Lately.

Feb. 24th, 2013 09:07 am
crows: (black raven)
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 [personal profile] 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.
crows: (caw)
I seriously need to calm the fuck down.

Cabaret is tomorrow; Cabaret being my choir's spring fundraiser. A number of full-choir pieces, some ensemble stuff (including our 'official' small-group, which I am part of), and solos. The everybody and some-other-people stuff doesn't much bother me, even though there are only some eight of us in the Quiretet. They're people I feel confident on the stage with.

I am not people I feel confident on the stage with. Once again, schedules never meshed, and I won't be able to go through the song with the gentleman accompanying me until... tomorrow afternoon between setup and official call time. So I'm sitting here working myself quietly into a froth over practicing, and making myself so anxious I forget words I know or, at best, lose them every time something distracts me. The thought that other people in the building can totally hear me singing, for example. Or you know, people walking by on the street, because my window is open.

Oh god, anything but people hearing me sing.

...wait.

Marvel.

Dec. 29th, 2008 05:45 pm
crows: (Default)
Busy weekend. The rehearsal and subsequent beautiful wedding of [livejournal.com profile] alaskanmermaid to her true love. Very fabulous. I sang in front of people and didn't melt or pop or anything... I realized today that all of the formal training I've invested in my voice has really been invested directly into my voice. Which is fabulous, I wouldn't take back a minute of it. Particularly the year with Ariella, I made a lot of improvements as a singer and I'm not losing them as fast as I thought I would now that I'm a musical orphan without an instructor again. But I haven't been training as a performer at all and, subsequently, while I'm slowly inching closer to being something more like the singer I want to be, I'm not the performer I want to be. Depending on where I end up, I will definitely be eying that as a specific goal next time I decide to take up vocal instruction.

I'm right now killing a little time before I go rehears with MJ; we got our date and time for the folk festival. January eighteenth, I'm not sure when but she'll give me the paperwork tonight. In theory, I'm supposed to learn to play passable guitar by this point. I can do it. Right? I can >.>...

Chant of the Sibyl still comes along slowly. I'm 81k words in - getting beyond novella at this point - and still hovering closer to the end of the story. Then there's a bunch of stuff I need to add; details, and full passages from Jadany's perspective, about her visions and assorted other things. Oh, and, the war... of course. I should probably address the war. Damn having all this stuff in my head. I have the tiny start of a short story called The Ta'raj Road sitting in my document folder, too... I'm waiting for the names of the characters to brew up and come to me.

Also, my computer is officially, finally repaired. This heralds a variety of things... my return to WoW among them, as well as more dabbling in digital art and possibly learning a little bit of programming (Ruby, Lisp?)

ALSO, Halflit. Earlier this year I started a community for creative writers at www.halflit.net. When things got so crazy this summer, I sortof abandoned it because I simply didn't have the time to nurse it into what it needed to be, but I'm back at it now. Consider this the soft announcement of it being reopened - that is, expect a more specific formal one later. But the point is I'm back at Halflit, and if anyone is interested in joining, putting up a webspace, and participating in the community let me know and we'll talk about getting you set up. I intend for members to be able to have a site to use as an online portfolio or 'in-progress' drawing table or whatever, a community for workshopping and friends, forums to play upon, and access to whatever other tools and fun things I can come up with as this thing grows. I also intend for it to be full of people who are at least a little serious about what they're doing, so that in the future the domain as a whole can start establishing affiliations with small publishers, editors, or whatever. Networking. You know.

So, yes... if anyone is interested... let me know.

That's all for now, lovelies. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and are relaxing your way into the new year. 2008 sucks. 2009 is going to kick its ass.
crows: (Default)
Porgi, Amor: http://youtube.com/watch?v=OB8IWGJl7Nw

I am with singing this in voice as of this week. I -adore- this song, and have ever since I was exposed to it when my old voice teacher, Moni, was using it to audition for an opera program when I went to visit her in Philadelphia. The last months of sight-reading have really paid off... this is the first piece of real music that I've actually had to employ it on, and it's going remarkably well considering how confident I don't feel about my ability to read the music straight off the page and figure it out correctly. It's starting to make sense in my brain though! It's a chore, pairing the intervals with the counting with the phrasing with the lyrics, but I know the difference between right and wrong and I'm not simply guessing at how it's supposed to be sung anymore. Freakin' yay!!

TDMonthly: I got my first assignment as a 'regional correspondent' this week. Basically, I'll be conducting phone interviews with retailers about new product for '08. They're going to pay me a little for the 'work' I did at Toy Fair, too. I've sent them the necessary paperwork. It's not going to be a huge source of income, but it's A: better than nothing, B: a great opportunity in terms of experience in two industries that I care about (writing and toys) and C: shouldn't be at all unpleasant. I'll probably still look for a regular job, at least part time, possibly waiting tables (I've never done that before!) once I get back from...

Oakland! Which is where I'm going tomorrow with a friend who's driving up to visit people. So. I get to visit some of my people, too! Yaytastic.

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