Fear & Longing

I started plugging in dates to price tickets for going home for the holidays, and I realized that one of the reasons (besides the price) that I've been putting it off is because I'm really going to miss my boyfriend when I'm gone (insert vomiting noise here, yeah).

It's stupid, lame, and, I suppose, a fleeting feeling. We've been going out less than two months (we were friends for a couple months before that as well). *Everything* looks better at the beginning. Eventually, you get sick of each other, or he stops saying "I miss you" and he dumps you cause it's too serious or you dump him (or her) because the idea of an entire future together is just too terrifyingly permanent, like death.

The thing is, everybody tells you how to fall in love. There are tons of movies and songs and media sobfests and bitchsessions all about how to start up a whirlwind romance. It's hot and fun and you laugh and have a great time.

You start a lot of romances in your lifetime, but nobody ever teaches you how to *stay* in love. Nobody teaches you how to stay together.

It's like a writer who never finishes a book. You've got all these great beginnings. You're great at writing beginnings. But slogging through the middle? Wrapping up the end? You've got no experience with that.

Falling is easy, sticking is hard.

At least in the case of writers, we have lots of more or less successful examples to look at to teach us how. But in real life? How many really loving, successful relationships do you see? Relationships where people stayed together for some reason other than "well, I can't do better" or "we can't afford to break up" or "I guess it would hurt the kids if we split."

And maybe that's the thing - at one time or another, what kept some longterm couples together was just that one thing. Some fatalistic thing, and they pushed through it, and things were better (as Steph once half-jokingly said to me "Me and the Old Man got engaged because we needed more than love to keep us together"). But man, you know, my fear of getting stuck in a relationship that's ALL that - that's based on two people sticking together out of something other than wanting, something less than mutual respect and friendship... that's hard to swallow.

The problem with constantly waiting and worrying over the ending of a relationship is that you lose all the good stuff in-between. You miss the missing; you fail to enjoy the laughter, the amazing sex, the verbal sparring, the pancakes in the morning, because you're always waiting for that moment when you lose it.

Thing is, I guess, I already lost this particular boyfriend once for one miserable week where we both looked and felt like death. We came back to it, because being miserable sucked goats, and we laugh a whole hell of a lot more together than apart, but how long does that last? How long until the next time? Until one of us flips out again or we get bored with each other? Maybe once we're bored with each other, the break won't be as painful, or as hard. We can hope.

Thing is, you know, I'm tired of being afraid of everything and living through something expecting it to end. I'm tired of writing hot beginnings whose tough middles I can't make it through. I want an ending hotter than my beginning, and a middle that's hotter than both. I just don't have a roadmap on how to do that.

People talk a lot about the sort of courage it takes to be a writer, to put yourself out there. It takes a lot of courage to live fully, too, to put your heart out there. It's going to hurt either way. Sometimes it's pretty scary not knowing where you're going. Exhilarating, terrifying, beautiful. An adventure. But fucking scary.

We lose everybody, in the end. If not to a breakup then to death or disaster. The ending always comes, whether or not we're prepared for it. Unlike fiction, there's no putting it off or setting it aside.

I want to find out how this one is going to end, no matter how much it scares the hell out of me. Because I wouldn't trade this beginning for anything, even if it's going nowhere; even if it ends tomorrow.

Good German, Bad German

The Good German, the book: Excellent.

The Good German, the movie: WTF?

If I hadn't read the book, I don't think I'd have any idea what was going on. The characters were entirely unsympathetic. Instead of good people made bad by bad circumstances, they were all (with the exception of Clooney) a bunch of black roaches feeding off a dying city (not gray roaches, but thoroughly black). The plot was mishmash, confusing. It tried to follow the story through all three POVs, starting with the least sympathetic, moving to the most, then back to another unsympathetic character.

Jumping heads was supposed to clarify what is, in fact, a really complex plot. Instead, it needlessly complexified it (yes, I'm declaring that a word).

It was really terrible, and terribly dull, which is a shame.

It's a great book.

Mmmmmm

Pumpkin PIE!!

It is always so reasonably carbed.

The Writer

I write everything at my job. Everything.

I write up SOPs for software installation, hardware maintenance, corporate store applications. I write "news" stories and announcements for our intranet frontpage. I create PowerPoint presentations from talking-point outlines. I write and edit marketing copy, business proposals, executive resumes. I write and revise panel descriptions, sales rep letters, insurance business proposals and company histories and all of our web content.

I have written talks about tax history, documents about how to use our timekeeping system and how to create service tickets. I've written sales policies, revised the company handbook, formatted and reviewed hotel directions, convention agendas, and loan applications. I've created order forms and trade brochures and email campaigns and edited four hundred pages of operations manual - twice.

I have written everything, and when I didn't know how to write it, I googled it and found formats and examples and ideas. I'm constantly learning about how to write sales pitches, persuasive copy, and business proposals, because you can never be too good at writing those, and you can always be better.

And I've spent the last couple of weeks working on synopses, one-line elevator pitches, pitch paragraphs, pitch packages, pitch copy, because you can never be too good at writing those, either. I have never written this shit before, and it's involved a lot of reading, a lot of searching, a lot of reviewing, a lot of writing and re-writing and starting over and reading.

It's a small miracle, making a living as a writer. What people never understand, though, what everyone sighs over and makes eyes at, is that writing is a job. Like acting or modeling, it seems very glamorous, but I don't think I realized exactly why it seemed so glamorous. I honestly thought all that glamor had to do with lots of money and hot bed partners and expensive toys and trips to Paris.

We've attached all sorts of associations with these sorts of professions, but the glamor of making it as a creative person isn't actually about the work itself, or even the expected perks, I think. Work is work.

The real glamor, the real perk, is the idea of spending your days doing something you love.

Sometimes I think that's what the allure is of any place: this idea that you can live somewhere, with someone, doing something, you love.

It is, perhaps, the greatest gift on earth.

That's the glamor.

Synopses:

Still hate them.

On the upside, I didn't realize I had this many backlogged novel projects.

So.

That turned out to be a very pleasant night.

I've been having a lot of those lately.

This One's For Patrick

Slaughter your world! (and kick a puppy!)

PUMPKINS!!!

Fresh, nubile pumpkins await their transformation.


Stephanie holds their fate in her hands....



I have all the right tools for the job.



Just call me the eviserator.



Mmmmmm. Tasty eviseration.


Around here, we don't need costumes to be scary.


Gutting nubile corpses is tough work, even for brutal women....


Mmmmmm... tasty pumpkin guts.


I take sinful delight in my work. Really, who wouldn't?


Stephanie has a surgeon's skill paired with a grave digger's sense of urgency. It's a deadly combination.


There's more where THIS came from....


I'm TELLING you: STEPHANIE HAS MAD PUMPKIN SKILLZ!!!!


The brutality takes shape....


Yes, EVIL has a face....


... and a not-so-steady aim.


Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.... Gotta love that new pumpkin smell!!!


The resemblence is STRIKING.


Sometimes I even scare MYSELF.


And then I see THIS FACE: and I am truly TERRIFIED!!!!


Stephanie's reaction is far less dramatic. I think she's still in shock.


I, however, have moved quite quickly from awe to shock to horror to pure, unadulterated batshit-crazy lunacy. Pumpkins have that effect on me.


Later, we teach Tessa to feed off the remains. It builds character.


Stephanie's pumpkin takes the left watch.


Mine takes the right.


Our terrifying creations complete their journey from nubile, fresh-faced pumpkins to brutal jack o' lanterns in just one night.

They'll thank us in the morning.

Together

Natural Architecture

Yummy!

Insured vs. Uninsured

Money I've saved in the last three months while being insured:

Hospital costs saved: $896.94 (two more claims for over $800 are still pending)

Meds costs saved: $611.51

That's $1508.45 saved on medical costs in three months. Just three months.

I wasn't joking when I said these costs-to-keep-breathing - pre-employement - were literally killing me.

And, of course, I HAVE paid costs out of pocket. That's just what insurance paid. Total out of pocket for the last three months is still: $475.46

Which is still 1/4 of what I was paying in medical costs pre-employment.

Four Suns

Definately the star system I'll use for The Burning Fields.

Note to Self:

Just because cheese curds are carb free does not mean I should eat the entire bag, blissfully satisfying as it may be to munch without fear of sugar overload.

Things I Hate More than Anything

Summarizing my books. Whether that's one-line summaries or full synposes. Hate, hate hate.

And it's something I seriously need to get better at.

That's what I keep telling myself as I slog through.

Quote of the Day

"Honestly, I think the only difference between depression and disappointment is your level of commitment."
- via Stephanie, who heard it on "some show."

Time

"Funky Things You Discover While Living in Africa"

Yup.

Fires in CA

From here.

"You Too, Mother?"

The one line that beautifully illustrates my undying love for Rome.

Midnight Madness

One of the ways I control my sugar when it's been out of hand over several days or when I eat something I don't generally eat for dinner is, I set my alarm clock for midnight and do a midnight sugar check.

What this allows me to do is adjust my sugar to keep it from rollercoastering too high overnight. If I was eating something that's got a weird rate of absorption, the numbers usually shoot up between my bedtime test at 9 or 10 and my midnight correction (unless I did a heavy exercise/kickboxing session the night before, in which case it spikes downward). This is why I tend to eat low carb and stick to certain types of foods. When I don't, I start to rollercoaster, and when you rollercoaster, you have to work fucking hard for about three days in a row with midnight testing and watching what you eat just to get back to your happy numbers.

The funny thing is, that even if I'm eating all right, I will, without fail, jump at least forty points between midnight and 5:45 am when I get out of bed. It's just how it is. I tested one midnight at 56, another at 68, and I resisted the urge to overcorrect (I did once, and woke up at 140). If I didn't correct, I'd wake up at 90 or 100 instead of 140.

So, why do a midnight correction if the difference is between 90 and 140? No big deal, right? Well, if I don't do a midnight correction and I have Chipotle for dinner, I could go to bed at 90 and wake up at 200. Big, big difference.

And yes, I learned all this through trial and error, and every diabetic is different. Your mileage may vary.

The last couple of weeks have been a little stressful, and I've been eating crap - going out and eating onion rings and chicken strips, waaaay too many Chipotle burritos (there is a direct correlation between Chipotle burrito consumption and my stress level), and chicken wings and breakfast scramble wraps here at work. Too much weird food, and it triggers a rollercoaster sugar ride, which then affects my mood. Extreme highs and lows wear me out. I feel like dirt. Quite literally, like dirt.

So this week I'm working at recovering from last week's rollercoaster. I realized I'd taken things too far yesterday, when I was so exhausted and bitchy that all I wanted to do was go home and sleep for ten hours because I found the idea of interacting with people - including my roomies and the boyfriend - really exhausting and annoying.

People find it very funny that I take such crazy control of my sugar, that I work so hard at it, but you know - I'm not a fun person to be around when my sugar sucks. I physically feel really, really bad. If I'm too low, I want to claw people's faces off. If I'm too high, I'm tired and bitchy all the time and too exhausted to speak to people, who then thing that it's them who's done something wrong, when in fact, it's all about me.

If rollercoastering goes on too long, some of those bad feelings are going to get out, and I'll start to lash out at the people around me who I love and care about. And after what happened back in Chicago, after knowing just how badly things can go if I'm not running at 100%, I'm committed to taking care of myself to reduce if not eliminate the possibility of me hurting people like that. I hate hurting people. If you can take better care of yourself so that you *and* the people around you benefit, wonderful. To do otherwise isn't just self-destructive: it's selfish.

Sure, if you want to be a hermit in a cave and not have anybody care about you, that's one thing, but if you want to invite people into your life, you must do your best to respect them. You can start by respecting yourself.

And yes, it's fucking hard.