Today I saw a beautiful picture of the Denali mountains taken by Jesse Cox, it made me long even more to get back to the mountains.

I’ve been having some wanderlust or really fernweh, meaning far sickness (opposite of home sickness, in German) a little more each month this year.

I don’t show my German so much, pretty much not at all, but it’s there. That’s the thing about being mixed, you are what you are, even if the whole world doesn’t see it, it’s always there, you can’t get a surgical removal of German.

Today was the first really cold day of the year, I love it. I love seeing the cold in the air, breathing it in, the cold feeling of the tile, like all the tiled rooms are made of ice. My husband hates it, I’m sure many German’s hate it, but I wonder how many people love the cold like me?

In one poll 59% of Americans like heat and 12% don’t care, but 29% enjoy the cold.

I’m always hot when it’s not cold, I’m never “warm” or “fine” just “hot” or “way too hot”. Of course I can get too cold, but so seldom.

I don’t know if it has anything to do with viking roots, I know by mitochondrial DNA I descended from a viking woman found near Birka Sweden.

I swam in a icy lake one year in the winter for fun, I had the luxury of changing to dry clothes after, but it was really no problem for me, no trouble with my heart or gasping, sure stiffer swimming, so invigorating, it doesn’t feel cold in the same way as a cold shower, it’s obviously cold, but it was expected and a new experience, so it’s quite different.

I’ve lived in the snow in a few states, yes I layer, but I don’t find I need much to be comfortable, it’s mostly down to dryness, if my feet are dry and my clothes are dry, I’m pretty happy outside in the snow.

Something about the snow is beautiful to me, when it’s really coming down, when it’s a wall of white that you can’t see through, when it drowns out the other noises of the world. It gives me peace, I know I won’t be called to work or school or an errand when the snow wouldn’t let me get there, it’s a deep deep peace for me.

My husband is from a hot part of Mexico, it’s the same latitude as Hawaii, he is amazing in his ability to work outside in the sun in the heat and feel happy doing it. Most other Mexican’s don’t share his insane heat tolerance, I just find it funny that he is someone who likes heat, but with a bit more extreme heat tolerance than average, and I’m someone who likes cold, but with a bit more extreme cold tolerance than average.

He mentioned the cold last night, when it first happened, the first cold night of the year in our area. I put the heater on for him to 80 F, asked him how high he wanted it, he was happy with 80 F, but I didn’t think we would sleep well so I lowered it to 70 F for all of us when it was time to sleep. A drop in heat signals the body that it’s night and helps set the natural sleep rhythm.

This morning was the first cold morning this year, it’s been a really hot year this year and I never realized how much I missed the cold air in the mornings. I like to sniff it, breathe it in deeply and remember the snow.

I have fond memories of sliding down hills on saucers, never quite a sled, snowboarding much later in life, but never skiing well. I miss romping in the snow, walking next to it, watching it fall when no one was looking at me. I don’t think I could watch snow fall with someone looking at me, something about being watched takes away the fun I have in most of the fun things I do, which is part of why I like to have time alone.

Sure I like people, but I feel I’m giving myself to them, ready to help, ready to listen, ready to support them, ready to answer, ready to think about what they said, I never feel unburdened with anyone else nearby. I don’t know what that would feel like.

It’s not always an unwanted burden, but it’s always been a burden to be around people. I don’t know if they always want something, but I can’t shake the feeling they do even if they don’t.

I’m a strong introvert, it doesn’t mean I’m shy, that I don’t like my friends, that I don’t have friends, it means I am more alive alone and a bit stifled and tired in a group.

And I’m in a group all the time… I mean I’m with my 1-year-old and 4-year-old very close to all the time and my husband sometimes.

I’m about to go away from my husband for three months, it’s nothing for me, it’s not hard at all, we are already used to six month, so three will feel like a weekend away to me.

I really treasure my kids, which is hard to explain, even to myself. I treasure and I hate being constantly with them. It’s complicated. It’s like an ice-cream sandwich that has strawberry, vanilla and chocolate, I have profound joy, mundane fatigue and also bitter hate for the amount of time I spend with my children all at the same time.

As a mom I love to know they are safe, completely safe, in a way baby sitters can’t and don’t offer for sure, I love to watch them, enjoy the good moments, but the good moments don’t spice up the constant dishes and laundry much, that’s the mundane fatigue of it, always a load of laundry waiting to go, no matter how many finish, always a meal coming up in a few hours, no matter how many are served, and the bitterness is being told to look at what they want me to notice too many times for it to be fun.

It’s horrible, wonderful and boring being a mom, for me at least. It’s a party of flavors… lemon, the pink one, and an unwanted orange one that isn’t lemon, but I don’t like either.

My daughter missed my sister, her best friend, her grandfather, Hawaii (which we typically live in for half the year, but not this year) and somehow that was enough for me to decide to go without really thinking about it at all. She was a four-year-old making the adult decisions in the family, but at least now she is a five-year-old making the adult decisions in the family…

We usually return from Hawaii right in time for my daughter’s birthday at the end of October, but this year we are leaving November 1st, more or less when would be coming back. The year started normal, became twisted and is now completely backwards for us, not bad, but strange and backwards.

I wouldn’t trade it for the world, my son was born last year, so this was my first full year with him and it had as many good points as any other year ever did. I didn’t have such a good time in the old normal years, I’m having a good time now. I tried to, I’m a trier, but I was often too busy. I went to college full time while I worked full time, try to have a fun time like that… it’s probably possible, but didn’t work out that way for me. Then kids while working full time, probably possible to enjoy, but again didn’t come out “super” enjoyable… so I’ve said a few times and as weird as it may be 2020 was the best year of my life by far.

Right at this moment, I’m sick, but I’m happy.

Finally through the birthday, Halloween looks to be very toned down this year, voting will be a chore, but not take to long, so about to turn my focus towards travel, hopefully I’ll travel better with snacks and movies for the first time like those other parents who seem to have their sh*t together, better than my husband and I have ever managed before.

Here’s to traveling with a “more” positive outlook this time around.

“Things are never so bad, that they couldn’t be worse.”

– Irish Proverb

✈️

This election is being annoyingly loud thanks to my husband, I was thinking it was ironic Clinton stole money from the Haitian people by setting up a charity fund and keeping the money herself, then having the election stolen ie she gained the popular vote, but still lost the electoral college vote as did Gore. She stole and life stole from her. Donald Trump works hard, but disrespects people up and down the street, then he wonders why the world is constantly disrespectful to him. Joe Biden seems to have stolen a lot of money via business contracts using his families as shells, then he seems to have had his memories stolen of them and everything. It seems like there is a certain justice in the world, but it takes about 10 years to go into effect.

All that is conjecture, but it’s not worth looking it up to me, because what I find won’t be much more fact based than my own conjecture based on 1 musing while washing dishes.

I don’t believe in eye for eye karma, that leaves the universe blind.

But I do believe in live by the sword die by the sword. If you are always in battle killing, odds are much higher you may be the victim of killing as well.

PEBKAC means the problem exists between keyboard and chair, which means, the problem is you/me = “the user”.

My tech friends used to use it to discuss what was wrong when working in pairs of two, so they didn’t offend the person that was the problem.

But when you are the problem, your problem, the obstacle of your own goals, it quickly (or slowly) becomes the elephant in the room.

People will attempt to hold you back, they will slow you down with their priorities that don’t match yours, they will try to give you their chores to do, but ultimately it’s unlikely that anyone will hold you down or hold you back to the extent that you hold you down or hold you back.

The baby elephant is kept with a simple rope tied to a tree, it doesn’t break free, as an adult it’s kept with the same simple rope, it has learned not to struggle against the rope.

Haven’t I too?

When I talk to my husband about my goals he calls it whining, but when he talks about work gossip, somehow he thinks I should listen. I won’t. I don’t want to listen respectfully to someone who never listens to anyone else, both my daughter and my husband are like that, it gets very old. I know many people would tell me to be the change, to give them the feeling of being listened to, to wait and act correctly and they will follow, only they don’t. If you offer a free lunch some people will donate and others just take and leave, day after day. If you charge a quarter or a dollar it stops most of those people, those people won’t spend anything to heckle others, to malinger, those people prefer a completely free ride on the way to the riots, they won’t contribute gas money to get there. I’m so bitter after years of him going on and on but refusing to listen, but I see that it’s a PEBKAC issue.

In the book “Beyond Boundaries” John Townsend discusses two different kinds of boundaries, protective ones for when people keep stomping on your flower beds and core boundaries for life. Perhaps a perimeter electric fence for cattle and a white picket fence to define the inner garden of the home. I’ve had poor boundaries of both kinds all my life, but also a lack of distinguishing the different kinds of boundaries.

When you love someone the tendency is to give them free access to your heart and soul, but some people become mischievous with no limits, who would perhaps be fine with a security camera.

As a boy my husband liked to steal juice at the store, he liked to pull out the teacher’s chair or put a pin on it, I never wanted to think he would treat me that way, I wanted to think someone that misbehaved with other people would treat me well out of love, it hasn’t been that way, but it’s taken me so long to see it. And even longer to notice who is to blame, me.

I was told if you have a problem with someone you talk to them, you ask them to stop, that’s about the only thing I’ve tired with my husband and it’s had the same high failure rate with him that it’s had with almost all the people I’ve used it with.

In general the people who will stop if you ask them are not the ones who would be thoughtless enough to ignore that they are creating a problem for you.

Has anyone asked Al-Quaeda to stop? I think so, I don’t think they did. I know Hitler was asked to stop, but so was Winston Churchill.

So my main solution to problems I was armed with 1. Asking nicely for people to stop, hasn’t worked very much at all, I’m guessing 10% of the time, it’s probably time to figure out something else.

Perhaps when I’m trying to write I should demand my husband talk to me, perhaps that would be the best way for him to not want to talk to me…

Yesterday I tried to explain to him what writing meant to me and how I wanted to be more serious about really finishing a book, and already today he was interrupting me in every way he was before the talk, which he agreed with. He agrees with me 100%, but takes 0% of the actions that would help us work as a team.

I don’t hate my husband, I’m not looking to get rid of him, but rather, I’m trying to find a way to make progress towards my goals and he always seems to be in the way of new habits.

Perhaps he hates change, I don’t know, but I do know he encourages me to do something like “work out” or “see my friends” but then complains or blocks the real logistics of it coming to fruition. I didn’t see it for so long, but now that I do I don’t think I’ll be able to not see it.

Sometimes we have bad habits, like being rude, I’ll own that, I am rude to my loved ones, I regret it, I work on it, I’m not perfect.

But I’m so serious about finding out how I can leave this state of not following my goals, I’m looking at what I’ve been doing, which hasn’t been working, and what the people who are working are doing that has been working, I’m combing over life with a finer comb and it’s come up with some metaphorical lice.

The biggest one is me, allowing myself to get distracted, allowing myself to stay stuck, but another is that I have to fight my spouse to work on the habits I am trying to create rather than being helped. I weight about 110 lbs, he weights 170 lbs, I can carry him a short distance, but he should either be carrying me or walking beside me, I shouldn’t be forced to over come more difficulty consistently by the relationship I co-created with him.

In the past I start writing a lot, then there is some huge fire to put out in the family, in the marriage, he should be putting fires out when he is home, he should stop causing them, but he doesn’t, he says he will, then does nothing differently, what is his game?

I want to table all those problems indefinitely, because whenever I’ve tried to do anything about them it’s been a wasted effort, but perhaps that’s a rope that I can break now?

In the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Stephen Covey makes the point that personal matters, relationships, should be the main focus of life, not the side focus, because they can so easily destroy or detract whatever other work you are doing, you may as well turn directly towards those focuses.

I really don’t want to do that.

To a large degree I want to remain a lone wolf, even though I’m in the middle of a pack, I’m married, I’m raising a family, but I hate it.

I hate not being able to decide where we go, I hate the slow pace of life, I know someday things will be different, but I hate so much of the lifestyle right now. I hate having a squirming baby on top of me, I hate my son stopping and starting breast feeding, I wish he would start and finish and be done, I hate 94% of this life style, I hate pee leaking on my dress right after I showered, I hate stepping in my husband’s pee puddle in the morning and in the evening and hearing him tell me the bathroom needs to be cleaned, I hate the way he does things so much differently than me and won’t meet me half way or on my side, I’ve hated much more than I liked and if I’ve said so, whatever I’ve said was the tip of the hate-burg.

I was a person that probably should have staid single, someone who likes when their things haven’t moved, when dirty socks aren’t on top of the table and in random places… someone who enjoyed sleeping alone, enjoyed hiking alone and enjoyed dinning alone.

Now I’m married, I do my best at it, but I don’t think it’s a superior life style by any means. Perhaps it’s better for the children, but I don’t enjoy it and I don’t know if my husband does. He says he does, but his honesty is not without question.

This post is pretty dark and bitter, but perhaps sifting through the darkness and bitterness is part of the process of seeing what went wrong, the mechanism for failure in my life and a clue to the road out of the pit of writer’s block I’m having? I don’t know.

I do feel better, I could probably delete what I have written and still feel better, but for some reason I don’t think there is anything dangerous about the truth.

Life is hard and marriage is harder.

It’s like a diamond sofa, diamonds maybe nice, but you want to be comfortable on the sofa after the rest of life was tiring, and instead you get the most difficult challenge in life that not only won’t go away but will light all your knitted sweaters on fire until you address that baseball game that you were supposed to go to together 10 years ago.

We definitely waste my energy being not a good enough team, so maybe I should try to create a better team rather than just trying to retreat to make progress on the things I enjoy?

I really don’t want to try, I remember counseling, begging to go, because I did care, and having so much damn resistance, he always makes me set it up and then won’t go, I fucking hate that, how about don’t make me do any work and don’t go, yuck.

I remember a few months ago being neutral towards my marriage, and somewhere along the lines I slipped into bitter and than flamboyantly bitter. I don’t even know when it happened, I think it was a shade further each day, but I don’t really know.

There is so much sadness, so much lack of hope it will get better, so much disappointment that marriage requires so much effort and gives so little encouragement, good conversation or good company, and I know I’m part or all of most of those problems, but somehow that doesn’t make it much better. I don’t know how to be the part of solutions, because I don’t know if solutions exist, I’ve seen so few good marriages, I don’t know if they are mythological or possible, and if they are I don’t know if they are possible in my life time and for me. Some people climb Everest, but most don’t, it seems like a encouraging marriage is a harder peak than Everest. If I divorce maybe I’ll climb Everest then, to find out what was harder between the marriage or the mountain for real.

Maybe Everest is much harder, but I’m lying at the base of this marriage, exhausted from constant failure to ascend and the other one I have no prior failures to discourage me mentally, I have never failed to break that rope.

I feel my hopelessness floating upwards and outwards from my stomach, it feels like a balloon filled with air instead of helium, something that looks from the outside much as it should, but is hollow on the inside and fails to perform what function it was made to do.

Like a balloon that sits in a chair looking fine, something in my soul hovers on the floor instead of getting up and rising to the occasion.

I may not be broken, but there is a blown fuse somewhere, a short circuit that should be resolved before a new fuse is added…

It’s more difficult to troubleshoot a tech error when a problem exists between the keyboard and the chair and it’s more significantly more difficult to troubleshoot a problem when the problem is your troubleshooting ability itself.

One day my computer got broken, the power chord became disconnected from the monitor so the monitor was only darkness, Tech Guru’s YouTube video showed me how to fix that in a few minutes, I was tentative, but I tried and I did fix this computer I’m writing on right now. I fixed the computer preventing me from writing in less than an hour, how long will it take me to fix the emotional problem preventing me from writing the book I want to finish by end of next year?

Essentially life is something that is imperfect, reactants form products, but it’s never 100% complete, because as the products form some move backwards towards the initial state, an equilibrium may lie far towards either the reactant side or product side, but it’s never complete, life is messier than that.

Day 2, trying to write at night, it’s 10:33 PM, I was kind of ready on time, I was looking for writing jobs… I thought if I wanted to write articles it would be easy to do, but it’s not as easy as I had supposed from the other side of the fence. I’m sure that there are good projects out there, but so far I’ve found more scams than reasonable projects. Perhaps from the work at home flood, or perhaps it was always that way “in real life”.

Interestingly I don’t want money so much as I want accountability, I was interested in having a writing coach, therefore paying the writing coach, so earning something from writing would seem worthwhile and found money has no bills attached.

It took a long time to set up an upwork account, everything didn’t work it seemed, the ID upload, the profile picture, seemingly everything, yet in the end it did and I applied to three projects (which I noticed were already full of enough applicants by the time I did, not a day later then the projects were posted).

Freelance sounds really cool, but actually, I guess it kind of means scrounging for jobs. I’m a freelance writer now I guess. I’ve said that for awhile, but I haven’t looked for jobs until today.

So was that or wasn’t that avoiding writing?

Today I had a free sample with a writing coach, which I don’t know about fitting into life right now.

Before the meeting I was thinking that I do always seem to have success at meeting goals for life, just that it comes slowly. This year I did a few good things, learned to cook, taught multiplication, adjusted to teaching for dyslexia, over coming shyness a bit, pushing myself out of my comfort zone.

One thing that slows me down is a lack of prioritize what project matters when I have no way to know which one will pay off and what will lead to something that I find rewarding, I basically will never know before hand and if I wait to know to start I will never start.

I like to do too many things…. or many not too many, but I have trouble picking and sticking to one project all the way.

Things I like to do:
1. Educational Diagrams
2. Metrics for Emotions
3. Educational Graphic Design
4. Digital Illustration
5. Writing Books
6. Reading Books
7. Comic Books
8. Research
9. Teaching Art
10. Teaching Martial Arts
11. Teaching Outdoor School – Charlotte Mason Inspired
12. Reading Advocacy
13. Math Advocacy
14. Science Advocacy
15. Game Design
16. 3D Sculpting/CAD
17. Banana Exercise Classes
18. Stoic Philosophy Everyday Life Applications
19. Blogging
20. Self Help Class Design

So, it’s not for lack of skills, passion, or interest, but lack of determination and focus to commit to one project and finish it.

I’ve been gravitating to writing a book as a project to get out of my comfort zone, it’s something I’ve always wanted to do, yet there are fears of it shattering dreams I’ve had since childhood.

I really fell in love, married, and a few years later, it’s not all picnics, it’s almost completely not picnics. I don’t know if I’m ready to let writing a book become real and stop being a fantasy.

I don’t “really” know what I want to do, I don’t “really” know what project is the best use of time or resources, but to live is to not know and do something isn’t it?

I really enjoyed the session with the writing coach, she had climbed Everest, but still struggled to actually start writing a book afterwards for two years. It’s so common a thing, so human a thing, but I look down on myself instead of looking for a way out of the writer’s block crevasse.

My son is throwing the biggest fit tonight, as if he knows I’m trying to peruse my life goals, there are certain activities that kids have a radar for and don’t tolerate without a fit. I don’t know why using the bathroom is not acceptable, leaving to get them a candy from the other room gets a pass? How do they know at age 1 and why do they hate when you seek independence, how do they even know? Maybe I can tell what I was meant to do in life by how much my kids resent me trying to do it? If they let me with no fight, that’s not it… just kidding.

My husband is helping my son tonight, he seems okay, he was awake anyways so, that’s nice that this second day, though difficult didn’t end in me giving up.

I’m supposed to know what I want to do, so I said I want to write my book and the two after it that I see in my mind as one unit.

Hopefully by 12-31-2021 I am done with the first book, I want to get started today and tomorrow.

I’m writing an article, but I hope that making the space for writing, defending my decision to right, strengthening my resolve, I hope that it creates the castle in my mind where I can sit down and write “the novel”.

I was trying to find the difference between the writers who do write and the ones who don’t. I’m attending two writer’s groups now and I notice nobody are flakes or untalented in either group, but the ones who are writing are driven and focused.

I’m trying to be focused and determined starting now.

To be focused I know one particular problem I have is wanting to jump from project to project.

FOCUS
Writing the trilogy’s first book due end of next year.
Writing freelance articles at least trying.

The writing coach told me to “do” not “try,” but I’m such an honest person, I don’t want to confuse the difference. What I’m doing for now is trying, because trying is the most I can possibly commit to right now.

Possibly I have to light the fuse and run rather than waiting for the fuse to light itself, but also I’m not going to throw a grenade until I have a target and I’m not sure if I do.

I was in bed with my baby who usually doesn’t throw a fit from 10-11 PM, but tonight did, my husband asked me to take the baby, but at least he helped for a long while, I took my baby, fed him, he fell asleep and I got out of bed to finish this article.

It may be insignificant to everyone else, it may be optional, it may be non-paying, but it mattered to me.

I have this superstition growing that if I write, my writing will find all the readers it needs to, whether that is 0 or 1 or 1 million, kind of like a “Field of Dreams” if you build it they will come kind of superstition.

Today I resumed outdoor school after being inside while we were all sick, I served the three meals that feels like three thousand, I did the laundry, the dishes, I did enough, I gave my daughter a kiss, looked at her for who she is, helped her with math, I did at least 200 things that I “should do,” but I think this article at 11:31 PM is the first thing I’ve done that “I want to do” that feels like it matters to me.

I know the kids are supposed to matter to me, but I want something that belongs to just me, without them, I guess I want some self, some individuality, I want to be an adult that can speak as an adult.

I had almost forgotten what the adult world was like and I don’t mean in a “adult movie” way, just a normal adult way. Being able to say things like DMV instead of “the place where all the driver’s licences are given, where you will go to be able to drive safely and get the privilege of sharing the road that your taxes pay for, taxes are added to items we buy and also taken from our income at the federal level, if you care about tax rates you can vote, but your vote doesn’t decide what will happen, it’s a community effort… that’s right the popular vote doesn’t always decide the president, it typically coincides with the electoral college, the electoral college was decided a long time ago when those in power didn’t trust the average person, who was not very well educated at all, sure there is corruption and confusion in the system, but that does happen in most large countries, well we live here because our ancestors were moderately destitute, so they came as workers here and now I need to go to the DMV”.

Going to the library branch writer’s meet up reminded me of that adult world.

I don’t know how many ABC videos it took before I forgot who I was, how many Baby Signing Time songs, but I so miss the normal life.

I miss being sick and laying around the house in bed, without helping anyone else get water or deal with anxiety or talk about their feelings or feed others.

My 4-year-old wants to be a baby again, and I want to be a single adult again, not to date, just for the purposes of not having to help anyone at all on an average day.

I look back on the days I used to call off from work for a food poisoning or stomach flu and they now seem like a high water mark, because I got to lay down and not get up to do all the things I usually do, I got to curl up with a book or a movie and take a nap, I got to order take out and not split it three ways and serve it and clean it and answer questions throughout the meal about the inevitability of death as well as how if my daughter can escape to another planet she can then marry her brother, which she knows we don’t want her to do… ha.

There used to be silence. I used to eat my snacks by myself. Those were the days.

But I guess no one loved me. That was harrowing.

One one side there was abundant rest and barely any love, the other side abundant love and barely any rest.

I suppose if there is a heaven it’s the only place that has both rest and love.

If I write every night it won’t be so hard to start writing about the book characters, or research, or scenes, and if I write the book time after time, one day it will be done, and I think someday I’ll know if it was the right thing or not, but someday way after I did the work of it and I will have to do the work knowing full well that I don’t know how successful, lucrative, rewarding, helpful or significant it will be to me or anyone else.

You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

– Martin Luther Kind Jr.

Tonight I’m taking the second step, on an invisible staircase, to a place I can’t see, in a building I’m unfamiliar, with in a country I can’t name, but somehow it feels right. Thank you for helping me take that step, thank you for the welcome, or begrudging acceptance, into the world of the night writers it’s unexpectedly nice to be here with you, across time, writing under the waning crescent moon.

🌘

I really do like the mornings, I like coffee and quiet, the approaching dawn.

I like the mornings, but so do my kids, they wake up before 7 AM and my son cries if I’m not near him from 6 to 7…

It won’t be forever, but it is right now.

So perhaps I can write at night?

Though I want the Immanual Kant schedule, maybe I can do the Jerry Jenkin’s schedule?

I did a web class with Jerry Jenkins, he said if you are busy caring for kids or family, it might not be the right time to write.

I love and hate that.

I love that it’s okay to put my family first and not be able to do everything, but I hate anyone suggesting that I don’t try to do whatever it is I’m trying to do.

I went to a really cool writer’s meet up, with four other writers who were so cool and welcoming. They were very productive as well, I want to get there, to where they are, it’s scary, but I want to try. Some have been working on novels for 20 years, which have deep and quirky characters and interesting, fast paced plots, and so much wit.

I kind of feel out of my depth with them, they are where I want to be in writing, their books are on par with normal books, good interesting books.

I feel a bit like a home cook trying to mingle with chefs, but I’ve often been the dumbest one in my study group… in college I made it a point to try to make the best student my study partner, they rarely resented it, even though I rarely helped solve half the harder work, it seems like the company and motivation to get the homework done was enough to equal out the help they gave me, even if I they did take some extra time to break down the basic calculations for me in physics.

One of those smartest student is still one of my few good friends, it started with me being bad at physics, especially derivatives for vectors, and it just never stopped. I owe a few good friends to my own stupidity I guess I could say.

So, it’s night.

Lately I haven’t slept as well, I’ve been sleeping late with a cough that I think is mostly gone.

This is perhaps a great time to start a night writing habit.

It’s going well tonight, I’ll write in the quiet of darkness, with the crickets singing (the males at least), I’ll write with my family sleeping in the next room over, so the click clack of the keyboard doesn’t bother them.

I’ll write “morning pages” at night, or homework for my first writer’s group, or perhaps the novel for my second. I will write something in the time from when the kids sleep, until I sleep. If I sleep that’s fine, but if I stay awake, I will write and not check email ext (I do that in the morning typically). If I am awake I will Stephen King it and work through the insomnia.

The kids and I got sick, I rested, and the rest became a reset, but as I reset I wondered, what should I go back to doing?

Some of what I was doing was very worth it, moving school outside, learning to cook, perhaps everything, yet I just don’t have more energy. So that, if I really want to work on a novel, and I think I do want to, than it requires that I have to save energy from somewhere.

I think I know from where.

It’s just hard, it’s hard to let go, it’s hard to accept I have more time than energy, but that’s how it is. I have a few more hours of the day than I do mental energy with which to use it “productively”.

I’ve driven myself pretty hard this year, filling in for my husband, working out a better life, a better school system, better family rules, a better team structure for the family, yet it’s taken a toll.

The Higgs Bosom particles, little particles smaller than an atom found in CERNs super collider, they can borrow from the future. If they need to go faster to break out of an area, they can go faster than they were going and then pay back the energy later, they take a pay day loan of energy from themselves.

So much of quantum mechanics has always matched how it feels like life works.

It’s kind of intuitive, not if you think of particles as objects, but if you think of them as beings or individuals. Aren’t we drained by Wednesday, but borrow from the weekend so that Saturday and Sunday we don’t have any vigor left? Doesn’t the work on Monday steal energy from Sunday just because we know it’s coming up?

I want to write hard scifi, I’m already started on a novel about a ship captain who doesn’t like her job and wants to quit, she does quit in the second book, but I haven’t spend nearly any time at all on the book lately.

At first I had to decided if writing scifi was what I wanted to do. And I feel like it is, for better or worse I have diverse interest and like many types of books and even types of creativity (art and writing).

But I think I was lost in scifi the best as a girl, The Princess of Mars, from a large box of scifi books someone was giving away, really captured my imagination. It had an outsider protagonist, which I’ve always been, and a strong warrior female who was also smart, which I would argue that I’ve always been as well, so it would have been almost impossible for me not to fall in love with that book.

I’ve loved The Forever War, I think that’s a good first Scifi book for anyone who has never read it, the beauty of Scifi, I think, is in being exotic and mundane at the same time. The relatebility of human nature combined with the limitless possibilities of what could have been or could be.

Clone, was a really good one, I’ll never forget that one, I stood in the library aisles, smelling the book smell, and sad that I would never read all the books (a realization that was new to me, having come from a smaller town with a smaller library, where I did read all the books in my sections) I was still hopeful to grab another good book and enter a new world.

My real life wasn’t so great I didn’t want to escape… and escape I did, there is a time for mindfulness, but also a time for a free and unpained soul.

I recently rewatched “the Never Ending Story” and “Never Ending Story 2,” beloved from my childhood, with my daughter. We both want the luck dragon Falcor, she liked the horse Artax more than me, but I noticed this time how much I didn’t understand as a child.

In the second movie they explain that books change when you read them again, for me they seldom did, because I read them back to back (for lack of new books). I hadn’t changed, so therefore my understanding and my views hadn’t changed, but finally enough time had passed that I saw “the Never Ending Story as an adult.”

It’s a beautiful story, that we are all a part of the story of mankind, that a world of our hopes and dreams and imaginations lives somewhere “a literary world”.

Since the internet has gone from a university side project, to an essential of survival, I wondered along with other writers if books would die, but I don’t think they will. They may change to digital only, they may shorten, but I don’t think they will die.

I think a new wonderful time for books is dawning when the unspoken voices are given freedom to speak, I don’t see this as the end, but the beginning of a freer era of books. It may not be everyone who reads books, but those who want to will, those living now and also those in every part of the future of humanity, I believe it will be much easier to keep books in digital form and that one generation of librarian will pass the torch to the next. Some books will be lost, but most of the great one’s won’t. Most stories and ideas worth telling are told many times, but each voice does so in a different tone, with a different tambor, a different beauty, a different flavor.

To me it is worth it to write a book, to push myself from what I have always been, a reader, to something new, an author.

Even if I go back to the way I was before, I believe there is a lot to learn about myself in the process.

I’ve always had the problem with math that I struggle a lot where I am told to struggle, in the class I am in, but when I get to the next class I can easily understand the one before it, so I wonder why couldn’t I just easily understand during the class?

Perhaps the ideas were too new? Perhaps I didn’t believe in myself? Perhaps my tools were too weak?

My mind was never weak, I was never horrible, but I just don’t know what I don’t know.

And I think I’ll never know what I don’t know.

So as I try to write at night, try to write a novel, I think I will learn a lot about myself, but I know that I don’t know if I will or if I do if it will be worth it and if it is or isn’t worth it what I’ll find out.

It becomes an exploration of my soul, my capacity for words and the courage to face the fear of being the worst writer of my group or of all time.

Thank you for joining me, I wanted to conclude the transformation series, but I found that I wanted to justify myself to myself in what I am doing writing at night or writing a novel at all, so perhaps tomorrow night I will end the transformation series I had been writing as I feel as one chapter of life has ended and a new one has begun.

🦉

Recently I’ve hit a strange plateau, I keep writing but not publishing.

I went to a writer’s meeting with one poem and three really interesting books being written, some had been in progress for 20 years, but they were all really interesting and decently cohesive at this point. It was kind of crushing to see how other people operate, they just seemed to be able to write so well.

I was guessing I would move from scatter brained to cohesive someday, but I never really understood exactly how it would happen.

The poem was awesome though, three wonderful and long novels which were all my time of books so it was interesting to go “back stage” and see them being written, but also the poem really lifted my spirits, it was about being the captain of your own soul, my 1st rule of our family is “be the captain,” I hope to be able to link to that poem someday, but as far as I know it’s unpublished, it was “an epiphany” to the writer on the day of the writers meeting, it was similar to the one I had that drives me to write here and strive in the average day to do just a little bit extra in life towards lifting someone’s spirits (my own or others) or taking a small moment to appreciate the beauty of the little things in life.

I left the meeting wanting to write my novel as well as articles, I kept thinking how is it possible to not have writer’s block for the one, but not the other, and I ended up having to have writer’s block for both I guess.

In the past I’ve read a lot of witty things about writer’s block, that you simply can just sit down and work to cure it… but having read all those things, and having had a solid year without writer’s block, it still returned to me so strongly this past week.

I now have 28 drafts on WordPress, at first it was 1 – a draft about romance, how to fix it, I started writing it thinking I would fix my marriage and explain how… step 1 never happened, thus all I have to explain is how to not fix a marriage, most of the other 27 were written this past week or two.

When I have writer’s block I seem to explode with ideas, and even to write, but I usually throw away the “balled up papers of writing,” this time I didn’t, but nor did I publish them.

Someday I think I’ll read those articles and decide to finish or delete them, my husband thinks they will be the best ones for whatever reason. I’m not sure.

I didn’t notice them being better, or worse as I wrote them, I was a bit more inspired to write, as honest as always, as clear as always, but what made me not publish them had a lot more to do about me than the articles. I didn’t feel secure in myself at all, so even my articles, which tend to be somewhere from fine to great (depending on taste), even pressing the “Publish Button” was out of reach.

As of yet not one person has ever criticized me on my blog, other than perhaps me, the one critic who may complain to me if I do hit the “Publish Button” is probably myself.

I’ve written and thrown out entire novels, without ever showing them to anyone, it’s an interesting dilemma to be in, some writers decide not to sit down and write, I so enjoy writing that I do sit down and write, but then due to a lack of confidence to let my writing exist, to allow myself to hope I am enough for it to be enough, to prevent using courage and hope I don’t possess (on credit) I destroy or don’t publish what I have.

I have never gone through such a short writer’s block, I find it encouraging that my cycles are getting faster.

When I was first married, my husband and I would fight over a two week period, perhaps being mean for 4 days, being sulky for a week, him apologizing for 1 day, me thinking about it for 1 day, then me apologizing the last day. Five years later it happens in an hour or two, 20 minutes of fighting, us realizing it’s not worth it to fight, double the fight time in sulking, we now both apologize one after the other and hug it out. Problems very rarely get fixed in either case but the old way took a lot more away from life, headaches during work the days we were fighting, stress, hating someone for a few days only to decide to go on living with them a few days later. He doesn’t like to do things my way, I don’t like to do things his way, we lack an “our way” and yet we want to stay together, we have achieved a peaceful, albeit it somewhat mediocre status quo over time.

When I have been writing, I think I’m a lot easier to live with, I feel better about myself, though my writing hasn’t done anything important to my husband’s metric (ie make money, be famous), it has done so many important things to my metric (sometimes help others, often help me, produce clarity in a murky world, produce emotional healing to some of the scars I carry in my heart, give me something adult to do in a life of child care, keep my mind as sharp “as ever”, give me fun, give me something to look forward to, help me balance my life, help me brainstorm new ideas, help me get to know myself, help me find my voice and values as an individual, even help me make peace with God or the idea of God).

I should acknowledge that my husband supports me in a way as a writer, he encourages me to write, he says my writing is good and funny, I just wish that that was enough for him. He is always hoping that if I keep going there will be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but I want to chase the rainbow for the rainbow itself.

I don’t want to be a cash cow, I just want to be a cow.

I’m not lazy, I’m not too idealistic to know we need some money to eat, but I’ve suffered so much at my own hands by over-prioritizing money over a life span.

I learned how much it didn’t matter, not because I’m smart or enlightened, but in a rare moment of pain and insight.

I had an epiphany Friday November 17th 2017:

I had been working “too much” since I turned 18 and even before. At 13 I worked at a doughnut shop, otherwise I don’t know what I would have done with myself as I was homeless at times when my bipolar mother got beaten by her significant other she would try to hit me and because I stopped her, she kicked me out. After some time to cool off she would let me back. It may sound weird to have a child working in the US, but the job was very adventurous to me overall. I learned so much more working than I had in public school, where I was already ahead, then when I went to college I tested above normal in English and at a low level in math, but I don’t think I would have tested higher in math had I not worked.

My childhood in 6 words = a 16 year long shit show. (I started college at 16)

There were three big problems with math, one anxiety about math, two I was so behind in fractions I needed to go all the way back and the class never did that, and third I thought math wasn’t important (which is crazy since I was interested in living successfully in a capitalist society as well as science such as physics which both rely heavily on math).

Later in college I went all the back to the beginning and learned math decently well, even becoming a math tutor. In a way math really beings when you stop believing it’s bullshit that you hate, but not before.

I worked as a child, I worked as an adult, at 18 I again lived with my dad, I felt so afraid that he would ever have to pay to support me, ashamed at that idea, I would have done better in college without the full time graveyard shift I got, but I would have had to rely on someone else, and I thought I could get all the way through a perfect life without ever needed to do “that” (rely on someone else for help).

At 21 I got an ambulance job working 72 hours on a normal week and 126 hours on messed up weeks when the company “needed someone” because they were “short handed”. In reality they always needed someone, because they made more money hiring not enough workers and driving the ones they had too hard, that means less benefit pay, less training pay, lower wages over all. Like a “going out of business sale” that never ends my company was always “short handed” and I didn’t know how to say no even if I understood it was by their own choosing they were short handed.

I remember one day being hired, the owner of the companies were talking with one another in the office, they said they didn’t have a spot, but were just waiting to fire someone and were very happy to hire me to be able to do it. I didn’t know much about the person, but it gave me a sense of the way things worked, owners used workers like dish sponges, replacing them when they could.

I lived working at the lowest wage jobs as many hours of possible, saving very little that I could have and wondering why I never got ahead.

I met my husband, love at first sight more or less, extreme happiness for 2 years, misery for 5, mild irritation for 2. Never lost hope that we will be happy again “someday”.

I worked until my water broke, two weeks after my first baby I worked (with the baby), I worked without thinking much about it until my daughter was about 2.

Other kids went to story time at the library, we got off work at 5 or 6 PM, all the kids stuff was over by then. Years would pass where I forgot to take off Chinese New Years for the parade, I didn’t make it to the beach 20 minutes away from where we lived, as I worked life passed by.

My husband spent the extra money on a truck he didn’t need for work, we both wasted money, but the truck consumed all my earnings, the truck I didn’t want. I told him, he didn’t care much, he cares some for me, but not so much for my opinion on how he lives his life, I think outside of movies a lot of husband’s are like that.

It was my day off one day, I took my daughter on a walk to the college, no rush (during the week days we were out by 6:15 headed for an hour in traffic), I took her to the snack store, let her look at every treat and decide, she picked her very first ice cream sandwich, we went outside and she starting eating it, it was a beautiful moment of peace in a usually frantic life.

Then I got a text message from work, they didn’t schedule me, but they thought they had and were already waiting for me, I said I would come in, I rushed my daughter home making her cry as I cleaned her messy face in a rush I had promised her wouldn’t happen “today,” as I realized what had happened, I realized who I was (not a bad person, but someone I hated, someone I had never wanted to be, someone I didn’t want to be anymore).

I was the same too busy to live, promise breaking parent that I had always wanted to never be.

I had become the enemy of who I was and who I wanted to be. I realized how much I was at odds with myself.

And I wanted so badly to get out.

I didn’t quit my job that day, but I did start making an exit plan, I didn’t become a good mom that day, but I promised my daughter I would try my best, and that when I could we would do those things other kids got to do (story time ext).

I think it took 4 months from then to quit, I got pregnant with our next and last baby (two for us) and went through a rough pregnancy being pretty impatient and nauseated all the time, then my son was born and my daughter was cast aside a bit, because that’s the reality, I don’t hold them both at the same time, the oldest feels cast aside, because to some extent they are cast aside… then it was rough finding our was as a family of 4 and the day before my son turned 1, COVID. His birthday was the day after the lock down hit our area.

The low point of my life so far has been watching my daughter cry as I wash ice cream off her face to rush to work again, like we always did, but with the awareness of what I was doing.

There were many bad times, perhaps if I got into details some people would cry at some of the things that were done to me as a child, but they don’t get to me much. To me the things I do wrong, are the things that get to me. I can wash away everything that isn’t my fault like temporary marker, but the things I’ve done against my own soul don’t wash away.

I want to use the word Steve McSwain used in the “Enoch Factor” to describe the moment I had with the ice cream sandwich, but I’ll have to look it up, I can’t remember it at all…

But it was essentially two moments of awareness in a mostly unaware, survival mentality kind of life, 1. This is what life should be, supporting my child, in a moment of peace and joy from time to time. 2. I am living a life I hate against everything I want for no reason.

We didn’t need the money I made, my husband wanted it, but we didn’t need it, which is lucky and not everyone has that, I’m grateful I can be at home with my kids, I was scared my husband wouldn’t like me if I didn’t earn money, but at the time he hated me so much for not being the wife and mother he wanted and being the wife and mother I am that it didn’t even make our marriage worse at all… in a way that bad marital satisfaction was very free, I couldn’t loose our marital happiness, which we didn’t have.

My life may not look so different to anyone, but it’s finally at least in part “my life” that feels a whole lot different.

Yesterday I was chatting with my sister, telling her I breathe honestly. She didn’t think it was a thing, it totally is. I just did it again.

If you hate your job and you lied in the interview about “why you wanted it” when you never wanted it, if you get a belly ache to head to work everyday, if you get tired of smiling empty smiles to not seem gloomy because you can’t remember the last real smile, if years go by without you really doing even 1 major thing that you enjoy (like seeing the beach, going to a parade, growing a tomato) and you always think someday you will start living, but it keeps not happening, when you stop doing those things, you start breathing honestly and it feels amazing.

I’ve never been the same person since the pain of the ice cream sandwich face cleaning, broken promises, incident, that pain was enough to move me out of a life time of living on auto pilot, that pain woke my soul up and sent me on a journey to try to live my best life rather then the expected one.

I welcome pain, sometimes I have more than I would have wanted, but in general, I welcome it, as it has given me most of the treasures of my life.

For me pain is the key that opens the closed doors, pain is the spark that lights the fire which keeps me alive during a cold night, pain lights the candle in a dark hallway, pain removes the splinters before they become lingering infections, pain is the mirror that shows me who I’ve become, pain helps me remember what matters, pain cuts through illusions of what can’t be true no matter who says it’s true, pain is the sword of truth in my life, the slap in the face that wakes me up before I fall off a cliff playing Pokemon Go, pain has been the Bonnie to my Clyde and I can’t imagine who I would be without it.

No one will ever free you, until you free your own mind, you can’t go anywhere new tied down to the expectations of others, you should cut the tethers to the past and return there by choice, but return freely, by choice, not as a slave to your fears of what is expected from you.

🗡️

FOCUSING ON OILING THE BLOG

It’s taken me a long time to think about what tabs I wanted to use to label my writing. In a well ordered mind, perhaps I would know who I am, what matters to me, what I want to say to the world.

But the truth is I am often scatter brained and confused by this modern world. I do the best I can with whatever I have on hand, everyday. Stephen King forgive me, I live with a zest for life.

There are many things I come across in everyday life, in the course of reflecting on a lifetime, in the world and on the internet (the digital sea) that strike me as worth sharing, discussing or thinking about.

I feel the need to digest ideas and every so often the ones I chew on improve my life so much I think, why not share that, it’s not for everyone, but it was for me and perhaps mentioning it will help the right person find the right tool for this moment?

Because I don’t believe in a fixed destiny, at least not a totally fixed destiny. Maybe some things are destined like birth, aging and death? But I think others are not, I think we can sail this world largely in the course we set, now more than ever. So if I can make some maps to places I either struggled with or enjoyed, why not?

It all comes down to why not?

So, I’m an imperfect person and an imperfect writer, but life keeps showing me remarkable things and I don’t see any reason not to share them with the world.

Finding Barbara Ann Kipfer’s book and website Things to Be Happy About, has been really helpful in showing me the style I would like for my website.

I always had a really veigh sense of what I wanted, glimmers of it, but seeing her site, very close to what I wanted, helps me imagine a way I could REALLY put it together instead of just imagining it.

So I looked at her site and main categories, arranged so cutely as a town, and decided (at least preliminary what I wanted):
Rays of Hope
Light in the Darkness
Distant Stars
Silver Linings
Shinny New Pennies
A Remarkable Life
Habit Garden
New School
Mental Strength
Art Cafe
Wishing Well
Goal Gym
Library
Book Store
Emotional Hospital
Wordcraft
Love
Tiny Farm

I kind of want a song for each, but I’m sure that will come in time.

It seems like an ambitious project to redraw my own version. Somewhere along the years I got really afraid of drawing, I was quite talented or at least a bit talented growing up, I shut that door at some point, threw away the key, and put a chair in front of it, I think if I want to go in there it will have to be from the window and I’ll have to break the window because it is closed. Maybe I can throw a rock at that window?

I’ve noticed that although I really enjoy and write articles, such as this, well (in my opinion and seconted by the kindness of strangers) and decently consistently and with very resonable speed, I’ve strangely been able to have pretty much a writers block in terms of the novel I had started with enthusiasm a few weeks ago.

Interesting to be writing every day or nearly everyday at the same time as having writer’s block. It’s as if I have a Bert and Ernie and the Bert is doing well but Ernie is suffering the loss of rubber ducky or something…

I am attending a writers meeting today and a writers class before that, so hopefully I’ll find a clue to the functional process that is perhaps missing.

I have the:

1. Be Alive,

2. Want to Write.

3. Have Somewhere to Write. < Down, yet

4. Write Things. < Is missing.

In a way that’s just a small problem, when I’m missing steps 1, 2 or 3 it would be much harder to fix.

A LITTLE ARTISTIC THEFT SIDE QUEST

So essentially I want to create a town drawing that links to different pages that then have the articles related to those themes.

Thinking of doing the whole town is daunting for me. It may look simple to you, but it’s a larger art project than I’ve ever done in terms of components.

So I just decided to start by mapping the whole town very roughly, labeling the sections I want, renaming the sections and changing the labels (using Autodesk Sketchbook a free app).

I decided I wanted to start somewhere, I ended up starting with the Art Cafe, it was a pig shaped idea bank in Barbara’s site, but mine is an homage to Jonathan, the MS Paint Chicken maker artist.

“Sketch for the Art Cafe”

There is a holographic fence with a hole on the bottom right, there are five tables with wooden crates for seats, there is a stair case because there are two floors, the art gallery is the upstairs floor, the bottom floor is a dog friendly cafe. My family dog Canela is lounging comfortably inside. Someday I plan “flesh out” the drawing more, but I find that in this basic sketch I could begin the next step much more easily than I could from a blank canvas. Perhaps some people can just draw the image right away, but I find scaffolding easier. Maybe I have a timid soul, that I need to make a coloring book page for myself, but it is what it is, I am who I am.

I became inspired to do more sketches by the Step-by-Step City Paper Illustration article in Art Rocket by Vince Dorce:

My first sketch isn’t at the level of Vince’s but seeing his process was helpful for me to allow me whatever “bones” I need to begin my design process in my own way.

On thing is I just used my touch pad rather than hooking up my drawing tablet. I could probably get more control with my drawing tablet, yet I’m at an annoying phase with it and I don’t necessarily want to be fighting the frustration of beginning to use Krita (the only app that works with my Chromebook, my only computer) at the same time as I try to generate and note down my ideas for the project.

I actually always wanted to have a mostly art based site, where I could write, yet where art was the main focus… but I ran into some problems early on, I was using Inkscape which was fine, but I kept trying to find a better program such as Illustrator and I actually didn’t love the “professional” most legitimate program. Though I loved Adobe Photoshop for a long time, I never clicked with Adobe Illustrator and I tried to force it.

I was a novice in a beginners world. Out of my depth and trying to take on bigger projects and greater challenges than I have the tools to complete.

I should have given myself time to do tutorials, or practice joyously, but I didn’t, I kept wanting to do better than I could and much much faster than I could until I became disgusted with the difference between what I could do and what I wanted to do. It’s only much later, with all the pressure gone that I have become smart enough to change what I expect from myself to within the limits of what I can currently do.

I know if I begin again, I’ll catch up to normal, I’ve always been talented in art, so perhaps that was the pain point of starting digital art, finding that I’m suddenly untalented in that arena and not at the top of a much larger pond. I find that art is as healing as exercise and I’ve missed it, but I’ve atrophied through years of disuse so that I begin again as a baby would, from level 0. Before I had issues with perspective, with perfectionism, but with very fine motor control, now I have lost that, but gained an acceptance for my imperfections that will hopefully sail me through the sea of digital art unto tropical islands of wonder and fun.

If I always either draw and write a novel I can always procrastinate the more important one by doing the less important one. I think perhaps that is a fear, that by doing both I will do neither well, but I can do badly at art or writing without doing both. Even if I do only one, it’s possible to do a horrible job at it.

When I imagine my best life, it includes some kind of art, I’ve always found a peace in the flow of drawing, I don’t need to be great at it, there are other people to do that, but if I can represent my ideas graphically, no else can do that for me, it may help me do things I want or good things, it may be a good tool that fits well in a good life, and maybe not, but if I don’t try new things, push myself out of my comfort zone, I won’t find any answers to the questions I haven’t answered about life and about myself, if I don’t practice living I won’t be better at it than I am now.

I’d like to die knowing I took things almost too far, I squeezed out of life nearly all I could have out of it, that I didn’t not take the road less traveled as I ate the free continental breakfast at the excuse hotel day in and day out, instead of getting started down the path of doing things.