A Secret Revealed

Ok, I don’t have a Thursday (or Friday, as it is now) post this week, because I am a) on yet another business trip, b) recovering from a week of burst ear drums and the resulting vertigo issues, and c) just too lazy to be clever at the moment.

So, I’ve decided to let you all in on one of my secret projects.  Back in February, I talked about NaNoWriMo, and how it had impacted my paycheck from November.  The short of if it, I wrote a 50,000 word novel last November.  This past week, I wrote the final lines on it.  Now, I’m doing a final polishing edit before I decide what to do with it next.  Below is the sample I posted on the NaNoWriMo website last year, which is about 1/4 of the first chapter.  I probably won’t leave this up here forever, but I’ve been talking about this novel for almost two years now, and I figured it was time to show people that it’s not made up.

So, if you like it- Yay!  If you don’t, then I totally didn’t write this and I’m just pretending that I did to protect a friend’s identity.

Northgate

            Nothing ever changes in Northgate.  The day begins with the city bell, hung high about the Council House, tolling First Light, and ends with the same bell tolling Last Light.  The same bell, the same tolling, and the same times, day after day after day.  Even after the sun sets and night falls, the routine is the same.  Some call it predictable and safe.  They claim it is what protects us from Darkness.  I call it boring.  And it definitely doesn’t protect us from Darkness.

Simone sighed and set down her pencil.  She knew she wouldn’t be able to turn in the page as written, and it would take another hour to rewrite the assignment properly.  Combined with the other schoolwork she had left to complete and the fact that the store still needed to be cleaned, Simone knew it would be one of those nights when she didn’t get to sleep before First Light.  At least she had that going for her.

The bell started its slow tolling, announcing Last Light in the City.  Simone pictured the path of the sound- the deep peals winding their way through neighborhoods and around stone buildings, compressing to fit down narrow alleys and expanding to fill the open-air marketplace.  It took the sound nearly half a minute to cross the City and reach the store, according to the Council-controlled timepiece on the wall.  That gap of sound had always bothered Simone.  A lot could happen in thirty seconds.

The problem was that it was the same routine every night.  The same famed 10 Steps to close the shop, the same four bags of trash to be dragged out to the alley, the same hours of schoolwork that awaited her upstairs, and the same promise that it would all be the same again tomorrow.  There was no variety, and no chance for escape.  Nights like this, Simone felt like she’d trade her left arm for even the smallest change of pace. Everything was the same, and the sameness was overwhelmingly oppressive.

Just like every night, Simone dragged the trash bags down the hallway.  Just like always, she hit the latch on the alley exit door with her hip, and just like always, it swung open with a creak.  Just like always, Simone swung the trash bags off the steps, and waited to hear the same sounds of the bags hitting the cobblestone ground. But this night, the sounds were different.

“Ow!” accompanied the landing of the first trash bag.  Surprised, Simone let go of the second bag too early and it broke open as it rolled down the three concrete steps.

“Eres tu simbali” Simone muttered under her breath, fumbling along the inside wall for the light switch.

“Swearing in Orcian will not help your case.”  replied a voice in the dark.

Simone found the light switch.  She glared at the boy sprawled on the ground at the bottom of the steps.  He sat rubbing his head, and from the looks of his hair, the first trash bag had caught him right in the face.  It had broken open, and the boy was covered with bits of papers and the remains of Simone’s noodle-based dinner.  It would have been funny, except that it wasn’t funny at all.

“What are you doing down there?  And what case?”  Simone demanded. This was not the kind of difference that she had wanted.

“The case to be heard by the Council, when I demand your rationale for throwing refuse at me.  They look poorly upon those who use such vulgar vocabulary, by the way.”  The boy replied.

“Not as poorly as they look upon street rats.  I’ll ask you again, what are you doing down there?”

“At the moment, suffocating.”  The boy said, shoving the black trash bag off of him and attempting to pick the larger pieces of trash from his dark-colored tunic.  He took a closer look at his arm, and looked up at Simone with glee.

“And bleeding to death.”  He said, brandishing his forearm.  There was a faint trickle of blood across his wrist.

“I don’t see anything.”  Simone said.  “Besides the three layers of dirt you’re covered in.”

“Four, if you count my most recent bath of filth, thanks to you.”  The boy stood up and took a step into the light.  Simone was surprised to see that, even standing two steps above him, the boy was almost eye level with her.  His hair, the parts which weren’t covered in sauce, was a sandy blonde, and his eyes were a deeper blue than the ocean.  Even covered in dirt, he was good-looking.  Really good-looking.

“So, are you going to just stand there or are you going to invite me in?”  The boy said.

Simone shook herself back to reality, and remembered why she’d been glaring at the boy in the first place.

“Why would I invite a filthy street rat into my home?”  She asked.

“Because while the Council might not care if you mistreat me, they probably will care that one of their shops is being run by a 16-year-old.”

“My parents own this shop.” Simone said.

“Yes?  And where are they?”  the boy asked.

Simone’s jaw dropped in horror, but she covered it quickly.  How had this boy found out her secret?  Her mind raced, trying to find a way out of the situation.

“Let me in out of the darkness, and I’ll be bound to keep your secrets.”  The boy said.

The words of the Custom- the Request for Asylum.  It was a bold move, and Simone suspected that it was because the boy had run out of other options for gaining entrance.  By law, Simone could not refuse admittance to her home if a stranger spoke the Request, but surely that law didn’t apply to filthy street rats?

The boy waited, standing in the pool of yellow light in the middle of the alley, staring at Simone with eyes that contained entire worlds in their depths, covered in dirt and garbage.  She knew it would be a mistake to let him in, that she would be risking everything in the store, and possibly her life as well.  But those eyes, those eyes that were familiar and alien at the same time, kept spinning her thoughts and allowing plausible excuses to creep into her mind.  No, she couldn’t let him in.  The risk was too great.

A faraway scream tore through the silence of the night.  There was silence for half a minute, then the bell began its ominous tolling.  This was no Last Light toll.  This toll was counting the number of those Taken.  As it rang its sixth, the boy’s eyes met Simone’s, and she saw true fear clearly in their depths.

“Please.” He said.  And against her better judgement, Simone stood aside and let him in.

On Dragon*Con

I have returned (and more importantly recovered) from Dragon*Con.  As usual, I came back with a much heavier suitcase and a much lighter wallet.  The good news is, I not only stayed within budget, I even made it home with some money to spare.

But enough about finance stuff.  I want to talk about Dragon*Con.

First off, I met Jaime Paglia.  For the ungeeky among us, he wrote Eureka, the best science fiction show that SyFy ever cancelled in order to show more wrestling.  The show was smart, had strong relatable characters, truly funny moments, and struck the perfect balance between science and fiction for seven years.  The man is truly talented, and I want to be just like him.

Naturally, I was a nervous wreck while I stood in line to meet him.  When it got to be my turn, I took a deep breath and calmly asked him to sign my jacket.

(No, that’s not a typo.  I was dressed as an autograph book, and I was collecting signatures on my jacket.  I’ve been doing this for three years now, and it’s still just as amusing to see the odd looks as it was the first time.)

Mr. Paglia didn’t bat an eye at my strange request.  Apparently when you write a show about worm holes and strong force amplifiers, someone asking you to sign a white scrub jacket seems quite normal.  As he signed, I somehow convinced myself to speak. (This is a problem with me. I plan out what to say, and then freeze in the moment.  I do this with non-celebrities too).  I told him that I wanted to be a writer like him.  He smiled and asked me the best question I think I’ve ever heard:

“That’s good. What are you doing about that?”

All the writers reading this probably get the magnanimity of that question.  For those that don’t, here’s the thing. People talk about wanting to be a writer all the time.  They talk about what would make a good book, or how they wish they had the time to write a book, or even how they once tried to write a book but never finished it.  Comparatively few people actually sit down and write.  For those of us who do, it’s not because we have more time than others or more creativity, it’s because the words will literally turn us insane if we don’t get them out of our heads and onto the page.

So, Jaime Paglia’s question was essentially, “I see you have a dream. Do you have a plan to make it come true?”

Why yes, Mr. Paglia, yes I do.

I told him that a friend and I have been developing two web series (serieses? seriesi?).  He nodded his approval while his handler talked about her friends who are getting their SAG accreditation from web series work.   To make a short story shorter, I ended up walking away from the table with a signature on my jacket and a verbal encouragement from Jaime Paglia to pursue my writing.

Oh, and this.

ERMAGADH JAIME PAGLIA TOLD ME TO KEEP WRITING!

After I collected myself a bit (and posted that picture as the cover photo on my facebook), I dressed two children up as Borg.

Assimilation never looked cuter.

Then, I met Felicia Day.

Hang on, I gotta take a moment… IT’S A PICTURE OF ME AND FELICIA DAY! AAAAHHHHHH!

Ok, I’m good now. Back to the point.

Felicia Day is a pioneer of web series, and totally and completely one of my heroes.  She proved that you can make anything happen if you are inventive and passionate enough, and turned a tiny idea that no television company wanted to hear into an internet revolution.  I managed to tell her about my web series company and how she inspired its creation, and she wished me luck and said that she’d be excited to see what we come up with.

I tweeted that to my business partner, who I believe promptly had a panic attack somewhere in England.  Sorry, James.

Overall it was an excellent Dragon*Con.  I came home with 1 new t-shirt, 2 new card games, 5 new books, 11 new autographs, and 17 new buttons (yes, I collect buttons. They’re cheap, easy to store, and last forever).  Not once did I get looked down upon for being a girl, or asked to prove my “geek credentials.”  I was just another fan in a costume heading to the same panels and trying to remember to eat.

Now it’s back to real life for me.  The new full-time job starts Monday.  I’ve cut my hours at retail job to weekends and then only as needed (because those free video games are hard to give up), and I’m looking forward to having weekday evenings to do some more writing.

This is good, because it is definitely time to start saving for next Dragon*Con.

Blog Search Term Challenge

Over the last few days, I’ve had at least three conversations with various people about the search terms people use to find our blogs.  Most of the time, I win.  This is largely because people insist on Googling “transvestite panda cub” and winding up on this picture:

 I wonder if the zoo knows?

However, I want to give the internet a chance to beat me.  If you have a blog that tracks search terms, and you have a term or two that you think is a real winner, post it in the comments below.  You can submit as many as you want, but they must all be real search terms used to find your blog.

Most bloggers announce a giveaway at the point.  As in, “if your search term beats mine, I’ll send you this!”  For those of you who read this blog regularly, you’ll already know that isn’t going to happen.  I don’t have anything to give away (except for a VHS copy of Dinotopia, and I’m not sure there’s anyone out there who wants that).

But what I can do is write.  So, I offer this: I will write a short story using the best three search terms submitted by you, my dear readers, as central plot points.  (This idea comes from a conversation on Twitter a few days ago, in which the viability of a children’s book about transvestite panda cub with self-esteem issues and misadventures with Spanx was discussed.  Sadly, that book may never see publication.)

So, here’s how this will work.  Post your favorite weird search term in the comments below, or tweet them to me @kdidd.  Next Thursday, 7/26, I’ll put up a poll of my 10 favorites.  You’ll have a week to vote.  On August 2nd, I’ll announce the winners (and try to convince someone to take Dinotopia off my hands).  On August 9th, I’ll post the story.

Start posting those search terms.  Someone found my blog this morning by searching “how to stop bugs from eating my brain.”  The bar has been set high, ladies and gentlemen, the bar has been set high.

Benchmark

Today is the six-month anniversary of the blog, which means I’m now at the halfway point in this year-long quest to pay off my undergraduate student loans.

The thing is, it doesn’t feel like halfway.  Partially it feels like I’ve been at this for far longer, and partially it feels like it’s been much shorter.  It all depends on the day (or what shiny object that I can’t afford is in front of me at the moment).

Today is one of the days when it feels much shorter.  That’s probably because I’ve been doing some math, and I haven’t quite made it to the halfway-gone point in my loans.  I’m $487 off my ideal balance of $5,765, or half of the $11,530 balance I started with.

In any case, a midpoint is a cause for both looking back and looking forward.  So, let’s do some review and some forecasting.  The first section is a lot of number stuff.  The second section is a lot of non-number stuff.  Feel free to skip one or the other, depending on your personal opinions on number stuff.

By The Numbers:

• LOAN
  • Starting balance: $11,530.12.
  • Amount paid, by month
    • January: $250
    • February: $961
    • March: $948
    • April: $1,296
    • May: $1,329
    • June: $1,334
    • Total: $6,118
  • Interest paid, by month
    • January: $307.41 (partially accrued from previous months)
    • February: $110.03 (partially accrued from previous months)
    • March: $42.83
    • April: $46.83
    • May: $48.64
    • June: $28.84
    • Total: $584.58
  • Principal paid, total: $5,533.42
  • Current loan balance: $6,249.03

• BLOG
  • 26 weeks
  • 56 posts (including this one)
  • 431 followers
  • 6,704 total views
    • 1,230 views on busiest day (posted: Discarded)
    • Average 37 views/day
    • 258 views/week
    • 1,117 views/month
  • 0 Blog Awards or Freshly Pressed mentions, but some of the best and most supportive comments that I’ve ever seen.  The best of these sit in a document on my desktop, just for rereading when times get tough.

space

By The Non-Numbers:

It hasn’t always been a easy road this year.  There have been times when I’ve been worried about future employment, stressed out over current employment, freaking out over late paychecks, ranting against the economy, angry with myself, frustrated with internet trolls, beleaguered by writer’s block, paralyzed by fear, consumed by anxiety, physically sick to the point I could not stand, bereft without a computer, slapped with unexpected expenses, and left wondering just for what it’s all been worth.

But there have been good times, too.  I’m learning how to let go of anxiety, plan for contingencies, but live in the moment, make a change in my world view, enjoy social situations more, know when to engage and when to disengage, find inspiration in odd places, be brave, heal, adapt, grow, express my dreams, and how to do all of that while keeping the parts of me that I like.

I know that there may be harder times ahead.  That’s just the nature of part-time employment and variable income (and life with OCD).  I’m still searching for that elusive full-time job, but even that would come with huge life changes.  I’m a big fan of routine, and unpredictability and change scares me.  I’ve come to realize that most people feel that way, however, and the best way around the fear is to talk about it and find support with others.  This blog has helped me do that, and I hope that it continues to be that way over the next six months.

It turns out this blog has been worth $6,118, and a lifetime of self-realization crammed into six months.

Thanks for being here this far.  Let’s see what the rest of the year holds.  It should be interesting.

How To Properly Spend Your Time While Waiting For Your Meal In A Restaurant

So while driving to New Orleans yesterday, I saw this sign.

My first impulse was to run into the building, yell “Congratulations!” Elf-style, and depart.  However, we’d been on the road for six hours and I was under strict instructions not to reenact any movie scene at a restaurant that would prevent us from eating at said restaurant.

When we (calmly, with no Will Ferrell antics) walked inside, I immediately noticed that every available wall surface had been covered with laminated quotes about life, death, marriage, children, jobs, etc.  You name it, and Wintzell’s Oyster House had something to say about it.

Naturally, I found some that were related to money, and pennies in particular.  I snapped a few pictures, and figured I’d post them here today.

Then I read The Bloggess’ newest entry, about unfinished quotes by anonymous writers.  As is usually the case after reading anything by The Bloggess, my plan took a sharp left turn down the path of whimsy and creepy trees.

Thus, we arrived here- the part where I present:

Personality Profiles of Fictional People in Penny-Related Quotes

1) 

This is good advice, spoken by a regretful Canadian accountant.  You have to keep a close eye on those pennies.  Otherwise, they might run right out in front of Congress and get themselves abolished.  Just look at what happened when Canada got all lassiez-faire about raising their pennies to a higher standard.  Such a shame.  People- do your part.  Don’t let a good penny go to waste.  It’s 10 o-clock.  Do you know where your change is?

2) 

Truer words have never been spoken by a pensioner living on a fixed income.  This man is over 65, has finally paid off his house and car, and uses his Social Security check to buy groceries for himself and cat food for his wife’s 17 cats.  The wife left him for a cabana boy three years ago, but the man just can’t bring himself to get rid of the cats.  Especially not since he began training them as attack ninjas who activate at the sight of that back-stabbing two-timing nag of a demon woman.  Yes, the cats have proven very useful indeed.

3) 

This is a classic case of OCD.  The inability to see the forest for all the damned trees that won’t get themselves into a reasonable tallest-to-smallest order by species even though you’ve asked politely at least a dozen times.

Oh wait, that says gowned foolish, doesn’t it?  Hmm.  This presents two possible explanations, then.

a) The poor girl has sensory issues, and fabric texture goes a long way towards making each day bearable.  Thus, she spends all her money on luxurious silk dresses, the kind that do not have a tag sewn in anywhere.  Her spouse does not understand this, and just thinks her delightfully quirky if slightly fiscally irresponsible.  He doesn’t mind the silk neckties that she makes him out of the old dresses, however.

b) She’s a Kardashian.

(Note- these two aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.)

4) 

There’s nothing like a sign in an Alabama restaurant that takes a dig at its clientele.  No, that’s not a commentary on the general intelligence of Alabama-dwellers.  It’s just that I’m pretty sure this guy was sitting three booths away from us at the restaurant.  He’s the good-ole-boy type with a heart of gold and a head full of rocks.  And now a gut full of small change.  He’ll go home tonight, announce to his wife that he’s planning to make a change, and request transportation to the hospital.  He’ll repeat the story to the pastor at church on Sunday, and again back at the bar on Wednesday night.  The waitress will sigh, and tell Ol’ Billy that she’d sure like to see some change in him, same as she does every week.  Ol’ Billy will get to thinking on that over his third YuengLing, and it’ll all start again.  Ah, the vicious cycle of poverty.

It’s such a privilege when I can put that Psychology degree to work.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to finish this…

If I ever end up on Death Row, remind me that this ought to be my last meal. It’s that good.

A Most Terrible Fruit-Based Murder

Those poor, poor baby carrots.

Last night at Art Club, a terrible thing happened.  There was a murder in the kitchen.  The poor innocent baby carrots saw it all.  They will never be the same.  Warning: the following pictures contain graphic depictions of a fruit-related homicide.  Don’t fall into the trap of thinking the googly eyes make it any easy to see.

Let me back up a bit, and explain how this all started.

For being such a low-pressure social setting, Art Club can do funny things to a person.  It makes one person bring in dragonflies, makes another root through desk drawers to find old art supplies, and makes a third put a poll up on a blog asking/begging for inspiration.  (That last person is me, in case you missed it.)

The winner of yesterday’s poll was “D) Nothing.  You should just hover by the food and put googly eyes on the carrot sticks.”

You people know me so well.

As soon as I arrived at Art Club last night, I was informed that despite the Internet Having Spoken, I would be forced (forced I say!) into making An Art.  No hovering was allowed.  My well-crafted plan to eye-bomb the vegetables and have them stage an off-off-off Broadway musical number at the end of Art Club would not be allowed to proceed (not least because off-off-off Broadway show tunes aren’t allowed at Art Club.  The fascists.)

I dragged my poor injured self (seriously- I partially dislocated my patella on Saturday.  I have a fancy knee brace and everything now) over to a chair and sat down.  I promptly stood back up and started wandering.  I wander a lot, but especially at Art Club.  There are just so many places to get inspiration from.  I grabbed one of the 12” x 16” canvases and snagged two jars of Scrabble letters and typewriter keys.  I sat back down in my chair and stared for a second.  Then I got back up and got a pencil.  Then I sat down again.  Then I got back up and got a ruler.  Then I sat down again.  Then I spent five minutes trying to convince fluffy-white-muppet dog to come over and let me pet him.  Then I gave up and stared at my canvas again.  Surprisingly, after all that effort, the canvas was still blank.

I opened the typewriter key jar and started spreading out the letters.  A line from my blog has been spinning around in my head for a while, and now I can’t actually remember if it even made it into the blog.  In any case, I thought it was a cool quote, even if I did write it, and I wanted to illustrate it.

Yes, I know.  “C) A quotation-based piece, since it turned out so pretty last time” came in last place in the poll, but I can’t help myself.  I like words, and especially the way they can evoke beautiful images through the simple lines of the letters.

Also, I’m really good at drawing trees.  And this particular quote let me draw a nice forest scene again.

But I’m getting off-track.  We were discussing a murder, not my artistic tendencies.

So, before all this chair-sitting and not-chair-sitting stuff happened, the apple bird came into existence.  Carved carefully with a rather large (for the job) knife, the apple bird was painstakingly crafted, crisp slice by crisp slice.  The three of us in the kitchen (definitely NOT hovering over the food, as that wasn’t allowed) just watched in amazement.  Once completed, the apple bird stood in majestic repose upon the cutting board.  We all stared, transfixed by its beauty.

The apple bird: the most majestic of the fruit-based avians.

The artist scooped up her creation and went to show it off to the others.  As soon as she left, a voice was heard to say sadly, “Now that bird is going to have to die a terrible death tonight.”

No one admitted to saying it, but we all heard it.  And we all knew it to be true.

That bird would have to die that very evening.  Beauty can never last.

Fast-forward an hour or two.  I am now sitting in my chair, and have been for some time.  I am sketching a lovely forest scene on my canvas, and everyone else is doing Art Stuff too.

Actually, that part is kinda boring. Fast-forward another hour.

Now I am painting a lovely forest scene.  I am using a sponge (I know, I know, I’m so clever)  to create an authentic worn path/ field of grass/ tree canopy look.  Everyone else is still doing Art Stuff too.

Suddenly, there is a scream from the kitchen, cut short by the sound of a knife hitting a plate with a sickening thwack.  I leapt up from the table, ready to spring into action.  No one seemed to notice, or more likely, were purposefully ignoring the now-muffled weeping emanating from the kitchen.

You guys, the scene in the kitchen was awful.  The baby carrots were sobbing, the baby tomato was poking the apple bird’s severed head with a toothpick, the cookie mobster (code name: Salacious Crumb) was falling apart with laughter, the cucumber was contemplating the life choices that had brought him and his three adopted offspring to the park this evening, and the apple bird died a beautiful yet tragic death.

You know what? The googly-eyes kind of do make it easier to look at, don’t they? Interesting…

After that, it was a bit difficult to finish my An Art.  But I peeled away the bad thoughts and found the seeds of inspiration again.  I dug to the core of my artistic abilities, and pared off my insecurities.  I plucked the fruit of inspiration off the orchard-dwelling tree of…. you know what?  I’m going to stop there.  I’m getting off track again.

Back to the murder scene.

Everyone was trying to figure out who did it.  Was it truly the cookie mobster (code name: Salacious Crumb)?  Was he really so careless as to leave a literal trail of evidence?  Or was it the cucumber in an effort to keep his kids from begging to go to the park during a critical hockey match ever again?  Could it have even been the baby tomato, with his gleeful expression at the apple bird’s demise?

The world may never know.

In any case, I wonder what kind of food will be at the next Art Club?

Oh, and I did finish my An Art.  Wanna see?

Truly, this is An Art. Or rather, truly, those resemble trees. If you squint a bit. And turn your head to the left. And look at it in the right light. See? Told you they were trees.

Counter-Pressure

Not sure if the message here is “be ridiculously happy in everything you do,” or “take joy in smacking others around,” but in any case- I want to be the ball on the far right.

I’m a big fan of Newton’s Third Law of Motion.  It’s the one that states that for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.  Newton used it to describe motion and kinetic transfer, but I think he may have missed the broader applications of his law.  Sometimes I feel like it should be called Newton’s Third Law of Life, and I think anyone who has ever felt the universe pushing back on them can agree with that statement.

This month, I finally hit my ideal monthly student loan payment of $1,334.  I was so happy, you guys.  It took me six months and a lot of recalculations to do it, but I had finally hit my goal.  It was the largest single payment I’ve ever made on my loans, and I’m telling you- it felt awesome to click YES on that “are you sure this is the right amount?” prompt the loan website flashes before allowing me to submit a payment.

Two days after that payment posted to my bank account, my computer crashed hard.  I talked about this on Friday, as I tried to write a coherent blog post via my phone.  (It turns out, that’s really hard to do.)  When I finally got my computer back, the total was $85 and a grim warning that my hard drive might be in the beginning stages of systematic failure.

*sigh*

It was all right, though.  I have an external hard drive and I back everything up regularly anyway.  I have an emergency fund, and it had $85 in it to cover the repair.  I am out the  roughly $210 paycheck from Thursday and Friday, but I’ll figure out how that affects the budget next month when the check comes in.

What is not all right is that the next day, another unexpected financial cost came up.  I twisted my knee at work while helping a customer search the bottom rack of Wii games for a copy of Mario Power Tennis (and no, the irony of a knee injury while searching for a tennis game is not lost on me.  Neither are the Skyrim-related jokes, such as “I used to be a video game sales person, but then I took a Wii game to the knee.”  Ha.   Ha.   Ha.)

It’s two days later now, and my knee is still a painful mass of useless flesh.  It’s not swollen, but it hurts every time I move it, hurts even more every time I move it in any direction except for straight ahead, and my ankle and foot are in a constant pins-and-needles state.  This makes me think I’ve got a pinched nerve in my knee.

That kind of injury isn’t cheap, people.  I’ve got an appointment with a orthopedist tomorrow, which means specialist rates, and I’m not entirely sure this doc is in my insurance network.  (There’s so much wrong with the US health insurance system, but that’s another post.)  Besides the cost of the doctor, I’m not sure what it will mean for my ability to work.  Two of my jobs allow me to sit at a desk or on a couch, but the other three require a fair amount of physical activity.  I’m already down $210, which is just shy of 10% of my monthly budget.  Missing more days of work means losing a bigger cut.

But there is good news.  As a Newton’s Cradle (i.e.- the thing in the picture above) will demonstrate, the equal action-reaction concept swings both ways (pun totally intended, by the way.)  Just as the universe seems to be pushing against me right now, I can push back.  I’ve got two freelance writing tasks on my plate right now, and I have the rest of the week to try to make up some hours at the consulting job.  Since I’m plainly not going frolicking through the flowers anytime soon, I should have plenty of time to spend typing away at the keyboard in the next few days.

Provided my hard drive doesn’t fail again.

Please, hard drive, don’t fail me now.

One By One

There’s this really cool pine tree in my backyard.  18 years ago, it was a normal pine tree.  It grew in the proper direction (ie up), had the right number of trunks (ie one), and seemed unlikely to collapse and take out the back of the house.

17 years ago, it got struck by lightening.

The thing is, the tree didn’t die.  Despite a two foot long blackened fissure down the middle of its trunk, that tree refused to slowly decay into firewood.  I mean, if I were a tree and a bolt of lightening turned me into my own Siamese twin, I’d probably give up growing.  After all, lightening strikes the highest point.  More height would just invite more lightening (that bit about lightening never striking the same place twice?  Totally false).  But this tree is not me (which is good because a tree writing a blog would be really weird), and so the tree kept growing.

17 years later, it’s still growing in the proper direction (ie up), but now it has two separate trunks that twist and turn and generally give the impression that we hired Tim Burton as our arborist (note to self- hire Tim Burton as our arborist).  It still seems unlikely to collapse and take out the back of the house, which is good, since the tree is now tall enough to not only take out the back of the house, but a significant portion of the front of the house as well.

This tree has killed other trees (one of which nearly fell on my brother.  Somewhere there’s a video of that…), grown over two separate hammock-hangings, fought off the ever-encroaching kudzu, hosted countless generations of squirrels, chipmunks, cardinals, blue jays, and woodpeckers, and currently provides shelter for a pair of very noisy owls.  It’s no longer the tallest tree in the yard, but it’s certainly no shrimp at around 50 feet.

It’s a monument to tenacity, this tree.  Despite a major setback, it kept fighting for its right to grow and produce pine cones and slowly be consumed by kudzu like the rest of Georgia’s trees.  It healed itself, and its remaining scars are the most beautiful things in the yard.

The way I see it, if a freakin’ tree can survive a direct lightening strike and continue growing, I ought to be able to survive a few minor setbacks of my own.

So grow on, you magnificent tree.  Rest assured that the city’s chainsaws will never reach you.  I cannot make the same promises re: Tim Burton’s influence.

Not pictured- the top of the tree. I couldn’t fit the whole thing in without climbing onto the roof… which I’m not allowed to do anymore.

 

Art Club, and its Related Realizations

Now this is the law of the jungle

As old and as true as the sky

The wolf that shall keep it may prosper

But the wolf that shall break it must die

As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk

The law runneth forward and back

For the strength of the pack is the wolf

And the strength of the wolf is the pack.

                                                                                                                             -Rudyard Kipling

Last night was Art Club.  I really like Art Club- even though I can barely hold a paintbrush.  My talent lies with the written word, not with tubes of paint.  The good news is that Art Club doesn’t care.  They let me come anyway, and I get to spend hours in a real artist’s studio, just doodling or staring off into space.  It’s also a very low pressure social situation, and it’s helping me make new friends out in the real world.  Plus, last night they had gluten-free yogurt covered pretzels.  So really, Art Club is a win all around.

But not always.

At Art Club two weeks ago, I felt like an imposter.  Everyone else painted beautiful pictures, made mixed media collages, or hodge-podged papers, while I sat and stared at a blank canvas or fought with a temperamental vintage typewriter.  I had found a scrap of wallpaper that looked like a cross between animal skin and tree bark, and typed a poem onto it.  I’d also found a rectangular piece of canvas-covered wood.  I figured the paper and the canvas would look good together, but I couldn’t figure out how.  I spent most of the evening isolated from the others, growing more and more frustrated with myself.

I ended up leaving that night with a blank piece of canvas and my scrap of wallpaper.

But last night was different.  As I drove to the studio, I had a minor epiphany (yeah, I know.  I’m prone to epiphanies.  Bear with me here).  I realized that the reason I am so bad at art was because I am so good at forcing perfection.  I can’t let myself go, because I might make a mistake and ruin a canvas, or use too much glue, or spill blue paint on the studio’s fluffy white muppet of a dog.  But art isn’t about perfection- the exact opposite, actually. (Except painting the dog- that’s always frowned on).

So, being the well-trained social scientist that I am, I decided to conduct an experiment.  I would make myself draw, with  well-defined pencil strokes, something on my canvas that night.  I would have to add color, I would have to figure out a use for the wallpaper and the poem, and I would have to leave with a finished art-type product.  Those were the rules.

I kind of hate myself sometimes.

I sat down at the table in the studio and I picked up a pair of scissors.  I cut apart the words of the poem into phrases and single words.  I replaced the misspelled words with proper spellings, and laid the poem out on my canvas.  Then I picked up my phone and consulted Google Images for a picture of a jungle tree.

Then I made myself start drawing.

It kind of, sort of, looked like a tree.  With winding roots.  Almost.

The artist who runs Art Club came up to me at one point and asked what I was working on.  I meekly explained that I was creating a background for my poem, and she asked what poem I had chosen.

It’s from The Jungle Book, I said.

Oh?  The artist asked.

Yep,  I said.  AND THEN I STARTED SAYING IT.

OUT LOUD.

AMONG PEOPLE.

You guys- I haven’t quoted poetry to anyone since I was 8 years old and it was a school requirement to pass 3rd grade.

Then an even weirder thing happened.

As I said the words of the poem, a new meaning sprang into my mind.  The pack cannot exist without the wolf, but the wolf is nothing without its pack.  It may be the law of the jungle, but it’s also the law of life.  My family wouldn’t be my family without me (they’d be someone else’s family).  I also wouldn’t be anybody without my family (because they’re the only ones who tolerate my crazy).  The same is true for my friends.  They’re my pack, and without them, I’m not much.

It was big moment for someone who generally avoids being out among people.  (I told you I was prone to epiphanies).

It doesn’t actually change anything, since it didn’t make me suddenly willing to go out every night, but it did bring a deeper and more personal meaning to a poem I’ve loved for many years.  It also inspired this blog post.

Oh, and my experiment was a success.  I made an art-type product.

An art-type product? Definitely. Anything else? No, probably not. But still cool to me.

And it’s now hanging on my bedroom wall, right across from my autographed picture of Tom Felton.

Chasing The Dream

Do you know what question I really hate?

“What do you want to do with your degree/career path/ life?”

I mean, this question was so easy when I was 5.  I wanted to marry Tigger, but I would have settled for Peter Pan.  I could have spent my days bouncing around the Hundred Acre Wood or flying over Neverland, taunting Rabbit or teasing pirates.  I could hunt heffalumps or indians, and look for a lost tail or a missing fairy.  I already had brothers, so it wouldn’t have been hard to adjust to the mostly-male cast of either world.  I had a plan, I tell you.  It was going to be perfect.

Sadly, I think I have to admit that my life probably not going to work out like that.  Apparently there is an age limit on both worlds, and I think I’m closing in on it.  Even more sadly, there is not an age limit on people asking me what I want to do with my life.

You see, I’ve made some choices in my life that would seem to indicate that I had a goal in mind when I made those choices.  I went to college, got a degree, I went to grad school, I got another degree.  For the normal person, this implies that there is a set career path in mind.

I am not a normal person.

I think the most important thing that I learned in graduate school was what I did NOT want to do.  I realized that I did not want to work as a lobbyist, a political consultant, a policy-maker, or really in anything to do with governmental politics.  I also realized that while I’m pretty darn good at biostatistics, SAS (the statistical analysis program favored by pretty much everyone, for some unknown ungodly reason) and I do not get along.  At all.  (You can ask the three school computers I accidently took out of commission for verification on this.)  Unfortunately, those were the two main things my degree focused on.

Now I have a Master’s degree that I’m probably never going to use to its full capacity.  I’m actually OK with this.  The problem is that most people don’t understand that.  There is a stigma attached to not using a degree- like the owner has failed to properly pursue their dreams.  For some, it’s out of laziness, for others it’s because of the job market.  For me, it’s because my dreams took a hard left turn somewhere between first and second year.  In any case, it’s not an easy concept to explain to people.

I’m going to try to explain this concept to people now.

I took an economics class my first semester in graduate school.  It was on Wednesday evenings, from 4-7 pm.  That’s dinner time for most people.  It was torture for the 30 or so of us trapped in that room each week.  I’m just saying- when you start trying to figure out the social cost vs the nutritional benefit of cannibalism, it’s time to get out of class.  Now, I had a wonderful professor.  She was kind, cared about her students, and tried to make the material interesting to us.  That’s a huge thing in a graduate school professor.  It wasn’t her fault that economics is the most boring subject in the entire world forever and ever and for always.

Naturally, my brain couldn’t handle this kind of self-imposed confinement for long.  Just before midterms, my mind finally snapped.  Out of the blue during lecture, a short exchange popped into my head: “And just who are the Nocturnes?”  “They’re us, obviously.”

That was the beginning of the end.  In about a month, I had written a 65,000 word novel, mostly in three-hour weekly increments.  My notebook pages were dotted with economic formulas and bits of notes that I’d jotted down when my attention wandered back to the actual class lectures, but mostly it was full of the story of a girl who sends herself away to boarding school only to find out her classmates are not exactly totally human.

I know, original idea, right?

That’s not the point here.  The point is I did what I had always wanted to do- I wrote a novel.  It was a terribly written novel, and editing so far hasn’t made it much better, but it was mine and it was complete.  I was so ridiculously proud of that thing, and honestly, I still am.  Even though it’s terrible.

Two years later, around the same time, I wrote another novel.  This one turned out much better, mainly because of all that I had learned about how not to write a novel from the first one.  The second novel is called Northgate, and I’m even more proud of it, even though it’s technically incomplete (I prefer to think of it as leaving the ending to the reader’s imagination…).

That’s not exactly the point here either.  The real point is that it took me a very long time to realize what it was that I wanted to do with my life.  This may be because it’s not a very well-accepted career move, or because I was afraid that people would belittle my dream, or most likely- that I would totally and completely fail at it.

But I remembered something that I had forgotten in the two decades since I was 5: dreams don’t have to be practical.  That’s what makes them dreams.

I also realized that now is the perfect time to really chase down my dreams- because it’s not like I have a full-time job or anything.  I actually have very few responsibilities in my life right now.  So, *deep breath,* I’m going to start giving the true answer to people when they ask me The Question.

Go ahead, ask me.  You know you want to.

You: “K, what do you want to do with your degree/ career path/ life?”

Me: “I want to be a writer.  But more than that, I want to be a creator.  I want to make things that make people feel things- books, blogs, pictures, videos, etc. (and yes, I will say etc.  Just like that: E.T.C.)  I don’t care if people remember my name, but I want them to remember the things I made.”

You: “Wow, that’s a really good answer.”

Me: “I know, it took me several years to come up with it, and a few hours to memorize the proper inflections for it when spoken.”

You:  “It was time well spent, I’d say.”

Me: “Yep. Far more useful than that second economics class.  By the way, you’re going to save $7 if you buy that game pre-owned since you have a membership card.  It’s a better economic decision… DARN IT!  The curriculum seeped into my brain anyway!”

You: “Um, ok.  Nice talking with you.” *You scurry away at this point*

This is exactly how the conversation is going to go down.  Those of you unfortunate enough to interact with me in real-life know I’m telling the truth.  I’m sorry, but it is what it is.  And you know what? People may not remember my name, but they do remember that strange redheaded girl who works at the video game store and has that eloquently-phrased dream, and that’s what it’s all about in the end.

space

Right?

The underlying message here: you may grow out of a dream, but your dreams should always outgrow you.