A Random Assortment of Things

Section One:

Try to hold on to those painful and touching moments in your life. Try to hold on to moments like when a woman you'd never met bought you candy to bring your blood sugar up because you were feeling light-headed or that day when you watched your 80-year-old grandfather stoop to put a dish of water down for his ill cat.

Try to hold on to things that restore your faith in humanity.

Section Two:

Writing is hard.

But really freaking fun.

Chapter two starts with a funeral.

Of course, it does. Moving on. I have a word count tracker thing in the sidebar. It is awesome. I love being able to keep track of things like this. I just like progress bars in general, I think.

Currently, I'm on Chapter Two and a little over 3k in. So yeah. Awesome. Plus, Randy is probably my favourite character right now. He's just... so screwed up but he's aware of it and is kind of... I don't know, happy about it?

Of course, Emily and Jenna are fun to work with too. Because I get to write things like this:


Jenna was quiet for several minutes then. Apparently whatever she was thinking was fairly vivid in her mind because it usually took at least one piece of duct tape to keep her quiet for long. “But there are a limited number of ways to be happy,” she said. “Sadness is infinite.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that everyone who’s happy seems to be happy in one of a few ways – their job, their family, something they can do, you know – but everyone who’s unhappy is unhappy in their own way.”

Emily took to kicking at the leaves as, caught by the wind, they swirled around her boots. “I guess you could say that. But then, wouldn’t it just be a matter of finding the opposite of your unhappiness?”

“The inverse of depression?”

“Right. Even if unhappiness is unique and there are a finite number of ways to be happy, there would still be at least one way that would cancel, right?”

“Maybe.” Jenna laced her fingers behind her head. “But what about people who are happy in their unhappiness? Isn’t their depression its inverse at that point?”

Emily hummed, thought for a moment and answered, “More of an inequality at that point, I’d think. Depression and happiness are in unequal quantities there.”

“But there is a measure of comfort to be had,” Jenna reminded her, her steps slowing. “That might just cancel out the inequality. And even if it’s an inequality, a tipped scale is more visually interesting.”

“You’d be a wonderful philosopher,” Emily said as they stopped in front of her building.

Jenna smiled. “Nah. I think I gave myself a headache.”

(Total first draft but still, it's an interesting conversation. I like the fact that it basically ends with 'Or not. IDK.' like so much of life.)

But yeah. That's where that is. I love slower stuff like this sometimes.

So. I'm going to go ahead and get back to it. Because I kind of left Randy in the rain near several people who might try to beat him to a bloody pulp if they knew he was there. So, yeah.

Section Three:

There is no section three. There never was a section three. Move along.

Section Four:

I might be screwing around with that side bar, just to be sure that everything is all even and pretty and easy to read. I just really like having things organised and I tend to spend an obscene amount of time getting them organised.

I'm using word meters from here and they're kind of awesome. I need to work out how to update them without going back to the site but that's not too annoying. I'm not totally happy with the order but I can work that out later. Along with everything else.

I'm actually really happy to have stuff like that to do. I can get things set up and not feel like I have so much to do that I get all overwhelmed and junk.

I'd like to learn graphic design too, I think. It's nothing that I really need right now but I think it'd be cool to know.

Section Five:

Yes, the Name/Nickname/Title thing on the side is right. I really don't give a dang about gender so I don't care what people call me/how people see me. If you want to see me as a kind of femme guy, that's cool. If I'm not, that's cool too. I'll answer to anything, so, you know, *shrugs*

(Basically, what it comes down to is if I want to wear a dress, I will. If I want to wear a suit, I will. I guess it's technically agender or genderqueer (different people have different definitions of genderqueer) with fluctuating presentations. So. There was your bit of personal information for the day.)

I said I was just gonna be me and I'm trying to just stick to it and not worry. If someone doesn't like you, that's their problem, right? Right.

So, bye for now, guys. Bye for now. I hope you have an awesome day.

. . .

Okay, here's how things stack up:

1) I haven't heard back on a certain beta-reading/editing project I was kind of really excited about and that's making me nervous. Everything's probably fine but I just really want to work on this and... ACK! I don't want to be annoying by sending too many messages but I don't have an answer and it's bothering me.

2) (Less serious, technically) I've restarted Camp NaNoWriMo. Why? Because I am a derp who is stressed about point 1 and can't focus. It is now a story about... I don't even know but the words are coming easier on this one so I'm rolling with it :D

3) I've restarted (at least in my own head) the self-published author thing. I've figured out that I don't really care about the money (even though it's nice to have). What I like is the fandom that small things gather - that and just the love of the work.

And 4) (so ranked because it's still in planning stages) I've been clicking away at a Word document filled with information on how authors who plan to self-publish can hire me as a beta-reader/editor with prices at a reasonable level and negotiable based on volume of work and the client's ability to pay. I love to help artists who chose not to go through major companies. That's a very brave thing to do! And it just might be the future of the industry.

But yeah. I'm stressed and I hope I didn't lose that job - I'm sick over that thought, by the way - and I'll be starting school soon (for psychology) and... just yeah. Stress and happiness all rolled into one right now. I'm leaving tomorrow or the next day to start this whole thing and it's just... insane. This all happened amazingly fast and somehow, yes I'm stressed (I wonder how many times I've used that word in this thing?) but I'm not as freaked out about it as I thought I'd be.

Huh.

I'm okay. And it's a weird and wonderful feeling - to be okay.

I'm very jittery inside right now so I'm going to go write for a little while and then we'll see where we are in the morning. *waves*

Things

And things.

It's late and I figured I could bore you all with a rallying post. Well, not so much rallying as 'This is what I need to be doing; hold me to it.'

First, basic schedule:

- Up at 8. Being up at 8 gives me an hour to screw around and still get three hours of work in before noon.

- Work for 3-4 hours. If I can't get something done in three to four hours, I'm doing it wrong.

- Take a break. Check twitter, tumblr, whatever. Eat, stretch, jump around, etc. for maybe a half hour.

- Work again until dinner (5 P.M.)

- Dinner break!

- Digest and then take a walk.

- You're free! Go do something you enjoy/sit around and do nothing.

Even that would be better than what I've got going on now. And that would give me time to get something that should have been done months ago done (finally!) and keeping that schedule will let me work on my website and on a few guidebook things I've been wanting to do. In short, it'll help me get things done. Which I really need to do.

Aside from that, I have a list (actually, a couple of them) that has the key points on it. Things I need to figure out for the website, things I need to make sure I get done before a certain time, etc.

Also, I'm between a couple of stories for a submission call a couple of months from now. Probably have to talk that over with mum and try to figure out which one fits the best. One would have to have more work done on it though. Ack. Why must almost everything I write fit at least some of these categories? *headdesk*

Actually, I think I know which one I want to do but I need to really nail down the plot for it and know where I'm going since it would have a deadline then. I like it though... Even though the doctor character needs a name and I'm not sure of the plot. It's kind of a zombie story... with mutated insects and fun things like that.

Anyway...

This was a simple update-y thing and I hope that I can stick to it because it actually sounds kind of fun. And, no, I don't know why that sounds fun, it just does.

I will check in later, guys. Hopefully with good news ^^

On the Labyrinth and Creativity

Looking for Alaska brought up the idea of the Labyrinth of Suffering for me. I find this to be rather interesting and it made me think about a lot of things. Mainly why I seem to like the stars so much.

Here, have some late-night thoughts on complicated subjects:

You struggle to find a way through the Labyrinth and then someone comes along and asks, "Why don't you use your wings?"

We are all born into the Labyrinth of Suffering. What we use as our map, our compass, our guidebook to help us make sense of the world, varies from person to person but most of us use something - religion, our own moral code, what-have-you.

The Labyrinth is not something we can ever completely remove ourselves from. Nor - do I think - should we. It is home to the most damaged and the most beautiful of souls.


Suffering breeds the strongest of people and I know this on many levels. My creativity might not have existed had I not felt the need to escape - from myself, from the world and from everything after. I've fought on the fringes of several disorders and problems and each time I stop to think 'Why?'

Normally, once it was largely over, I'd have some deeply superficial answer for it but sometimes I could dig deeper. I could walk back into the Labyrinth.

And, strangely enough, the air was cool and sweet. I remained not because I was suffering but because I could see the sky. The Labyrinth can never trap you completely because it has no roof. You can always see the stars, arranged into far-reaching and majestic constellations by whatever creative force you believe exists in the world - be it God or the universe itself.

A glint in the darkness. A light at the end of the tunnel. Creativity is one of the greatest gifts - one that enables us to transcend barriers, to live a thousand lives within the limited numbers of our own. Infinity in a heartbeat. And it is a gift which allows us to fly.

Maybe, then, the only way out of the Labyrinth is up.