Progress (or, rather, lack thereof)

Holy dairy cows, the past couple weeks (read: two months) have been crazy.

I went through the whole moving process - that took about a month total of looking for a place, signing a lease, packing, moving, and now we're still in the process of settling in. I've given up two hours of my days to driving back and forth from work which is just fun.  

And I'm still struggling to write. I've been journaling a lot more... though not in my usual detail or with any of my usual - a-hem - flair. And obviously I've been neglectful of this blog (as well as two others). It's an uphill battle as they say.

At least I'm up in New Hampshire for the weekend. Wonderful family times can't be beat. Good for recharging, etc. I need it after this week in particular. I got stung by a bee for the first time in about twenty years. No anaphylactic shock, but my finger did swell up to a glorious size for three days. Cue me going into a Benadryl induced coma and losing a bunch of time. No writing. No working. No exercise. Zero progress - unless you count healing insect damage.

My motivation for everything in still high, though I feel pretty frustrated. I've been quite good about keeping my food and fitness journal (it's a Star Wars moleskine that I titled "How to Become a Jedi Like Luke Skywalker"). I've been writing something... almost every day. Even when it's only 100 words. And I've been thinking about my writing almost non-stop. I pulled out a couple of old books: How to Write A Damn Good Novel by James Frey and Bird By Bird by Annie Lamott.

They both, of course, have sections addressing the problem of writer's block. Typical stuff, but good to hear. It happens to everyone, blah blah. Don't let it stop you, blah blah. If you're a writer, you'll figure out a a way through it, blah blah. Mostly it's a matter of hitting your head on the keyboard until something falls out.

Anyway, that's what's up with me for now. What up with all of you? Any of you who stop by and read this at point or another, that is....

Solutions

Let's talk about something serious.

Ever since I graduated college, I feel as though I've been on a bit of a downward spiral in terms of my health.

I've always had (what I consider) stupid-weird health problems. I have anxiety-related nausea that can be crippling. I have poor blood circulation. My feet are flat. My eyesight, especially in the dark, is much less than perfect. I get migraines. I am prone to random bouts of depression. Two winters ago, I had vertigo for three weeks. Stupid-weird problems. I can deal with all of them with various degrees of success, but there is one issue that I absolutely refuse to put up with anymore.

My weight.

Looking at my BMI right now, I'm definitely on the dangerous side of overweight where you don't want to cross into the next territory. This number aside (which, after all, is just a number) for the past two years I have been feeling the awful effects of being overweight. I'm tired more often. My clothes don't fit. I hate how I look in pictures. I feel bloated. I have regular digestive issues that I had never had to deal with before. Etc etc. This is the first time in my life (since I was maybe 12 or 13) that I don't like the way I look, and I tend to go out of my way to avoid facing that fact.

The worst part of all of this is, of course, that it's entirely within my control and of my own doing. I mean, for the first year or so that my metabolism evened out from its post-teenagery blaze, maybe I could have a pass for figuring out what my new normal is. But now that it's two or three years past that? No more excuses. This is now a matter of self-control.

So here it is. I want to lose forty pounds by the time I turn 26 next March. I think this is a pretty reasonable goal. And I'm going to do it smart. Focus on eliminating the bad parts of my diet (Wendy's, I am looking at you!), and adding in a hell of a lot more exercise. That's my biggest problem, I think. I eat relatively well most of the time - though I could use a lesson in portion control. But I do not go out and sweat my ass off nearly often enough. I have blamed this on my job for a long time (which is peculiarly exhausting), but I don't want to do that anymore. There really is no excuse in this century with all of the infinite resources at our fingertips for not doing something about a weight issue if you have an issue with it!

Our new apartment complex has a pool - blam! I can do laps and other fun pool things without breaking a sweat. Good for after work too. There's also an awesome rail trail nearby that I can use for walking and running. I want so desperately to be one of those toned women running in a sports bra and compression shorts. I need to take advantage of my yoga and tai chi and bellydance dvds too. I might even give in and buy Zumba for my Wii.

At any rate, I stating all of this here because I want this to be a real and alive goal. I plan on focusing most of my energy on this as soon as we get through our move to western MA. I figure by setting a goal of losing forty pounds by my next birthday... that's August to March. I will be blogging about my progress at least one a month until then. I have all the confidence in the world that I can do this - but obviously I often have trouble adhering to lofty goals. I want this to be something I'm thinking about and trying to do every minute of every day.

Here's to being healthier.

Melancholia

My computer is a less than satisfactory tool right now. The battery is completely dead, so it runs only when plugged in - and with just a little tug,,, beeeeeeooop. Laptop down. Highly annoying. I have been wanting to buy a netbook as my primary writing tool for some time now (like a year or more), but I can't justify the purchase right now when we're about to move. Damn these less than well-paying jobs D and I have!

The past two days have been peculiar. I came home from work on Wednesday with a painful and incredibly itchy welt on the inside of my left knee. Benadryl didn't do anything but knock me out, so we went to the ER around midnight. Docs gave me a diagnosis of cellulitis, but preferred to give me a lon antibiotic regime just in case it's Lyme disease or something else unexplained. It was very painful to walk so I stayed home the past two days. Today things are looking up, swelling going down and redness finally retreating, but I still have a million other itchy bug bites to deal with so I guess I don't begrudge myself some time to recover.

(Though taking time off work is certainly not helping my financial woes.)

My sleep schedule has been all out of whack since the Benadryl/ER. That always leaves me with an odd feeling of unreality. I've also been a reading a book (which is very good) in which one of the main characters seems to be suffering some kind of mental breakdown - and all of the other POV characters have various levels of paranoia and flashbacks to abuse. Spending so much time reading that story has probably not helped my feeling of unreality.

I don't know why, but I definitely slip more into the minds of characters who have some degree of crazy going on. I find it compelling to read, and even more compelling to write. I suppose it might be because all of my darkest moments have consisted of me "losing it" in some way - feeling a slip on the grip of what's real, wondering if I can control my thoughts or actions, watching the world spin around me without me.

Today I'm having that feeling in a disconnected sort of way. Trying to gauge what my reactions to words and experience should be rather than just having them. Spending too much time in meandering thought. It's nothing that I can pin on a particular incident. I don't feel like there's anything I can do to make it stop. I just have to drift through with it until normal feeling floods back in.

Jeez, human brains are weird.

P.S. The book is called All For One by Ryne Douglas Pearson. I'm about 3/4ths of the way done with it, and it's a pretty fantastic little thriller. http://www.amazon.com/All-For-One-ebook/dp/B0044KM16I

Back to the Lighthouse

I've been struggling with getting words out of my head lately. I'm not sure why. It's frustrating and depressing to feel like my voice is gone. I don't think it's a permanent thing, but it's definitely been affecting my ability to finish Wings of Destiny - an unfortunate fact that is causing everyone I know to constantly ask me that horrible question: "How's your novel coming?"

Okay, okay. I know I told everyone that I would be done with this book by now. I know I promised myself to buckle down and finish. But here's the thing: I am buckled down. I am trying to finish. I am stuck in Luke Skywalker's head apparently. Too much trying, not enough doing. But how is a writer sans her voice supposed to finish her damn book? If my muse was tangible, I'd throttle him. For realsies.

I guess most people would say I have writer's block. I'm not sure that's true. I can brainstorm easily enough. In fact, in the past two weeks, I've come up with grand and wonderful ideas, plots, and characters for at least three of my other books. I even had a small breakthrough with an issue I've been having with the plot of Wings. However, none of that plotting and world-building did a lick of good for my actual writing. I just came back from spending the weekend (mostly) with my best writing friends, usually an inspiring atmosphere for getting words down, and I got approximately five sentences of real writing done the entire time. On the other hand, I also reread an entire manuscript of mine, gave it an entirely new plot, fixed a conflict with another manuscript, and wrote a new and improved antagonist into another. Not to mention, I brainstormed a new story with said best writing friends.

Sigh.

Bigger sigh.

Sigh with a (headdesk) thrown in for good measure.

This is the time when I try going back to my lighthouse. If you're new to this whole thing, or just don't remember all of my crazy-weird methods of keeping sane (or is it insane?), my lighthouse is where all of my characters from all of my stories go when a) I am not using them or b) they are hiding from me. I wrote a post describing it awhile ago: http://mysticalminx.blogspot.com/2011/05/subconscious-theater.html So on my laptop I have a document called "Subconscious Theater" that I write in as a therapeutic way to figure out what's going on with all of these clamoring voices inside my head - and perhaps why they're not coming through clearly.


P.S. I'm also big into running as a new way to clear my mind of reality and immerse myself in my own worlds.
I'm going to go try that now.

P.P.S. It sort of worked? I feel like blogging more at least. -_-

Vacation and Preoccupation

The boy and I have been vacationing down in Metro DC for the past five days. (We've only got a couple left - boo, hiss.) It's nice to relax, of course, and we've had a lot of good food and drink and company already. We've also been to tour Gettysburg, gone through some Smithsonians, had an afternoon in Leesburg... All fun. All good.

I should sound more enthusiastic, but I woke up this morning with a sore throat and cramps, so I'm not exactly in love with my life at the moment.

Every time I'm down here visiting my family, I always find myself sinking into a preoccupation with my future and how to turn myself into the person I want to be. The stupid thing is that the things I am preoccupied with are materialistic and image-heavy. Like I want to present a more polished version of myself to the world - makeup and nice clothes and an impeccably clean apartment. I want to own nice things that make me happy to look at them. Or thinking about how much I should maintain a schedule of calling my relatives once a week, writing to my faraway friends once a month, getting together a list of things the boy and I should go and do before we get old or have kids.

I can do all these things. I keep trying. I keep doing them in half-measures. These days everyone is hung up on adult ADD and kids who can't concentrate enough to learn how to read, but I feel like I have life ADD. I can never finish the things I start. I need to find more of a sense of satisfaction in the END rather than the BEGINNING. How do I do this?

...last and final random thought relates to my perpetual love of music. New music. I need to listen to more. If I get with the program and start blogging more, I'll share more music too.


This whole post perfectly reflects the scattered mundanity of my thoughts these days. But you know? I love it. I love the mundane. I delight in my own mediocrity. Screw you, Salieri, you should be celebrating being on the sidelines. There's a lot less pressure.