Nheulandia
Blog Import in Progress Here
Check back soon for actual organization and things like that. This is a rough import from a WordPress XML. It has a bunch of fragmented unpublished stuff, and a bunch of stuff is somehow out of order? I'm guessing it's a proprietary thing. Blech. Anyhoo. Eventually I'll have it cleaned up.
Musings on Life, Creativity and everything In Between
The word "meditate" comes from a Latin word whose base meaning is to measure, and it is related to the Latin word "mete."
When you look up mete, the first connotation google gives is judgement and its measure. The second, is a boundary or boundary stone. If I'm following the etymology right, it looks like the two definitions arise from different sources, however both of them ultimately center on ideas of boundary. Related to the first definition is an archaic meaning for meet, which is "Middle English (in the sense ‘made to fit’)." (Emphasis mine.) There is a sense, throughout all these definitions, of boundary, of cutting and tailoring. An action, rather than a practice of simple awareness.
Photo by David Geib on Pexels.com
Ultimately, a lot of my struggle as a human and as a writer centers on action and awareness, on where I belong, what the measure of myself and my meanings are and how I fit. I think I might like to write a little about that here.
Working on a Timeline
Literally. A couple of years ago I used my NaNoWriMo coupon to bag on to a copy of Aeon Timeline 2 I've fiddled with it before, but I've just recently realized it may be the tool I need to pick up the narrative thread of the story. I'm a single mom, and there are many moments I just can't keep up with daily writing. Some days, I'm just happy to be able to get up and go to work and get my bills paid. A few weeks ago, when I got up the gumption to take another look at it, I found I'd both lost my place and had a billion threads to tie up, give or take a million or two. So I opened a fresh timeline and got to work. It's excruciating and unbearable in someways - lots of scenes to track, and I'm doing my absolute damnedest to not look at the quality of words in this still unpolished draft. On the other hand, wow, what a thing I will have when I am done! You might check out the program if you get a chance. Some aspects of it are pretty intuitive, but to be frank, you may end up hitting the help documents and even YouTube to understand it's finer points - it can be a bit fiddly.
Time
Time. There isn't any. Or rather, there's not enough. I've been working retail for years, now, and while it's a good job at an indie bookstore, it's hella hard work and tiring. And I'm a single mom, "unevenly yoked" (his ironic words) to an ex who doesn't step it up and do his part. So I'm worn out. The middle of my life snuck up on me and now I have to fight for breathing room. There's time to rest, but not enough time to rest, get all my required BS done, and write/create as I'd like. Imma get there, but damn - the work I still have to do on my in-progress novel is staggering.
Such a Mess
At this point I'm wed to finishing this novel, but I'm worried it's gonna take years. I've been working on it for years, off and on, and the tangled narrative clearly demonstrates this. I'm trying to be patient with myself, non-judgemental, but I am honestly intimidated. This thing is a mess. There's uneven voice, pacing, inconsistencies borne of it's prolonged creation. I don't know where everyone is, and at this point, I need to know where they are, even if they are off-screen. I started this adventure pantsing it, and now I've got a lot of loose threads to either cut loose, or incorporate into the weave at the end of the story. It's probably going to take months just to get caught up in Aeon Timeline. Then the fun part - working on the notebook full of fixes and to do's I've begun.
Update
Getting back in the swing of things. Posting reviews for books on Edelweiss, now off to review on Amazon, for the writers. Working on my own writing, slowly. Perhaps I'll finish my novel in the next year or two.
Long Road Ahead and Behind...
...but I keep trying.
Day to Day
Welcome to my corner of the world, in all its glory/inglory. This is where I work, every day, right now. This is my social distancing. It's an odd space, reworked to be a hangout spot, but now where the Pete the Cat lives and where I work from home for the bookstore I'm employed with, at least right now. I don't know how long it will last, given everything, but I'm trying to help limp things along. I love the light in this room.
Notes on Wordpress - Pressing Frustration
I've yet to get started on my big plans for this site. Part of it's Real Life™ - I'm managing one my offspring's last year in high school - he's virtual schooling at this point, which is fine, but he's always here, and this has been a hard year, so I get interacted with a lot. Which is fine. But finding that balance between meeting the needs of a traumatized kid and focusing on my work - it's not going as well as I'd like. Add to that the issues this year inherited - it's been a challenge, to put it mildly. I'll own that - it's My Work, as an old friend of mine would say.
On the other hand, I've been working on getting this site up to speed as a professional reference point/anchor/place to share my skills and expertise. It's proven a struggle, between the lack of WYSIWYG that Wordpress is replete with and my growing realization that my website hosting here is not exactly a good value for the money. Right now I have a personal website via them, but accessing anything that might help me monetize is completely inaccessible. Adding the ability to add any widgets at all takes a professional level account, which would make the yearly total cost for my website between 300 an 400 dollars, depending on bells and whistles. That's a lot right now.
As a former web developer I'm frustrated, because I know roughly how much the hosting for my website is likely to be costing Wordpress. I understand the potential security concerns related to embeds, but, frankly, I suspect that they are less genuine security concerns for a monster webhost like Wordpress, and more a polite excuse for another nickel and dime. Which is why I'm so frustrated right now. If I had known exactly how difficult it was going to be for me to set up my site - factoring in my background in website building - and how little I could accomplish with the money I pay for my domain and hosting - I probably would have looked elsewhere.
Long story short, I'm here, and at least for now, I need to stay, at least through the renewal of my services next year. And I'm writing, doing work in the background. It's just going to take me a little bit longer to get up to speed.
Soon, though.
RNG and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Fri, 04 Dec 2020
I've just finished up my latest read - The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern, expect a review soon - and I've used online random number generators to pick my next two books. To be honest, I tried a few times, just out of curiosity, but these are the first and the last choices. I was hoping to pick a young reader title next, but every time I rolled for an RNG, adult books on my shelf kept coming up. I have way more young reader choices than adult. I mean, like way more. I'm going to honor the two books random chance have more or less given me to read next - Florida Man by Tom Cooper and Dead Astronauts by Jeff VanderMeer. I'm feeling a bit like these guys, though:
Just Like Everyone Else - I've Got Burnout
Hey, y'all. Man, life has been hitting me hard. I have this tendency to turn inwards regarding pain and hard things and depression.... I think this flattening, this near dystonia, is more common than it has been. Us non-neurotypicals have been joking (see like 90% of the corner of Twitter that I inhabit) that it feels like the world is catching up to us - seeing the hard things we see, feeling them too.
When you suffer long-term abuse, there's this thing that can happen, this deferral of meaning when it comes to your own pain, your own suffering. Other people suffer more, you think. What I feel, my pain, my depression - they're shallow, meaningless against the greater grief of the world, And when you do reach out, so often it feels like the world strikes back. That happened to me. I grew stronger, tried to talk about my grief, get help, be open about my life. I got called a lot of bad things, got a lot of blowback. Just like a lot of own women finding their own power, I got called a bitch, and asshole. Mean. Boundaries scare some people, and those people lash out. So I withdrew.
When you couple that with the struggle to deprogram from literal decades of gaslighting...well, let's just say I've spent months second guessing everything. Including my right to my pain and my trauma. Add a pandemic with hundreds of thousands dying, and you can guess how deep my self-devaluation has gone.
It's hard for me to be creative. Hell, I'm as depressed as I've ever been. It's hard to get ANYTHING done. Nothing new there - I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said before. But it's my experience, and I feel like I should speak to it and claim it.
Bad things have happened over and over again to me. Some of it's bad luck and some of it is related to choices I mad years ago. Some of it - a lot of it - relates to bad things other people have done to me. It is what it is. I'm marking my time. I wish I knew how to move on, or escape. I'm trying. In the meantime, this is me, saying I'm in pain and I'm trying to move through it.
A Tale of Two Podcasts, or How Two Stories Kept Me Sane on a Difficult Road
I've recently had to travel for some of those grown up reasons you might know of when you're a child, but that end eras for adults. Probably a maudlin and overly wordy way to put it, but I suspect, if you're reading this, you're old enough to to know what I mean.
Anyway, I rented a car and drove north from here, passing through Alabama, Tennessee, up to the north and east. I passed places I've lived, places my parents lived, places I've visited, the places where my dad's extended family is from. I drove on my own, and pressed myself to make the journey as quickly as possible. To keep myself company I pulled up a podcast I'd been meaning to try - Old Gods of Appalachia, a "...a horror-anthology podcast set in the shadows of an Alternate Appalachia, a place where digging too deep into the mines was just the first mistake."
I started out in the early afternoon, so as I reached northeast Alabama, the day was done. And y'all, I was spooked. What had started out as a necessary quest to find my future had turned into a look into my past. All the places I was passing, all the touchstones ... couple that with the shroud of darkness, mountains like behemoths, rising as voids along the horizon, trees grown thick about me ... well, let's just say I was transported, beyond just the physical. My trip began to feel less practical and matter of fact and more a move between worlds.
Old Gods was started right before the Pandemic. Their first season is polished and obviously thought out ahead, at least at the beginning. Part the way through that first season, the our real life Great Sickness hits - you hear about it in the intros and outros. Obviously Covid affected their plans, but it also brought a new layer of dark awareness to their stories. Maybe it's a terrible thing to say, but the tragedy and sadness of 2020 brought a focus to their storytelling, added more grain and grit to the tales they were spinning.
I drove a long way with the characters of their tales, passing through the regions they were talking about, or at least where they might be if I was through the veil and driving through their dark vision of the Appalachian past. Their stories kept me company, kept me transfixed as I navigated.
I caught up with their tales just after I reached my destination, in the town my parents each last lived. That seemed right, somehow. I'm caught up now, waiting for their next episodes - we're on part three of season two, and "family," I can't wait to see where they go next.
On the long road back I listened to a now finished podcast I'd also been meaning to catch up with - Alice Isn't Dead. Summer before last, before the world went Topsy-Turvy, I read the Alice Isn't Dead novel - a complete reimagining of the podcast by the same author, Joseph Fink. Fink is one of the creators of the Welcome to Nightvale podcast - wildly popular amongst Certain People I Might Consider Kindred, and yet another thing I've yet to dive into. Life's hard, y'all.
The mood of Alice is completely different, although it also deals with the underbelly of the universe, and the various dark things that grow there. I won't spoil anything, but the villains of the story, while similar in tone to the Old Gods baddies, have a very, very different origin. (All I'm going to say on the matter. Interested - stream the podcast! ^_^)
Both podcasts have good sound production. Old Gods is subtler, sneaking up on you, scaring the pants off of you, contextually. Suddenly that monster of the woods is in the room with you, sharing its mood, and family, it's not feeling forgiving. The sound in Alice is a lot more heavy handed. The main character is Keisha, who's taken up truck driving cross country while searching for her not-dead spouse. You follow her as she recounts her journey across trucker radio airwaves, and sometimes her world encroaches on your own. More than once I jumped when driving, startled by the sound of a blaring horn or other car related noise. Probably not the best choice for a solitary driver, but I was motivated, y'all.
Alice spans 53 episodes, covering just enough time for me to drive all the way back to my home from where I was. 53 episodes, come to find out, will get you about 2000 miles down the road. I chose it in keeping with my journey - while markedly different than Old Gods - it's more contemporary, less gothic, more cynical - it had some similar elements of "being afloat" and "being different". And it was basically one big road trip, which suited me just fine, as well.
Comparing the two IPs is not really an easy thing to do. Old Gods brought me home, in a lot of ways, sharing stories of family, fear, the dark unknown. It's centered in a part of the world my ancestors all called home, and its vernacular is familiar, easy to access. When you add elements of gothic horror and Lovecraftian mayhem - well, just consider me sold. I'm a lifelong fan now.
I loved the Alice story, although it was a little harder to navigate. The main character is sympathetic - I totally get her anxieties, and to be honest I've secretly always wanted to be a long-haul trucker. It's an interesting tale, if a bit diffuse. The story's good, but the ending is a bit vague. I loved it, don't get me wrong, and I understand that Good Stories Leave Questions, but I wish Praxis had been better addressed. It seemed written on the fly, with less constraints on the story universe. More poppy, less focused.
Both podcasts deserve their popularity and adoration, and if you're interested in a good horror podcast, both would fit the bill. I highly recommend you check them out. They both have awesome merch, as well - check out Old Gods' here, and Alice's here. Old Gods has a very active Discord server, if you're looking to find like minds. I've just started investigating it, but it seems like a good safe space filled with interesting people.
Ultimately, I'm most grateful to have found Old Gods of Appalachia. It will be good to have their company in the long days ahead. And honestly, y'all, I'm looking at more than just a few.
Be well, friends.
Inside My Mind: Hollowness
I'm struggling to stay afloat right now. Still in between things. Things keep looking like they are headed in the right direction, and then something happens to protract or lessen and here I am, back in limbo. My life is quiet, and frequently unbordered. I don't know that that is good for me.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Lascaux-IV_01.jpg/512px-Lascaux-IV_01.jpgThe internet is a lot bigger than it used to be - literally, obviously, but metaphorically, too. Used to be, maybe someone would see you, but these days, if you don't have an infrastructure past your online life, odds are, noone is going to see your scribblings on the wall. That's a crap realization, but irrelevant, too. I guess if it doesn't matter, why not keep writing, if for no other purposes, so that I can see that writing on the wall.
I'm struggling to stay afloat right now. Still in between things. Things keep looking like they are headed in the right direction, and then something happens to protract or lessen and here I am, back in limbo. My life is quiet, and frequently unbordered. I don't know that that is good for me.
Today's Vibe: Mon, 21 Jun
Tuesday's Vibe Tue, 22 Jun
Surveys
Y'all, are you aware of all the companies that pay for surveys?
I'm hustling for income right now, so I use a few of them. Enroll is not worth your time. Mostly they ask for free demographic information from you, and if you get a survey, it's literally just a few cents. There are some better ones with actual UI feedback, but I'm a bit wary of them. However, now that I have some gain issues with my web cam sorted out, I might do them more and then review them here. Mostly, right now, I do Survey Junkie. Thought about linking them, but they're easy enough to find and don't need my little link to make bank.
The gist of it is, you sign up, give them all your demographic specifics, and then they have a dashboard of surveys you can try for. Mostly they are a pittance - 20 minutes for 70 cents, that sort of thing - but if you are efficient, you can make a little petty cash fairly easily. Not much - basically half a tank of gas with a little bit of effort, maybe once or twice a week.
There are pre-qualifiers for most of the surveys, and you're going to be kicked out 4 out of 5 times on average. Mostly those are quick double checks of income, gender identification, age bracket, that sort of thing. There's this new screening device, though, that seems fashionable amongst these survey developers. They like you to write them a little paragraph about something personal - your favorite food, best holiday, you get the picture. No explanation. They just ask you to "be specific". I can't decide if these are a test of compliance, or if they're looking for keywords, or if it's just a bald-faced grab for more demographic material, somehow.
Anyway, I'm absolutely over these. Normally this is where you'll see the most clues to the personality and background of the survey developer - their inherent class bias, etc. I don't think they understand who's taking these surveys, mostly. Asking about my favorite place to holiday is at the very least a bit insensitive, really. And asking for a few hundred words without compensation - as an "aspiring writer" - I really, really hate that. So sometimes I answer seriously, sometimes I tell them a story about living with an abusive man, sometimes I just layout my opinions on their own probable demographics and resultant bias. And I can do the same developer's screener with the same question for different surveys, and I get completely varied results. Sometimes they kick me out and say I don't qualify. Sometimes - and this is more common - they say I've "broken a rule." Never do find out what rule, though. It's a puzzle. Not an important one, but something that occupies my mind. I can't figure it out. If I do, I'll let you know. In the meantime, picture me - rebellious, survey-taking, anarchist.
Do Over
Big changes. More word soon, for the bots that drop by at least. Hollering into the void over here. Invisible me, invisibling. I'm in the process of moving where I invisible, though. Writing this in a whole new state.
Renewal?
...maybe it's a refresh, instead.
Had a birthday yesterday, which, while a tiny bit imperfect, was exactly what it needed to be. It was a landmark birthday, one of those they make cards for, and it went ok, which is a first for landmark birthdays for me. My 16th birthday I literally drove cross-country with my dad, moving station with him and starting over in high school with one year to go. My 18th was fine, although my parents forgot to call me. 21 was fine, there was some alcohol involved, but a bit downplayed, because of my partner. Same with 25. I had a kid at that point, which was interesting. Trigger Warning - light discussion of domestic abuse ahead.
30 and 40 were both clusterfucks. My ex was a controlling abuser. He picked a horrible, day long fight with said oldest child on my 30th. My 40th I put my foot down and reclaimed my time by going out with friends. So that night I was treated to an all night diatribe of yelling, in front of the kids. All the things I wasn't doing, why we were "unevenly yoked" ... always with that phrase. There were lots of other less palatable words and phrases, but that was something he used to say a lot. Complete bullshit. I'll spare you how I came past that. It's an old story, but one I'm slowly walking through. Getting by and moving on...
Anyway, flash forward to yesterday, which was a day of relaxation, and just a nice day. One child brought me decadent little delights and fun literal interpretations of things (chocolate cake with pumpkin cupcakes on top - who knew?!), one child bought me Indian food, one wrote me the best little rap song. A good day. Not dramatic, but what I needed.
It's been a long year. A year ago today, bad things culminated. Not my fault things. There are things I could have done differently, but ultimately, I put down boundaries, and experienced consequences. That's fine. My dad (and last living parent) died, too. And a beloved cat. So I've done a lot of messy grieving in the last year. I'm not getting younger, and the world doesn't stop turning, but I finally feel like I can step back onto my own path again, and make my own way into the future.
It's good to have my life back.
Learn a Little... Tue, 01 Mar
Caesura Fri, 25 Mar
Thu, 15 Sep
From "The Black Maria" by Aracelis Girmay. Read it here.
Interval Sun, 30 Oct
"There's no room for ghosts" Sun, 30 Oct
Real Life Sure Is A Thing Wed, 26 Apr
I do keep trying, tho.
Long story short, been gathering my resources and healing from a long journey to get where I am. Refreshed, renewed, I begin again.
Music Break... Wed, 10 May
Or even if you don't have a hangover - good rainy day vibes....
Today's Earworm... Sat, 08 Jul
I can't do Normal - Response to a WordPress Daily Writing Prompt - Wed, 20 Sep
Logged in today. I want to write more, but so much is exhausting right now, not the least of which is the worry that some second-rate word trawler might creep through my blog, scraping my thoughts to shove in to a machine learning text regurgitator. But I digress. I'm in negative spoons today, but felt a need to at least get some words out - be creative in some way. If abuse and disfunction aren't your cup of tea, please consider skipping this one.
Holidays used to be a thing and to mean something. My family unit - my sister, myself, my parents - celebrated in consistent ways - messy Christmas day (paper everywhere), certain foods often present on different holidays (new years brought black eyed peas, cornbread, greens), no church and seldom gatherings outside the home. It was what it was, and it was ours. Then I left for school, followed by my sister. I got married to an asshole and surviving his bullshit became my tight focus. My sister went down a rabbit hole of her own making I still don't understand. My folks were my folks - never quite settled, but of a piece/peace. For a while.
Living with domestic abuse changes holidays. The extended family on his side wasn't really ... a positive influence on the holidays. The Now-Ex was often maudlin and loud and destructive. The in-laws were like - why are you fat, here are presents that underscore how little you mean to us. Did you mean to buy that for your kid? It's an awful present. Your kids are gonna grow up awful. You're awful. Have some alcohol. It'll take the edge off of the what's probably coming tonight, when the Now-Ex will keep you up yelling and talking about all the ways you aren't as good as he is.
I had some holidays with my folks. But then they moved north and I didn't get to go anywhere. Then there was a little bit of time we were all together. Then I had to move back to the Bad Place. Then my dad got sick, and who he was changed, and my Mom entered a hell that was at least in part of her own making, although, by the time she died, he was a different person and not at all a nice one.
Mom died near Mother's Day. My sister deliberately avoided wishing me a happy mother's day that year. It was awkward. We were together dealing with Dad and the estate and folks were wishing me a good day in her space and she just ... didn't. It was what it was. The Now-Ex had more or less made it a non starter of a day anyway, same with birthdays. He spent the entirety of my 30th yelling at our eldest. Neither the kid nor I have any idea why. We seldom did.
My dad died the day before Thanksgiving. My youngest child did some breathtakingly abusive things at Thanksgiving the year after that. So I had to set firm boundaries. No way around that. It's hard. We don't talk, don't contact. No birthday mentions, no Christmas.
I've been trying to make my own traditions since I got separated, but life is fighting me hard on that one. I feel so rejected by the world around me, by my culture. I came here to write about that. Today's been very hard and I've been thinking about how we all fit in society -- or don't, as the case may be. I'm still going to write about that, but I want to spend more time with the words. This is just off the cuff expression. I have some concerns that - speaking of fitting or not fitting - I may turn off potential readers or followers by frank discussion. This isn't meant to be trauma dumping. I kind of hate that phrase. My life - my body, even - has been drastically affected by trauma. It is part of who I am. I realize that is not the case for all - or even many.
I read a newsletter today by Raechel Anne Jolie that talks about the injured body, in part (her partner has cancer). I'll dive deep into that on another day - summing it up in that way probably does it no good service - but here I'll say that understanding the essence of illness or otherness in the context of my culture has proven difficult, consuming work. Holidays are hard work for me, as they are a crucible for my otherness - understanding my value within all the contexts I am a part of is sometimes a joy, but often harrowing, so to answer the question - my holidays are spent in deliberate attempts at softness and self generosity. That is how I celebrate them at this point -- looking for softness and joy and peace and a little bit of understanding, inside and out.
Poetry - Golden in the Morning Crane Our Necks Thu, 28 Sep
Still Here, Always Trying Tue, 20 Aug 2024
I cannot believe it has been so long since I posted. Lots going on between here and there. (Always a lot going on.) Lost my dog the week before we moved, to a brain tumor, we believe. The move was hard, and for the first time in my life I have a roommate that's not kin. Very weird, that.
Recovering from trauma is a long, long process, and I've had COVID 3 times now, as well. I feel like it's harder to well communicate my thoughts, needs and wants, at least as far as a blog is concerned. Who I essentially am lies hidden behind a great big wall of distractions and emotional dead ends and brain loops.
I recently read some of Pizza Yeti's game reviews, and I'm looking at those and going, yeah, I need to write better. That Age Old silly-thing of comparing. Comparing is no good, y'all. Our path's are so individual....
Anyway, I very much like Pizza Yeti's stuff, to clarify. Best of luck to her.
Being genuine to one's self has been on my mind a lot lately. This video speaks in the space I'm holding this morning. Thought I'd share.
A Consideration of Space And Connection Thu, 05 Sep
Get Moving Sun, 15 Dec 2024
Broken Image to Be Fixed HereInspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get the work done. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you're not going to make an awful lot of work. — Chuck Close
You Cannot Erase a Thing That Never Forgets Mon, 16 Dec 2024
"[...] she remembers the fields that flourish under her - roots too deep for digging. You cannot erase a thing that never forgets."
— Jay Hulme (@jayhulmepoet.bsky.social) December 16, 2024 at 12:24 PM
[image or embed]
Pamela Anderson is a Joy <3 Thu, 19 Dec 2024
On Habakuk 03 Jan 2025
Imagining is often connected to misunderstanding. -- Tal R
...it's through your errors and catastrophes that you learn the most. -- Ibid.
