What a difference 24 hours makes.

A couple of minor setbacks today. I was supposed to meet friends at a happy hour last night, but couldn't find the place. It turned out, I had the street wrong! How could I mistake Manchester for Olive? I didn't lie down at 5 as I felt I should, that's probably why. I might have arrived late, but I would have arrived.

I went home and gave myself a triple vodka. I seldom have that much, usually a single or double. Then I woke up this morning with a sore throat, and itchy mouth, took some benedryl, slept for a few more hours. Didn't really feel any better. I had to cancel tonight's plans. I slept through the early evening and finally got up. I did a few hours of writing on the novel today, but for the most part, everything from last night on has been a wash out for everything except reading. 

Hoping to be back with it tomorrow. I have to finish a chapter of writing. Late tomorrow, I have to work on another blog entry.

Update: 12:45 1/18/13 I've actually been able to turn this into a very productive evening of writing.

Rediscovering joy

At the recommendation of a friend, I've been reading Andrew Solomon's Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression for my nonfiction. I'm only 94 pages into it, which is not very far. The book is close 500 pages of prose with a 40 page bibliography. It seems to cover depression from every different angle. 

On pages 34-37 the book tells the story of a Cambodian woman named Phaly Nuon, who survived the brutality of the Pol Pot's Killing Fields. For reference to how ruthless the regime was, one out of four people in Cambodia were murdered or died of starvation during that time. For the size of the population he ruled over, Pol Pot was many times worse than Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong.

Afterward, in a Thai refugee camp, she saw women who were wasting away PTSD and depression. She treated these women by following four steps: forgetting, working and loving; and then the most important step, teaching them that those three are all inter-related, part of a whole. Phaly has had so much success, that she has been a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize more than once.

Not made for 9 to 5.

My hours are extremely irregular. I put in eight hours writing today, but I started at noon, found myself worn out 3:30, napped until 6, wrote until 8, had dinner, started writing again at 9, and finished up at 11:30.

I get mentally worn out during the day. The temptation, which I've indulged, is to blame this on concussions I had as a child. I don't actually know. I have told doctors about it, but because the US now has the worst healthcare system in the industrialized world (and this is not an exaggeration), and the most expensive, I can't actually afford to find out, and our medical system won't solve it anyway.

I will get overwhelmingly tired at irregular times during the day, and if I don't go to sleep, I will begin to make stupid mistakes. If I try to push through it, I'll continue to make mistakes, my mood will crash and I'll get a migraine. This has been going on for decades. This isn't a normal tiredness, either, like one you get late at night, what I'm feeling now. This is, "I feel like I'm going to die" tiredness. I can't predict when it will happen, but it happens some time during the day no matter how much sleep I get during the night.

American Mary: a good digression.

I went to a party last night. I didn't know hardly anyone there. It was a benefit for the owner of the pub, O'Malley's, who had suffered a stroke. It was, of course, at that pub. I'm on a stringent, fixed-income budget, and ran deficit last month, so I have to choose my socializing carefully. 

A trivial fact about me: I fear nothing in life more than a stroke.The very thought of it is frightening.

I went alone. Several different groups were meeting there, and I knew almost nobody. I did talk to a few people, but in between time, I sat alone thinking about the scene I was going to write. That's what I do now, I daydream about my characters or about the scene, when I'm driving, when I'm walking, not when I exercise, though. Then I watch TV. It's probably an expression of both my opinion as a writer, and my Attention Deficit Disorder.

Slut Shaming, pt 1: Rape

What does a guy have to say about the subject of slut-shaming? My own message is that women as well as men engage in it, and I think in about equal numbers. Yes, I think it's possible that even though it comes down preponderantly on females, I believe other females are just as likely to be slut-shame as males are.

 Especially for adolescents, "slut" is a smear used to knock somebody off the status ladder. However, they do it with a sense of justice that is pretty much assented to by adults. It's a dynamic that has a lot in common with bullying, which with I have a lot of experience, on the receiving end. One of my old observations about bullying is that often the adults signal, consciously or not, who gets bullied. Children try to aim their aggression at kids whose oppression make the instigators feel secure and justified.  This is why Conservative Christians have said that anti-bullying campaigns are actually promoting the "gay agenda." They are admitting that they depend on bullying to instill homophobia in kids. Having gone to Catholic schools in the '70s, I could attest that the most damaging thing you could be called was "fag," or some variant. Second worst was n*gg*r-lover. And no, there were no African-Americans at my grade school and very few at my high school. Bullying was a means to indoctrinate both homophobia and racism. The latter definitely wasn't part of the Catholic teaching, in fact, I've probably mentioned before, the nuns did their level best to stamp it out in the students. Unfortunately, the racism was endorsed by the parents, and their sway won out. For homosexuality, though, the parents and the church agreed.

A super athlete? Presume cheating.

I'm trying to post two times a week on substantial topics, but in doing so, I'm endangering now my goal of 2,400 words to read on my novel. After days of working on the topic I want to write about, (Slut-Shaming) and discovering I have too many thoughts requiring too much background and documentation, I've decided, for this deadline, to fall back on a different topic. This is the way I'll have to write this blog, small, simple topics interspersed with bigger, more complex ones. It's called lowering expectations.

Speaking of lowered expectations, I hear that Lance Armstrong is considering a public confession of his doping. After all the vehement denials, he's thinking of coming clean. I'll believe that when I see it. This is somebody who couldn't restrain his ego and competitiveness to give himself anything less than seven Tour de France titles.

Sex!

Handyman's Porn

 
No, the title of this entry isn't just to get your attention, that's really what this is about. As a blogger, I often run up against conundrum: how much do I really want to share? I'm very cognizant of how information on the Internet can be used against me. Information I should not share, such as: when I will be on vacation (what a concept), so I only talk about events retrospectively. My birthday: that's identifying information.

Then there are the subjects that can burn bridges and make enemies of  people I don't even know, or turn friends into enemies. Don't I know about politics and religion, but another of those is sex. If your views don't coincide with the social norm, stay quiet; and if they do, the social normals see little point in talking about it. The safe view in this culture is monogamy: no sex outside of marriage, no fancy plumbing (intercourse only, and some souls restrict that to mish), no birth control, before or after sex.

Newtown massacre.

Flag and shattered sky at Newtown

I'm late posting here about the Newtown shooting, but-- with the handle of caseymoz, I was posting/arguing about it on the Democratic Underground for the week after it happened. Some examples:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1997575

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1977591

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=337620

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=338503


Descriptive words can only turn this horrific tragedy into some kind of fiction. All 20 children, 28 people total were murdered in such a cold, malicious way.

Day off, I guess.

I don't plan to take days off. It just happens that way. I'm a writer, self-employed. Every single day I get up with the idea of working on my main project. On days like today those plans don't pan out, but it's a holiday, so I suppose nature just meant it like that. This seems to happen consistently about one, sometimes two days a week. In other words, I get a day off whether I want it or not.

I have taken up to three weeks, though without such a day off. The work doesn't only include writing. I do a lot of reading. For my writer's group, I always have to read and critique somebody's work. I'd give anything to have a 1200 wpm reading speed or better, but reading does help you as a writer. Then there's studying the finer points of grammar and style mechanics.

You then have to practice. This blog would be considered practice. I find that issues I want to write about the most simply tie me in knots. My writing about my family life turned into heap, and it's taking a lot of work to unsnarl. I want to take on some more pertinent and controversial issues. However, it seems that I still respond to other people's posts far better than I can generate my own blog entries. I do this here and here. Why don't I just link them in my blog? Because by the time I get around to writing my blog, I'm trying to think of my own issues to write about, and often I respond to posts spontaneously; those are the distractions. I'm afraid if I do, the blog becomes incoherent.

It was very nice together for New Year's. My reading seemed acceptable. There were only about nine people there, a very brief reading compared to others the group has had, which was good because it left the rest of the time for partying. One guy knew about four verses of Auld Lang Syne. Which was good because nobody thought of any other way to hail the new year when it came about.

I remember as a child looking at how long the years were and thinking that living until the year 2000 would be virtual immortality. I'm fortunate.  

 

New Year's Resolution

I don't generally go in for New Year's resolutions, but I will make one this time: I will post on this blog at least twice a week, on Wednesday and Saturday by 6 p.m.

I don't have a wife or GF. As an atheist, my "solstice" holiday is called Humbug. I've kept my family at arm's length this holiday season, and I've been happy. I'll still go over and help my Dad if he calls, but my sister and her husband are living there now, and so I'm not needed very often anymore. Socially, I don't have much in common with my Dad or siblings. I've felt disconnected for so long when I've been there, and it would trigger depressions.

Almost the entire time over these holidays has been spent writing, reading and critiquing.  Every day I've been exercising, and I've done some cleaning up, with plenty more to do, I'm afraid.

I celebrate New Year's with my writer's group tonight. The party also acts as our weekly meeting/reading. This group is dedicated. They've met every week for seventeen years, never missing a one. We almost missed last week because our usual venue was closed and almost everyone was with family, until one guy put together a small party, including me, who did readings. I wish I had joined them when they started out in the mid-90s. Of course, this thing called the Internet was just getting started then. It was only by the Internet that I found them. Because their website made them appear inactive, at first I passed them over for another group that didn't work out so well. They would only read somebody's works once a month, and only about 1/6th of the words.

In the current group, half the people have been published, one of them has sold a novel, one has received the interest of an agent in the last year. It's a good group. It has purpose.

I have to get my installment prepared for them tonight. Maybe I should practice reading with vodka this time . . .

Mood: happy.