There is No Good Title Today

...because today we are random! In no particular order:

1. Writing time: Wow, universe. You really, really have it out for me right now. You have made me reach into my writing time on two days this week for stuff I can't schedule any other time, even though it was originally scheduled at another time. This is not cool and sucky. Then you scratch my wheel rim at the dealership yesterday, and grant them remorse, so I must write another day in the auto center. NOT COOL. All I want is some pleasant writing time somewhere nice, me, my laptop, nice music, sort of like where I am right now. Anyway, stop it. I schedule writing time, I write in writing time. I don't get surprised. At least not this much.

2. Day Job with Teeth: Wow, Kirkwood. When I'm there, I'm like on, right? All I've done this week is troubleshoot and test. You owe me. Oh...that's the whole paycheck thing. Nevermind, then.

3. Taos Slump: Between Day Job with Teeth and Taos Slump, writing has been...harder. Lifting fingers off the keyboard has been...harder. I hope that getting back into my routine helps. So far, yeah, but not appreciating the writing while holding eyes open with toothpicks thing.

4. World Con: Will you be there? I'll be there. Attending writer ed panels, and stuff. Drinking and stuff.

5. Paradise Icon: Still looking for neo-pros...

6. Workaholics Are Us: So. Day Job. You aren't helping with the regression thing. Not. At. All. Have been relaxing on the principle of thing. Which starts the cycle of questions about why I'm not writing. Own your free time woman. Own it!

7. Husband: Turned 50. Still cool. Still working on year 26.

8. Pirate Glass: Cruise pirate glass broke. Cheap product from China. Damn! No more pirate juice.

9. This Blog: Sketchy. Kinda busy. If you want books, I expect sketchier.

10. Checking Papers: My goodness. How I've missed you, papers! My red pen has been crying out in loneliness!

11. Coffee Shop: May be looking for new first coffee shop. Rock music and student conversations do not rock my writing world. Also, still recognized by Kirkwood crowd. Not cool, not productive. This place is kind of cool. The drama! It burns!

***

That's what's been up with me. In more concrete terms, I am living my very full life, and hope that it gets a little less full soon. I'm going to go back to working on the first third of Abby Rath. After cocktails and supper. Yes, cocktails. We do that sometimes.

Cath

Mirrored from Writer Tamago.

May I Borrow a Cup of Angst?

So. That was a successful evening of socializing, working out, and even writing a (very) little. Tomorrow morning, I'm off to get my hair Margo-ized after a summer of her maternity leave. Yeah, I am so ready.

***

Well, I read Amy Sundberg today. Her blog on Life as a Dream, Life as a Fairy Tale is pretty first rate. And you know, like a good blog entry, it got me thinking.

I've always been a believer in shaping your own destiny and becoming what you dream. No, I'm not about pulling yourself up by the old bootstraps. Rather, I am about living and enjoying life, and being what I want to be. Sounds really, really easy, right?

Funny Amy should use the fairy tale analogy. I have thought of myself as a fairy tale figure before. (Step aside for my pretension.) I wrote a series of entries thinking about my background called The Standard Bearer last year, and I've always felt that I was more of a Don Quixote figure than anything else. Or perhaps a girl who was adopted by trolls and discovered she wasn't a troll. Or a troll, maybe, who learned that she could act like a girl, and people wouldn't notice.

Or there's the Dickensian way of thinking of myself. Pick any one from the number of wretched, mistreated children in Dickens who do right, and you'll probably find me. And I must admit, a lot of early Dickens reading warped my moral image. I often thought of myself as a British gentlemen. Well, British girls were kind of passive.

But the thing about the character who overcomes is that you have to...overcome. Lot of work in overcoming. Hard work. Training yourself to be the thing you want to be. Learning a new culture, like. Does our hero and heroine have a goal worth achieving? Is there a happy ending to the story? Is it necessarily a story of transformation? Can we interpret our lives to have iconic meaning?

I have come from squalor and pain into a happy marriage and a rewarding career in which I help others. That's...pretty epic. I do my art, and I get support to do it. I wouldn't be the person that I am today if I hadn't come from where I did, and while I'm not saying I'd like to do that again, well, there are lessons to be learned from that background that make me a better person, because I won't repeat those mistakes.

So, yes, I'm going to say that it's a good narrative. That life is a story, and you are at the center, and sometimes life is like that Dickens novel. David Copperfield does get out of the cannery and gets to write his own autobiography. The girl meets a great boy and they do live happily ever after. It can be that simple. You don't see the transformation, and the transformation isn't easy, but hey, you know, the life worth living is the examined life. And the grateful life.

That means, I guess, I have to borrow a cup of angst. Because today I am all out.

Mirrored from Writer Tamago.