Playing catch up

So we meet again. Along with the dreaded blank screen.

I cannot count the number of blog posts I mentally composed in the last few days. And forgot.

August arrived hard and fast, an unyielding month of heat, humidity and family events. The first third of the month a blur of my mom's birthday and visiting niblings. So much drama. So much martyrdom - and that was just my mom talking to my siblings on her birthday!

I've accomplished absolutely nothing short of paying the first wave of this month's bills, entertaining children & teaching them to play Pokemon Go, and trying to help Mom navigate her birthday excitement and then the post birthday let-down as the world goes back to not revolving around her. Even if it kind of always does. (This is me dealing with my post-Mom's-birthday resentment at wanting more than we could possibly deliver.)

So I let go of the annoyance of blog posts (really nifty & inspired) long forgotten. Or I try to, anyway. I take a little solace in the fact that I did finish reading 1 book in two or three days - the latest Harry Potter script. While not necessarily winning the hearts of many diehard Potter fanatics, I felt like it was a fairly honest followup to what happens to a a character's life and family in the aftermath of such an amazing and scarred childhood. I know a lot of people haven't cared for it, and it wasn't something I'd likely re-read BUT I got it. I could see how all parties got to where they did.

In the spirit of cleaning out my brain of stray thoughts, despite my earlier post about not joining in with Camp NaNo this July, I ended up registering for it anyway. I wanted to give it a fair shake by joining a cabin of other writers who I didn't know in real life to see if there was anything I had missed out on my first time out with it last year.

There was not.

At least not with my group of last minute Nano'ers. It's a cute idea, but with no clear leader or unified goal, it just doesn't drive me in the same way November's writing event does. And that's okay. If it works for other people then that's great. Freeform is what I do regularly anyway, so I respond better to the writing kick in the pants that involves peer pressure.

March Madness

It occurred to me today that in just two more week's we'll be a quarter of the way through this year. Time flies when you live paycheck to paycheck, am I right? In all seriousness though, I've decided that what makes time seem to speed by so quickly as an adult is swinging from one moment/set of bills/responsibility/drama-filled meltdown/appointment/etc to the next. When I was a kid, the things I waited for felt like months or years away and time crawled across a partially inflated air mattress to get there. Christmas was always f-o-r-e-v-e-r away. Now that I'm the one in charge of holidays, they appear with no apparent warning, as though not clearly marked & advertised well in advance. 

Point being, the pace certainly has not slowed down as we skid past the Ides of March. 

My sniffly-ness has been (fingers crossed) cast aside. Although that thought reminds me that I forgot to pick up a refill on my now-empty new allergy medicine. Let's hope I remember to pick that up tomorrow. My back and I have reached an uneasy truce. I still walk funny & it hurts like a bitch, but I'm able to get around more or less and even stand up straight a little each day. I'm sure I'll push it a little too far too soon, but I'll complain about that when the time comes. 

Feeling the year racing away with me should make me feel like I'm running out of time to accomplish what I wanted to this year. And if I'm being honest, there are moments when I wonder where in the hell my life has run off to. But, however, not withstanding, so on and forthwith... Er... BUT, I feel like I'm starting to gain a bit of traction. I'm declaring the beginning of this year to be framed by the act of learning to accept what you can't change, adjust and do what you can. Decent advice in general obviously, but I'm stubborn and grumpy when it feels like life is going off the rails. It doesn't matter if I had a plan, if this is a seat-of-my-pants kind of time then go with it. 

So while life happens, writing is getting back on track. Had a minor setback when my hard drive bit it, but that set back was quickly overcome, my computer now in better shape than ever (knock on blessed, virgin wood). A few extra writing nights out to save my sanity over the last week or so helped as well. I will find a workable, productive rhythm. I will start producing enough material in order to get feedback to ultimately produce more material to publish. Deadlines here I come. You know, hopefully.

I've got to say, finally working on renewing my acquaintance with a foreign language I enjoyed learning 20 *coughchokesnort* years ago has been awesome. I am a quarter of the way through the program after 17 days of moderate use. It makes me feel good and I'm anxious to start a list of other languages offered. This is 100% just for me. It serves no definable purpose other than fulfilling a personal aspiration. And I love it. 

March is traditionally a difficult month for my mom, which in turn is a difficult time for us. She hasn't escaped the busyness of the year, be it a slew of her own doctor visits or just being discombobulated from the constant changing of schedules and coming and going of grandchildren lately. The extra chaos bothers her, but it's almost been too busy for her to have the usual DEFCON 2 level of problems. Not enough to need to be committed, but enough that day to day you know something's going to happen. Today was moderate passive aggressive martyrdom regarding my dad because he wasn't paying attention to her while he was reading. She didn't cry or become hysterical, though I think we were nearly there, but then again she had two pieces of pie today so that may have been what saved us. I'm completely serious.

I've got fun plans later on in the week, I'm productive, I may have binge-watched the Full House reboot while re-installing software on my computer & I'm almost finished with one of the two books I'm reading. Now to figure out how to humanely persuade the mockingbird outside my window to find a new home - somewhere I can't hear it's chattering from sundown to sunup. 

Doggie Update: Good days and enh days. He had been eating less and less, down to a few bites at most. And then the other day, after eating three bites of dinner and walking away, he started barking at my dad later in the evening. He ate part of a can of wet dog food and has been cleaning his bowl ever since. Today he got up and greeted me when I got home from the pharmacy. The cancer is still there. The end is still coming. But he continues to do it his way. Today goes down as a good day for him. I'm sure he would consider it a better day if he'd gotten a bacon cheeseburger. He's funny that way.

Writing: Writing several days a week for the last two weeks. Working my way back to where I want to be.

Reading: Averaging about a chapter a day, more depending on doctor appointment wait times. Ready to move on to new books I just so happen to have already picked out. Shocker.

Language: Getting.it.done. 

Coffee: Synapses say thumbs up. Not too much but still room for more. 

Positivity: Still on board. Life is beautiful. Life is difficult. Still believe it's worthwhile to practice & share positivity. Basically, yeah, still trying to be positive and happy. 

I'm struggling this week. Productivity is plummeting while demands are jockeying for attention. And that's okay. Really. Ebb and flow, give and take. And I freely admit to being a bit frazzled, a lot spacey and overwhelmingly exhausted. So basically your garden variety pre-holiday stress, hold the gravy. This is the last week of NaNoWriMo, and it's not even a blip on my radar. 

So as I drift along the word count abyss, I've been feeling the need to come up with a new blog post. To keep me writing. To give me something different to write about. To keep up with my blog. To keep me from chugging a bottle of tequila while I prep for Thanksgiving. I've had several ideas come to mind with fantastically witty observations or funny anecdotes. Of course, none of these stuck around long enough for me to write them down. At a loss and losing my grip on conscious thought, I latched onto something that came up (again) in conversation tonight.

I am, based on extensive experience, apparently a difficult person to read. 

And, people who try to read anything into my actions are generally (ahem) wrong. I find this fascinating, because I like to think of myself as fairly straight forward and pretty good at reading other people. But people apply their own 'baggage' to their communications and interactions. So if I say, "Okay, let's do that." I don't mean "I'd rather set my face on fire." I am capable of politely bowing out of something I'd rather not do instead of following along like a lemming. 

Point of fact, if I do turn something down it doesn't mean I never want to see that person again. (Because then I'd make mention of that pesky face on fire appointment on my schedule.) It does mean I'm either legitimately busy, I have so little interest in the activity that it's actually sucking the life from me just to think about it, or that I'm so tired or sick that I can barely pick my foot up off the floor. It's not a reflection on how I feel about the asker as a person - unless you're a douchebag wanker, but for the sake of argument let's assume that's not the case. 

Also, one 10 second introduction does not make you an expert in what makes me tick. Someone I am related to by marriage tried to cozy up to me very quickly and prove to me that we could be buddies, which depending on the length a person goes to can be a red flag. Every funny little 'in' joke this person tried to create involved what an obnoxiously opinionated, aggressively angry, catty bitch I was - said the person who made snide comments about the kind of clothes I wore, make-up, etc. See? Baggage. Also, pre-existing crazy, so the red flag was totally warranted. It's funny what people tell you about yourself who don't give you a word edgewise into a single conversation you have with them. 

And just so we're all on the same page (Warning, book may vary.), I have my own baggage I bring to the conversational landscape. I struggle to feel understood, to feel heard. I repeat myself. A lot. If you look away repeatedly, I'm going to assume you're not interested. If you want me to keep talking, I don't recommend a blank stare. "Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, oh, uh huh" does not a conversation make. So if your baggage tells you that me repeating something means something, and my baggage makes me repeat unimportant details I think I might have not been clear about or want to make sure you know that I'm not worried about, we're not going to get very far.

What do you really know about anyone and do the opinions you hold about them reflect more about you than the other person? I'm sure it's variable based on your own insecurities, personal experience and more, as in how much of someone else can you take in once you've filtered them through your own bias. 

I'm pretty sure this didn't amount to what I thought it might when I started thinking about it earlier. But, I wrote. I took a break from the holiday chaos. And for me personally, I took the chance to explore for just a few minutes my need to be understood. And how amazing it is to me that I am so often misunderstood anyway. 

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving!