learning to walk again after getting a leg shot off, or getting a spinal injury? Why can't it be like getting over the flu? Relearning to think differently is a long, difficult, sucky, unpleasant prospect (and probably just as bad to do).

BFF:  Because it is much like learning to walk, or walk right.  For some of us, it's not "again".  This crap has been normal for far too long.

This crap has been normal for far too long. 

Normal. 

Normal for me is not the same as normal for someone else, for the most part. Sure, normal for us all is that the sun rises and sets every day and the earth revolves around the sun and we need certain combinations of gases to breath and nutrients to stay alive and etc. But normal for me also has come to include struggles with depression, anxiety, and pain; solitude and loneliness; and medications. My normal includes a lot of stuff that I hate. 

Zenhacking My Life, 2012

I don't make New Year's Resolutions — never have succeeded. I tried a few times when I was younger and I had the success that all articles about the futility of resolutions predict: zero. But there are a couple of sites I follow — one always and one sometimes — that have ideas for changing one's life without resolutions or goals. One of the sites is zenhabits.net; the other is LifeHacker.com. and both offered up a true gem for me to use to change my life into what I want and need it to be.

What I need in order to change my life (YMMV) is new habits. And among the ways to help me make the changes is to implement the placebo effect.

Nano-Lame-o

I haven't written any more. I got up to 1600 words and just haven't done any more. I'm stopped on all fronts — all. No progress. No movement other than backward. The apartment is still shame-worthy (no, seriously, I wouldn't even let a maintenance guy in if I had a problem). I haven't paid the estate bills for no reason at all. No reasons for any of it. Except one.

I am sad.

I am drowning in it. I cannot even take to heart the wonderful advice and suggestions of Julie at JulieLand! Writing creatively has become like trying to claw my way out of a coffin (I've been watching MythBusters on Netflix and there are two episodes with coffin escape attempts in them, so I know of which I speak): impossible. Nothing comes.

So there we are. This is the place that is my life right now.

Creating

Well, I haven't written since the 1st. Until tonight. And I am not writing story yet. I'm just writing stream-of-consciousness text, trying to figure out who this character is and what she wants.

Sure, most people start Nano knowing all this ahead of time. Many people even have all their characters and plots worked out before November 1st. I barely had an idea. And unfortunately, where I started going just wasn't. Going. So I thought I'd do this top-of-the-head writing. Or down-in-the-basement. Or out-of-the-attic. Or wherever your creative muse or center emanates from.

This character won't let go of me. I have one snapshot of her in my mind, in mid-stride as she runs at a slow lope along a forest path. Not terribly dark, and not out in the wilderness. But other than her name — Nel — she hasn't given up much else.

It's possible that my 50K (or whatever) for November will be all exploratory. I'm going to write what I can and not worry about it. That's all I can do. While I haven't written any kind of story in a very long time (except that romance that would. not. live.), I do know that you cannot force the story. You cannot force the character. Well you can, but it doesn't make for either great writing or great creativity. And I am A Great Writer. (Lani Diane Rich makes all her students say/yell/type this at the end of every class. She rocks. You can find her at StoryWonk)

So that it for the evening. I'm going to go watch some more stuff on Netflix. It's Saturday and I had a way-too-challenging week, so I'm done for the day.

At least I wrote 964 words today. Not a story, but perhaps the beginning of creativity.

NaNoWriMo, Day 2: Even Worse!

Unfortunately, today was a very long day. I was busy with one of my jobs most of the day, then led a meeting for that one. I didn't get to my other job at all and as of 9 pm I haven't written for NaNo. Not sure yet if I will. Because after a very long meeting, I drove down the road a ways and discovered I had a completely flat tire. And I wasn't in a very good neighborhood. Thank heavens for cell phones!

Luckily, I have roadside service with my insurance coverage. So after about 45 minutes parked at a gas station, a nice man came and changed my tire. Ah!

But now I'm exhausted and my eyes are all squinty (I was on the computer all day, in a much more intense way than when I'm on it just messing around). I'm tired. I'm wired. I'm not sure if I can manage to write creatively.

But if I can, I'll report it tomorrow.

TTFN!

Word count for the day: 0.

NaNoWriMo, Day 1

I'm engaging in National Novel Writing Month. The first question I have to ask myself is this: is it counter-productive to write blog posts when I'm also trying to write 50,000 words of an incipient novel?

The second is this: can I make it all the way through this time?

And the third is this: what am I, crazy?!

This is my third or fourth attempt at NaNo. The other attempts ended within the first 7-10 days. I can write 1666 words a day, no problem. But creatively, while under pressure? Okay, the pressure is self-induced. It's not really a competition; it just feels like one. And if I don't reach 50,000 words by the end of the month, guess what? Most of the other people doing NaNo probably won't either. So there is no external pressure.

In addition, I haven't written creatively in what, a year and a half? And that was only on a novel that I'd written off and on for two years. For perhaps a decade and a half before that, my creative writing endeavors were just so much tumbleweed-strewn desert. Blog posts feel different from fiction. I know they both come out of me, but blog posts are more like conversation. Fiction, now, is work.

I'll report as I feel able throughout the month. If I can find a NaNo widget for the blog, I'll use it so you can see my running word count — LIVE! As for today, I worked for half an hour and wrote 392 words, including title and byline. It was difficult for me, that half an hour and nearly 400 words. I wanted to whip myself along to that 1666-word goal, but I decided to be good to myself instead and celebrate the fact that I wrote for half an hour on a brand new story that is just coming out of my head, no pre-plotting, no backstory other than half a dozen paragraphs of notes. So yay for me! I wrote! However many words I manage to write, I'll write, and I'll celebrate each and every one of them as bringing my creative side back to life. This, my friends, is Me coming back to life. Perhaps, even, my sanity.

Miracles

I started a part-time paid position with the group I've volunteered with for two years: I am the manager/ coordinator for making sure that everything is accomplished, and on time, and that the event runs successfully and smoothly. Not sure how I got roped into this. Doug made it sound simpler.


So, right after I agreed to that job, I was asked to interview with a writing services company. One of my colleagues on the volunteer job is always trying to help me, so she recommended me to the owner of this company. With my new resume that showed my new part-time position, I sat down and had the best interview EVAH with the owner and the VP. I told them what the ideal situation was for me (2 part-time jobs, at least until the other one is finished) and freelance. They didn't pull away or act like that was a deal-killer. I took their tests. Last week they offered me some part-time work. I don't know if it's just this one project or an ongoing relationship, but wow. I start early tomorrow morning.


All I have to do now is get the freelance stuff back on track.


If the writing services company keeps me on regularly, I'll be able to pay all my bills and put money in the bank for the first time since January 2008.


Of course, I have this virus that has given me laryngitis and a cough that is keeping me up at night. I have the writing job tomorrow, then therapy, then a meeting with the other PT job. It's possible I will have no voice by the end of the day, but so what. I'll have been doing things.


Now can someone help me pay my mom's last bills so I can finish my work as executor and get my bit of money?

Winging It

I don't plan my life out: not my days, my weeks, my years. I have some barely defined goals or desires in my mind, but no defined stepping stones for how to reach them.

I used to define goals. I was an awesome project manager at various jobs in the past: if I said I'd hit a deadline, then as long as nothing major like a complete set of new features or a new product module got in the way of it, I hit that deadline with a quality product. I wrote out all the steps required to meet the goal, all dependencies and other resources needed, and could sync of my schedules in my project management software with the schedules of other people. I had one of those personal and professional organizational systems with all the pages for purpose, personal mission statement, and so on.

Then I burnt out of my industry and my career. None of my goals and schedules and mission statements contained burn-out as an action item, nor did they leave room for it. Suddenly, none of that mattered.

After I moved to Oregon and slowly got over being ill and burnt-out, I chose to free myself from goals and organizers. I managed without them (except for when I needed them to remodel the house I bought) for several years. 

When I moved again, this time to Houston and to beginning a new phase in my life, and found myself in the position of needing to perhaps return to my old career — certainly I was in a continuing trajectory of unemployment and willing to do whatever would pay me good money — I began setting goals and creating mission statements and defining my purpose all over again. I bought an organizer and all the internal components. As someone who adores papers — stationary, specialty papers, notebooks, and even nice printer paper — organizer packages are a bit like crack cocaine: sparkly, desirable, and ultimately my downfall. Because defining my purpose in life and creating a mission statement have always "blocked" me from getting completely into an organizational system. How can you ensure that your tasks and objectives are in line with your purpose and mission if you don't know what they are? I'm neither a product nor a corporation.

I don't think that goals and purposes and missions (oh my!) got me the work I had last year before I had to go take care of my mom. No goals would have included "return home to care for Mom with cancer," although doing so is within my values, just not specifically stated in any mission or purpose statement.

One of my favorite blog authors, Leo Babauta, who writes zenhabits, wrote a post on "achieving, without goals." It makes sense to me, to do and pursue what you are passionate about, what makes you happy (which, hopefully, is more than TV and beer), without creating goals and objectives and tasks on how to get there.

Babauta wrote: "Goals keep you focused on something in the future, instead of being present and enjoying what you’re doing right now. Goals keep you fixed on one path, which might not be the best path in a week or a month or a year." And goals don't take into account changes you might choose to make regarding direction or simply giving up that goal entirely. 

Outside of my phases of over-organization in both my professional and personal lives, I have done what Babauta suggested in his post and pursued what I was passionate about. True, a lot of what I did was externally decided upon — go to school, work some kind of job to have money, etc. — but if something I was doing made me unhappy, or even better, if I spotted something that I wanted, something that lit a spark in me, then even if I couldn't pursue it immediately, it kept calling me. It was sparks like these that swayed me away from teaching, for the good of generations of children, and toward the career I followed for over two decades.

Nowadays, I am winging it. I've been working on becoming clearer about my core values and what creates my center, what grounds me in my life (especially as I had made my mother those things). I'm opening myself back up to my passions. I'm giving myself permission to pursue what I'm passionate about, rather than what others might think I should pursue. 

I'm not pursuing my old career in my old industry (even though at this point I wouldn't turn it down because I do need an income Right. Now.). Other work strikes my passions: the volunteer work I'm doing (which has brought me into a chairmanship in the overseeing committee!); the smaller, more varied, and infrequent freelance gigs I'm doing for very small businesspeople; and the ideas and work that those I've been working with and for have been encouraging me to do, such as teaching writing seminars to teachers and possibly schoolkids (but not in such a way that will damage their school experience for decades to come). 

Not having a defined and concrete path laid out in front of me instead leaves me with an entire world to explore, from horizon to horizon. I'll probably end up at the dead end of paths from time to time, but I'll have learned a lot on my way there and I won't feel guilty for not being able to continue on a specific path toward a specific goal. I'm perfectly able to pursue my passions without a roadmap, thus allowing myself to be caught by "oooh, shiny!" Turns out, "oooh, shiny!" feeds creativity, or is at least associated with the creative mind. None of the pages in my organizers had a bullet item for "oooh, shiny!"

Now I'm flying and floating and running and skipping my way through and toward my desires and passions. Already it feels better than the three-piece Goals suit I used to wear. I feel almost like a kid again, in tee shirt and shorts, creating detective-kits out of flour and paintbrushes and making up my own stories complete with illustrations and cover art, reading in trees and painting with color combinations not considered compatible by most other people. I've earned my wings and I'm not giving them up, ever again. 

Anyone have a barbecue grill or an outdoor fireplace? I have some pages I need to burn.

On Simplifying My Life

I like reading about simplicity — there is always a new perspective or something new to learn. Because I don't have my favorite books with me, I've been cruising teh Interwebz and found a post on one of my favorite sites: zenhabits. This post is "Simple Living Manifesto: 72 Ideas to Simplify Your Life" by Leo Babauta, the author of the site. 

The post isn't about 72 things you must do in order to simplify your life. The 72 things are ideas and suggestions, things to think about. I am beginning with the first one, because it seems central to how to live my life in general, not just how to simplify it.

"I. Make a list of your top 4-5 important things." This list basically sets your priorities and the way you want to live your life. This is what I wrote:

1. Creating. Writing!, drawing & painting, crocheting.
2. Freedom. Being able to do what I want to do when I want to do it, not being tied to an 8 to 5, commuting, unsatisfying-job existence (and getting burnt-out, and getting sick — again). Being able to do work that I think is fun, being able to work wherever I want to work. Having time and energy for my important things.
3. Love & Friendship: having close friends to talk with, having friends to do things with, having people to love. (Having a "romantic" relationship would be nice, too.)
4. Compassion & Giving:  Things like volunteering for EcoBot and being the Vice-Chair for its committee, volunteering to do stuff here and there, and maybe volunteering to work with shelter cats and cats at adoption events. Giving my time.
5. My Health. Physical, emotional, mental. Getting the care I need and taking care of myself in every way.

It's not an exciting list: there is no lust for travel (not that I would turn it down, and the Freedom item would allow me to do so, but travel isn't important to me as a thing by itself). No building a hugely successful business (that wouldn't leave me very free). It's a list that feels good to me. It feels open; all of it feels "free" to me. I wasn't sure about 4 and 5, because they weren't exciting, but even though I'm not doing all I could be doing (possibly because I'm not free as I struggle with money and worry and grief), I am doing some and there is lots of room for growth.

I can see what I want here. I'm not sure how to get to all of it. And I need to just start writing: if I can write more than one blog on a regular basis, I can write a story. I can start a novel. I can work on any of a number of things I want to write. The blog seems different from "real" writing, but for goodness sakes, look at my weekly word count! That's real writing alright.

Who knows? As I pursue the things I can easily pursue now, maybe the others will simply come to me.

What are your top 4 or 5 things?

Thinking — Not Always A Good Thing

I've been thinking, a very dangerous activity for me. When I think, small thoughts grow into bigger thoughts, which often grow into grandiose ideas and fabulous plans.

I think I'm currently at medium thoughts.

I've been thinking about what I want to write about. I have this blog. I have a professional blog that I started then stopped. I may or may not theoretically have other blogs in existence or in stand-by, if at all. But what should I do with my blogs? With my professional blog, I want to share my ideas about my profession. I want to make it a useful blog for myself and others. I want to share and grow and stretch.

For this blog, I want to explore my ideas instead of just writing them down. I want to put real thought and effort behind each post. So I've been creating a list of things to write about. I'm color-coding them so I know which blog they belong to (as if the topic isn't sufficient — I just like to color-code things).

I think that in this one I want to return to exploring the mental landscape that is in my head, which includes things I want to include in my life, things I'm just thinking about, etc. But things that are important, rather than just "I like cheese."

Two things I can think of to start with are the concept and practice of Simplicity, and the concept and Practice of Scientific Pantheism. The two of them complement each other quite well. I'm not sure if it would be better to alternate them, to cover one to the best of my ability before going on to the next, or just be random.

I'd rather not be random. I could, possibly, interweave them. Say I'm writing about Simplicity and something I say reminds me about something in SP. Well, I could cover that the next day. Does that make sense?

Well, I'm still cogitating. I know I'll come up with something interesting. But I do plan to start with Simplicity. Both my life and my mind could use a lot of it. And I may throw in some Stoic Philosophy and my own brand of Zen Buddhism (my own, barely informed, brand). I can see myself expounding upon the life and being that is Skye. That's just a warning. Just in case.

Stars

Stars. I never look at them anymore, but they actually are quite ... beautiful. –Men in Black

Do you ever find yourself so wrapped into a routine that you forget how you got there in the first place? When something you did because you enjoyed it becomes becomes habit?

For example: I spend a lot of time on my laptop. Nowadays, I surf the Internet for the most part. And even that has become a mindless task. I started spending all this time on the Mac writing for myself and doing work for others. When I surfed, I was looking for specific information, or discovering fun things, such as LOL cats and XKCD. But now I surf through and past these fun things, as a habit, forgetting to even pause long enough to enjoy them.

I read an article that suggested that the more time you spend in front of a screen — either computer or tv — the shorter your attention span becomes. And I think it's true, at least for me.

As a matter of fact, I'm finding it difficult to concentrate on writing this post.

Watching tv and surfing the web consume time, but  they seldom make you think.

The Internet contains amazing information, pictures, and people, a digital universe. And I hardly look at the stars any more.

The Sincerest Form of Flattery

Today I am following the lead of ... copying, perhaps ... an author named Lani Diane Rich. She began a blog series under her Lucy March name to document her life and personal changes over the next 516 days, which is when she hits her 40th birthday.

In 1 year and 2 weeks, I will be 50. That is 54 weeks. Three hundred seventy-eight days. Wow. There is a lot I want to do with myself and my life by then. Some very real changes I want to make. And I want to blog about what I do and the changes I make, to share with my friends and family, most of whom are far away, to give myself regular writing practice that stretches both my skills and my creativity, and to give myself a record of all these things. These are the goals I originally set for this blog.