44 posts tagged “writing”
So very much to do and never enough time in the day. Mostly because I am able and willing to sleep, to say good night, and wake up to say good morning, and pleasantly say 'Yes, I did sleep well. You?'
October's end was quite unexpected. And therefore unexpectedly busy. I regret none of it, but I am a wee bit saddened that nanowrimo is 9 days old and I haven't put pen to paper, or fingertips to keyboard if you like, in its employ even once.
Well, that's not true--I did resketch several chapters to incorporate some development that's been swirling in my head since my trip home, but alas 50,000 words seems a damn near impossibility now, even with my jump start from previous work on it. Sigh. I'm torn between setting a realistic goal of a couple of weeks later, OR desperately trying to make up the time. I still have so much left undone--around the house, at work, on my contract, that I just don't know what to do.
And then there are the animals. I am so very desperate to get them adopted out. I want to get on with the business of grieving their loss, of getting over their absence and believing that I've done the right thing by finding them better homes. I am tired of being practical and logical, tired of loving them and yet holding myself at the distance of a mere caretaker. Coming home is a reminder that they are my burden and my failure. If I had been stronger, I would have forced myself to recognize the unsustainability of this situation earlier, and adopted them out when they were younger, cuter, etc. Now they are older, less adoptable and I've only just recognized how little space exists between the rock and a hard place I've been occupying for two and a half years.
My biggest comfort, beyond the hope that I will find them better places, is my love and the new life that's waiting for me. That fate and luck have offered up such a sweet reward--a door opening just as I was prepared to walk out of the old one and shut it behind me--is yet another sign, I hope, that this has been the right direction all along.
I just wish I could run down the road and through that open door a bit faster. I want to get the crying over with, and I'd prefer to do it in the arms of the someone else I trust to help 'make everything better.'
The road, though, is a pages long to-do list. Time to get back to it.
Have I really not posted since ACL? WTF?
Alright time to get back in the swing of things, though probably will have to keep this post to just the daily details.
For now, work is busy and better stay so as I have big plans ahead and am still broke as a joke from paycheck to paycheck, but glad to have the jobby job still.
Home is busy too. I'm cleaning out the house of all the unwanted stuff I've still held onto for some unknown reason and having a garage sale with another neighbor tomorrow. Trying to get the rest of the block in on the act too. You know what that madness is like. Craigslist, fliers, early arrivals, etc. but it's supposed to be beautiful weather so we decided to go for it.
The pets are all still here and in need of new owners, though the local human society has agreed to accept the 2 youngest cats if I don't adopt them out first. I'm heartbroken and, yet, as I just spent the morning first walking all over and then sweeping up cat litter scatter. Then I mopped. Had to, was too disgusting to stand. Also made rice for the sick dog since she was sick to her stomach this morning...but she turned up her nose at my efforts, so she can suck it. :-)
I was in El Paso over the weekend showing off my hometown and introducing my love to all the family and friends present. It went very well and we will likely both be back at Thanksgiving together.
I'm home now for a couple of weeks and then off to St. Louis to see my girlfriend and her 'new' baby who is already crawling, quel tragedy!
Oh, and did I mention what this year's Halloween costume is going to be? Heh heh heh...my trip home netted some great stuff that mom has been saving for years, and so I shall be going as a 12 year old version of myself. While I'm sporting a side-pony in the run-through pic below, I'm actually trying to find a crimper to really do it up right. Note the charm necklace and NKOTB fan gear. :) [And hey you coworker readers, no fair telling anyone else at work what I'm going to be! Or I shall hunt you down and cram pumpkin seeds in your eyeholes!]
putting some coffee on and hitting the pause button on writing for about an hour. i need to move. thinking of doing some barefoot cardio. maybe another hour of yoga instead? not sure if my shoulders can take it though. note to self: must set up full acupuncture series beginning next week.
not a bad monday. so close to travel that i want to pack everything NOW and just be ready. but i have laundry and animals and such. all the little things to take care of before i leave. glad i woke early for yoga this morning. used the evening for a pedicure and dinner with friends across the street instead. feel more and more like time with them might be precious and fleeting. i may miss them most of all. wouldn't have it any other way.
picked up a couple of small side gigs today. randomly. first the family connection hooked me up with taking pics at some event at the driskill downtown tomorrow. should be interesting--i have no details, other than it's a corporate affair. going to have to dress the part though. maybe i'll rock out with the boots to split the difference between boring business dress and cocktail hour. then a previous employer called up to ask for some editing work--more copy editing than content, but could be good for future seeding. we shall see. it's a book he self-published more than a decade ago and now is being translated to spanish--after my edits--and dropped into the e-reader market. will be glad to get my feet wet with whatever contacts he's made.
feel this is the calm before the storm. not a bad storm mind you. just a rush of emotion and pure effing bliss. feels like i'm curling in on myself right now. staying quiet. head down. get the work done. out of the way. prep my body. prep my heart. we have time...i have an open ended ticket too. if not for the animals...but the animals are still here. if not for the job...but the job is still here. sigh. still, 'the island' awaits.
something is very different. i know what it is...i see my face in pictures and it is changed...familiar, but so unlike me, and yet...so completely me.
it is very strange to see that kind of naked happiness.
there were photos this weekend that caught me like that--completely naked. sometimes happy. sometimes at peace. sometimes simply stripped bare without walls or boundaries and you can see every emotion on my face at once.
there is one such frame of time that is particularly special. i'm not sure i can describe it other than to say i was overwhelmed. i was exhausted, but filled with joy, wonder, sorrow, and such relief. in it, i am doing something i love at the request of someone i love and i am completely myself without art or artifice.
i am also, therefore, absolutely bedgraggled looking.
but after a day of yoga, of trying to give myself over to my imperfections so that i can see the bigger picture of growth and focus, of the "importance of the journey and not the destination", i will gladly silence my ego to share it here. for him.
it's a photo of me pausing and reading something i had just
written, and while it might look like i was completely enthralled with my
own words, what is really captured here is my very full heart. to be loved like this, to be supported like this, to be told that i should do, must do, what i love and that is what he would like me to do for him...it feels like freedom--if freedom is being set free from the cage and welcomed home at the same time.
what would i do to show that kind of love in return? i'm not sure. but all that i can, i will.
Several years ago I found myself on a serious roll...I was writing, I was finishing a degree program I had almost failed out of the year before, I was making strides against all sorts of fears and issues (ah, therapy...love it and hate it), and had just taken a long-hoped-for but seemingly impossible trip to Europe. When all hell broke loose and the world flipped on its side, I thought I could kiss my well earned growth and momentum goodbye. I think that might have been, initially, what upset me the most; that it would all be for naught, that I would have to start over and who really knew if I could make it again? (Which in itself is rather telling...that it wasn't the end of the relationship that I feared the most, but the return of the person I used to be.)
As some of you longtime readers know, I more than made it through. Sure, I fell to pieces at first and for a while (it wasn't as if the end of the relationship was just a speedbump after all), but the momentum didn't die...it only shifted. Self preservation demanded a look inside my head and heart. The concept of forgiveness was foremost in my brain. And I beat the hell out of it. My sister will tell you how damn tired she was of hearing about the Dalai Lama...my mother still foams at the mouth a little when I tell her she needs to let it all go, but for me, that was the most important, though not the last, piece of the puzzle.
And yes, being able to forgive the people you love who've let you down--along with the strangers and forces who've damaged you--is all well and grand and even critical to a happy life, but truly my hardest lesson and the most important one was about self-forgiveness.
My sister would roll her eyes at this point of the conversation, I'm sure. She'd turn to me and say, "Hey, Camp Counselor Ness, settle down." But you see, she's still learning.
I'm ok with the mistakes I've made. I can't change them. They inform who I am now, though they don't define me. I'm also ok with any mistakes I might make down the road. I'd rather make them then live in fear of making them, which is how it used to be. Such ridiculous fear--laughable now, but at the time...it kept me from moving forward, from breathing, from believing in myself as a writer and hell, even a worthy human being. "Look at what I've let happen in the past...I can never allow such things to happen again." Hear that? "Allow." That kind of need for control will kill you. It's classic victim mentality, by the way, which itself is still hard for me to swallow at times. I never liked the idea of being a statistic, of reacting the way that studies say one reacts. But so it goes.
Today my turtle-ness may still demand a long gaze at the landscape, assessing the risk and the reward, but I move forward now more often than not. I prefer the complexity and uncertainty of the future, even as it terrifies me. I feel so brave, my ego can't help but be placated. (Don't let the sarcasm of that prideful statement escape you. I'm well aware it's not brave, it's just a simple requirement of living.) And as for forgiveness, make no mistake, I still push myself hard and beat up on myself when I let certain things stand in my way, but...eventually, and much sooner rather than later, I let them go. And that's something I am proud of, and even humbled by...that I've come so far from this 'isn't what I thought it would be.'
Life is messy. So fucking what?
Love might not be forever. But then again, it might be.
And these days...I'm on a roll.
a co-worker i like and who is a friend though we're not close enough for non-work events yet found my twitter last weekend. i've just remembered this as i realized i've been playing with twitter and facebook extensively this weekend. this was an oversight on my part.
she announced triumphantly on monday morning that she had 'found me!' 'i know...could you tell me how?' you see, my name is common--it is like the jane smith of spanish combinations--and i don't pop up within the first several pages of search. a professional skateboarder and a folk singer steal the high ranked pages and act as a cover. i rather liked it that way.
knowing a bit of what i've written about in op-eds recently, she found the blog, the name cageyness which is searchable, and then found me.
i'm not certain how i feel about this. i was a bit perturbed at first. didn't i like remaining hidden?
i promptly turned around and created a google profile. then searched for my name. appalled that it now appeared on the bottom of the first page with all the other google profiles of my name--but easily identifiable as me--i removed the 'use my full name' and reverted to cageyness. that's as it stands today.
but...
i'm close to reconsidering. as i write more i want people to be able to find me more easily. and, at some point, the professional a-political me should merge with the personal leanings of sex and language and occasional other liberal sensibilities, shouldn't it? i think forward, though, to new job searches that could be down the road and i wonder how much is acceptable to divulge.
on the one hand, much of my subject matter is personal or 'inappropriate' or runs about a 50/50 shot of offending its reader--since this country is split down the middle on all the hot topics. on the other, would i really consider working some place where my writing life is cause for censor? then there is the question of family...i have young cousins coming up now. i realize they clearly have more to do than search for me online, but if i'm found...well, i suppose it's as it is with anyone online now. if you're looking for it, you'd better be prepared for where it's going.
and if you put it out there, you'd better be prepared for the repurcussions.
which is why even said google profile doesn't list one account. it's completely public. on vox. but in no way traceable to me. yet. all poetry and prose, it's growing and i'm eager to share it. just not sure if now is the time. perhaps. we'll see.
Unlike Miss Doolittle, I am not sick of words. Seems they're all I have in my head lately. Pouring out all over the place on issues of import and mere daydreams of fantastical ridiculousness.
I'm a busy busy bee and working on at least a half dozen pieces right now, a couple for bitchbuzz, some for me, some for friends. We shall see where this goes, but I feel rather addicted to reading and writing right now. Lovely sensation.
Don't read the comments on something controversial and for the love of god don't respond. They don't really want to hear back from you. They want to goad you into a screaming match.
Jeezus.
I've decided that on my next trip to El Paso, I'm going to pick out the house I'm going to buy there someday. I don't think I'll live it in full time, but I know I'm going to need my artist's retreat and holidays. I still want my writing room with the glass paned french doors opening to the back yard, built-in bookshelves lined with all the stories and words I love, and the fiery light of sunset bathing the walls.
Mark my words...
I just spent two, maybe two and half hours writing while standing up at my kitchen counter, scribbling on on whatever paper I could find without moving away and accidentally breaking the storytelling spell on my brain.
It's not a finished product yet, but I'd say it has fabulous potential. Can't believe how much I'm writing now. I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes.
Good night.
Update: I posted this without being able to remember if I hit save/submit or not. So I had to come take another look. Turns out I'm seriously delirious from lack of sleep. The room is all spinny, but I'm the envy of writers everywhere. No writers' block for me. ;)
