It's productive goofing off

So I should be tossing papers out and getting rid of the stacks of junk in the kitchen. I am so not up to doing that. Nor am I up to actually balancing my checkbook and see how little of my money I have left.

So I'm playing around with a spread sheet I designed for keeping track of projects. I used to have a better memory for where I had exactly left a story, what needed to be done to it next, etc. Now I find I leave the folder out and I'm clueless to why it's out. Or get sidetracked and can't remember where in the editing process I was. Hence the spread sheet. Also it's a faily good measurement of how productive I have (or haven't) been. I feel a lot better about 2003 when I see the only think finished was the crossover. And that was 126,105 words long. It's all about perspective.

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Wasting Time That's Not Wasted

Yes, I'm still goofing off reading the ghost stories, but I found at least one that has caught my storytelling interests. In 1746 Dmitri Girshkov stopped by a friend's grave on the way to his wedding and disappeared. The Father Litinov sees the distraught young man trying to find his friends, family, bride. A strange light and a gray mist surrounded the young man and he vanished. 1933 was the date of the reported siting, collaberated by other sitings during the past two centuries. What has snatched the poor guy and is depositing him in the future according to his POV, and then snatching him back? Could it happen again?

So it goes into the folder. I'll find something to match it up with.

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Crossroads: An Author Self-Interrogation Chapter 1 Question 19

Quote of the Day: It is not lack of polling data or campaign contributions which keeps many women from ascending higher on the political ladder. It is fear and loating for the political system itself. -- Madeleine Kunn, a governor of Vermont

Crossroads: An Author Self-Interrogation Chapter 1

19). What do you long for?

Publication, publication, publication. Financial security. A clean porch. A clean house. The house.

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Delaying writing hour

I need to get my car fixed, standard tune-up stuff that I have put off for way too long. But because of the wrecks at Denham Springs, I'm probably going to have to leave work early to get to the garage I like. *Sigh* Which means writing while I wait on my car.

So right now, I'm going to read.

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Crossroads: An Author Self-Interrogation Chapter 1 Question 18

Quote of the Day: What the hell is wrong with the I-12 Amite River Bridge?! -- Me (after hearing about 3 18-wheeler wreck this morning that will still be cleaning tonight when it's time to go home)

Crossroads: An Author Self-Interrogation Chapter 1

18). What can make you unbearably sad?

Pain, injustice, death. Tragedy especially historical tragedy. I watched 9/11, thanking the higher powers that it was just through a TV screen.

I cry over bills, but those are tears of frustration.

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Goofing off

I should be working but I don't feel like it. Meaning that it super slow at the job and I should be writing or working on some alien evolutionary steps, but instead I'm reading Real Ghosts, Restless Spirits, and Haunted Places by Brad Steiger. *Shrug* It has to go back to the library, you know.

Oh yes, I did managed to get to the library last Friday. I went in with a list of 5 books and came out with 8. My supervisor saw me waiting for the trolley and brought me back to work. But over all the experience went well. So nice to prowl around a library that doesn't care if you're in it or not.

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Crossroads: An Author Self-Interrogation Chapter 1 Question 17

Quote of the Day: There's one sure way of telling when politicians aren't telling the truth--their lips move. -- Felicity Kendall

Crossroads: An Author Self-Interrogation Chapter 1

17). What scares you to death?

Snakes. I hate snakes. I understand why they are a neccessary part of the chain of life and vow to stay out of their way if they stay out of mine. Once I convinced my great-grandmother to attack a pile of leaves that I thought was a snake.

Chad warned me last night that he saw a snake underneath the Inn. To explain, Chad lives in one of the buildings on the RenFaire site; upstairs in an apartment, downstairs is the demo area and kitchen. I told him that he would know what happened if he heard a scream and I was on the second floor balcony. Or in the tree.

Like the stupid geese weren't bad enough.

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Crossroads: An Author Self-Interrogation Chapter 1 Question 16

Quote of the Day: Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think. -- Hannah Arendt

Crossroads: An Author Self-Interrogation Chapter 1

16). What can make you very, very, very angry?

Hypicroscy, lying, breaking an oath, never having enough money, everybody putting all the work on me, never having time off, nobody understanding what I mean, having to justify my every move (even though I offer it up voluntarily), feeling unappreciated.

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Good suggestions but...

... you don't have to live with my mother. *Sigh* Yes, I feel that I'm being taken advantage of, and having my chi all depressed ain't making that any better, but now that they've decided to start selling the shit, I can't do anything. If I do, I have to sell it and I hate doing that. Plus two other households are involved along with the weather.

I asked when they have the next one planned for. "We haven't planned that. Have to do more cleaning and get more stuff out." If I haul it to the needy now, it's going to be "Kindra cost us hundreds of dollars." And more junk will be on my porches.

What good will losing my temper do? It'll be "Kindra's acting crazy again. How can she be against us making money when Mom's unemployed, Dad's working in underpaid spurts, and Kai doesn't pay any of the bills and has to save up for her test so she can get a real job. (Yet she has money to go buy any DVD she wants, GRRRRR!)

Everybody get it yet? WHAT I WANT DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER!

Sure I'll try to be firm. I'll say you've got till June 17th to get rid of it. Then it will storm every fucking weekend. And then I'll be out of line for not letting them have one more sale.

If it was a week or a month of this verbal abuse, I'd take it. But Mom will bring it back up and dwell on it till the day she dies. So I can't win and I might as well keep all the shit and call into work and tell them I've been barricaded in, can they find me a remote office job I can do from home? They don't want me to have pretty clean porches you can sit on. If they did, the two weeks at the beginning wouldn't have turned into six months. They wouldn't have piled MORE shit on after I rented a storage unit and shoved everything around so the furniture wouldn't get ruined.

And now I have to spend the whole goddamned day feeling depressed about it because there isn't anything I can do to resolve the stupid situation that won't turn into a family bloodbath!

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Crossroads: An Author Self-Interrogation Chapter 1 Question 15

Quote of the Day: A woman is like a teabag--you can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water. -- Nancy Reagan

Crossroads: An Author Self-Interrogation Chapter 1

15). What are your complexes, inhibitions, and superstitions, past and present?

What exactly qualifies? I'm not stalling for time; I just think a lot of things have been lumped together that maybe don't go together.

Superstitions, for some putting food outside on Halloween is a superstition, for me it's a religious practice. I'll admit there is no good reason for tossing spilt salt over your shoulder, except for respecting traditions far older than me.

Inhibitions - an inner impediment to free activity, expression, or functioning: as a : a psychic activity imposing restraint upon another activity. Yes, I did go look that up. Just want to be on the same page. Apparantly I have a sexual one that I haven't discovered the root cause of yet. I opt for the path of least resistance with family turmoil. I hate being labeled the difficult one, the uncooperative one, the one causing all the problems, when I'm supposed to be the dependable one. That may fall under complexes. I freeze up everytime I have to write a cover letter, or any other letter praising me. It's wrong to brag because nothing you have is worth bragging about.

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Electricity and Throwing out

Time for another break. I've gotten through three rooms so far, well 4 if you count the hall between the front and back bedrooms.

The problem with the clutter isn't so much stuff I'm keeping long past due, it's having no place to keep the stuff I need to keep. Books that don't get reshelved right away end up becoming stacks. Material that will use just about all of it by the time Faire starts has to be stored until I can work on it. And just when I think I have one area organized, I have to shove everything else into it because company is coming over. (The back bedroom gets used for this a lot.) The closets in the back bedroom weren't really the problem I thought they were. The main thing is a lot of little things that need to go into the boxes in them. Like the Christmas decorations I got from co-workers need to go in the Christmas box, etc.

Kitchen and office are a different story. That mess is stuff I need to throw out, once I have it scanned into the computer. Never enough time to do that. And I really DON'T want to spend the next weekend which is a three-day chained to my computer. Even though I know it's more beneficial to me in the long run. Damn, damn, damn. I hear the beach calling my name. Unfortunately it will call everybody else too. Maybe a karma deal I'll work Saturday and Sunday if I have Monday off? The rest of the kitchen mess, okay I hate being domestic. I haven't cleaned the fridge out in probably over six months, the floor needs moping, pantry and cabinets organizing.

The living room I need to buy more shelving to put in the entertainment unit. But that's clutter that needs money to organize. *Sigh*

The electricty: I'm on levelized billing which means I have an accuring account balance that gets bigger in summer paid off in winter but the monthly bill remains near the same amount. Well, apparantly there's been a screw up with this month's bill and they want the whole account balance in June. Yes, I'm talking with them on Monday.

The porches: I can't sell anything because that's WHY the stuff is on my porches! They've had two so far, but want to clean out their houses some more and have another one. I can't fight with my mother not when my house has the best location, I want them to dejunck their house, and she can't do everything herself (and my father and sister are not going to help). Though I think I'd be less huffy about it if my chi wasn't entirely blocked off AND stuff hadn't been sitting on my porch since last June!

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Feng Shui

People don't believe in it environment affecting your life. I'm not one of them. It's not a magical cure for everything, but magic works symbolically. Everything is connected, interwoven in the great scheme of life.

Enough poetics. For a while now I've felt that aspects of my life are spiraling out of control. Finances especially, followed by my pro-writing. If it's not a time schedule issue, what is wrong? So after I took Chad home, I gave my house a hard look on paper with Feng Shui Step-by-Step to consult. It's the first Feng Shui book I got, and good for beginners without confusing everything.

Observations:
1). Both porches are blocked with everyone else's junk. I can't get in through the front door because of all the garage sale stuff from the rest of the family. That overflow hit the back porch, and I can barely get out through there. Chi cannot travel into the house and so what chi is in the house is growing stagnant. Stagnant anything is never good. Stagnant water, stagnant oders, stagnant chi, you get the idea.

2). Overall, my worse cluttered rooms are:
a). office in the north, which is ruled by water. Blocked or stagnant chi here (either caused or represented by clutter or badly positioned furniture) hinders smooth flow of professional and financial affairs. (I just got a $273 electric bill, I think finances are in trouble.) Health problems that I have noticed or worried about: sexual debility, tooth decay, nervousness, depression, and lethargy.
b). kitchen in the northwest, which is ruled by metal. Blocked or stagnant chi here causes interruptions to the rhythm of professional affairs. Health problems that I have noticed or worried about: skin problems, degenation of spinal vertebrea, emotional blockages, and melancholy.
c). back bedroom, which is ruled by earth. Blocked or stagnant chi here undermines growth of professional affairs. Health problems that I have noticed or worried about: obseity, insomnia, nervousness, anxiety, insecurity, craving for attention, and loneliness.

3). Using the eight point system you can pinpoint areas in your life that are troubled and take steps to influence them. When the eight points are applied to the whole house, Marriage, Reputation, Money, and Children are the points most cluttered. When the eight points are applied to each room separately, and I tallied how many times the same one was cluttered in different rooms, Career, Friends, Family, Money, Reputation, and Marriage are equally cluttered.

While I can't do anything about the porch situations until other people take action, (No, it's not worth the fight that will last until I die if I hauled it to Goodwill now for them.) I can take steps inside the house. I must take steps inside the house. It's impossible to concentrate when I get this overwhelming sense of having to fix everything in here at once.

I have cleaned my bedroom, but will have to admit that room had the least amount of problems. I need to do some decorating changes, but that has to wait for the money. :p Feel the vicious cycle yet?

Okay enough of a break. Time to get back to cleaning.

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Can I go to the library pleeeeeeaaaaasssseee, Mr. President?

That's right, George W. Bush is the speaker at LSU commencement this morning. Thank the Lord and Lady, I don't have to go! But I have to go to the State Library at lunch since they close at 4:30 and I can't go after work. Will the streets be open by noon? I have no idea.

And Chad is no fun to apologize to. I sent him a grumpy email Thursday morning, then later felt bad about it, and went to go see him after I got off work. "You were cranky, that's all. It didn't bother me." I told him he was no fun to apologize to.

And Wednesday night was spent at Jamie's house visiting with her and Kenn. We didn't end up leaving until 10:30pm. He got dropped off at his apartment, and I went home. :p

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Crossroads: An Author Self-Interrogation Chapter 1 Question 14

Quote of the Day: War is menstrual envy! -- Feminist anti-war slogan

Crossroads: An Author Self-Interrogation Chapter 1

14). What have been your frustrations and disappointments?

Way too many to dwell on. The latest one seems to be lack of time, lack of publishing, and trying to improve my area of Faire that no one from the owners down gives a damn about but the ones that have to work in it (me and my crew). It hit me Tuesday when I was having a spiraling frustration build-up from lack of sleep, that the stupid baron-lord-guy-thingy that hosts the very first joust in A Knight's Tale has a better looking dias than we do!

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Can't win

So gee what should I give up to get more sleep, have more writing time, better concentration at work? Move to Baton Rouge, the city with rent I can't afford to be closer to the bill paying job but away from the house I want to buy and keep in the family. And further away from family which needs me apparantly.

Bill-paying job? Yeah, I can barely eat with what income I have now. No income at all is the much better choice.

Online time? That has already gotten slashed dramatically and still no difference.

Writing? Let me go sharpen that battle-axe over there.

RenFaire? I'm doing as little as I can now, but I have to last the year.

Boyfriend? Oh yeah, that'll make everyone real happy. Mom will be happy cause I'll be sitting at home alone where she can watch me and then she can complain about me having no life again. My friends will be happy cause I'll be online to talk to them. I'll have plenty of time to write while I'm moping around.

I've been alone without a relationship of any significance for my ENTIRE life. I finally get one, and the council is from all sides is "gee you have to ditch something, your life is just too full. Dump the guy, you don't need him."

I'm a little miffed over having gotten no sleep, again. And that was as much my fault as Chad's. But that's an issue we have to work out.

As far as my math, something was wrong with the calculator. 12 + 4 = 16 That's exactly 8 hours left for sleeping, but that isn't enough since I have to get up at 5am (7 hrs.), don't fall asleep until 30 min. to an hour after I turn off lights (6 hrs.). So 5 days of 6 hours at the most is not enough. And the weekend catchup never works, just throws everything off and I'm in worse shape.

So I was right, it's not sleep deprivation psychosis. It's just operating without enough sleep period. Like the rest of the country.

Course I'm doubly miserable now because I can't breathe as well as wanting to crawl back into bed. Don't get me wrong. I love my friends, I love to visit. I just can't do it in the middle of the week.

Time for caffine.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: THE ABOVE RANT IS ONLY APPLICABLE FOR THE TIME IT WAS WRITTEN IN. THE AUTHOR DOES REALIZE NO ONE SERIOUSLY EXPECTS HER TO DO SUCH THINGS, AND IF THEY DID SHE WOULD BOP THEM IN THE HEAD. (Damn, no lime green color for text. That's not fair.)

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Crossroads: An Author Self-Interrogation Chapter 1 Question 13

Quote of the Day: One of the things politics has taught me is that men are not a reasoned or reasonable sex. -- Margaret Thatcher

Crossroads: An Author Self-Interrogation Chapter 1

13). What have been your personal triumphs, past and present?

Getting an op-ed peice published by an independent editor. Wining a trip to Washington D.C. when I was a junior in high school with my writing. Winning second place in creative writing at the Louisiana Beta Convention 1995, and representing the state at the National Convention that summer. Showing my mother a check for the university's literary magazine that my story had won first place.

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WOOT!

Why do I bother signing out of this thing? Anyway, I have plastered it everywhere else, and I don't care if it's a freebie site or not they published something of MINE!!!!!!!!!!

Pause for the dance of joy

Okay I'm better. You can read my article What Does Age Have To Do With It?. Please do read it. I'm obscenely proud of myself. I might try something frothy next.

Have to go. Got a block of paper to throw at my boyfriend.

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Emotional crisis & Exhaustion

Yeap, it's back. Me blathering to the whole damn world, about the things rolling around inside my head.

Though I think I've stumbled on a trend with the emotional crisisi/crisises? Aw heck, what is the plural form of crisis?

The funks hit harder with the less sleep I've had.

Okay, hardly ground shattering, and I'm sure they've already done scientific research into it. I know it's not sleep deprivation psychosis (I love knowing the technical terms for things :D), like I had last summer. More like the sleep bank in my brain is making more withdrawals than deposits and running low on funds.

Example: yesterday I felt awful. I didn't want to be at work and everytime I thought about everything I had to do for Faire, I got more depressed, frustrated, and angry. And I wasn't even discussing it with anyone, just thinking and researching. I decided around lunch time to crawl into bed as soon as I got home, and if I still felt like crap go to the doctor today.

I was nearly asleep before 8pm, before somebody knocked on the back door and left my mail on the doorstep. Why can't they use the phone like NORMAL people? If all the fricking lights are off, I don't want to be bothered. I cooked some grits, ate and went back to bed. Mustard decided he needed more food and I need to feed him before 4am. That cat is going to find himself flung against the wall one of these mornings.

So I didn't get up exactly on time because of fighting with my cat. But I feel better. I feel a lot more confident about the plan of action I decided on yesterday for Faire, and just generally more upbeat. So it must be the sleep.

So I started on some calculations. Well I started them to have a really good argument as to what the hell is wrong with those three adults that they can't get laundry done in the 12 hours Monday - Friday that I am gone.
I leave for work 6:30 am.
I get home from work at 6:30 - 7pm depending on different facts.
That's 12 hours. I usually don't crawl into bed until 10 - 10:30pm. That's nearly 4 more hours. 12 + 4 = 20 Out of a 24-hour day, that leaves 4 hours for sleeping. Well really 3, since the alarm is set for 5am.

Maybe it is sleep deprivation psychosis.

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Crossroads: An Author Self-Interrogation Chapter 1 Question 12

Quote of the Day: In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man; if you want anything done, ask a woman. -- Margaret Thatcher

Crossroads: An Author Self-Interrogation Chapter 1

12). What have been your most powerful sexual or romantic experiences?

Don't worry, I'll keep it clean. Actually because anything dirty is none of your damn business.

Faire had just ended, was it one week or two? Amazing what details are clear and what falls away as unimportant. It was before Angel left for Arizona, and I was at the Inn to watch a movie, and trying to make out without hurting Angel's feelings. He had just had a very public and painful breakup with another cast member. It was time for me to go home and Chad walked me out to my car. We ended up walking around the lake, to the joust field, back to my car, avoiding the other groups of rovers, and talking. And we finally talked about us. And more kissing.

Have you heard a really good kiss described as "curling your toes"? Those were the kisses on that moonlit, December night.

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Crossroads: An Author Self-Interrogation Chapter 1 Question 11

Quote of the Day: I'm not giving up my writing hour come hell or high water. What do you mean "it's high water"? -- Me

Personal note: I won't be online tonight. I'm going to crawl into bed as soon as I get home in hopes that more sleep will improve my mood.

Crossroads: An Author Self-Interrogation Chapter 1

11). What have been your most powerful (intense, significant, formative) non-sexual experiences (during childhood, adolecence, maturity)?

I'm mature? Okay, so that is debatable.

Significant experience that comes to mind happened when I was in the ninth grade, a freshman in high school. No longer a stranger, since the middle school had to be closed at the end of my sixth grade year and seventh and eighth grades were spent on the high school campus. Travel back in time to 1992. (What's going to be scary is when that actually becomes a period to go back to in the movies.) I had been writing continuously (well, it came in spurts but the spurts were more frequent) since 1988. The English teacher took one of my short stories to read to the class. I was trying to create a modern Gothic, a girl haunted and killed by her incestual deceased older brother (possibly step-brother, those details are fuzzy).

Nobody got it. A story I thought was so clear needed Superman's X-ray vision for anyone else to understand it. Even worse, none of my classmates thought my writing was something special, something unique. "So-and-so has stories too. She should get the teacher to read them too." That was devestating. I think it was part of the reason I first turned to fanfics; my friends who liked the original universe would be the only ones who saw them. But even their praise of "wow, this is good" grew stale.

I fluctuated between fanfics and originals all through high school, not even knowing what a fanfic was. The Internet wasn't available until after I got to college. I remember a friend giving back a story with "that was good. I really liked the characters." I hadn't had to pull the second sentence from him with pliers and was overjoyed.

I wish I would have had Orson Scott Card's checklist back then to hand people who wanted to read my stories.

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