authoring destruction

So, this weekend has been tough. I'm still trying to balance the exhaustion of working 6 8-10 hour days per week. The bookshop, my last two days, is a good wind-down and doesn't require me to be on my feet quite as much but it still doesn't leave much time for me to take care of myself. Friday night descended into awful, into some hard but necessary conversations with one of the people I'm in love with, a lot of anxiety. Topped off by the neighbor downstairs cranking the music up at 2AM, right as I was getting myself close to wound down enough to get some sleep. Less than four hours later, I woke up, still in the thick of the migraine I'd cried myself into the night before.

I got up, cleaned up, got ready for work, messaged my boss that I wasn't feeling well and was going to be a little bit late but was determined to go in anyway. Trying to make something to eat to put down with the 800mg of ibuprofen I'd just swallowed was interrupted by several intervals of just having to stand still and cringe. Walking out of the house into the bright sunlight off the fresh snow almost made me throw up. I went back inside, called in to work, pounded on the neighbor's door so hard I hurt my hand, yelled at her about the music (which was still going on, loud enough to vibrate my floor upstairs), got cussed at by her boyfriend inside, went upstairs and spent 2 hours in the fetal position under my covers, about half of which sobbing hysterically cause I hurt so much.

When I came out of that, I emailed my-aunt-the-landlady about the downstairs neighbor issue (I've hinted lately that I haven't been talking to my family, so I've been resistant to call them about house-related issues - it's a major point of anxiety for me). She replied quickly and quite kindly, and is going to look into doing something about my neighbor to make sure this stops. I don't know how promptly that will occur but at least someone else knows about it other than Delia and I. I then commenced to completely lose yesterday, cause moving around a lot made me too nauseous to do much even inside the house and my brain was too gelatinous to address any of my intellectual needs of the moment.

ALSO Friday night, coming at the worst possible time, the decline on two stories that were approaching the end of the reading period for where I'd submitted them. I had rather foolishly allowed myself to be a bit hopeful about them since I felt like they'd been kept for a little bit, and they turned up right in the middle of that tense time I mentioned earlier talking with my SO, where I'd already felt a little broken open and pretty vulnerable and just... not well.

Updating my submission spreadsheet made me realize I received those rejections on the 3 year anniversary of starting to submit work at all. Nothing's been printed. Which basically started off the resounding chorus of you're not good enough and you're not working hard enough in my head, which I've been trying to quiet down since then. Today is a little better. I was still woken up at 4AM by music downstairs (called the police; this isn't the first time and I'm not the only person who's called).

What I did have my head on straight enough to do Friday night when I was still miserable and couldn't stop crying is send out everything again. Both the stories I got back plus a flash fiction piece that I've sent out before but hadn't had out recently, but still really like. I also spent some more time reading about other markets and picked out the next ones for the two longer pieces if they come back to me again. I don't have enough time in my current existence to let things grid me to a complete halt if I can avoid it. So no matter how worthless I've felt about my work the last couple of days, uh... other people have it to read and I think that's what matters at the moment.

Rewind a bit. Thursday I took my kitchen back from the entropy gods. The inertia of stress from the last several months, which I've touched on here, and my own struggle against the weight of life inside my brain has meant it had fallen into a place where I basically couldn't use it. It's not totally put back together, but I can at least cook at home again, and have a responsible amount of groceries with which to do so. I even bought coffee and treated myself to a brand new pour-over cone (it's red!). I haven't owned one of those for a while, and while I like my press, I'm more likely to use the pour-over/keep it clean.

Today, I think I'm excusing myself from more cleaning in order to focus on creative work. I'd like to have some more short pieces that are ready to go out. I haven't been focusing at all on short work lately, most of my energy has gone to the One for Silence and Dark Energy, which is fine, because I'm liking the work I've done on those, slow though it has been. But still. Theoretically, publication credits will eventually serve those projects, too. So today I'm going to go through the fragments and the old pieces and see what is waiting to be finished/rewritten/revised.

I also want to do some work on the comic, because that is a very good project (co- authoring and illustrating with thiefofvoices) that is moving forward.

I also need to sing. I have the music for the piece I'll be singing solo at my choir's fundraiser in a week (from yesterday >.>) but I haven't sat down with it yet. So, uh, better get on that, so tonight I can arrange some practice time with the gentleman who will be accompanying me.

So that's that! Fuck you depression and harpy-chorus of misery. I've got shit to do.

So many inarticulate things about the space and nature that is home. I'd love to tell you about it, but I don't really know. Yesterday was very difficult, and very bruised, and very tired, and in that run-ragged way fatigue has of making you feel every imperfection, every pea beneath the mattress, I was much more aware than I sometimes wish I was about just how wrong the shape of things here is.

Today, however, I have energy for mischief, energy for pushing back and laughing in its face. And I plan to.

Let's get this party started.

Well. Apparently, it took me two days to recover from my all-nighter to get back down to Iowa. I expected to be dead on my feet all of Tuesday (having arrived that morning), but I didn't really anticipate Wednesday and Thursday being useless days as well. I did watch all of Harper's Island, though. Surely in some universe that was a productive use of my time.

I did manage to wake up at a decent hour (7:30, much better than 10:45), wash my dishes, make myself a good breakfast, and get away for my errands without feeling hassled. I've picked up a stack of job applications from bookstores, cafes, and other shops within walking distance of my house; on wandering into the Blick down the way (also to apply) I bought a very nice looking wood bookcase on clearance for $30 and even managed to get it up to my apartment by myself (it's not awfully heavy, but it's a very awkward box).

I also named the two members of Team Destructokitten. The little one (grey and white striped) is Jay (short for Bluejay, not of & Silent Bob), and the larger solid grey one is Rook. Rook is in my lap right now. Well, now he's on the desk. But he was in my lap when I typed that he was. They're both lovely. A little thin; I think I might need to deworm them despite not seeing any other evidence of roundworm other than that they're not putting on as much weight as I would have expected. It's also been a long time since I've had a kitten (having adopted my previous cats as adults).

Venus is here, she's crabby about her new friends still but I think it's mostly the flight getting to her. Today and yesterday nobody's really hissed at eachother, though they're not quite interacting yet. The kittens - particularly Jay - really want her to play with them, but she's still acting a little snobbish. Between the three of them, my apartment feels really un-lonely. Also, nothing stays on a surface unless it's anchored down.

I'm still brainstorming for new things to do with Halflit. I started compiling suggestions here: http://www.halflit.net/suggs.html and then, because that was sortof a dumb idea as an ongoing thing, finally set up a forum for discussion here: http://www.halflit.net/rookery/forum/

Everyone is invited, writers and otherwise. Feel free to register and say hello; I'll be making an actual layout for the board in the next few days as well as adding new forums. That messageboard will remain permanent, and theoretically connect to a set of pages devoted to writing and artisting resources.

Upon reflecting on the recent move, and the ledge at which I am standing, I am often overwhelmed by this sensation: I am in the right place. I am in the right place. I am in the right place.

I think I've been waiting for this for a long time. I think it what qualifies, for me, as what manifests in many as the sensation of needing to feel at home somewhere. Home specifically for me is a somewhat more flexible (though very important) notion. It has to do with love, with people; several areas in space qualify. However, home is not always the place where I need to be. I am there now. Fortunately, it is a home as well.

To a handful of people who have added me recently and I've added back (those I know and those I don't), hello and hello. If we're not acquainted, feel free to leave me a message introducing yourself if you feel :D (for those I am acquainted with, um... you can too if you feel left out!).

Just got back from a very short-notice and not particularly planned two-day foray into Chicago. Delightful time with a few friends including an extremely relaxing evening with tea, talk, and knitting. I need more things like this! The whole crowd of people I've encountered in that city seems very warm. I enjoy that doubly, being away from my own nest of loved ones (you are all so, so missed).

There have been some small hangups getting settled. Nothing of its own merits worth mentioning, just the sort of things you expect. Everything takes a little longer and costs a little more than you expected, no matter how you plan. C'est la... this too shall pass (and it isn't too bad to begin with).

I adopted two kittens from a farm out of town. They are supremely adorable. http://crows.halflit.net/issues.jpg

I'm stirring up an entire collection of short stories that primarily address events prior to the time that a piece I've worked through four drafts in the last year and a half and intend to submit for publication after a little more work this year (Unbroken Thread). One is complete (draft one) and I have a handful of beginnings and concepts. Secondly, the collection of fables is webbing together into an interesting pantheon that encompasses the unfinished story of Carusa and her daughter, which I've begun but isn't gelling, and The Sea Knife which is complete at draft one from a year-odd ago.

Oh, and there's Chant. All ninety four thousand words of it. Sitting. Staring. o.o If anyone is bored and likes picking through messy draft fiction, I always appreciate anyone willing to have a glance over things I'm working on. So let me know if anything looks remotely interesting.

I think that's about it. I'm exhausted but the rest of me feels extremely awake. Coming fully back into balance with the more metaphysical aspects of my life has been an interesting process; I have impulses to overextend and I think it's contributing to some of the instability I've been feeling.

You know it's been too damn cold for too damn long when you're incalculably relieved to see fresh snow. It's above ten and climbing after our weeks below zero, and it feels so, so good outside.

I have a tiny glass pot of flowering jasmine and lavender white tea. Beside it, a serving poured in a clear cup with a trace of raw honey and six, bright pomegranate seeds faintly translucent in the candle-lit water.

Today, the morning is cold and hazy. The hillside is green and yellow, the mountains rock-brown and red giving way to new snow mantles. I've been in a black mood the last few days; frustrated, crying spontaneously, abjectly sad. I'm giving over as valiant an effort as possible to deal with things before I have to. Not so much worldly things, they don't trouble me as much, but the emotional things I've been having difficulty digesting. There are no firm answers, yet, but I think I'm learning slowly where things lie, even if the other people involved are doing their best not to talk to me about it. If it is intended as mercy, I want to appreciate it, but I'm tired of being in limbo. I know it isn't that simple; but I wonder how much a part that is? The temptation to really just throw in the towel and cut my losses becomes very strong between two-hour stints of sleep when I'm laying awake (again). Double bed, cold room, silent city. So many disquieting notions keeping my company. I don't know what I'm going to do about school residency; day by day, it looks more and more unlikely that I'll be returning to California. There is a certain suspicion in me that even another city will be too close; there will be too many reminders. But a fresh start and a clean slate somewhere else doesn't break me out of my own mind, aren't just that simple, and take a long time. Maybe what I need is a lottery win and a lobotomy before I try the aforementioned.

I meant to give some kind of proper update. Why? I don't know. Few to none of you are particularly connected to what's going on with my offline life that it would make so much of an impact. However, I always have the best of intentions for these things. The memories, the record! Oh, how self-possessed we all are in this post-blogging world. Perhaps I'll just stick to cryptic Twitters.

A great many things are well with the world. Well, and as they should be, and as the people that are involved with them deserve them to be. As for my position as far as all of that is concerned? I remain slightly outside the lines. I like it well enough; it is not without it's drawbacks, but nothing substantial enough for me to try to climb back into the box. I toy with the idea of a more thorough sabbatical from present existence... really removing myself from it for a while. A substantial change of identity or perceived identity, along with all the things that come with that and are required to properly facilitate it. I daily count the chips from stack to stack, considering gains and losses. To live in a place where one is away from one's personal history, both externally and internally, opens a lot of doors. However, disappearing closes many, too. How could I excise myself from my own life without hurting the most essential people to it? Or, is letting go of those 'essential' people core to the process of disassociating oneself with one's past and the trajectory of the present? I could put myself on the other coast, know no one, bend my mind to some different fragment of my name (Gail, anyone?) and enjoy, for a while, the psychic anonymity of that. If nothing else, it would certainly cure me of any attempts to salvage the past. Of course, that is all dependent solely on whether or not I decide there's anything worth salvaging. There may be, in more than one avenue of recently derailed planning. There also may not. Perhaps I shouldn't yet be thinking this far ahead.

Getting closer. Still debating whether or not to bring the cat. On the one hand, she's happy where she is, she stresses my parents' cats out a little, and it's gonna cost me at least $200 bucks to make that all happen. On the other hand, it's my CAT. I loves her and will be lonely without her for 6 months. And. She'll be happy wherever she is. Damn entitled cat knows how to take her happiness from whatever she can get it out of better than any other creature on the planet. Hmm. Hmm.