Writing

Seriously needs to happen tonight. I'm behind 5500 words again. Blast.

A Train Wreck of a Day

God, today was awful.

It has to do with a lot of stuff, including the fact that my health insurance doesn't work and I have to run around the office begging for money. Then there were loud coworkers, fighting down hysterical responses, being asked to get coffee for one of the IT guys (it was an innocent request, it just brought up my lingering animosity toward being a useless secretary), first official meeting with a new supervisor in a new department. It was a poor to terrible performance during our Zumba class (I move like a stone; the only part I felt confident with was when we punched). It was waiting too long for meds at the pharmacy. It was being overbudget on fun money for the month. It was not enough workouts. It was moving departments. It culminated in me spending an hour waiting for an apartment showing... in front of the WRONG apartment complex. By the time I called the guy a second time and sorted out that I was in front of the wrong place, he'd gone home, and I felt so stricken and stupid - it was so much the perfect end to a perfectly shitty day - that I just walked home and cried the whole way.

It's change. It's terror that I can't actually hack it on my own now, after getting sick. It's terror that in fact, I am crazy and incompetent, and once I'm on my own, that will become abundantly clear. I have a lot of really fantastic stuff going for me right now, and now I have to bring it, and after failing to fucking find the right apartment complex absolutely killed me tonight. Look at the level of my incompetence! I can't even show up to an apartment showing! What if being sick has permanently fried my brain? What if I can't make it?

I hate relying on health insurance to live, and relying on an employer for health insurance. I hate being so crazy-busy that my brain just... stops. That I can find the right apartment place, circle the block and *stand outside the wrong apartment a block away because they look alike for an hour.* I should have, at the very least, re-called after half an hour. I should have - duh! - seen that I was now standing in front of a complex that was in the middle of a street, not a corner lot like the one I passed while doing a loop around it. What the hell? How did I not see that? I just stood there like a sheep, like my brain saw it, and clicked and all reasoning power turned off.

And this is who needs to hack it. This is the one who's corp copywriter, building sales projects, has a three book contract, and lives or dies by how well she can calculate her insulin/food/exercise percentages four times a day each and every day. And, of course, that's the rub, isn't it?

How many things can you keep in your head? How much can you do until your brain shuts off what it considers non-vital? How much until you just overload and have to shrug everytime you blow a gasket and go, "OK, well, shit, I guess that was one thing too much."

I hated almost everything about today.

Tomorrow will be better.

I can do this, but I'm scared as hell, and until I prove to myself that I can do all this in the face of... all of this, everything I carry along with me, I'm going to be a little freaky about it all for the next couple of months.

Man, I want it all to come together.

Man, I want to shine.

The Crazy

I'd never realized what a powerful thing it was to take control of your own emotions and reactions to things. What's the quote? "Life is what you do with what's been done to you."

You can't go back and change how things went. You can't change people. You can't change the past. What you *can* change - right now, this minute - is how you react to those things. How much or how little you allow them to eat you up, consume your life.

It's hard. It's fucking unfair, especially when you feel you were in the right, or you were the one abused, or you were the one treated unfairly or fucked over.

Yes, you were.

Now what are you going to do about it?

Because I can't change other people. I can't change their reactions to me. I can't be more loveable. I can't be more than me. All I can be is the best I can be. The only thing I'm in charge of is my own reactions.

Life is what you do with what's been done to you.

There's this bitter, cynical guy at work who comes in every day and every day there's some new way that he's been screwed over, that life is unfair, that his life is crap, that it's not going his way.

In fact, he's pretty successful, I think. He has a spitfire wife he seems to get along with quite well, two absolutely gorgeous children, a great opportunity with this young company, great health insurance, tons of friends around here and back on the east coast where he's from. He owns his own house. They have two cars. I'd bet they have an IRA, too. They're in a good place. His life is in a good place.

But that's not how he chooses to take it. He comes in and everything is hell, everything is bad, everything is doom and gloom. It's waiting for the other shoe to drop.

And you know, though I have some fear and trepadation about losing everything in the back of my mind, I don't live that reality. I don't have nightmares all night about losing everything (OK, not usually!). Sure, sometimes I'm afraid I'll lose things, but what drives me is hope. Hope that I'm building toward something more. Striving to be better. Hope and faith.

I've done some terrible things to people the last couple of years, and I've had crappy things happen to me, but you know what? Shit happens. You can hate somebody for breaking your heart and scream at them to fix it, or you can fix your own damn heart. You can patch it up yourself. No one's going to do it for you. You can choose to figure out how to live the life you want - chronic illness and all - or you can lie in bed all day screaming at the unfairness of the universe and sit around feeling sorry for yourself. You can bitch and moan about losing your job and being stuck in Dayton or you can thank your incredible friends for giving you the opportunity to start over in a new town.

You can drive yourself with hate and fear and a deep sense of persecution by God or the Universe or whatever. Or you can say, "OK, this is what I've been dealt. Now what the fuck can I do with it?"

I think the thing that pisses me off about it is that it tends to "absolve" others (or the Universe, or whatever), for their actions. It's like saying, "So what, you were mugged in the street, get over it!" But what's the alternative? Sitting around waiting for the mugger to apologize and give your money back or watching him strung up for theft?

In this scenerio, whose actions/reactions do you have control over?

You're damn right I want the assholes to get their just desserts, but when I'm sitting around waiting for that day, on those nights when I'm not out campaigning to get them incarcerated or trying to change gun laws or whatever, what am I doing to take care of myself? How am I looking out for my own emotions? Cause nobody else is, especially not the person or external force that hurt you.

One of the things I hate the most is being dependent on other people. I hate having my well-being so dependent on the actions of someone else.

There's something incredibly freeing when you stop yourself, when you clutch at all the hurt and pain and say, "This isn't about that crazy fucked up person who hurt you/fucked up thing that happened to you. This is about how you choose to handle it."

Some people do things to you that are hurtful because they're wacky or crazy or completely fucked in the head. And that's something they have to deal with. What can you do about that? Just run after them, screaming?

So I work hard to let it go. I remind myself that all the stuff that changes is going to change within me, not inside of someone else. I can't change other people. I can't change situations. I can't change screwed up genetics.

But I can change how I deal with it.

I can take control of it now, this moment.

And that's how I live my life.

That's how I keep going.

That's how I succeed even in the face of catastrophic failure.

Fall down seven times. Get up eight.

Tomorrow

Cthulu is on Second Base

Tonight

Collapse. After our second day of video shooting tomorrow, I'm hoping things at work will slow down (ha ha).

Apartment viewing Friday! Yay!

Decided

I've finally decided.

You don't get people like this every day.

Life

Work writing. Fiction writing. Chipotle. Looking for apartments. More work writing. Work socializing. Fiction plotting/planning. Some reading (not enough). Some working out (not enough).

I need to go bowling next month and get the hell out of the house, but there's so damn much going on right now and so many deadlines that I'm having trouble getting my head unstuck.

Good news is: things are good.

Black Desert

I get really irritated when the Plot gets in the way of the exploding heads.

Life, in General

Behind at work. Behind in fiction. Behind with workouts. Too much Chipotle. Not enough time.

Dear Hobb

Um. Two words: Time management.

Writing is writing. Manage your writing in the way that makes the most sense for you. If you're bleeding all over blogs and not bleeding enough in your fiction, stop blogging.

If you get satisfaction from both, manage both. If you write about insurance and tax prep at your day job in return for health insurance, write on your blog about writing, and fulfill your three-book contract on the weekends while taking kickboxing classes and working out four times a week and eating pancakes, awesome.

There's this fiction that we can have one thing and not another, that we're all or nothing. I write to survive. Health insurance, yo. I blog to reach to different sort of audience and fill a different need. It does completely different things for me than fiction writing does.

And I write fiction because it's what I love, what I've always done, because the pleasure I get out of that keeps me sane.

Survival. Socializing. Sanity.

I need all three.

And so I manage my time really, really well.

Grand Revelations

Working on writing up website text about insurance, revising a bunch of scripts for work, then come home, use up some more Chipotle money (carnitas fajita burrito, no rice, no beans, no sour cream, no cheese - wow, this has suddenly become a full-on "healthy" meal. "Only" 745 calories!), off to bookstore, crank out the requisite 1500 words of Black Desert:



Home now, time for line edits and reading and packing up gym clothes for tomorrow (they apparently have kickboxing at the Y downtown on Thursdays. Our membership is free through work, so really, why not go? We'll see how it goes).

Another day, another dollar.

It's all a step at a time. Sometimes there are no grand revelations, just hard work.

Black Desert: Still Behind

...but gaining. Am about 7K behind schedule, but that's 3K less than I was this morning, so that's something. This week is more relaxed at work, so I figure I'll be able to catch up a bit before falling behind again next week. Heh.



As you can see, I am not the world's fastest writer. But I'll have a draft by the end of April, come hell, high water, and sales season.

Also, Rhys sure is long-winded. I think I wrote 2K of pure internal self-introspective narration. Whine, whine, whine.

See, I like unreliable narrators, but I believe that there are these moments when some of us really do truly see our actions for what they are. These moments of lucidity are fleeting, and immediately after we realize them we tuck them away again and hide from them, cause if we lived with the truth for too long, well, then we'd actually have to DO something with that truth.

So I do enjoy putting in those moments when we stop hiding our motives behind our actions and see them for what they are. It's nice to capture it in print. Doesn't mean they're any more reliable. We just got to see a brief moment of lucidity.

Nyx and Rhys are incredibly different, but they both lie to themselves with the same incredible desperateness of ingrained self-preservation and perpetual self-hate. It hurts them. And it hurts the people around them.

Also, this printer the not-Boyfriend got me months and months ago? It kicks ass beyond all measure. It's like 30 pages a minute, yo. It's amazing.

It's like, the sort of printer a WRITER would have.

And yeah, if you wonder where I get all of my material from? You don't read this blog. It's all sillily transparent.

But hey: the blog inspires folks on one end, maybe the books will inspire folks on another. I actually like the idea that they'll reach totally different audiences, and I'll get totally different sorts of fan mail for each (yes, I've gotten my fair share of blog-related fan mail. It's why I post things here that are so personal. Sometimes it *does* help people. Other times, yes, I'm just ranting).

Mostly, ranting.

I'd like to say I should be ranting a little more in fiction and a little less here, but they tend to feed each other. When I'm writing, I'm writing, no matter where it is. When I'm not... well, I'm not.

Anywhere.

So.

Now I'm just drifting, so I'll stop. Good night!

Black Desert: Excerpted line of the day

"Her name was Azizah, and she ran with a crew so hard-bitten and bloodlusty that they made Nyx nervous."

I can't wait until I finish this book. Not because it's a BAD book. It's actually a pretty GOOD book, but I feel like I've been working on it, like, forever.

And yes, I decided on my own that "bloodlusty" was one word.

Sue me.

Wanted

Today's Song, Stuck on Repeat

It's been stuck on repeat for two days, actually. This may have something to do with reading and (thus far) enjoying Armor over the last couple of days, too (full rant to come).

For some reason, these fit together in my head. Though this one's more upbeat.

The Decemberists - Sons & Daughters

When we arrive
Sons & daughters
We'll make our homes on the water
We'll build our walls aluminum
We'll fill our lives with cinnamon now

These currents pull us 'cross the border
Steady your boats
Arms to shoulder
'till tides are pulled
Hold our grounds
Making this cold harbor now home

Take up your arm
Sons and daughters
We will arise from the bunkers
By land, by sea, by dirrigible
We'll leave our tracks untraceable now

When we arrive
Sons and daughters
We'll make our lives on the water
We'll build our walls aluminum
We'll fill our mouths cinnamon

When we arrive
Sons and daughters
We'll make our homes on the water
We'll build our walls aluminum
We'll fill our mouths cinnamon
(when we arrive sons and daughters
We'll make our homes underwater
When we build our walls of aluminum
We'll fill our mouths with cinnamon)

Here all the bombs fade away
Here all the bombs fade away
Here all the bombs fade away
Here all the bombs fade away

Deal with the Devil

One of my coworkers has offered to pay my 6-month Wow subscription if I do his resume and he gets to run other characters on my account when I'm not logged in.

These guys are serious addicts, yo. This could be my future.

Honestly, tho, you know: I'm sick of being better. I would like to hide in pixelated goodness for awhile.

There are no broken hearts in pixelated goodness, just rending the flesh of my enemies with my mighty fists.

But really, I should be doing that in kickboxing class.

Whine Whine Whine Bitch Bitch Bitch Moan Moan Moan

I find my ability to be full-up with self-loathing even when my life is full of awesome to be incredibly annoying and certifiably silly. Which just goes to show you that happiness has nothing to do with external stuff. It's not that you just need a new house, a new car, a new significant other (OK, yes, sometimes that's the case, but sometimes you're just full of self-loathing), it's that what needs changing is so often on the inside. It's the rotten, poisonous core that needs to be given a shot of antibiotics, right there at the heart of it.

Cause the hate and self-loathing, though fleeting now and merely something to gnash my teeth about on a Monday night, never go away. I have to change something inside. Some key part of how I see the world, see myself, see my place in it.

I'm not sure where that change needs to come in, or even if it does. After all, I get down on myself far less often now than in the past. But still... something inside needs to change. I need to let myself be happy with what I have, what I've accomplished. I need to stop focusing on what I don't have, what I could lose.

Now is all we've got. External "fixes" won't change it. It's all about me. I'm the one who has to change. To let go.

Other things I discovered today that are silly: Chipotle burritos without sour cream and cheese. I mean, really, what's the point?

Life

I think some days you just get tired of trying to be better all the time and you have to just hole up and say "fuck it" for awhile.

Another of Life's Inexplicable Truisms

The dates you WANT to call you back?

They do not call back.

Le sigh.

At least I still have my brutal bounty hunters cutting off people's heads in Tirhan? And World of Warcraft? And Chipotle? And Zumba on Fridays? And a killer job? Yes.

Yes, indeed.