alexandraerin

And I look at it, and I laugh bitterly.

I have plenty of shame. Shame and I are old friends. Could anybody really read the story of Mackenzie's life and not understand that?

Of course, when I started writing that story I thought I was looking back on a period in my life where I let myself be defined by shame. I'm now coming to realize that--much like the proverbial Mulder and Scully in the hallucination-inducing carnivorous fungal organism--I only dreamed that I escaped from that state. I have plenty of shame and I do let myself be bound by it, all the damn time. It keeps me from doing what I want to for myself. It keeps me from doing what I need to. It keeps me from doing the wonderful things I could be doing, the things I go to bed dreaming of doing and wake up ready to do... until there's a tug on the chains.

The problem, dear Anonymous Internet Person, is not that I have a surfeit of shame or that I'm immune to its sting. I have enough, more than enough... plenty enough shame to know that shame doesn't get things done. Shame doesn't solve personal problems. Shame doesn't write stories. Shame doesn't entertain the masses.

Yesterday, popelizbet told me that today is day one of putting myself first. The person who asked me the question in the subject heading is probably going to laugh at this and suppose I've never done anything but that and point to the months and months of one-a-week-updates-if-we're-lucky as evidence of this.

Writing is me putting me first. If I don't have the time and energy and spoons and space... mental and physical, metaphorical and literal space... in which to write, that's warning sign number one that I'm not putting myself first because there's nothing that would be a higher priority for me if I were left to my own devices.

And since writing is not just my life but my livelihood, that state of affairs is absolutely un-fucking-sustainable. So why have I sustained it for so long?

In a word, shame. I've allowed shame to become a more powerful motivator for me than my work ethic and even my desire to write for myself. In the past whenever I've realized that I'm not living up to my work ethic or that I'm not delivering to my (paying) audience, the response has been more shame. It hasn't even registered to me how much I'm failing myself and how my life suffers for it.

Shame is the mind-killer.
Shame is the little death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my shame.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the shame has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

So, to return to the question: have I no shame? Not today, I'm afraid... today I am fresh out. Today is the day I feel no shame. Today is the day I put my needs front and center. Today is the day I return to defying gravity.

Edit To Add:

This post got me a "poor dear" and an e-hug from my boyfriend, which was nice, but I'd like to clarify: I'm feeling good, and I'm actually and non-ironically grateful to the person who said that to me, because it's what made me realize that my shame is what's holding me down.

It's a quarter till four in the morning, and I am awake mostly because I've been asleep for most of the past three, four days. I don't know how long I'll be awake for... I've kind of been in a cycle of sleeping for anywhere from two to ten hours, then being awake for three or four hours. I had illness creeping in on me in the aftermath of a period of physical exhaustion, and that just takes it right out of me.

One side effect of this is that I've had a lot of dreams lately.

Two Shall Stand, Two Shall Fall

In my most recent sleep I first had a dream about a fantasy-type world that was divided between two lands, one ruled by an immense being of pure chaos (very strongly influenced by the "Elemental Chaos" of D&D 4E: ice on fire and rock flowing like water and so on) and one by a being of order who I'm pretty sure was voiced by Peter Cullen. Each of them had a giant Masters of The Universe Action Playset style citadel that were so huge they were visible from each other, even though they were on the opposite ends of this apparently flat world, and they were naturally locked in battle with each other. The being of chaos took a direct interest in trying to invade and subjugate the lands of order, while the being of order took a more defensive/reactive approach, with some of his subjects making their own forays against chaos of their own volition. Order Guy ended up confronting Chaos Guy during the latter's big push, during which Order Guy accepted a fatal wound and Chaos Guy discovered why he'd always stayed out of the fray... the two of them were both necessary to the natural order of things, and when one of them was weakened unto the point of death the other one started to fade. So he undid the wound and retreated and started thinking about how to negate Order Guy's freedom to act rather than killing him.

By Mantisback To Memphis

I didn't seem to have a direct presence in that dream, but after that the dreamscape segued into me and Jack taking a journey through Vaguely 1800s Americana Land to Tennessee to visit popelizbet. It was a very "off to to see the wizard" type thing... like, she really was pontifex maximus and we needed her help annulling some unfavorable marriage I'd been forced into. I was a lady gunslinger and Jack was some kind of preacher of whatever vaguely American Protestant Magic Religion it was that Lizbet was pope over. We were being trailed by bounty hunters sent by my husband. Jack was riding on some kind of fast-moving llama and I was riding a reanimated giant mantis skeleton (yes, yes, I know... it was a dream). We kept running into people we know in real life from statements, though the internet did not figure into this dream and we didn't know any of them yet.

We spent most of the dream traversing Kentucky, which was good, because reanimated giant mantis skeletons apparently love KFC.

There were many other random dreams that I remember in less detail, having been obliterated by multiple periods of sleep and wakefulness.

Extending The "Freshman" Metaphor

I was a newly appointed Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, which met in a disused classroom in my old high school. As the newest member, I had to use a freshman locker, which was way the fuck away from anything... the courtroom in particular... and I only had two minutes between bells to get to it and get changed into my robe and then get back to the courtroom or else I'd need to get a signed hall pass to be admitted.

The Far East

In real life, Omaha is on the eastern border of Nebraska. It butts right up against the Missouri River, which forms a natural barrier between us and our good twin, Iowa. In this dream, there was a vast territory of "Eastrn Nebraska" which sprawled on the other side of the river right up through where Ohio should be, and because of this my high school Quiz Bowl team had to take airplanes to get to a lot of our matches. Yeah, that one's not so interesting. I'm not sure why it stuck with me except for the flying details, since I flew a lot more than usual in the last month.

There are more dreams that I don't remember more than a one-word description of at this point: superheroes, superheroes, zombies, dinosaurs... and of course, loads of fetishy sex dreams that I will never, ever commit to a public Livejournal. I'd be far too embarrassed to put up any kind of window into my private desires like that for public consumption.

First, there's some musical magic, brought to my attention by popelizbet who is kicking ass and taking names at law school*. (*The preceding statement should not be taken as an admission of violence on the part of popelizbet)

Check it out:



My computer did not arrive yesterday. The tracking info still hasn't updated from the first time it was generated. This generally means it hasn't actually shipped yet... they've just stuck it in a box and generated the FedEx label for it. Probably there's a backlog, given the time of year... this sort of thing is among the reasons why companies cite things like "7-10 business days" when they're shipping using methods that only take three or four of them. No biggie. I'll send them an inquiry if it hasn't moved Monday.

The other thing about valerian versus melatonin is that it seems to result in more interesting dreams, or fewer details being lost in the fog between states of consciousness. I came up with an awesome idea for an item set in 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons out of my last dream. I won't go into the details here because it's conceivable that I'll get my online games running again once I have a working desktop. I might elaborate on the mechanics behind them in my gaming blog without detailing the specific items, though. I've got a bunch of half-finished posts sitting in the drafts folder over there... things I started and then lost my train of thought on. I'll have to look through and see which ones can be salvaged.

Mmmm... I had more things I wanted to mention in this post, but I've already forgotten them. I think I need to blog more often, as ideas come to me, instead of putting it off when the ideas come to me.

It's kind of weird being kind of famous. That's my thought for the day. Folks I've never met stop my e-boyfriend on the street and ask him how I am. Those who've read my more intimate works could probably guess more about my sexual predilections than many of the people I've actually had sex with. Odd realizations.

I've set a productivity goal for myself this week. I'm not going to share it until I know if I made it or not. I've discovered that I need goals to keep my motivation up when spoons are in short supply, but announcing them is tantamount to self-sabotage.

My "new" desktop computer is indeed dead on arrival. I have a return authorization from Geeks.com that I'm going to be taking care of on Wednesday, when my roommate is off work, and then... well, advertised turnaround is either 5-7 business days or 7-10 business days. Frustrating. I'll reserve judgment on the company until the whole thing's finished, though. Given the timeframe, I think I'm going to go ahead and get Fantasy In Miniature set the rest of the way up using my roommate's computer for the laying of out.

My other replacement electronic, the Palm Pre, is awesome. I had some doubts about the lack of immediately available office software, but the memo function is sufficient for writing. I wasn't sure it would be, since it's dressed up to look like Post-It notes, but it can handle story-length documents just fine. The Google Calendar integration is outstanding... totally transparent two-way sync, which is nice, because I'm far more comfortable tapping my reminders into a phone than I am going onto Google Calendar. And with the reminder stored in both places, even if I forget to charge my phone (or misplace it), I still got my reminders in my email (including the one to charge the phone). It's very, very helpful.

I'm very, very excited about things that are coming down the pipeline for Dungeons and Dragons. Yes, yes, I know I made a separate blog so you all wouldn't have to put up with this, but it's a bit depressing to deal with since I lost the ability to host my games, so you're going to get my squee here for right now. Suffice it to say that not only do I think 4E was a more fun and better designed product than 3.0 at launch, but I predict that when Player's Handbook 3 comes out next year, the game is... well, it's going to go from squared to cubed. This is just based on stuff that has been teased/tested through Dragon: the hybrid rules, the skill power rules. In terms of flexibility, in terms of the range of potential character possibilities, in terms of being able to play a character concept rather than a character class... and with the computerized Character Generator obviating the need to buy every book that comes out and memorize every detail of them in order to bring your characters to life. Even with just the playtest version of the hybrid rules with material for the fully released classes at the time, you can create some truly innovative characters. I'm really looking forward to being able to mix and match from the full suite of classes.

Fundraiser's been going well. I think it's +$60 from the last time I a tweeted a new total. It's been more of a steady stream than a huge overnight burst, which is exactly what I've been looking for. Lots of it's in the form of new sponsorships, which is also what I was hoping for. I'm going to need to bite the bullet and get the new names added to the list, even though it means I'm going to have to start a new spreadsheet for it. That will probably happen Wednesday, though it might be on the weekend. Thanks to everyone who's participated.

I'm pretty sure the third story's goal has been met. I'm starting to get sleepy so I'm not entirely sure. I'll edit this tomorrow if I'm wrong, but I'm almost positive it has been. It will be another fun one to write.

karnythia's auction is accepting bids through the 31st. The bid was at $30, last time I looked. You can help a friend of popelizbet keep doing awesome things for people and get your name in an Adele story.

Good news: I am now halfway through Day 4 of feeling awesome physically and mentally. It wasn't until Thursday that I really ironed out the best schedule for my supplements, but for three days in a row after that I felt pretty good from the start of the day until the end of it. A lot of minor physical complaints that I didn't really notice until their absence (poor circulation in my legs being a standout one) have been clearing up.

Bad news: While my mental clarity and focus are both great, I'm badly "out of shape" when it comes to the act of writing. I'm writing well, but the faucet effect I'm used to (open it up and the words just flow) isn't there yet. It's more dribs and drabs. The TOMU chapter I've been working on is approaching 3,000 words and an actual ending and will certainly be up this afternoon... after that, I think I need to do some microfiction or other drills like I used to do. The secret to writing is writing, and the best way to keep writing is to keep writing.

Worse news: My desktop computer died on me. Thing just won't turn on... it may be the power supply, but possibly the motherboard. The fan turns on about about half the time but the hard disk isn't spinning. Don't worry, the impact of this should be minimal. I've learned from previous computer failures. I bought a decently sized USB flash drive about a month ago and moved pivotal files off of it. I will need to replace it by and by so I have a backup and because some tasks are just better done on it, but my netbook is what I do all my writing from. My long-term purchase plans also include buying an external hard drive. These things will be important, but they are not immediately crucial.

A small health note to myself: I need to stop minimizing my peanut allergy. I had the first reaction that came from just being near peanut butter without actually physically contacting it the other day. If I'm serious about my health, I can't mess around with that stuff.

There's no denying that the weather has turned here. It's supposed to be in the low thirties tonight. It's about sixty degrees out now. This morning, I was just telling someone very dear to me who hails from a slightly warmer climate that I was glad I wouldn't have to run the AC at all today. He said it sounded too cold for him and I laughed... now I'm wrapped up in blankets and using my lappy's charger to keep warm.

And finally, more music that makes me feel good. This is a recent discovery, courtesy of my technical, spiritual, and menu adviser, popelizbet: