alexandraerin | Entries tagged with seven deadly sins

Yeah, so, even with the softening of "lust" to "love" in the meme format, this one gets into territory that not everyone's going to be comfortable with... and that includes me, given that I know that my immediate family is reading this blog.

I could friend-lock and filter this post, but I've done the rest of the meme out in the open and so I'd rather not have it go through days 1 and 6 and then have it just sort of hang there without any resolution (any more than I've already done by leaving number 7 off for a week). So I'm posting this in public, under an LJ cut, with the following caveats attached:

If you don't want to know anything about the love life of your Livejournal friend/weblit author/family member/whatever I am to you, don't click to read on and then complain about what you find here. I'm mostly staying away from the TMI stuff anyway, but the point is, if you click to read this then there is no such thing as TMI.

Also, if you are related to me and you choose to read this anyway, please let me go on thinking that you didn't.

( Read more... )

"Guilty pleasures"? The concept is somewhat foreign to me. Guilt, I get. Pleasure, I get. I don't know how the two are supposed to mix. I've never been the sort of person who requires permission, a complicit accomplice, or an official pardon to order dessert if that's what I want to do. It's not that I'm immune to guilt... I'm really, truly not. It's just... it takes more than "this tastes good" or "I enjoy this" for me to feel guilty.

There are perhaps some pleasures that do cause me to wrestle with guilt, but they fit better under the theme of tomorrow's sin so I believe I'll hold off on them for now. So, this will be seven things that make me feel indulgent. Or that I feel like indulging in.

1. Baths.

Hot baths. Bubble baths. Fizzy baths. Whirlpool baths. Baths by candlelight or its soft electric equivalent, with relaxing music and/or audiobooks playing. The more bells and/or whistles that can be added, the better. In my Fortress of Unbridled Greed, there would be bathing chambers with giant sunken tubs surrounded by trickling waterfalls, a garden of plants with jade leaves and fruits of polished semi-precious stones and hidden steam vents to envelop the whole thing in a warm mist.

In keeping with the most commonly used definition of gluttony, I'll mention that my favorite scents for bath items are food. I started off with vanilla: warm vanilla sugar, honey vanilla, and so on, with the occasional strawberry or raspberry bubble bath, or milk and honey. After someone (Addie? I'm afraid I'm not sure) introduced me to Moon's Harvest, I discovered things like chocolate covered-strawberry scented bath bombs, and cilantro lime... I really like the cilantro lime and other similar ones, because they're things I wouldn't have thought of as bathing fragrances, and they really tie the experience back to food for me. It makes bathing into a very primal and sensual sort of indulgence for me.

2. "Wing Night" at Pizza Hut/Wing Street

Ever since I learned that Pizza Hut's online ordering had come to Omaha and that they offer 50 cent wings on Wednesday, this has been the one indulgence I allow myself every week no matter how little money I have. It's important to be able to treat yourself. It's important to allow yourself to enjoy things.

If you don't have a Wing Street location near you, the exact nature of this indulgence might be lost on you. I'm given to understand that Just Plain Pizza Huts only have buffalo wings, if that. I'm able to choose from such delicacies as garlic parmesan wings and lemon pepper wings (both of which make excellent salad toppers in their boneless forms), honey barbecue (a personal favorite), spicy Asian, and more.

Note that I say that I allow myself it... having given myself permission to order wings once a week, I often turn around and deposit the money I would have spent on it from my PayPal account into my bank account. Knowing that I can do it and don't makes the act of setting money aside feel like an indulgence.

3. Fast food in general.

I like to eat out, and I like going to a sit-down restaurant and ordering something fancy or something meaty like a nice, big steak, but it doesn't feel as wickedly indulgent as fast food. Don't get me wrong... I have no "Oh, God, this is so bad for me..." style qualms about eating at Burger King or Taco Bell. I really don't. You see, I understand that I am me, and this means that if I am having a good experience there is no way to understand what is happening except to say that what is happening is good for me. It doesn't matter if the food I'm eating doesn't enrich my body except in the simplest and most direct sense of providing the nutrients and energy I need to last until the next meal that I eat. If I enjoy it, it is good, and who could it be good for if not for me?

But fast food feels indulgent to me because it's the sort of thing that was a treat for me, growing up. We didn't have a McDonald's in my town. There was a Pizza Hut and a Kentucky Fried Chicken over in the county seat, and eventually a pizza place did open up in town. Nowadays there's even a Subway there. When I was growing up? When my older brother got his driver's license, I used to pay him to bring me back a Frisco Burger from Hardee's when he went up to Omaha. It seemed impossibly far away, and the idea of buying such exotic delights with my own money was a real novelty. Now, of course, I live in Omaha, but the novelty's never quite worn off.

4. Chocolate-flavored alcohol, and the other way around.

Yum. Three Olives brand chocolate vodka, chocolate cream liquer, ChocoVine (especially raspberry), chocolate mudslides, chocolate martinis...

5. Video games as stress relief.

This one comes down to certain specific things in certain specific video games. Driving around in Burnout Paradise. Beating on groups of criminals in Arkham Asylum. Walking up to people and shooting them in the face in Borderlands (especially with a a revolver or shotgun, bonus points if it's explosive... the zombie island expansion was especially therapeutic for me). Loading up a classic 8 bit-era character in Smash Bros. and beating up some pokeymans, especially when I'm feeling frustrated with members of a younger generation. Full auto with dual pistols in DC Universe, especially in the middle of a crowd of slightly lower level mobs. Almost any Mario Kart track that I've played through a few times also can fall into this category... the more dynamic ones never quite reach the level of mindlessness needed to be stress-releasing.

6. Watching clips of my favorite movie scenes on YouTube.

Like this one, from Young Frankenstein. Or the scene that inspired it. Or this scene from Love Actually, which my parents and I sometimes have cause to recite snatches of while waiting for service in a store or restaurant. Or a classic Donald Duck cartoon. Or Steve Martin's bit in The Muppet Movie. Or this soliloquy from Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet. I can watch any of these, or several others, over and over again.

7. Magic gun porn.

In real life, I'm not a big believer in violence as a problem solver. I won't go so far as to say it's never called for or never accomplishes anything, but in general, I think people are too quick to resolve it and it causes more problems than it solves. Gun violence in particular is too irrevocable and too capricious for my liking.

But then there's a comic book like Garth Ennis's Punisher, where a big brutal man who's as much a force of nature personified can take a bunch of guns, fire a bunch of bullets, and never kill anyone who doesn't really deserve it. Magic gun porn is a work of fantasy that presents a world where violence solves everything, and it does so quickly, efficiently, and satisfyingly. This is why I read >The Punisher. It's why I read The Repairman Jack series by F. Paul Wilson. Take away the guns and you basically have the same fantasy underlying Batman: that someone could do this, someone could take the streets and dish out violence and justice and solutions and not get killed or kill innocents.

It's not something I believe in. It's not even something that I wish could be true. I wouldn't want to live in a world where the solutions were so absolute and irrevocable. It's a fantasy, not a wish. It's an indulgence.

The lens I'm viewing this one through is kind of odd. I could have easily filled this with things that I would want if I had truly unlimited wealth, and this would include things like a giant saltwater swimming pool under a climate-controlled glazed geodesic dome with tropical landscaping and a tiki bar and barbecue facilities and such. I've certainly spent my share of time looking at castles and decommissioned missile silos that are for sale and thinking about how I would turn them into my ultimate supervillain hideout if I had the money to spend purchasing, refurbishing, and maintaining them. But mostly the items I can think of to put on this list are things that are a bit more reasonable, if currently out of reach. I feel like I'm departing slightly from the "sinful" theme of this meme by not displaying unbridled greed, but I'm at a stage in my life where I'm really learning to control my spending impulses and make long-term financial plans, so this is where my brain tends to head.

1. A house in or near Hagerstown, MD.

This one that we've been looking at would be nice, but any house with at least three bedrooms and room to expand (in case of children, or if Jack's feeling acquisitive again) would be nice. Getting a house fits into our longterm plans... it's among the reasons I've been motivated to step up my game from "making enough money to get by" to "making money" (the two propositions are more different than one might think). But for right now it falls squarely in the category of Big Dream. It's the first big ticket purchase I'd make if I won the Magic Lottery You Can Win Without Even Buying A Ticket That Is Somehow Not An Internet Scam.

I like Hagerstown, quite apart from it being where Jack lives. It's kind of nicely in-between the two places I've lived, those being the city of Omaha (It's An Actual Place™) and a small town about twenty, thirty minutes away from it. Hagerstown has basically everything I'd demand from a city but the small town feel.

It's also convenient to my parents' haunts in Florida. I already knew that I could take the train up or down the cost for about a hundred dollars, but last night I got curious and found out that a non-stop flight from BWI to Tampa or back can also be had for about a hundred dollars. I like the train, but a two hour flight has a lot to recommend itself over a twenty-four hour train ride.

And I really don't want to spend another ten years renting an apartment, which is becoming our shorter term, more immediately attainable plan for all living together. Apartments make me feel jittery and insecure. They're noisy. There's little privacy. You're at the mercy of a leasing agency in many ways, and an unconventional family of unconventional people always has additional things to worry about, no matter what the local laws may or may not say on the subject.

2. A Delirium of the Endless action figure.

This one's not such a big-ticket item, obviously, but it's something I can't really justify spending too much time or money acquiring. I had one on my desk when I worked at Oriental Trading Company. Someone who worked the day shift twisted her head off. I could see it being accidental... the way her hair was molded, you couldn't turn her head all the way around because it would hit her shoulder, but the neck articulation was of the sort that nothing stopped you from turning it 360 degrees anyway. If somebody were bored and determined to see if they could get her head to go all the way around... well, pop goes the weasel.

I kept the figure for a while. In my mind, a decapitated representation of Delirium is not necessarily inaccurate or inferior compared to a whole one. But I believe the pieces were eventually thrown out, and in any event, I've looked for a whole one in every comic/collectible shop I've been in since.

3. Enough money to travel at will between Tennessee, Florida, Nebraska, Maryland, the Pacific Northwest, and other points.

Right now I can raise enough money to travel places but not quite at will. I'd like to be able to visit more friends, go to more cons and other events, and see more places I haven't seen before.

4. More and better electronic toys.

I have a working netbook but I'd like to separately have a more awesome laptop for those times when I'm traveling but will be in one place at my destination for a considerable length of time. I have two working desktop computers... I can't begin to justify why I'd need a newer or better one as they're both reasonably spiffy, and one of them is approaching monster levels when it comes to gaming and I don't even game that much. I want a better phone for reasons I described under "envy", though I have turned a corner on writing with the virtual keyboard. I have a brand new e-reader, I can't really say I want more in that area... the only "better" Kindle is in fact mostly just a bigger one and I don't want a bigger one because the one I have is a perfect size.

I have everything that I need and a few things I clearly don't. But the fact remains: newer and better electronic toys exist, and I want them.

5. A private car and dedicated driver.

Here's where we get into what is pretty much completely pie-in-the-sky territory. I'm going to move to Hagerstown and we will eventually have enough money on hand to be able to acquire a house in a responsible fashion. I could stumble across a Delirium action figure. Once I'm lodged in Hagerstown I could probably get one without too much effort on eBay. (Until then... it's not like all my money's going towards that one end, but there's always something better to spend it on than an action figure I used to have.)

But it's not really within the realm of possibility that I'll be making enough money that this would be a non-frivolous expense, even if it ever became a viable one. The number of times I'd really need to go somewhere that I wouldn't have someone to drive me would be too low. This is basically an extension of my envying the freedom that comes with having a car... or a lament on the non-ubiquity of public transportation in the United States. I want to be able to just head out the door and go somewhere, whether it's down the block or fifty miles away.

(And if I'm being driven by somebody who looks like Jason Statham in The Transporter, more the better.)

6. My housemate's electronic toys.

Specifically, her big ol' plasma screen and PS3. Not hers in particular, but things like them. These didn't make it onto the envy list because I don't envy her them. I am a direct beneficiary of her having them. There have been times since I moved in that I've used them more than she does, and times when I haven't used them at all. But I like knowing that they're there and I can use them, and I know that one day I'm going to move away from them.

The PS3 is probably the more realistic part of this goal, as it can fit in more places and I know I'd be living with at least one other person who'd enjoy it. Both items are things I might be able to afford in the future, but couldn't now... I mean, I could put the money together for them, but that's money I need for traveling and moving and such. Also, I wouldn't gain anything by buying them now.

7. ALL THE D&D STUFF, EVER.

D&D is a major source of entertainment, inspiration, and solace for me, but I'm already picking and choosing among the things that I "need" (for a certain value thereof) and things I can do without. I'd like the freedom of being able to buy every book/supplement that comes out even if the amount of content I'll use compared to the price tag doens't work out, both so I have them on hand and so I can give my support to 4E and its developers.

...

Ah, hell, let's do this twice. Here's the Unbridled Greed edition:

1. The decommissioned Titan I missile silo complex outside of Denver, CO.

It's been on the market for about 3 million dollars, but the environmental clean-up and fitting it out as an underground home/lair would likely cost a lot more than that. It's supposed to have over 45,000 square feet of usable floor space to begin with. I imagine even more could be had by effectively turning the three missile silos into multi-story subterranean buildings. So, Jack doesn't live in Denver... but with our own subterranean town, we could bring whoever we wanted to us.

2. A castle.

Assuming I'm getting every item on this list (and I did specify no bridling of the greed), this would be built over the missile silo complex. I'd build a new one rather than buy an existing one, to save on the difficulty of retrofitting it for modern comforts. I'd go for a combination of medieval security (with modern materials and technologies) and modern comforts. I'd basically go for the perfect combination of a house that's like a castle and a castle that's like a house.

3. A giant, climate controlled glazed dome with a saltwater pool.

Again carrying over the assumption, this would be on the castle grounds, inside the outer bailey. Or we could skip the glazed dome and put it underground, with a vaulted ceiling painted to look like the sky. Or an LCD sky that can cycle through day, night, weird cosmic vistas, and (for the lulz) default Windows screensavers.

4. Ultimate, built-to-order "adult playroom(s)" within castle-and-underground-city-complex.

Enough said (one hopes).

5. Jason Statham to drive me around and/or kick people in the face.

Because why not?

6. Similarly awesome living places in all the places I'm apt to visit.

They don't have to be castles built on top of missile complexes. Old churches or factories retrofitted as living spaces, giant Victorian dollhouses, etc. Just so that wherever I go there's a super-awesome place where my friends and I can hang out.

7. Unlimited wardrobe of unlimitedness.

Hats. Cloaks. Capes. Flowing skirts and dresses. Corsets. Masks. Wigs of many styles and colors. I will gradually amass a version of this anyway, but in the unbridled greed fantasy I have rooms full of these things, all high-quality and many custom made.

I'm still trying to treat this as an exercise with some kind of a point to it, so for this one I'm kind of making myself a meta-task list for my life. These are things that I don't do but I need to. I could put more things on here than 7 ("Take care of myself.","Learn to save money."... though I've made some pretty good strides in both of those), so I'm limiting it to things that I both need to get on in the short term and that can be accomplished (or improved) in the short term.

1. The non-writing parts of my work.

This is another one of those "I could do all seven as examples" things. Doesn't matter if they're easy or even fun... filling in character descriptions for the existing character tags has taken me longer in calendar terms than I expected because I'm not doing it every day.

2. Updating my reminder/phone schedule for my new life and new phone.

A lot of the things that I'm neglecting come down to this: my phone isn't reminding me what day it is and what I need to get done. Getting on that is the first thing I'm going to do when I finish this post, I've decided. I'll never keep up Fantasy In Miniature if I don't receive a reminder.

3. Finishing unpacking/de-cluttering/putting my room together.

Despite my grand plans, my loft basically looks the same as it did when I first moved in. No, it looks the same as it did after I moved in and then I furiously dug through boxes and things to find the stuff I needed for the trips I took to Tennessee, Florida, Maryland, and Wisconsin in the two months that followed my move in. The problem is that by the time I was "home" at the dollhouse for any length of time in a row, it was too hot to do anything physical in the upstairs, and then inertia set in.

I'll have to get on this after I go back next week, before it gets too warm. Though this year I should be able to keep the window A/C unit in my own window upstairs, instead of putting it in the window by the stairs where any cold air has to climb to reach me... this was a compromise to try to cool off both my room and our (now gone) other housemate's room, but most of the cold air was just trapped under the stairs. I expect that moving the A/C will make a difference in both livability, and our electric bill.

4. Send out the confirmations to the folks who have bought AA editions since last Friday.

This could go on under 1 but I'm making it its own item so I can make sure it gets done. And also do the corresponding spreadsheet and templating work that will allow me to fulfill the orders when the book launches. Yeah, it's gone a week and I haven't done this. It's a lot of copying and pasting, and I thought I'd brought my USB mouse with me but apparently I didn't. I have one now.

5. Letting people know when I'm having a good time.

This isn't so much "sloth" but it is something I need to remember to do. Apparently it's very hard for people to tell when I'm enjoying myself. I always feel like it should be obvious when I'm having a really good time because I feel so good I think it must show, but apparently it doesn't. Also I'm capable of feeling crushing social anxiety and/or terror at the same time as I'm enjoying myself, and apparently those things show better than the enjoyment.

6. Cleaning up things around the house.

I don't do much housework. It's not because I'm opposed to it or lazy. Cleaning a floor or something makes for good physical busy-work to distract my hands and body while my mind's engaged in the mental part of my work. But I make up my mind to do it and then days pass before I get to it. Again, I think re-doing my calendar in my phone will help me there.

7. Keeping in touch with people.

This is a big one. I just don't do it. It's like the point where my lack of awareness of the passage of time and my poor memory come together into a perfect storm of "What do you mean it's been three years since I said anything to you?"

Jack has helped me quite a bit there, as he gets anxious if he doesn't hear from me and he lets me know how much he enjoys it when he does. In the past year I've gotten a lot more into the habit of emailing with my family and a few friends, but it still takes effort to keep it up. I've started using Facebook a lot more and made a reading list on LJ so I can make sure I can see what my friends are writing and respond to them every once in a while.

Only seven? :P Clearly I'm going to have the opposite problem here from the Envy one. I think that to make this manageable I'm going to restrict myself to things that don't really matter all that much, petty little inconsequential things that can still make me froth and boil over... not the Big Issues of the Day or the things that really impact my life. I have a feeling that this is more in keeping with the spirit of the meme, and more likely to be instructive to both me and anyone reading this.

Note: I started writing this last night when I couldn't sleep, so some parts of it refer to that. The first section (on errant pedantry) was not actually inspired by the preceding anti-pedant rant... that's just something that's always on my rant-dar.

( Pre-emptively cut for length, because I'm sure this will get long. )

This one's really not that easy to do. I have a pretty good life. There are parts of it that could use some improving, but they are by and large improving. Anyway, I'm sitting here typing this at the dining room table in a condo in a lovely little town outside of Tampa, Florida called Dunedin. I paid nothing to be here. Yesterday I was at Epcot in Walt Disney World with my parents. I paid nothing to be there, either. My parents are kind and generous with their time and the fruits of their own successes to their grown children, and that would leave me with precious little to be envious of even if they didn't have a place in Florida or regard Disney World as a sort of promised land.

I suppose I could take the description I copied for the day of "seven things [I] lack and covet" and make a list that's just seven things that I want. Wanting things is easy. As Jack Handey said, "It's easy to sit there and say you'd like to have more money. And I guess that's what I like about it. It's easy. Just sitting there, rocking back and forth, wanting that money." But that's really not what envy's about... envy requires both a direct and an indirect object. If you covet money, the money is the direct object of that coveting. For envy, the money becomes an indirect object... the person who has it is the direct object of your envy.

A lot of the things that I want, I just don't envy anybody who has them, even in general. I mean, when I find myself wanting a good steak I'm not thinking "There are people out there eating steak right now and I'm not one of them."

This is not to say that I don't experience envy. The first two items on this list required no thought at all. I just have to really stop and think to fill out seven things. If this list has any purpose, though, maybe that's it?

1. I envy Sarah for living with Jack and having known him longer. It is necessary in this case to quote a line from Cat Valente's The Habitation of the Blessed that stood out to me when I first read it (I love how easy Kindle makes it to mark and look up favorite lines): "Envy and jealousy are sisters, but not twins."

Envy is wanting what someone else has. Jealousy is not wanting to share. You can feel jealous of something that you have (i.e., jealously-guarded secrets or treasures) or something you only envy, but it's possible for there to be envy without jealously. I don't resent Sarah her seniority or proximity, and I would not trade places with her... wouldn't take away from what she has to enrich myself. I like Sarah. I admire and respect her. I hope that my happiness with Jack is able to increase the happiness in her own life. Polyamory operates on the principle that love is not a zero-sum game, after all.

But I envy her.

2. The hoopla that happens when trad-pub authors experiment with crowdfunding. This is occasionally somewhat or even very irrational, as among the reasons why I've forged the particular path that I have is a lack of desire/ability to deal with certain hooplae at the outset. There are good, solid reasons for me to move towards brighter spotlights at my own pace. But emotions are only ever reasonable by coincidence, and it usually only takes one or two Respected Names making a comment about how an experiment only worked because the experimenter had an audience, or it didn't work despite the experimenter's established audience and therefore crowdfunding is disproven forever, or invoking the need for gatekeepers to protect us from the 90% of everything that is crap* for me to start resenting how little attention is paid to the truly indie efforts.

(*How does the rest of the internet work, then? There are no editors and publishers overseeing the internet and yet we all find sufficiently entertaining entertainment on it.)

This shaded over into jealousy exactly once, and it felt ugly because it interrupted (if only for a moment) me feeling happy for a friend.

3. People who didn't inherit the hereditary hairline from my mother's side of the family. It meshes well with my already-established love of hats and it's inculcating in me a love of wigs that I'd probably keep even if I found myself the lucky victim of a drive-by scalp transplant, but it's decidedly inconvenient for someone whose womanhood is considered to be up for debate. This is envy and not mere covetousness because I really do envy people who have the kind of hair I would want.

4. Anybody I see using a smart phone with a full physical QWERTY keyboard. I used to resist the idea of on-screen touchable keyboards pretty fiercely. I got a chance to try one and found that it was easier to use than I'd expected, and I extrapolated from that experience that once I got used to it I'd be able to write on one as easily as I can with a physical keyboard. So when I lost my Pre... and wasn't interested in replacing it with another of the same for a variety of reasons... I jumped at the chance to get an Android-powered phone. The one I could get for free with an upgrade credit didn't have a keyboard. I thought it would be no big deal, I even considered it a plus since the lack of a sliding or flipping mechanism meant there's that much less that can go wrong with the phone, physically... but in the weeks that have transpired since then, I have found that no amount of practice makes up for the deficiencies of the on-screen keyboard and every time I see somebody sliding out a keyboard on a similar phone I find myself wishing I'd held out for that.

5. Visual artists. It might take a lot of practice and discipline to be a skilled artist, but no amount of either would be enough to make me even a serviceable one. I took elective art courses all the way through high school and learned quite a bit of basic theory and technique, but as for getting any actual physical results out of that learning I have some specific lacks that are at play here: fine muscle control, coordination, spatial reasoning. There are forms of visual expression that I could engage in, but in terms of using an artistic medium to visually represent something... well, my artist friends can count on me for commissions.

6. The freedom that comes with having (and being able to drive) a car. When I tell people that I don't drive, the most common response is, "What, you've never learned?" But it's like the art thing above. I've received technical instructions. I understand the theory. It's more a matter of ability.

I've never had a doctor diagnose me as incapable of operating a motor vehicle, but it's not something I'm comfortable with doing. There are certain things that are more apt to be unfortunate if they occur while piloting two tons of metal at speeds that are some multiple of 15 or 20 miles per hour than they are when one is walking. These things include: having a powerful spasm or tremor in the arm or leg (or the whole body), a loss of the ability to distinguish right from left, and just completely spacing out.

There are good things about not driving. Chief among them is that it means there is little to no point in owning a car. But it means I am obliged to rely on other people for some things... as we all are, but there are some areas where modern U.S. culture, by and large, expects us to be self-sufficient... and that I am unable to assist others in matters of transportation logistics.

My lack of driving ability is becoming more of an issue now that my knees have started to go. Walking at a moderate pace has long been the most exercise my body would tolerate, and I have enjoyed it very much. The prospect of walking five or six miles (or more) to get somewhere never bothered me, so long as I knew I had two hours to spare doing it. Now? It's considerably less of an option. Pain is fatiguing.

All in all, I don't know that I'd choose to change this one if I could. I mean, a car would be a lot of complication and expense to take on at this point in my life. That's why I'm specifying that I envy the freedom. I don't envy the financial burden/responsibility, the need for maintenance... the reality of car-ownership. All things considered, I'd rather just be able to teleport.

7. People who can sleep without trying... people for whom "going to sleep" is an actual thing that a person can do. Even during the incredible stretch from late November through a few weeks ago when I was reporting 7-8 hours of awesome sleep all the time, I haven't been able to "go to sleep", only lie down and wait to see if and when sleep will deign to come to me.

And that's seven.

Current Mood: envious

I wrote a flash story this morning that was basically a snippet of a story that's been bouncing around in my head for a while. Parts of it have come out as a Fantasy in Miniature segment before, I think. It might live as a longer story soon. I wrote it as a sort of "palate cleanser" to reset my brain into creative mode, which is one of the purposes of flash stories for me... a warm-up exercise. Unfortunately after I finished it my body kind of went "5 hours of sleep isn't enough" and sent me back to bed for a while. My body doesn't quite have the sleeping-in-a-different-place thing down yet.

I've seen a few people on my friends list and in the wilds of LJ doing this meme that I'm going to do as an additional warm-up, and to keep me in the habit of updating my LJ often now that I'm on semication and down from the creative high that had me posting multiple times a day.

Seven Deadly Sins Day 1: Pride. Seven great things about yourself.

1. Tales of MU. The story itself. Over a million words that have kept thousands of people all over the world enthralled. It's the kind of story I've always wanted to tell, and I'm telling it.

2. What I've accomplished with Tales of MU, in terms of building a career around it. There have been ups and downs, but the trend has been upwards... as the years stack up, the panics and near-disasters have become scares and near-emergencies and then startlements and near-problems.

3. How much I've changed in the past year and change. I've spent much of my adult life in a holding pattern, #1 and #2 aside, and then one day I woke up and I was thirty and all the stuff I'd been waiting to see if it would get better had just gotten worse. If Jack does this meme, he's welcome to put this on his Pride list, too... he's got a lot to do with it.

popelizbet, too, as she was patiently prodding me in the general direction of personal growth long before Jack was on the scene.

4. I came up with the riddle pun "Q: What do you get if you lock M. Night Shyamalan, Bruce Willis, and Haley Joel Osmont in a freezer for a week? A: Icy dead people." I'm really (quite justifiably, I believe) proud of that. I'm never going to stop trying, but I don't believe I'll ever top it unless I come up with one equal in quality but more timeless.

Is it too late to make this number 1?

5. I'm tremendously good at entertaining myself, or not needing to be entertained. Actually, I suppose I could best explain this one as a weakness: I'm really bad at being bored. I enjoy a good diversion like a book or a video game, but it doesn't matter how many times I've read the book or played through the game, it's just as entertaining to me as it was the first time. And if there is no book or video game to be had, I'm fine just with my own thoughts. I can actually be pretty content with nothing more than a wall to stare at, and in a pinch I can do without the wall.

6. I'm pretty good at making layered foods and desserts. It's a trifling skill, to be sure, but an enjoyable one.

7. Clearly all of these could be puns... who wouldn't be proud of something like "trifling skill"? But really, what I'm most proud of is the number of people I've helped inspire, one way or another, to take their art to the masses directly and embrace crowdfunding or even just the idea of directly sharing with the world, money be damned. I don't believe that many people have had anything like my kind of success at it yet, but the keyword is "yet"... it must be remembered that I was doing this for years before I started Tales of MU, and its success took me by surprise. In the coming year I'm going to be doing more to help grow the audience for and awareness of weblit, something I tried to do earlier on in my full-time writing career but before I was really on firm enough footing (financially or emotionally) to carry more than myself. I feel like this could end up being a breakout year in a lot of ways.