Laughter Through Tears

I underestimated how much getting my period would affect the first week's writing. Good thing I had three pretty good days in a row, because yesterday was awful. I took a four-hour nap instead of writing and spent most of the day eating chocolate and fighting headaches.

Had to venture out to the shopping center this morning to get more Advil, and rewarded myself with coffee and chocolate croissants.

So sometime last month I committed to starting Pilates again, after several years of not having done it at all, following the closure of the studio where I started and my failure to find a replacement studio. Then I saw that there was one in my neighborhood and it was super close to my place, and I figured I couldn't turn down such a convenient opportunity.

I've been doing it twice a week for the last three weeks or so. Too soon to feel an appreciable difference, but it certainly gave me structure and motivation while unemployed.

This morning I rushed to get dressed and ready because I was supposed to have a morning class (when not employed, I rarely wake up before eight). Then through a series of convolusions I discovered that my initial payment plan expired, and I need to renew it. Which is bizarre? I would expect them to be on my case on the phone before the plan expired? Like, I would have expected to get a call last week saying "your plan only has one more class on it, it's scheduled for Monday, do you wanna renew?" I would have expected them to make it super easy for me.

No such luck. This adds a fourth to the count of phone calls I absolutely need to make today. Classes fill up real fast, especially morning classes. I had better call them first.

ETA: Upon closer examination we discover, to no one's surprise, that the whole thing was my fuck-up to begin with. Which means I missed today's morning Pilates for no good reason and won't have another class until Sunday. I guess on the plus side it will give my abs time to rest? I'd better go and make those other phone calls now, maybe it'll help me feel a little more like a responsible adult.

I am very glad that I managed, somewhere along the way, to master the skill of not jumping down the throat of a new creative idea as soon as it occurs to me. Instead, I let it sit for a while and try to figure out if it's really as shiny and exciting as it first seemed, especially in relation to how much of an effort it's going to require.

So I sat on the portal fantasy idea for a while. I'm glad I did. It seemed at first to be a wonderfully flexible idea that would allow me to combine concept from secondary world fantasy with some of what you get when you write urban/contemporary/masquerade fantasy. With the benefit of a little breathing space, though, I'm not sure that I could maintain interest in it for long enough to make the project worthwhile.

Right now my writing goals plate is pretty full, and I have work and school on top of that, plus all the ordinary stuff of living. And I have a list of deadlines to which I can aspire, which will push me to create new original material. I'm on track. I just have to keep reminding myself of that.

Last night was sort of the pits of the funk I've been in lately. I talked it out with someone and I feel a little more optimistic. It's the feeling of being trapped into a course of action that gets me down more than anything else. fortunately with enough forethought and creativity I can usually come up with an alternative. And so that's what I'm trying to do now.

Yesterday was also the deadline for Strange Horizons' special queer issue. To which I did not submit a story, as a cause and consequence of the funk I mentioned. I did write yesterday, though, and something I am fairly pleased with. And this morning I drafted my next blog post, the one about writing disability that I've been mulling over for so long. I dread the possibility that it will expand into a series of posts.

Now I have a short break in the workshop which hopefully will allow me to catch my breath a little. And there's Olamot over Passover which is OMG! SO SOON!

There are people who are fucked up and people who are basically normal, functional, whatever. People who've got their shit together. Then there are people who are basically pretty fucked up but are trying to unfuck themselves, and that's a process that can last indefinitely. Some people spend their whole lives trying to unfuck themselves, and that's okay.

Between two basically normal people, relationships are simple. Not that there aren't difficulties or that they can't go wrong, or that they are always good, successful relationships. But the normalness is measured not in lack of problems but in the ability to problem-solve without setting yourself or your immediate surroundings on fire.

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Or I'm full of shit. That's also a distinct possibility.

Hello, weekend.

The problem with life is, that everything happens at the same time. I am not very good at that, as it stands. This weekend is a weekend for getting things a little bit back on course. That means pushing a little harder than usual. Make things neat, and organized, not just clean. Throw out what's unnecessary. Make a food plan instead of just buying groceries and hoping for the best.

Today we talked about self-esteem.

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IDK. Self-image is complicated.

Things I accomplished today: zero.

Okay, that's a lie. I swept the floors and did a whole bunch of house chores. There was a lot of dust. Disquietingly much. Not really sure how to handle things like dust accumulating on top of the closet. I still need to make the bed, preferably now and not at eleven thirty when I just want to fall into bed and sink into sleep.

Work has kind of eaten all my energies. My preoccupation revolves around getting house chores done, motivating myself to get to work early (so that I don't have to leave very late), keeping up with work and not getting bored... A little free time goes to reading and writing. Mostly passive stuff, very little in terms of words on paper.

And I keep having to convince myself not to play the list-of-things-to-accomplish-on-the-weekend game. It only leads to playing five straight hours of Skyrim and then feeling guilty as hell. I work, I need rest, that's totally reasonable.

And somehow blogging stops being something that I do to help myself focus, and becomes another thing to manufacture artificial guilt for. Most of my writing energy, I suppose, goes into my daily pages at 750words.com. Those have been pretty consistently helpful.

I am still afraid that I don't know how to live.

I got back home from Jerusalem much later than I had planned because my parents had a cool houseguest. Consequently the morning was a lost cause but I dedicated much of the afternoon to sweeping and mopping the whole apartment. This is my least favorite house chore, both because it always leaves me tired, sweaty and gross-feeling, and because the apartment gets really nasty if I don't do it often enough. But I'm starting my first week at the new job with a clean floor and fresh linen, which seems auspicious.

Of course as a consequence of not waking up at my own place, and then later the mad rush of neatening and cleaning, I forgot to each a sensibly timed lunch. Now I'm going through a whole progress of figuring out what I can eat and where it can be acquired. I really wish I'd had the good sense to get more supplies for winter-style cooking. Not that I'd break open a bag of red lentils or pearl barley right now. But sooner or later I need to adjust to having foodable foods at home, and for the winter that's really the best stuff.

I wanted to do writing today but probably I will only do TV: How to Get Away with Murder, Haven, and probably/maybe The Flash.

Apparently that's what they call it when you're sick with some shit you can't do anything about except "fluids and rest". Ugh. I don't even want to go to a doctor because it's not of any use, except I probably have to because of sick leave. Bluh. I've only just gone to a doctor to pick up prescriptions on Tuesday. And I told myself, maybe I should ask her about the fatigue and the backache and all. But then I didn't.

Yesterday I had to go in because of some things that needed doing that no one else can do. Figures the only time I have actual work to do is when I can hardly get myself out of bed in the morning. I slept most of yesterday afternoon and slept until after ten this morning. I let my alarm go, because I thought I might wake up feeling better and go in, which would be simpler all in all. But instead I felt like crap? So I slept another four hours and then took a long hot shower.

And, uh, did a laundry or two and cleaned the kitchen counter. And now I'm cooking lunch/supper because I have food in the house that I'd meant to cook days if not weeks ago, but I've been awful instead. Even though I know having cooked food in the house makes my quality of life immeasurably higher. I even dropped in some fresh mushrooms, before they get limp like the carrots I had planned to cook with on, oh, Friday?

There was some other thing that I wanted to write before I went to check on my dinnerlunchmeal. Whatever. If it's important, it'll come to me later.

Things aren't hectic at work (ha!) and I have some extra time on my hands. I've been pouring some of that extra time into 750words.com. I'd heard about the site and the idea of "daily pages" more than once, but I guess I just thought finding the time to do it would be too much of a hassle. Actually, setting the time aside has been pretty good. I've been considering trying on a stricter morning routine, since morning is when I tend to lose a lot of minutes that add up into major time chunks.

I write a bit the same way as the journal entries here, except even less filtered. (I don't filter much here, but I obfuscate a bit.) Things being what they are, it's a convenient outlet for extraneous stress. Loud sudden noises and whatnot. This morning I strayed a bit and actually did some on-paper outlining. Which naturally meant more progress than "brainstorming" mentally on the bus. Really I need to get over writing habits which I know don't work. I believe I am still one character short of a complete cast, but the plot is coalescing. Oooh, plot! *scary noises*

Between that and completing a few too-long-delayed chores, I feel pretty good. I'd still like to have a sofa so that I can stream shows on my desktop and watch them while flopped on something soft instead of sitting up. Sitting up is a sucker's game.