It is snowing as I write this. It is not the first snow of the season–that came after Thanksgiving, falling after midnight in a powdery coating that lingered for days, even through warmth and sunlight that should have sent it away. It is the first snowfall that happened during what could generously be called daylight hours, though. A light, gentle dusting that will stick mostly to the snow left over from a week ago as the brined, salted, sanded, or grit-covered roads force whatever lands there to vanish swiftly. There will be more snow, soon, at least according to the forecast, and we have reached the time of year where it will likely stick until we get another mid-winter heatwave of temperatures in the fifties [which has already happened]. Snow in a brown winter can be a deceptive thing, lingering longer than you would think as the regional draughts isolate it so long that it has no choice for survival but to hide in unseen corners and mix with dirt until the muddy slush it becomes is finally melted down by the weight of its disguise. It can last weeks, maybe even months if its cold enough, but people who desire some semblance of the frosted winters they recall from years past will often seek it out and, like a flower plucked for a vase, bring a swift end to something that might have lived longer on its own.
Continue readingMetaphor
This Is About The Scott Pilgrim Graphic Novels And Definitely Not About Burnout
After last week’s post about the end of National Novel Writing Month and my goals for maintaining my writing habits going forward, I feel kinda bad writing about my continued deep and abiding exhaustion. Being at work has been draining, as it always is, and I’ve found myself frequently feeling spread too thin. Doing too much is kind of my defining character trait at this point, since I can’t really seem to figure out any other way to live my life and do the things I’d like to do. There’s just too much that I need (or desperately want) to do. So, I’m going to talk about the thing I bought myself as a treat for being a Responsible Adult (aka, doing all my DIY and cleaning projects before people showed up for Thanksgiving) and then read during my post-Thanksgiving recovery weekend. I finally decided to buy and read all of the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels. Specifically the large color ones. This has been on my to-read list for at least a decade at this point, but I usually just forgot about them (my reason for not buying them in the past five years) or didn’t have Graphic Novel Money when it came to buying books (you can get more book per buck with a paperback and I spent a lot of years needing to manage my entertainment budget very closely). I mean, I really enjoyed the movie and one of my closest friends loved the graphic novels, so it felt long overdue. Plus, I got a huge Black Friday discount on them despite ordering them over a week before Thanksgiving, so that helped. It also helped that there was a Netflix show that recently released and I figured I ought to read the graphic novels first.
Continue readingThe Itch
Lennard lifted one carefully trimmed fingernail to his neck and dragged it across the skin. The scrape shuddered through his body, briefly offering reprieve from the drone of his coworker who had launched down another useless tangent. The relief was momentary, though, and the burning demand to act returned worse than ever. If he kept scratching, maybe he’d be able to put that moment off long enough for Zach to get tired of talking.
Continue readingCell Phone Thoughts
I used to wonder why I never saw my cell phone in my dreams, or why I never even thought about it while dreaming. Then I was grateful, since it meant I could escape it’s constant presence in my life. Now, I wonder if it’s been a part of my dreams all this time, just in a way I didn’t recognize because the parts of it that matter in the way that dreams matter seemed so similar to my own thoughts.
Continue readingRelief From A Weight I’ve Never Mentioned
I went to get a mole checked out today. I wasn’t super concerned that it might be a sign of some kind of skin cancer since I’ve had it for as long as I can remember, but it has long been an inconvenience at best since it sits right between my nose and my lip. It gets in the way of shaving, of blowing my nose, of wiping my nose, and it can interfere with sneezes if I don’t have them absolutely locked down. It tends to bleed easily, if I scrape or pinch it hard enough and it frequently itches in a way that encourages me to scrape or pinch it. If I shave too thoroughly and indelicately around it, it will bleed the next time I brush against it with anything rougher than my hands. That said, I’ve been living with it for as long as I can remember, so it hasn’t been an issue for much of my life. Only occasionally, less than once a year, will I accidentally cause it to bleed or otherwise hurt myself by absentmindedly interacting with it. It has been easy to ignore as I’ve dealt with more pressing issues because I had the tools and skills required to cope with it in an effective and safe manner.
Continue readingNimona Is A Wonderful And Powerful Movie
Last week (when I wrote this), I opted to purchase myself a month of Netflix. I will probably wind up using this month to watch The Witcher and whatever other Netflix stuff I’ve missed over the last few years of not wanting to watch shows by myself (like Stranger Things season 4), but the reason I paid for a month of Netflix was because I wanted to watch Nimona. It hit Netflix on the 30th of June and I knew it was something I wanted to watch, even if I had to do it by myself. I’ve been following ND Stevenson for years and found his posts, comics, and online journaling about his gender identity incredibly informative and helpful. I was excited to see the movie made about the comic that wound up being so unintentionally about his identity and journey, even though I’d never read the comic. It was one of those things that I always meant to read but never got around to reading. Then, when I heard there was going to be a movie I decided to wait until after it came out. I almost broke down and read the comic when the movie got canned by Disney, but wound up being glad I waited when Netflix announced they’d picked it. Now, I’ve watched the movie and am preparing to read the comic (as soon as I have the time required to that, since I’m writing this less than 24 hours after watching the movie).
Continue readingOne-Week Pause
I’ll be skipping this week’s Infrared Isolation post. Chapter 10 is going to need another week because, frankly, I’m pretty burned out and the thought of pushing myself to get it done and then asking my editor/alpha reader to get it back to me quickly felt like volunteerily going to hell for vacation. I’m not about that life so, instead, I’m taking a rare break and posting only this today. Not even gonna try to come up with some essay to fill the gap since doing OTHER work doesn’t really address the whole “too tired to do work” part of being burned out. Hope you’re all having a great weekend and that we’re not all drinking ourselves into a stupor following the apparent end of democracy in the US.
Why Someone Might Hide a Small Injury in the Workplace
My shoes broke today. One of the eyelets ripped open when I wentto pull my laces tight this morning and I was forced to drive to work with what felt like an incredibly loose shoe even though the other nine eyelets in use were holding strong. When I got to work, I rustled up some heavy-duty tape, some tiny washers, and spent about fifteen minutes repairing my shoes. It was a rush job (that wound up breaking irreparably a little over 24 hours later), with most of the time being spent on making sure the laces could still move through the holes in the tape on the new eyelet and on all the eyelets I reinforced. It isn’t perfect, but it will last long enough for me to get through my work day.
Continue readingWorldbuilding Is Only Done When The Campaign Is Over
I have created an entire Dungeons and Dragons campaign setting (multiple major and minor plots included) from nothing but a pile of unrelated notes that aren’t even from the same genre in about a week. It was an exhausting, draining, and incredibly focused week of non-stop effort, but I managed to get it all done. It helped that it was similar to some other ideas I’d been wanting to explore, so I managed to swing the perfect trifecta of “interested,” “excited,” and “well-rested” required for a feat like that. Most of the time, it takes me a bit longer than that to get a campaign off the ground, from concept to ready for the first session (Session 0), but it rarely takes more than a few weeks. That said, the settings are never done. There’s always more work to do, more research and development to continue to chip away at, and so many basic ideas that need to be fleshed out.
Continue readingIf You Bite Your Cheek And No One Sees It, Are You Really Injured?
I bit my cheek the other day. It was a rather ordinary moment, by any measure. I was eating my afternoon apple and, in my genuine enthusiasm for the fine fruit, accidentally bit the inside of my cheek. It hurt, of course. It always does, no matter how frequently you bite yourself. But it didn’t bleed very much. After doing my best to examine the injury, I was able to determine it was quite deep, given the way I’d bitten it, even if there wasn’t much blood. Since there was nothing I could do about it, I rinsed my mouth out and returned to my apple. It was painful, but I was able to avoid worsening the injury by chewing carefully and finished my apple. Eventually, I also ate dinner and managed to avoid worsening the injury through another great deal of careful chewing. It required ignoring a decent amount of pain, of course, but I’m fairly used to ignoring pain so I was able to cope well enough. I couldn’t just avoid eating, after all. That would only make things worse in the end.
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