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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/books/item_id/1946560-Inner-Workings-of-the-Machine/month/9-1-2019
Rated: 18+ · Book · Other · #1946560
When one blog is filled, another one must open.
Coming soon: more work from someone creative, ambitious, and determined - often called a variant of insane/crazy.

Notes: Genderfluid. Preferred pronouns (they/them)

         [& denotes married couples]
Immediate Family: soon-to-be-ex-Dilbert, Tempest, Dogbert

My Extended Family: (s)Dad, cousins (K, D, G, J, F, N) I guess it's good to be on speaking terms with someone. Voluntarily. AuntS
Dilbert's Extended Family: SIL (+5 kids)& BIL, FIL's gf (only for holidays, mostly)
Important People I Don't See Enough: Owl + Partner, Paradise ICON crew (which owl is a part of)
People I've Known a Long Time/Long Distance: Doc & [husband], Sheer & DocSheer, Mrs. Light & [husband], Trillium & Diego (not married but close enough), Steph
Local People: MotherDroid, Owl&Partner ... There are about to be new people on this list, because, well, I'm evolving. And it hurts.

DnD: used letters, S (DM), D(doctor), Y(because I like him!), K(old RPGer friend who also attends church), P(church guy who does game night and is local and our families are also friends), A (went to church but moved back to Chicago, moved back locally then i moved)
Tempest's friends: I don't know very many of her local friends. She's got an internet buddy who also talks to CousinK's younger daughter. the younger daughter is DRAMA.
Dogbert's friends: Has a new group of friends based on a Pokemon thing and they have a DnD club at school and outside of school. Lucky kid!
September 26, 2019 at 1:52pm
September 26, 2019 at 1:52pm
#966817
Anxiety makes everything a harder struggle than maybe it ought to be. The laser is supposed to make this better. I'm exhausted and I want to sleep- because the sleep has been so hard to get lately that I'm losing executive function. Tempest has nightmares. Dilbert accidentally woke me and then decided it was a good time to talk despite me yelling at him that it wakes me up more... I don't know if he learned his lesson but no one disturbed me for 9+ hours. The sleep wasn't great but it was a start.

Part of it is that looming ICON deadline- October 1st. And a looming anthology deadline, also around October 1st, for which most of these I haven't written much. I'm terrible at grounding something in a current time and place.

I'm terrible at a lot of things.

I'm also trying to knit a hat. Because knitting is easier than breaking my brain over writing while the sleep thing isn't working.

October is also my first religious services meeting to learn to do sermons. Because my brain thinks that's a great idea - to talk to a bunch of people who already don't understand or agree with me.


I finished reading White Fragility, and I am stunned at the overwhelming arrogance of the author. She pushes it off as her racism, but damn. No. It's something she would have done no matter who the recipient was. She didn't see the arrogance. But then my brain plays tricks on me, because I wasn't like 'all the other americans' according to the Persia and Swede when we were hanging around in preschool. They always thought of me as more European. Is that the American Arrogance, and then wrapped into racism? I'm twisting that around. And unfortunately, one girlfriend might take this as an excuse to not read the damn book, and she's the one who always cries to get people to comfort her. She did at at the lunch I complained about this book at. Then second friend tells me not to confront when I'm severely sleep deprived. She's right but it also must be done.

So many books to read that won't make me so angry.
September 14, 2019 at 7:56pm
September 14, 2019 at 7:56pm
#966197
I have DnD at my house tomorrow. With a new group I created. We've been playing since January. I had asked 8 people originally, and all of them said yes in time.

The DnD drama at my table was one dude, who was in love with me, acted manipulatively and kept it all inside. Scary, to a point, where he's finding time with me outside of anyone else being there even though I don't at all try to be alone with him. I don't, anymore. He left the group. He said one day we're not friends (back in May) and gave no reasons. And, I'm perfectly fine without that. It's been more peaceful at my table since he's gone.

The crew consists of two guys from Tai Chi (DM is S, other is D), one guy I used to play Shadowrun with (he's a pathfinder guy but he's been a RPG dude forever and he's fun - K), one guy from that old DnD group (the only one worth being friends with Y), and two from my church game night (A and P). A moved back with her husband in Chicago, but yay she stayed with us. Y and K joined us as the obsessed guy exited, and the transition wasn't horrible. Poor S is trying to make sure we have enough bad guys, and he's doing a great job. Everything is in LEGO and it's the best thing. I love playing with this group. I love that we're not drama-laden anymore. And I enjoy the game we're playing. (Even though I'm a cleric. It's not the best but it's not the worst. I'm glad I chose something different than the fighter I played in Shadowrun but I'm also becoming a War Priest in the prestige classes for DnD3.5ish that we're playing. Ish because we're using combat rules from AdvDnd version 2.)

Basically I haven't been around for the summer, or longer. It's been a pretty rough year. I lost a friend and my father-in-law in June. Both my parents had surgery in July. (mom was nothing, dad had prostate cancer and exploded intestine into colostomy bag. he'll have surgery again in November to reattach everything.) My sister-in-law had breast cancer in August. She's through the worst of it now and changing her lifestyle for the better. (I hear one good recommended book from a doctor is Undo It.) We also had a man disappear on the farm as well as a neighbor across the street breaking into my home. Not to mention church drama that's become a congregational crisis.

On the bright side- I got to visit my cousin in Montana. This was probably the single best ten days of the summer, despite face-planting my phone in the pavement and having to deal with Dilbert during that time. (We were hungry! It was dinnertime, not buy a new phone and activate it time!)

My writer's group is about to finish my book, the Creature's Path. I'm terrified I ended the book wrong. I'm terrified to start changing it without knowing what they think of the end. I'm just... really stuck at the moment and I hope it's going to go well. 3 more meetings- and they'll finish just in time for me to NaNo book 2. No, it's not a good decision, and yes, I'm going to do it anyway.

I'm also two weeks away from my ICON deadline without much idea of what's happening there. I need an up to 5k submission, and I need to figure out what the heck those words are. *Cry*

My church game night crew is changing, and growing, and I'm liking all those lovely people. It's something to look forward to, and I need that. The best part is i don't have to clean my house for that! At some point this summer I finally woke up to how very politicized so many of the people at my church are. In some ways this is good- we care about who's elected. And in some ways it's bad- because there are big issues that we don't actually get better at changing ourselves and looking inward, just pointing fingers at other people.

I've been struggling out of a pretty deep depression. I'm getting through something, but it's hard to mark the progress sometimes. I lost a friend for a while, and he apologized for his depression (Smiles). And of course when he went radio silent again I worried he was mad at me again. It's my damn asshole brain.

And while the laser has kept me out of the darkest of the pits, I do wonder at times whether I need other things to help me out. Like medicine. Like an actual neurological test to figure out what these issues are and what I can do to keep them in check. Because it's been a beast lately, and I'm struggling on a level that's not truly functional for a time period that's pretty unacceptable. Plus, it's not exactly a walk in the park to have the brain literally working against me at every turn.

I've been knitting a lot. It's calming. It won't get my writing done, but I suppose I have to win back my brain first. I have a bunch of new friends, and a bunch from that current list are not really relevant, so I guess I'll update that. I've also been missing from this blog a ton, and my own promotional stuff almost completely.

Also, I quit the studio. It was time. I had anxiety about the owner, and the person who made all the staff decisions that made it a place where I want to work left to start her own place. Originally I was supposed to go with her, but we're not there yet. We'll see how it goes. She's busy as hell, starting a studio, and that's hard for me to digest. I'm on my own for now, with a lovely Saturday class that's slowly maybe going to gain traction, back at the elementary school on Thursdays with some enthusiasm from those teachers, and a Monday night class at a church I don't attend but is a decent earner. I still work at the Y, and also the local old folks home. One of them, anyway.

I haven't figured out how I never learned to make dinner. I'm always hungry and I don't know what to make unless there's something semi-together in the freezer. It's weird. I've also been reaching for a lot of hard books lately - finished radical acceptance but not able to get through much of White Fragility without getting mad about how people have treated my mother, and many of my other family members. Let's not forget how racist and homophobic my (step)dad's family was and is, and how they wrote my dad out of the will. It was subtle and manipulative and damnit- the way they demonized my mother it really most likely on her skin tone. My dad thought that it would be okay if he adopted me, but I didn't want in that damn family. Not in any way. There are so many things that are awful about it, and I just couldn't. Wouldn't. I don't think it would have mattered. I'm my mother's daughter. They would have done anything they could to make sure I didn't inherit. They're that devoted to this notion that my mother is bad. They're dead wrong.

It should never be a relief to not have family holidays anymore. And yet, it was with them. It's hard to bring about that family on my husband's side- my in-laws have exactly two. I'm not ready to be an elder. But with both my parents facing potentially serious issues this summer. I've almost lost mom twice already. But she seems the strongest at this point, and that's scary. Also, my parents are separated. Dad lives on the farm, and Mom bought a treehouse in town. It's not an actual tree house, but that's what she calls it.

Today was the auction for my FIL's stuff. We got the play by play from my SIL, who was there. It's been a good thing overall and at least we're all staying close so far. We're pretty dedicated to staying that way, so I'm glad.


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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/books/item_id/1946560-Inner-Workings-of-the-Machine/month/9-1-2019