Tag Archives: work

Listening to the Silence

23 Tuesday May 2017

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I have left my noisy urban home for a few days, and am now in a very quiet place. All I can hear other than my own little noises is the dripping of my friend’s cat bowl, which makes a teeny recycling fountain to keep the water fresher. Strange to tell, instead of being relaxing, all this stillness has done is underscore my own disquiet, which I tend to keep buried like a secret shame.

When I realized Things were burbling up from my inner cesspool, I opted to turn off Pandora and stay with the cat bowl and what I call “microcries:” bursts of blubbering that last about 15 to 30 seconds. It’s sort of like crying constipation–that’s all I can get out at a time, although I feel myself to be a very cistern of tears.

As previously noted, I’m a random crier at the best of times, and I’m getting closer to deciphering why, or at least a maybe-why. I think that when it’s triggered by something heartwarming, it’s because my heart is in reality feeling cold and lonely; if the trigger is heroism, I am afraid that I myself am weak and helpless.

I do many things. I sing, draw, make jewelry, mother, befriend, love. But I feel as tottery at most of it as I do when my physical therapist cajoles me into trying to stand on just my right leg. (Almost everybody is a little lopsided at this, but I’m a champ at lop.) The only thing I really have is the writing. The sheeping writing, which fails to make me any money or gain me any renown, and which will likely continue to fail to do either.

All I am is the writing. That’s what’s at the bottom, behind the tears, underneath the depression, and despite the failure.

During this quiet afternoon, I went to the extent of Asking for a Sign, first in what passes in me for silent meditation, and then just talking out loud. So many people tell confident stories of hearing a Voice, either from outside or within–why not me? Although my faith isn’t what I’d call strong, my belief in the possibility of a Higher Power is stronger than my fear that #45 will turn America into a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and that’s something, isn’t it? But nobody came to my outreaching self-pity party, leaving me to confront what I have, what I know.

Perhaps all I’m really for is the writing. Maybe one or two people will be reached by the words that start at my core and ooze from my fingertips. They will laugh, cry, feel less alone or freakish; they will feel a kindred spirit. My fiction will keep them company for a bit.

What I hear, what I know, is just the writing. And sometimes it is barely enough, but it remains.

Tide Change

28 Tuesday Mar 2017

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Because I can’t meditate (I am a trauma survivor and get jumpy if I feel myself losing conscious control of my body), I had to find a way to dump stress after the New Year’s heart attack. So I cut back my hours at my day job down to one day a week, and that will stop in May. I will be picking up more editing work, and that will fill the financial gap, but belts will be tightened around here.

I made this decision about a couple of months ago, and have until now been too busy with the editing to do much else–somewhere along the line I acquired the Protestant Work Ethic, damn it to blazes. But now there’s a lull, it’s a gray Tuesday morning, and I’m here in my sweats debating getting another tea so I can finish this post in one sitting instead of going back to bed for a half hour: Now what?

Above my desk is a copy of a Batman meme: It is the crisp and elegant Batman from The Animated Series, pointing his finger at me. The caption reads, “Quit Procrastinating/Work on Your Art.” I’ve put in a decent word count recently–finished the sequel to Long Leggedy Beasties!–and so this Lent I decided to do an hour a day working at visual art. Like most of my Lenten disciplines through the years, it’s most conspicuous for its omission. I did complete the T-shirt design needed for the day job, but that was because I had an external deadline. Other than that–

–I’m blocked. You don’t know how happy I am that I’m at least finding words to put on this screen. I started a weird little story about an autistic girl on a bus, who has just met a mage and his familiar, although she doesn’t know it yet–and I’m stuck. I listened to my beta reader and tore out half of Max’s sequel because I sorta went off topic and threw in the kitchen sink (an age-drenched failing of my work in all media), and now am doing the stare–write a sentence–stare–write three more–stare–wander off method, known to writers everywhere. And don’t get me started on Damascus. I’m just glad I have a solid beta reader to point out the screamingly obvious. Sigh.

I also have to self-pub Max and get him out of my system. I tried finding an agent for him, and nobody bit past the can-I-see-three-pages stage, and those were the agents, I discovered, who reply to all queries that way. (I wish they would just put that in their requirements; it would save a lot of raised hopes.) At least a few people have read Beasties and been kind enough to compliment me on it, so this way Max will get his chance to do some people-pleasing.

I just wish I didn’t feel that doing so means I’m a failure. The market has changed, that’s all, and the good thing that it brings is that some people will read my stuff. Maybe not as many as would if I had a big publisher doing advertising and whatnot, but some.

So much for going back to bed. The 18-pound cat is stretched out on its bottom half and she has a stronger character than I do in terms of my getting up the gumption to remove my loving pet who just wants to be near me. Time to soldier on, watch closely, and try to see what life is saying to me.

I Wanna Be Sedated

23 Saturday Jul 2016

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In a little over two weeks, I have the second surgery. The stress has been driving me nuts; I doubt it’s a coincidence that my blood sugar has catapulted to over 200. I have another week of work, my insurance still hasn’t cleared my root canal with my dentist, the housing lady still hasn’t gotten back to me to acknowledge that we need to meet to renegotiate rent because now we will all be living on my disability, Long-Leggedy Beasties is being steadfastly ignored, sob–and my rewrite of the very first book–the trilogy–is like rolling in a huge wad of flypaper: Just as soon as I free one piece, something else gets stuck. I even had to dive in and do a nip and tuck on Max, because he will now chronologically come first in the series.

But the most irritating part of my life is that I can’t seem to sleep well. There are three big basic types of insomnia: difficulty in getting to sleep, staying asleep, and waking up too early. I have all three.

Worst of all, I have something called Restless Legs Syndrome, where just when I’m about to drift off, this electric impulse shoots through my body and I have to move my legs and sometimes my arms. The med my long-suffering shrink suggested (Mirapex, or pramipexole) doesn’t seem to be working. I went off my anticoagulant so I could try a dose of an NSAID. Nada. What did work was Percocet (courtesy of dentist above), and can’t you just hear the threatening chord of music there?

Luckily, I’m not stupid, having just had to wean myself off oxycodone for Knee #1, so I’ve just happened to take the one. (Dental tip: Take the antibiotics, stupid. They cool down a “hot” tooth and are a far more effective way of dealing with the pain than narcs. Who cares if it messes with your GI tract for a few days? Eat some yogurt, and stop whinging. Oh, and take all the antibiotics, which is your way of keeping resistant bugs from spreading.) But, ooh, that night of uninterrupted sleep was nice!

So I’m dealing with my surgery anxiety in the possibly unhealthy way of looking forward to the drugs.

The down side of the narcs, though, is that for some reason they slow my creative processes down to a crawl. (Picture Flash the sloth at the Zootopia DMV.) Don’t expect much from me while I’m on them. Coloring is a lot of work; I just hope I can find something good on Netflix, having exhausted NCIS at last. And then there’s the pain they’re treating. Not kidney stones or bad cramp pain, just a gnawing sort of ache and the discomfort of your leg having not enough space to accommodate all the swelling your body wants to do. Le sigh.

But at least I’ll sleep.

 

 

My Silent Instrument

17 Sunday Jul 2016

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(Written to Genesis’ “I Can’t Dance.”)

I’ve just finished a spot of what my son calls “ADHDing,” which means browsing the net (usually inspired by something on Facebook; this time it was actually from a piece I’m editing) and pulling up YouTube vids by the criteria of “Hey! Let’s go lookit that!” This is by far my favorite way of wasting an hour, but it always ends up making me feel a little bad.

I can’t sing terribly well, and my dancing is a private thing. My photos are all badly composed and only the evolution of the camera saves my thumbs from being stars. I can’t play a musical instrument, and I’ve lost my drawing facility through non-use. And I kinda doubt I have the kind of fantastic patience it takes to do animation. Is this what it’s like to feel dumb? In both senses of the word?

All I can do is write, or so it feels. And I know that’s important, and it has its own magic: I can make people hallucinate sights, sounds, and smells. I can make them feel sad, or make them laugh. I can make them happy. But sometimes that’s not enough. Or is it?

Bribe

30 Thursday Jun 2016

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A number of my followers and friends have read Long Leggedy Beasties, either when it was posted here or by my giving out beta and review copies. And the first two and a half chapters are available on Amazon. Here’s the deal: I hope you liked what you saw–writing for me is at least partially in blood and sweat, and now I’m going to offer to do a little bit just for you . . . but you have to do a little bit for me first:

Below is a link to my book page, which will take you to Amazon. (Or you can just go to your Amazon account and search for me (Idony Lisle) or the book.) The first twenty-five reviewers will get either a limerick or a haiku, written just for you. (You can pick which and suggest themes, but cut me a little slack.) Just slip me a quick comment here after you write your review.

Why that number? Because that’s when Amazon starts including the book in “You Might Like” lists and “also bought.” Means a lot.

Oh yeah, the book is only $2.99. Support the up-and-coming author! (You can buy it on any of the other venues, but please review on Amazon.)

https://books.pronoun.com/long-leggedy-beasties/

Stupid Writing

19 Sunday Jun 2016

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OK, got Long Leggedy Beasties launched as my first experiment in self-publishing, finished fine-combing Max AGAIN and am now waiting for my typographer son to finish the cover. Meanwhile, I’ve dived back into Dark Crimson Corners, which is now almost ten years old, and . . . yeesh!

It’s not that I was a bad writer back then. I was a somewhat weaker writer back then; but the yeesh! part is the intensity. This was my first novel, folks, and of course I threw everything but the kitchen sink into it–autobiography to just weird wild hares up my bum. Going through it is exhausting and I need breaks. I’ve been editing out unneeded plot threads and random asides (and changing “Pharaoh” to “Max” because Max’s book is coming first.) I’ll then put together Damascus the serial Slayer’s story (said unneeded plot thread) and run it as a sort of prequel to the rest.

After that? I dunno. By then it’ll possibly be November, and time for NaNoWriMo while battling the pain of a post-surgical knee. (Am going in for the other one on August 8th.) Seeing as I already have a stub done for Things That Go Bump in the Night (sequel to Da Kitttehs), I’m not sure what my WriMo will be. I might stick with the cat theme seeing as it seems to be working.

Oh–an aside for anybody who actually ends up *reading* the stuff: Eureka (published here) is non-canon, meaning it’ll stay here and not mess up the reality my fingers are trying so hard to make coherent.

In other news, back at work and trying desperately to do everything that needs to be done in the seven weeks remaining before my surgery, including putting together a training on the autism spectrum for my co-workers.

My allergies have been killing me, to the point where I have succumbed to using Flonase (ewww), and the new knee is still stiff with painful muscles. (The surgery has healed solid as a rock–no more bone pain!) My sleep is disrupted in that I now wake up too early. (It’s 07:30 now; been up writing since 5, and am yawning to nigh-decapitation.) Despite having tea and morning meds, I will now try to go back to bed for an hour.

Various Catchups, Mustered

26 Tuesday May 2015

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A chance rejection of poor Max made me realize (as in, a light bulb went nuclear) that his story has eaten my plot. So I trashed something like ten chapters (Yes!), realizing that they were the equivalent of his baby book: You only want to see that stuff if you are already enamored of Max. Now this leaves me with the problem of how to make you enamored of Max without starting with the one-celled Phalutagemickis of his Tricenjurassic past. Oy. At least this leaves me with what for me is a happy thing–I no longer have to worry about how long it is!

* * * * *

The whole faith thing has expanded to the point where I’m considering going back to chanting Nam myoho renge kyo as a sort of meditation. Last time I did this, my life exploded, which was probably all a coincidence, but I am still looking at the beautiful liturgy and beads a friend sent me, all sitting nice and quiet on my nightstand, and telling myself not to be a scaredy cat. Maybe my life needs to be exploded; what do I know?

* * * * *

My therapist listened to me rant about the hatefulness of my job for a few sessions, and then suggested I take a vacation. After I experienced what for me is an early warning sign of Bad Stuff (i.e., I took a mental health day), I decided to be obedient and compliant and whatnot, and am taking off for the first two weeks of June. This is unpaid leave, and as such won’t involve tropical islands or anything, but at the very least the only crazy people I have to deal with are my beloveds in my inner circle. And me. Very much me, that being the point.

* * * * *

My beautiful 11-year-old cat has cancer, and I am mordantly amused by how this has affected us. The Big C has a numinous presence that has totally turned around how we treat her, let alone think about her. Much tiptoeing and overindulging–good thing we also brought home a major toy for Zoe, who has been on Rip’s butt ever since she stepped out of the carrier.

Ripley had surgery a week and a half ago at the awesome Alliance for Animals, and they got it all, but warned us of probable recurrence. She seems to be her old self, if not better now that she doesn’t have a lump in her mouth, but has gotten really spoiled, because we had her on cat soup (Yes, they make cat soup) while she was healing, and now it’s nose up at most *wet* food, let alone *shudder* kibble. We are delighted, but we all hear the mortality ticking. I’m prone to hearing that as it is, so for now we love the hell out of her and try not to think about it.

* * * * *

And that’s a wrap. Time to head off for a board meeting, instead of my writers’ group, which is so much fun I’d frankly rather be doing that, but being a grownup sucks. So it goes.

And That’s a Wrap!

29 Friday Nov 2013

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I hope you’ve enjoyed Eureka as much as I have. I didn’t want it to be over! Thanks for each like and follow–every one has made me go “Oh goody!” (Comments, though. Those would also make me happy. Just a hint, if you have the time.)

I am a NaNoWriMo 2013 WINNER!!! 51,743 is their count. I wasn’t at all sure I could do it, but I took a writing weekend in New Hampshire, where there was a hot tub (no, we didn’t bathe in it) and lots of quiet and a writing friend to nag. This made up for a work week during which I did next to nothing. I know it’s probably silly, but I have a real sense of accomplishment.

This taught me a lot about the writing process: First, of course, is that I could have theoretically written Max‘s 100K first draft in two months, instead of oh, a year and a halfish! Ouch! And Dark Crimson Corners could have been pounded out in six months instead of five years–and I really had a sense that I was writing hard for that one. (That said, both of those were almost entirely first-drafted in longhand, instead of Eureka, which was almost entirely composed at the keyboard.) Second, that I write a bit over a thousand words an hour. Thus, if I make myself actually sit down and write for a measly hour in the morning, instead of, say, just faffing around playing World of Warcraft, I can get an amazing amount of stuff done. I guess the trick is remembering that I’m a writer first.

But I’m a lot of things second and one of them is being the webmaster! I am being paid this week to revamp the site and do a brochure. And a lot of things have gotten in the way of that. Ouch! again. I’m way behind.

The biggest thing getting in the way is that we are moving this week, God help us. Still haven’t signed up the actual muscle, so wish me well.

After move and work are caught up, I’ll go through and give a lightning second draft to Eureka, with the goal of having her put up as an .epub on Amazon by Christmas. Just to see what happens. Thoughts?

Unmoved

01 Tuesday Oct 2013

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I’m caught at work with nothing to do. Well, comparatively. I could be researching new groups; I could be working on my quilt block; I could even slip back to my office where I can do my tiny data-crunch of the people who visited the center in September. But I can’t concentrate on the first two and the third is awkward: I’m sort of invisibly babysitting a recovery group from the receptionist’s area.

I’m not part of the group officially for two reasons. For the first, it’s 90 minutes long, and that’s too long, even with coloring. (A perk of being a peer specialist is that people understand my need to focus on doing something like abstract artwork during meetings to hold down the wiggles and help me pay attention.) For the second, I’m not the official facilitator, but being Frau Direktor, it can sometimes be funky with group dynamics, and this group is new and a little wobbly.

But I’m here because earlier it looked like a peer would be present who’s been having a hard time recently. Last week, she threw a tantrum during a group–and that one was being run by an honest-to-john psychiatrist–and stormed out. The facilitator made it clear that it needed to be Handled somehow, if at all possible. So when I popped my head into the program to see how it was running and saw her here today mumbling to herself . . . uh-oh. So basically I stayed behind this afternoon in the role of possible official bouncer–but she’s not here after all. Just as well.

You may be thinking that it’s politically incorrect of us to have standards of behavior–after all, we’re all mad here–but I assure you, it’s necessary: People acting out can be frightening and triggering to other peers as well. Getting screamed at was one of the things they left off my job description during the hire (possibly because it was also done by the guy hiring me, who is thankfully no longer with the firm) but it is my job. As is calling security. Sigh. But not today. Today I try not to eavesdrop and sit here blogging to you. (Not a total loss. I’m able to touch base with building maintenance about the rock somebody threw through our window this morning. Sigh again.)

Meanwhile, back at my life: We still haven’t moved–but November 1 is now the ticket. It’s reached a level of unreality by now–the stress coating my soul has coagulated like the cheesy mold that coats a long-forgotten cup of coffee. I know on a purely intellectual level that it will be violently dug into by the cleaning brush of packing in two weeks, because by then I’ll be attending two 40-hour weeks of intensive training. In other words, I’ll be exhausted and cranky. I still haven’t finished the prop paintings I’m doing. Moving then would be a cruel joke, but we know the universe loves to laugh.

I’ve decided to participate in the zaniness of NaNoWriMo for the first time this year, which will force some sort of writing out of my head. I’ll link some bits here. And I haven’t forgotten about Damascus! m’ not dead yet! I’m getting better! I feel happy!

A Quick Catchup and Mumbling About Things Bought Over the Internet

25 Sunday Aug 2013

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Yarrgghhh. Where did that stressball summer go?

Let’s see:

My son is still on the couch and we are still waiting to move. What had been conceptualized as a July 1 move to a three-bedroom apartment has been beaten down by the realities of market demand and people dallying about actually moving when they tell their landlords they are. We are now looking at a damn-near-sure-thing on October 1, which would have thrown us all into hysterics had we known at the outset of this adventure. The new apartment is supposed to be bigger than this (other than just adding a bedroom, smarty-pants) and we are crossing our fingers.

But it almost definitely lacks a ferret room, which is to say a chamber which is far too small to be a bedroom by modern building code standards (else it would be marked as one and we would be charged accordingly). So in preparation, we got a new ferret cage, which has about a 3′ square footprint instead of the 10′ square they’d been in for the past several years. Nobody has come right out and said it, but this has been an epic disaster; an unheralded mustelidean misery which we are now stuck with. I’ll just leave you with the phrase, “Oh come on, they’ll figure the slide out!” and we’ll move on. (We ended up making them little fake staircases out of unloved textbooks.) But it looked GREAT online!

To add to the furry fun, the cats have fleas. So after the flea bath was the usual waste of time, my daughter ordered them flea collars, as for some reason our local pet store is in denial about cats in fact suffering from fleas just like dogs. The picture on Amazon said “flea collar.” What came yesterday was a calming collar, all covered in copious powder smelling like everything but the lavender it claimed it was. I wish they’d invented these back when I had the cat who chewed all of his own fur off because he needed to be an only kitty–but I really wish they’d just sent us the flea collar they charged us for.

My daughter’s laptop is dying and she is now sharing mine pending the probably dim hope that the guy in Dudley Square will fix it, unlike Microcenter, which smugly told us that they were only told to put in the part–diagnostics as to whether they put the part in correctly would have cost extra. (Really. Literally. I am not making that up. Never go there.) I am spending big wisdom points on not going all banshee on they ass.

Stress, stress, stress. On top of everything else, we had a personnel shakeup at work and I ended up being the only person on the team with Web skills. Such as they are. True, I was out carving out niches in HTML back when pappy was a brat, but over the last ten years, we’ve moved to the CSS Internet. So I went out and got a book which spoonfed it to me, and everything was fine, until the site which looked awesome on the Mac was broken on the PC, meaning that once again I had to break out tabling and faking a lot. But in the end my new site looks one hell of a lot better than the old one, which was put together by a committee of mentally ill people–and looked like it. (I’m mentally ill. I can say this stuff. Sort of like the N word.)

I offered to do a similar redesign for somebody else on the team, but communications broke down because I wouldn’t let her hang on the phone with me while she supervised me making her changes live. This woman, known henceforth as The Client because she flashed me back to my early agency days, is unclear on what the big megilla is making PDFs so different from Word documents and was miffy because I couldn’t edit one of her pre-existing PDF bits. (They wouldn’t spring for the $30 CSS book [“We thought you already knew all that!”]; there’s no way they’re getting me Acrobat–I’m just glad that the Mac does basic PDFs natively.)

She also put up a downloadable document in Word. And I used my nice words and everything, but no dice. Webmonkeys are webflunkies, and as soon as she realized she couldn’t micromanage the entire rebuild, she faded off to a corner. This is swell with me, as Clients get charged Real Money, instead of the we’ll-pay-you-for-a-sick-day method we use around here, and I already have *ahem* a job. THAT at least has been going smoothly, which of course now has my paranoia radar blinking.

So there have been days I’ve been holding onto my recovery with all my fingernails, and I won’t deny that there has been crying. (Crying’s OK. It’s when I start walking around randomly singing all the time that it’s time for the men with the net.)

Writing: Well, you’ve already noticed the lack of blogging. But I did *drumroll* finish the epsilon draft of Max, meaning that as soon as the beta team does this one last crawl, it’s time to figure out what to do next. I was planning on sending it out the old-school way, but I have to talk to an expert on disability before I do that–heaven forbid it actually sell for too much money and I end up shot in the foot. I might end up self-publishing after all, who knows?

Meanwhile, I’ve been plodding along on Max Draconum and lazily wondering what to feed you nice people next. I think I might just rewrite the rest of the Damascus thread after all, seeing as I’ve decided to simplify the book it used to live in and focus instead on another of its plots.  We shall see, we shall see.

But for now I wanted to pop on, tell y’all I haven’t gone back to the hospital yet, and now consider myself poked about the blog thang. Peace, y’all!