The Novelist's Hubris

Finding My Way In: More Thoughts on Blogging Post-LiveJournal & Grappling With Fiction Writing

Susannah Conway posted an intriguing piece about being tired of the Shiny Happy Factor of many blogs -- to which I'll add that I'm tired of not only the Shiny Happy Factor, but also the marketing, the Lessons Learned approach, and the blogging-as-science shenanigans that have been rolling around in my universe lately. (I touched upon this in my Remembering Livejournal post, to which I received many a comment from LJ veterans who felt similarly, as in, Where do we go from here?) What her post, which I partially related to -- but only partially, as we come from very different Internet backgrounds, and she has a much larger, and one could even say, "cult" following, than I do -- reminded me of is that this is my space. And you (yes, you) are a part of my audience, but I want to sound like myself and not like a performing monkey.

& it saddens me that I even have to remind myself to "Be Myself" and "Be Authentic" and all of that tripe, but it's true: the Internet has changed and is changing all of the time.

 

On the mental health front, things have been a mixed bag around here lately. The last two months have been a bit of a struggle and a slog, with a few high points here and there -- right now my body's old patterns of stress reactivity have been arising, to my dismay, and I keep thinking about my old therapist's maxim: "Accept it and do the work anyway." He was an ACT therapist; he believed in Acceptance and Commitment. I liked him, and I think that radical acceptance is an interesting idea, but ACT can be a brutal method of responding to traumatic forms of mental illness (i.e. psychosis). At present, I still don't regret quitting therapy, and not having that appointment weekly or semi-weekly is a weight off my shoulders. I'm stepping gently into working with a life coach at the moment, and though at least one friend has expressed nervousness about life coaches potentially being charlatans, I've had largely positive experiences so far with the coaches that I've worked with -- you can see the ones I love most in my Resources page -- and so I'd like to work with someone around the issues of decreasing phase blindness, actively working on healing from old trauma, and reducing escapism/increasing distress tolerance -- which are all things that I've tried with therapists, but never made much headway in.

 

It pleases me to see the development of The Long Work as I've been chronicling it here, so here's an update: it's 400 pages (double-spaced, 12 pt Times New Roman; much longer in Courier, of course) and 126,000 words. Structurally, I'm in the last leg of Part Two, which leaves Part Three as the final section of the book -- then I'll have a full, sprawling, disarmingly tidy draft, at which point I'll have to dismantle and rework for at least a year, maybe two.

The end of Part Two is giving me a headache, though -- TLW has been leading me around by the nose, and I've tossed in salient elements that are a bitch to research, including Liberation Theology, piano-making in the 1940s, Greenpoint in the first half of the 20th century, and charismatic Christianity in rural Northern California. I suspect that the hard part about writing the final chapter of Part Two is that so much of it is based outside of my so-called realm; the book is very un-autobiographical, but extrapolation helps, and living in a ministry-slash-commune is. Um. Way out of my depth. I decided to break the ice by "planting a bomb" in the chapter, i.e., deliberately inserting heated autobiographical content in a foreign scenario. I did a major Find/Replace and used Real Names for characters. We'll see if it works.

I'm also paring down an excerpt into a short story, which instinct tells me will have to go through many more drafts before I let it near this particular solicitation. I have a tendency to, in a jolt and flurry of anxiety, shove my babies out the door to school before they've got their pants on.

So, the Rapture, huh?

 

xo,

Bells

These are the new rules. I’m not allowed to leave the house without Ma, William, or preferably, both. I am not allowed to go into town. Therefore, William is not allowed to go into town, because I am not allowed to stay at home alone. Now we are having family meetings every day. In these family meetings, we talk about things that are unifying us and things that are dividing us. We are striving for things that unify us. (Naturally.) Things that divide us must be eliminated. At this family meeting is where the rules are defined. We sit at the kitchen table. William has arranged his face in a semblance of nonchalance, picking at the table with his thumbnail. There exists a somewhat mythical story about my father buying this table and having to enlarge the doors to get it in. It’s one of my favorite stories about him because it seems so outlandish, and makes my father seem grand in a manner that has nothing to do with madness. One of Ma’s ideas is to string bells along the top of the front and back doors, and the windows, too.

 

P.S. Jezebel quoted from my post about "phase blindness" in an article this week titled "Vague Memory May Be Linked to Depression." Check it out -- it's an interesting look into memory and mental illness.

Moving On

Once, I dated a guy who wasn't so great. An example of his not-greatness is that if you Google his name, his Megan's Law sex offender profile is the third thing that comes up in the results (for more than one offense.) And that doesn't even count what he did to me, because I never reported.

It's been eight years since I've spoken to him or seen him, and in those eight years, I've done a lot of capital-P Processing. Like: running out of clubs crying, talking to therapists, writing truly terrible, thinly-veiled short stories about My Worst Ex. And for the most part, now, I don't think about him that much. At least, I don't think about him as much as I used to -- which was a lot.

Sometimes, though, like today, I dream about him, and I wake up with a feeling that lasts with me all day -- a deep, sad feeling, down to the skeleton.

And I think things like, He gave really great hugs. Not too tight. Very gentle. Embraces, really.

Oh, of course he had a temper, too. Obviously. But those hugs.

Well, I tell myself, don't dwell. It's been so many years. Both of you are such different people now. You're happy; he seems all right. But the sorrow is hard to ease out of, like a grimy skin that can't be shed.

Then I move on. I go to sleep. I dream about something else.

xo,

TNH Chats With: Paolo Sambrano, Creator of Bi-Poseur

Image taken by Beth Allen

Paolo Sambrano is my kind of dude. He also performs and writes about bipolar disorder -- and after seeing a chunk of his performance a few months ago, I'll voice for his sassy smarts, wonderful wit, and amazing ability to move around on a stage while conveying the deepest, darkest aspects of mental illness.

In this interview, Paolo and I chatted about performance, creativity, and why Playstation controllers are funny in that "ha ha but oh no" way that I love so much. And at the end of this post, two lucky winners will get a chance to win a pair of tickets to a performance of Bi-Poseur this weekend!

 

Q: So I saw your performance awhile back, and was quite struck by all of it — the narrative technique, the use of physical space, etc. How did you fall into performance, and what sort of training do you have, if any?

Paolo: Ah, first off, thank you very much! I really appreciate you coming through, and double thanks for the note a couple of weeks back. Let's see, I did some acting in high school, nothing too much though, some community theater and drama as an elective. And I mean, I always was interested in solo performance - my first exposure to it was as a kid watching John Leguizamo one-man shows on HBO, Freak and Sexaholix. I've personally been doing solo performance since July 2008, and I fell into it by accident, really.

Q: I truly hope this is going to turn into a story where you are walking into your bathroom and there's an audience in the shower.

Paolo: Almost! I checked out W. Kamau Bell's own solo show, The W. Kamau Bell Curve in SF that summer, and saw that in the program he teaches a workshop on solo performing, Doing a one-person show was always something that I wanted to do, but one of those things that I didn't know how to get started on (much like how to wrestle bears and fly in a hot air balloon around the world).

Q: Right! So it sounds like a workshop was perfect for you. Did you have a sense of what you would want to perform, back then?

Paolo: Absolutely! I always knew that I wanted to talk my suicide attempts in high school, 'cause I've been telling people those stories for years now, and I always thought what happened to me was always absurd (even while it was happening to me!). And as a medium, I really clicked with solo performing, I bummed around from filmmaking to slam poetry in high school, and doing solo was the first thing I didn't bail on after a sustained amount of time doing it.

Q: That really strikes me — that you wanted to use performance as a vehicle for talking about suicide. I especially noticed that your show — the part of it I saw — had a lot of humor in it. What's one particularly absurd thing or moment you're fond of performing?

Paolo: Oh man, I think for me, I really like doing this scene where I try to hang myself with a Playstation controller. My dad walked in on me and ended up wrestling me to the ground, but neither of us knew how to wrestle, so it turned into this awkward, shirtless sweaty mess with him just exhausted on top of me, so I couldn't move... then my brother and grandma walks in (my grandma asked if I wanted a cup of Sprite) and my dad tells my brother to call the cops. The cop comes, and I basically yell at him that LIFE SUCKS. He ends up putting me in cuffs and puts in me the back of the squad car while the EMTs come.

Q: I can just imagine the reaction you get when you tell this story one-on-one versus in performance. Or maybe they're the same!

Paolo: Ha! Totally! I mean now that you mention it, when I [narrate it in my head], it sounds way darker than how I play it on stage. That was definitely a low point in my life, but I was always able to realize how absurd this all was. Even the EMT was like, why would I waste a perfectly good Playstation controller.

Q: How old were you?

Paolo: I was fourteen years old when it went down. It happened Fall 2000. But it's always fun to play on stage. And the Playstation as noose kind of became the unofficial symbol of the show.

...

Q: That's brilliant. I want to ask you about your creative process... how did Bi-Poseur get put together?

Paolo: Bi-Poseur was formed with W. Kamau Bell and the Solo Performance Workshop (the workshop he co-founded with Bruce Pachtman in 2005). The way the classes work is that you put together a 20 minute self-contained scene over an eight week period with other people. So you'd get up on stage each week and present what you got in front of the others in the class. At the end of the eight weeks there'd be a class show where you'd perform your scene in front of friends and family, [and] I did most of the heavy lifting with Bi-Poseur in these classes, I'd sign up for sessions and write these 20 minute scenes (although I didn't have an immediate end game of forming them into a full length show at the time). It wasn't until about Fall 2009 that Kamau (and others) pushed me in the direction of having a full length show cause I had enough material. So I stitched together the existing scenes I had, wrote some connective tissue around it, and there was the show. Although I like to admit I have such an inefficient creative process.

Q: I'm curious about the actual Moments of Creation, though, having never written for performance. How did those 20 minute scenes get written? I'm picturing you sitting at some desk, pulling at your hair with a flask next to you. And then getting up and saying dialogue to yourself.

Paolo: Yeah my actual creative process is terribly inefficient. What usually occurs is that I just freewrite, or try to construct scenes, or at the very least scene concepts that I would like to do at my computer, on the word processor. And then I'd print out that document, and then I'd carry that around with me wherever I go, and then use whatever inspiration that pops into my head at the time, and immediately write it down on the script somewhere. Eventually, I just reconcile the notes I made on the script into the document, print out the new version of the document and repeat the process. I'm not much for just sitting at my desk and making myself write, I find that it's easier for me to let the mind wander. Makes the stakes in my head easier, I reckon

Q: Ah, that's really interesting. So when people ask you what Bi-Poseur is about, what do you tell them?

Paolo: Ahhhhhhhh, yes. I half joke that I need a new tagline or 30 second pitch about Bi-Poseur, but it usually sounds like this: "Okay, whatever I'm about to tell you, I want you to know that this is a comedy, okay? Okay. Bi-Poseur is about suicide, mental illness, and the death of my mother. Remember! It's a comedy! It's hilarious!" And then I spend a minute or two talking about how the way I approach the topic isn't exploitative, and how the gravity of the situation isn't there, and the stuff with my mother is treated a bit heavier.

Q: Do people laugh nervously at that point and give you a dollar?

Paolo: I've been getting the the nod and smile lately. Wish there was dollars involved though. Maybe a THAT'S INTERESTING here and there.

Q: That's interesting. Why do you emphasize that the death of your mother is treated with more gravity than suicide and mental illness?

Paolo: Ah, good question .I think in my head, when I say that the mental illness/suicide stuff isn't exploitative, I'm afraid they think that It'll be like a Me, Myself, and Irene situation, where it's I'm using these topics just to be 'edgy' or what the fuck ever, and that the jokes that I'll be constructing just use the edginess as the punchline without any real craft attached to it. One of the things that I'm proud about Bi-Poseur is that the comedy is completely straight, I'm not being ironic at all, but it's juxtaposed with the stakes of me actually trying to kill myselff/deal with mental illness. And then I say the stuff about my mom, because, the stuff about my mom is more somber, I don't want them to think that I'm using my mom's death for laughs.

Q: I wonder sometimes if I'm always going to use mental illness as a characteristic of my work — it's in my fiction, it's in my nonfiction, blog, etc. — and just now, it occurred to me to ask the same of you.

Paolo: Oooh. When you say characteristic, forgive me if I'm stating the obvious, but do you mean it as like an adjective when you describe your own work? Or do you mean like, this is the stuff that I write about (mental illness).

Q: I meant, I suppose, the way that Flannery O'Connor is associated with the South, or Dave Chapelle is associated with racial issues.

Paolo: I mean, here's the thing that always astounds me about Bi-Poseur - the fact that people can relate to it. When I was writing the show, I remember panicking to my director saying how nobody is going to like the show, how they'll say it's all self-absorbed and narcissistic and not about BIG ISSUES (like the Middle East or racism). I learned that most solo shows are all narcissistic to a degree anyway, but when I started doing the show and people would come up after and be like THAT REALLY HAPPENED TO ME or I HAVE A SON WHO IS BI-POLAR AND ITS LIKE THAT. That's really flattering to me. So I mean, I feel like the show can be used as advocacy for mental health/suicide issues, and I'm more than happy to take on that mantle in that regard, if it is asked of me... not to get all big headed there, or whatever, heh. And I mean, I think the mental illness stuff will always be a flavor or be an influence on my future work, I don't think I wanna be like... the one thing I'm known for. I'm writing a show right now about losing weight, and I have this idea in my head for a show about manliness

Q: So let's talk about future work. What's cooking for you, presently? We'll wrap up with that.

Paolo: Yeah, I'm currently deep in the throes of writing my second show, currently titled I Get Wet. That show is about my ups and downs with weight loss (I used to be a lot fatter in the past). I'll performing the first twenty minutes of that May 20 in Baltimore as apart of Fitbloggin', which is a conference for weight loss and fitness bloggers (perfect fit for the show). I'll be performing Bi-Poseur one more time this Saturday, May 7 in San Francisco at Stage Werx Theatre (533 Sutter @ Powell) at 2pm. It'll be the last time I perform it for a while. [And] I recently just quit my job, so I'm really just trying to open myself up to possibility, as new agey/hippie as that sounds. I've been [training in] Boxing and Muay Thai for a spell... bly good fodder for future work. I just wanna do all sorts of things, really. Competitive BBQer, solo performer, amateur fighter? Able to perform marriage ceremonies? Anything, everything.

Final performance of Bi-Poseur this Saturday, May 7 at Stage Werx Theatre (533 Sutter) at 2 PM.

 

So you totally want to see this amazing dude perform, right?

Brown Paper Tickets link for ticket purchases - https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/171589. Get five bucks off tickets with discount code FRUAD (not a typo).  

Well, you can (if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area). The first two people to reply to this post with a comment will win a pair of tickets to Bi-Poseur for this Saturday, each.

In an email after our conversation, Paolo would like to append:

...I thought a little bit more about [your mental illness question], and I think what I was trying to say (however not obvious and long-winded it was) is that 'mental-illness' is something that I will most def claim in my creative work and writing, but I think I am a little unease with being the 'mental-illness' solo performer, or to be looked at as some advocate prime, kind of like how you mentioned Dave Chappelle is to-go for racial issues.

Thank you so much to Paolo for doing this interview, and I hope you SF'ers rush out and see the show; I'll be there!

xo,

Tomorrow is Today

 

A silly lil video from Half Moon Bay.

All exuberant on the Western Front. Be aware of the following:

I wrote an article for Jezebel about celebrities and bipolar disorder. As of this second, it's gotten over 19,000 pageviews and 72 Facebook Likes. Thank you to everyone who's been supportive in this endeavor; thank you to Jezebel; thank you to Anna, who asked if I would be interested in writing about such a topic.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to be on the CBC radio show "Q,", which airs in the United States on Public Radio International, on Sirius, on CBC Radio One, etc. (see aforementioned link for details), but fortunately, for those of us who don't have either an old-fashioned AM/FM radio or Sirius, "Q" also has a podcast, available on iTunes. I am hoping against hope that I do not sound like a complete blithering idiot.

 

I've had a bad cold for the past couple of days, which stirs up in me a number of thoughts, including that which states that my mental malaise and psychiatric dervish-ing tend to calm down when I'm physically ill, as well as the fact that I need to boost my immune system (more oranges? zinc?). I do have much to say. I'm reading The Tiger's Wife. I consulted my dreams last night after seeking creative direction from my fickle Muse, and came up with fire and brimstone. But my bad cold is wearing me out, dear Readers, and I'm going to rest up and read before going to bed very early, as good girls do.

xo,

Am I Human: An Interview with Jessalyn Wakefield

Image of JW taken from Am I Human.

Spring is all I can think about. Weather. The light. How it feels in the nasal passages. Many books. Many thousands of words. Others. My own. Mostly quiet. Maybe too quiet. Humming to open my throat. -- journal, tumblr

NOTE: This post contains images which may be NSFW, depending on what kind of work you do.

 

Jessalyn Wakefield is magical -- fierce -- stunning -- a storm of a woman. I met her at an aquarium. All around us: otters, silver fish, black-eyed sharks. I find it perfectly fitting that we met amidst water (my element), because Jessalyn has wound her way into my life in a profound way; she inspires me regularly, and I'm thrilled to have her work here, as well as a Q&A. Thank you, Jessalyn, for being here.

As you will discover on her web space, Am I Human, Jessalyn is a writer, photographer, performer, bookmaker, printer, and great thinker. 

Q. Do you see links between mental illness and religion? How does this influence your prose, your style of writing and performing, what you choose to write about?

A. The position that the mentally ill are prophets, or conduits for divinity, or are inherently more spiritually attuned than other people is disturbing to me. Just because someone is speaking in ways you do not understand, it does not follow that what they are saying is profound.

The psychotic aspect of mental illness, of seeing the unreal, is the aspect that is often skewed as being “prophetic.” But to use the prophets of Judaism and Christianity as an example, these were functional people. Most of them lead very ordinary lives. These were not people in the throes of madness. These were people who received transmissions and instructions, followed through with them with clarity and power, and continued on with their ordinariness. The schizophrenias, in contrast, are more often than not debilitating. And what people unfamiliar with the disease fail to realize is that psychosis, while perhaps the most fantastic aspect of this sort of mental illness, is not necessarily the most striking to the person with schizophrenia. The majority of those suffering from schizophrenia don’t even perceive their psychosis as unreal. There are a host of other symptoms that severely compromise one’s ability to live one’s life in the manner in which one should like one’s life to be lived. Agency is crippled and concept of will becomes impotent.

One does not follow the other, but neither does one negate the other. A mental illness is not an extraordinary spiritual experience in of itself. But a person can have a mental illness and also have extraordinary spiritual experiences.

I am a woman with a mental illness (schizoaffective disorder) and I am a woman who claims to have divine visions. These are markedly different states. The psychotic experiences I associate with schizoaffective disorder are simultaneously terrorizing and route. During a psychotic episode I have a repertoire of audio, visual and olfactory hallucinations that, at this point, five years after diagnosis, do not deviate much from a predictable pattern of images and sensations. But to me, terror is the hallmark of psychosis: the feeling of my mind and body assaulting themselves, and my utter impotence to stop what is happening.

Transmissions I associate as being of the divine are intense but the aspect of terror is absent. I am less comfortable talking about these experiences than I am talking about living with a mental illness. Language falls short. I don’t even know if they are about language. But to say: these experiences do not disrupt my life. I have them and I examine them and I continue on.

My writing often includes images and references to the Christian mythology because Christianity is a significant part of my history. I do not address my direct interactions with divinity in my work. But my illness is my life. By this I mean my life must be lived to accommodate my illness. My writing is not especially creative; I write about my life and my experiences. In this sense, my work is perhaps a continuous catalogue of what it is like to perceive the world with a schizophrenia. Because of my illness, terror is a familiar feeling to me and one I am able to access and transmit readily in both writing and performance. There is a brutality to my work but it is a compassionate brutality. It is the brutality of direct experience. Over and over I am trying to convey: I have experienced and I understand. I know how terribly frightened people are of each other. I know how terribly frightened people are of themselves. I want to tell people that it is okay to be frightened, but they mustn’t let their fear stop them. That they must listen to their fear and yet learn how to honestly live the lives they desire despite it. Because of it.

Q. What are the tactile appeals to you with bookmaking and letterpress? What comes closest to it, for you, outside of the press?

A. Books have always held a blatant erotic appeal for me. I get aroused standing in libraries and bookstores, being enveloped by the presence of language made corporal. The scent of books, the turning of pages, the engagement that reading demands: this all speeds quickly beyond the tactile and into the sexual.

My first letterpress class was revelatory. Handling type, using my body to operate the press to create words was the piece I did not know I was missing from writing. It was one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life. Taking the creation of language away from the domain and privacy of the mind and making it a totality of the body and the public. I love the direct incorporation of my body into the reproduction of words (and even this language? The integration of the entire corpus. The biological act of reproduction.).

A single piece of lead type has many different parts. Many of these parts are named after the body. The feet. The face. The belly. The beard. The shoulder. You can literally cup the body of a letter in your palm. And the parts of books themselves: head spine joint tail. Words and the shape of words. I know language is deeply flawed and not especially suited for the task we've assigned it. But I love it so much, and it's like people in that way. Of all the things humans have created, language is closest to our selves. And to be able to give it a body, to experience the body of language directly with my body? It’s a mystical act. It’s exciting and it’s sexual.

The closest thing outside of the press is probably intimacy. Knowing a skin, knowing someone and learning how to get along with them. I think of writing and typography and printing as a relationship. As my primary relationship. Loving people and loving my work are inextricable tasks. One informs the other. Continually.

Q. What project are you working on presently that you're the most excited about?

A. I have two major projects in the works. CVLT CVNT is a one off literary magazine featuring the work of Elizabeth Hall and Marie Fury. I am a piss poor binder and wanted to give myself an assignment to practice binding. I am very excited about this object; the writing is excellent and I have not released a handmade book in two years. This is the most complicated construction for a book I have yet undertaken for an edition. Which is not saying much. But it’s saying something. It ought to be finished up in late spring.  

The second project is a new book of my own work, THE HONEYS TRINITY. I don’t know what to say about this piece. It’s an experiment in forms, primarily in typographic forms. It’s relatively lucid but the forms are weird but maybe not weird enough to be interesting. I don’t know. I only write books that please me, that’s all I’m ever trying to do. Pleasure myself. I have no qualms with calling my work masturbation. Masturbation is very pleasant and sometimes you find people who enjoy watching. I think this is currently a popular position to take about one’s writing but so it goes. Anyway. I expect to release it in late summer.

There are always more projects. Every experience presents the opportunity for a new book. One of the frustrating and beautiful things about book making is how much time and energy it requires to produce such an object. Every book is a commitment and a serious investment of hours and resources. There will never be enough time to create all the books that I envision. So many of them will persist for only as long as I am able to remember them. 

 

Thank you, again, to Jessalyn. Please visit her at her website, Am I Human, where you can find, among other things, a free recording and e-book of her work, The Void of Course Moon.

 

xo,

Future Attractions

Today feels like a flurry of future attractions. I'm sitting in the matinee, waiting for the movie, and I'm just watching previews instead. But I like previews. They put good scenes in previews. Also -- and this is embarrassing -- I'm soft-hearted as all get-out, so previews usually make me cry, if it's a tear-jerker.

Here are some of the things that are coming up in my life (and here):

I'm writing an editorial about something I care about (hint: it's in the triumvirate of what TNH is about) for a pretty sizable media outlet. And I'm worried that I'm going to screw it up, or that they won't take it in the end, or that no one will read it, or that putting my opinion out there for once in my life is going to land me in hot water; but I'm happy that I've gotten the chance to write it, and I'll let y'all know when it's out in the world. And there's the novel excerpt in Storychord on Monday. I've got heebie-jeebies about that. Stage fright.

Today I received full approval to go to the Vermont Studio Center in September. I'll be there for four weeks, and I haven't got a clue how far I'll have gotten in my first draft by then -- but I'm already plotting my schedule out, and trying to figure out how to maximize my time so that I can finish a solid draft by 2013 or 2014.

I quit my role in the fashion blog that I started in 2008 so that I could have more mental energy and time to work on cuddling, novel writing, this blog, etc.

There's a rad-as-hell interview with Jessalyn Wakefield going up next week with never-before-seen photographs and sizzling Q&A.

And I'm going on vacation this long weekend to the seashore, where I'm going to load up my camera, dip my toes in the freezing saltwater, and sleep in a room with a fireplace.

What are you looking forward to?

xo,

The Long Road to No Monetization

Oatmeal, cooked raspberries, and whipped cream.

I took down my shop two nights ago; I took down the links to purchasing prints and postcards. Presently, TNH is a place with no monetization, and no plans for monetization. (I actually lose money on TNH from paying TypePad fees.) With my down-to-the-half-hour schedule the way it is, I don't see myself offering copywriting services or e-courses anytime soon, either.

But why, you may be asking, would I ever think that I needed to make money off of my webspace? I come from a background of avid LiveJournaling, where diarist blogging meant that you got what you paid for, if you had a Paid Account -- a tightly knit community and people to listen to you when times were good, bad, and ugly. But in my attempt to find community in this weird wide web of the Internet now, I've somehow found myself in the entrepreunerial community. I'm more of a lurker than a participant, but I read White Hot Truth and Unicorns for Socialism; I listen to freelancing podcasts and read about why Freckle is the best thing on earth, and why blogging for money is the way to go, because who doesn't want more money? In fact, when the hot, sassy Kelly Diels and I had a Red Shoe Blogger session, we spent way more time talking about money than we needed to, because of the assumption that ducats were my mojo.

Well, let me tell you this. I like money, and I like feeling prosperous in more ways than one. But I don't think that I know how to make money here off of what I do. In the (admittedly short) period of time that I had photographs for sale here, I made twenty-two cents. Maybe my photos suck, but this is also true: the market is just glutted with people who know their way around a lens, and I'm one of those suckers who have gone to art school, have an eyeball that likes to look at things, and wants someone to pay for a print. But you know what? NO MORE. My strengths are fiction writing and lovin' folk. I am not going to make money on TNH by doing either. The strengths of TNH are me talking about my trifecta, as spiritual coach Ronna Detrick calls it: writing, mental illness/health, and compassion/care.

So I'm paring down. The top menu is different -- no more CV, store, or links to photography. Those simply aren't where my strengths are, or where TNH's strengths are. Instead, there are two empty pages of a Manifesto (which I'm looking forward to writing) and Resources (which I'm looking forward to collecting).

I'm still coming to terms with all of this. Listening to entrepreneurial podcasts and reading entrepreneurial blogs so much has my brain in a real wackadoo headspace. I'm still considering becoming an affiliate for some rad note cards that I genuinely love, and have been writing many letters on these days -- but other than that, I have no plans for becoming an affiliate, a place for ad space, or having revenue streams in general.

Therefore, I hope, freeing up TNH for what it's meant to be. And that meant-to-be-ness is fab stuff.

xo,

Unapproachable Things

People come over and they marvel at the assortment of prescription medications I have on my coffee table. The coffee table, which is "shabby chic" and "French country," was purchased online and delivered for less than twenty dollars to my living room.

I have swollen vertebrae and a rotated pelvis. How my pelvis became rotated is unclear. It could have happened on the operating table, when they moved me this way and that. Or it could have happened because I was completely inactive for a month and then went back to my daily life. Either way, one of my legs is now shorter than the other.

The painkillers that are prescribed to me have a side effect of creating mood swings. I don't like to take the painkillers for this reason, but when I don't, I feel like I'm being worn down.

I was rejected from two residencies.

A friend tells me good-bye.

A Post About Pain

Pain, especially long-term pain, can make people misanthropic, angry, and bitter. Even normally very nice people. I've been thinking about this over the last few months.

 

I went back to work on Monday after feeling much better for a few days. Remember that I'd been convalescing for over a month. Then, hours later: pain. Really bad pain.

By the time I went to the clinic for the billionth time yesterday, I had a new diagnosis: back strain. It seems that my back muscles had atrophied when I was recovering, and I pulled a muscle or otherwise injured my back while attempting to get back to everyday life. The back strain was also the culprit behind my pelvic, leg, and abdominal pain, due to the network of nerves originating from the lower back.

The doctor, who wasn't my ordinary doctor, told me to take Motrin and sit on hard chairs. This was after I told her that I was experiencing pain from a 7 to 8 on the pain scale. (Which was true.) I asked her how I was supposed to function with this kind of pain. She said that I would be better in two days, but that it would take a month to fully recover.

I was already near tears by then, but I waited until she left the room to sit on the floor and sob. I cried all the way to the elevators. I cried in the lab where I was getting yet another round of tests done. I cried in the Member Services office, where I tried to get my rejected Short Term Disability forms filled out. I was also hating everyone around me. Even the people who were trying to help. 

I thought of everyone I know who is angry and bitter, and in pain.

I took two melatonin at 9 PM and fell asleep after reading a bit of Mating (Rush). I woke up with pain. I am very tired.