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(Writing) Professional Deficiencies

24 May

Writing 150It feels like it’s been an awfully long time since I’ve talked about writing. When the Spring semester classes for college started, that ate up most of my time and what wasn’t claimed there was spent on family, work, or my social life. Then my sister passed, and life since then has been pretty full dealing with the fallout from that. I’ve withdrawn from this semester of classes, but it hasn’t felt like a lot of free time has opened up.

Slowly but surely, though, things have begun to settle. Now that I’m away from school I’m beginning to wonder if pursuing a degree at this point is something I really want to do; it’ll take me over two years of constant work (taking classes during the summer and winter breaks) just to get an Associate’s Degree with an intent to transfer. After that, it’ll likely take me three years at least to earn a BS in Psychology.

I think there are better ways I can help, right now. Volunteering with NAMI, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, or any number of other organizations geared towards mental health might be a more immediate way to work with those who need the most help right away. I can also study outside of classes, learning more about mental health issues, the state of current treatments for them, and the barriers that so many different people face in getting the help they need.

But that’s a post for a different day. I’ve got a minute to think about writing, so let’s reflect on where I am with that aspect of my life.

The short answer is not well at all. Going to college was difficult, as I expected, but I also underestimated how much time it was going to take away from everything else. Work has been pretty hairy even though customers have been quiet — shifting to ten-hour days four times a week means free time during work days are at a premium. A lot of what’s happened over the past several months has forced me to become more organized and focused, which needed to happen. But it’s also made it all but impossible to focus on my writing.

Now that I’m not taking classes for at least three and a half months, I can start turning my attention back towards writing. I’m not sure if it’s possible to develop a full-fledged writing practice, but I’m sure interested in trying. So I’ll go ahead and announce my intention to write 1,000 words a day every day from June 1st until September 1st. The best part is that intention will face a pretty stiff test right off the bat — I’ll be going to Biggest Little Fur Con at the beginning of the month, and fan conventions are notoriously difficult places to write if you, say, have ADHD.

But that’s a good challenge to start off with, right? If I can nail 1,000 words in the chaos of a furry convention in Reno, I can do it pretty much anywhere, at any time.
I also know that I don’t read nearly enough, and that’s something that pains me greatly. I’m never going to get better as a writer if I don’t read voraciously, and I’ve struggled with that for an awfully long time. Life is so busy that it’s hard to find space for something that feels like a rare and idle pleasure, and these days it feels especially difficult to single-task in the manner that reading requires. But that might actually be why cultivating a reading habit is so essential; it forces you to slow down and pay attention to what’s right in front of you. It’s hard to fall under the spell of something you’re only giving half your attention to.

There’s a tremendous stack of books to read on my shelf right now, and it’s time to start making a dent in them. I’d like to write more short stories, so focusing on those is a good idea to start with. A couple of friends bought some really neat short story collections for me and I’ve subscribed to Apex Magazine, Fireside Fiction and a few other publications that have choice works out right now. There’s no shortage of things to read; it’s just a matter of building the hunger for it.

So, I resolve to finish “Giovanni’s Room” by James Baldwin by the end of the month and start going in on short stories, novels, graphic novel collections and other things soon after that. I resolve to talk more about the things I’m writing and reading, the lessons I’m learning from acting and observing, how my skill and understanding as a writer is developing.

I know that I have a tendency to over-commit to things, so I’ll be careful — I’m setting my sights low, but I also need to make sure I’m devoting a significant amount of time to this to prove my intention. Resolving to read and write every day — and finding ways to create time for both of them — is something I can do for at least a few months; once September rolls around, I can take a step back and see if this feels better.

Also, hopefully, this will let me make more polished posts here and accelerate the development of my voice, which I’ve always wondered about. What will I sound like when my mish-mash of influences coheres into something unique? It’s an exciting thought. I’m looking forward to finding out.

 
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Posted by on May 24, 2017 in Self-Reflection, Writing

 

(Personal) The Best Thing About Tragedy

22 May

Myth 150Pixar’s Inside Out is an amazing film, and I’ll get into exactly what I think about it later. But for now I want to talk about one perfect moment of many in the movie because I keep thinking about it recently. If you haven’t seen the movie, don’t worry — I won’t spoil too much about the plot or anything. It’s a small thing, but like the best emotional beats it opens directly to the heart of things when you look into it.

The premise is that the emotions we all experience — Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust — are people whose job it is to make sure our emotions influence us to take action when necessary. Each emotion has a situation it’s designed for, and Joy (our main character) is really dedicated to making sure her person has the happiest life. This, of course, puts her in direct conflict with Sadness.

A character that Joy and Sadness meet while traveling suffers a loss that affects him deeply, and Joy can’t seem to snap him out of the funk he’s in. Exasperated, she steps away; Sadness sits next to him and encourages him to talk about what’s upsetting him, getting him to move through his pain instead of avoiding it. Once he’s had a good cry, he stands up and announces he’s ready to move on. After that, Joy realizes Sadness’ purpose — the pain we experience allows us to have empathy for others, to help them move through pain that can feel unbearable at times.

This first week of May was one of the hardest I’ve ever experienced. My sister was the one person who would have gotten me to go back to my hometown of Baltimore, and her sudden hospitalization found me on a plane there without hesitation. I got the call on Friday morning, arrived early Saturday, and saw my mother for the first time in 19 years that day. The next day, I met the father of Teneka’s children and my two oldest nephews for the first time.

That was the day we were gathered in a conference room with a small team of doctors and social workers and told that my sister was brain dead. My heart broke, not just for my loss, but for the loss of my nephews’ mother, my mother’s daughter, my brother’s partner in life. Our grief in that room connected us, as painful as it was; I can’t speak for anyone else, but being comforted and being able to comfort my family made me feel just a tiny bit better.

The following week was a struggle to absorb the twin tragedies of my sister’s passing and the cold realization of how much my mother’s health had deteriorated over time. She was a small but ice-hard woman, and she kept a clean home. Walking into the house I grew up and being hit by the smell and sight of what it had become is a shock I won’t forget. As soon as I saw her, lying in her bed, I knew that I would do anything to get her out of there and into a better situation.

My husband paused, allowed himself to recover, then immediately went to work helping her. His aunt did the same when she drove with me to help prepare for my sister’s memorial service. I hadn’t seen my mother since the day she told me not to come back all those years ago. Ryan only knew of her through the stories I told him about my upbringing. His aunt had never met her — she was a country girl from Arkansas stepping in to an inner-city home for the first time.

None of that mattered. Time and again, I found myself helped through this terrible time by friends and family stepping up to share my grief and take on a burden that wasn’t theirs. When someone else needed my help, I stepped in without hesitation. Knowing that there were so many others who would do — who had done — the same for me made it easy.

Over the week I was in Baltimore, I was able to heal the rift with my mother — who loved my husband, by the way. I was able to meet my nephews for the first time, and get close to someone who loved Teneka as much as I did. Our family came together in a way they hadn’t in quite some time, and I forged a bond with friends and neighbors that allowed me to reclaim my past. Most importantly, the beautiful, graceful connections that we formed helped ensure that my grief for my sister was tempered with an appreciation for her life and all of the people she had touched.

Our ability to feel pain is also our ability to feel empathy. We can know what it’s like to lose someone and reach out in ways that can genuinely help ease their suffering. As hard as it was to deal with everything back in my hometown, I keep going back to the people I bonded with, the deep and lasting connections we formed, all of those times where love filled the room and allowed us to be open and honest and kind. I feel sad, and I will for a long time. But I also feel incredibly fortunate to have the friends and family I do, the support that carried me through all of this, the ability to witness the best in people.

Even in heavy grief, my heart feels lifted by gratitude. I don’t know that I can express how much I appreciate the kind words and deeds of everyone who reached out over the past few weeks. Thank you all, for everything you’ve done.

 
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Posted by on May 22, 2017 in Better Living Through Stories, mental-health, Self-Reflection

 

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(Personal) Eulogy For My Sister

15 May

Myth 150When I was younger, I used to make plans with my sister to run away from home all the time. We always thought that the way our mother treated us was grossly unfair, and after a particularly hard day we would pack up a few days’ worth of clothes, make a couple of sandwiches, and sit beneath the porch of our childhood home to plan our escape. Of course we never went through with it; when the time came to pull the trigger, we always found a reason that the timing wasn’t right or why tomorrow would be better.

Only, as time went on and we grew up, we both did run away in our own sense. I fell into a ton of extracurricular activities in high school and when I graduated, I worked two jobs and spent the rest of my day at the library until it closed just so I wouldn’t have to go back home. After that, I tried really hard to be an active Jehovah’s Witness. When that didn’t work, I fled to college in southern Maryland.

My sister literally ran away without me when I was 13 or 14 years old. Suddenly, she was gone for months and neither my mother or I had any idea where she was. I was so stunned that I couldn’t think of anything to do except sit and stare at the wall for hours after school. It was safer for me than feeling whatever it was I felt. I knew the emotion was too intense for me, and that I would end up doing something to purge myself of it that would not be good.

I didn’t realize that was grief until just a few years ago, and since then I considered myself lucky that it had been the closest I’d come to the pain of losing someone so close to me. I can’t think of myself as that fortunate any more.

My sister died on April 30th, 2017. She had been found unconscious and unresponsive in her apartment a few days before, and when the paramedics arrived it took over twenty minutes to get back a pulse. She was on a respirator for days while the family gathered and doctors performed a few tests. By the end of that weekend, it was clear that her brain had died even though her heart was still beating. We heard the news as a family — my mother was there with me, and so was the father of her two oldest children. It shattered us; each of us had a complicated relationship with my sister that took us further away from her, then closer, over time. I’m not sure any of us understood how much she meant to us until we were told that we would never get to speak to her again.

In a lot of ways, I felt like I had already mourned my sister the first time she ran away. She came back and ran away a few more times before I left home for good, and that pattern would be repeated over the years in several fights with my mother. The last time I spoke to her, she had come back from going “off the grid” again for a few days, ready to work with Mom to get the house in order, take care of her children, and start the long hard road towards being a mother, daughter, caretaker and everything else folks wanted her to be. I didn’t think it would last, but I never could be sure because I didn’t know my sister — not really. The sister I knew had “died” the first time she disappeared without a trace, and all these years later I was still feeling my way around this changeling that had taken her place.

But of course that’s not the reality of the situation. Of course my sister was the same girl who plotted escaping home with her quiet, nerdy brother — just with more experience, an adult’s understanding of the childhood pain she carried with her for her entire life. When I think about what my sister went through in her too-brief life, I’m stunned by her strength and the realization of how much she loved people, how much she sought love and acceptance. And it breaks my heart that I realized that only now, when it’s too late to do anything with that knowledge.

Like all of us, my sister had mental health issues that had been inherited by our biological mother. Unlike me, though, she still lived in the heart of Baltimore City where these issues are largely unrecognized and go untreated. When she tried to talk to her friends about them, they would tell her that she was “making things up” or that she just had to think about her problems the right way to see how ridiculous an idea it was to have “anxiety disorder”. Over time, my sister learned to nurse her issues silently and even when asked she would be reluctant to talk about it. She had to bear the burden of her own faulty brain while stepping up to be strong for everyone around her. She worked so hard to clean and care for my mother, who only gave her scorn in response; she tried hard to provide a good life for her oldest son, even though his mental health issues will make it extremely challenging; she had to fight an uncaring bureaucracy for any help she could get, even though she had been punished for having such a hard time by losing her two youngest children to foster care.

Thinking about what my sister had to go through, it’s no wonder that she turned to drugs when she did — and that it was so hard to kick the habit whenever she tried. The comforting oblivion of being too intoxicated to think or feel is an extremely tempting one, especially when just piecing together a life for yourself is so hard and thankless. Still, she knew that she needed to stop for the sake of her children. The fact that she ultimately failed is a tragedy, but it is not one of personal deficiency. She needed a support network that believed in her and worked to validate her experience, one that would give her hope that she could still live a happy life. In the depths of depression surrounded by the craziness of the inner city, something like that can feel as impossible as flying to Mars.

Still, she stayed. She stayed because she was the only one who could care for my mother, an exceedingly difficult woman who pushes away anyone who gets close enough to help her. She stayed because her children needed her, and she tried to get clean for them. She fought and fought and fought until she couldn’t any more; but she never gave up. She gave her family everything she had and then some; she hid how much it hurt when she was told again and again that it wasn’t enough.

At last, her pain is over. Her struggle has ended. I wish this wasn’t the way it happened, and I’ll regret not doing more to do right by her for the rest of my life. The only way I can prove how sorry I am is by being as strong as she was, as giving and hopeful and tenacious. She eventually fell to her demons, but she never stopped fighting them. I can’t either.

Because of my sister, I will run away from my fights much less often. Standing my ground and fighting my battles is the legacy she left with me with. For that, I sincerely thank her.

 
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Posted by on May 15, 2017 in mental-health, Self-Reflection

 

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Zen & The Art of Getting Shit Done

03 Apr

 

Buddhism 150It’s been a hard couple of months for me, mostly because of a few unexpected emergencies. I got into an accident at the end of February that totaled my car, and it took about a month for my insurance company to make that decision and offer me a write-off settlement. I had spent a bit of time researching available cars for a while, but past a certain point I had to blitz through buying a car because of the other sudden explosion — family. I’m still working through that one, and it looks like I’ll be devoting time and energy to that for a while yet.

My ADHD intersects with my Generalized Anxiety Disorder in weird ways. I’m not sure if I’ve talked about my anxiety disorder, but here’s a quick summary. Emotions are like the dashboard warnings on your car, right? They’re indications that there’s something you should pay attention to. Sometimes, the sensor and trigger for those warning lights can be faulty or over-sensitive; so you’ll feel angry at the slightest provocation, or your body will suddenly panic for no real reason. In my case, my anxiety trigger is really sensitive — it doesn’t take very much to trigger it, and that makes it harder to absorb new sources of stress when they arise. It’s easy for me to get overwhelmed.

When that happens, my ADHD kicks in. It feels like I have…hummingbird brain, let’s say. I’ll flit from thing to thing, rarely staying in one place or on one thought at a time. The more I try to settle down to focus on a problem, the more my brain slides away from it, distracted by the nearest shiny thing. Because there’s an urgent matter that needs my attention, some part of my brain will send an anxiety response to draw it back, but I can’t focus and I’ll slide to another distraction. This happens again and again, and I end up spending so much energy trying to get my brain on track that by the time I’ve wrestled it into submission exhaustion has set in and I don’t have much energy for whatever problem I’m dealing with.

It’s frustrating and awful. It means that instead of having the capacity to deal with what’s in front of me, my anxiety will throw me into a state where that’s more or less impossible. Flight becomes my default response, and I’ll get caught in an anxiety-flight loop until I’m too tired to run, metaphorically, from my problems. But I’m also too tired to deal with them.

This is one of the reasons that self-care is so important. I know that laying a foundation of care allows me to absorb stress better, recognize when I’m about to become overwhelmed, and pull back to manage stress as necessary. It does mean that things get done more slowly, but the process is a whole lot faster than letting the hummingbird tire itself out and trying to deal with things that way.

A big part of that self-care is taking time to practice meditation. Allowing myself to do whatever it is I’m going to do helps to ground me. It’s like…setting aside space to honor the hummingbird by letting it flit as much as it wants; sometimes it settles down to sip the nectar of a particularly attractive thought and I discover a solution for something I need to take care of. Sometimes, it simply gets tired and goes back into its cage of its own accord. Either way, meditation helps immensely to replenish my capacity to absorb stress and deal with unexpected things as they arise, without attachment or judgement. I can enter a state of flow more easily, and it’s not quite as devastating when that flow state is broken. Panic happens less often, and even if I’m tired at the end of the day it’s not that raw and troubled exhaustion that happens after time fighting anxiety; it’s a contented kind of weariness, knowing that I got shit done.

Those of us who have to deal with mental health issues have all kinds of other considerations that others might not. Whenever someone comes up to ask me something or make a bid for attention, there’s an instinctive rise of concern about how much this exchange will take out of me. If I’m dealing with a lot of stress-inducing stuff at the moment, I might not be able to spare much energy at all, but I want to help and I want to listen, connect, work with people. If I wake up too late to meditate, I realize that I’ve compromised my ability to deal with difficulties for the rest of the day and my focus will suffer. I worry a lot about being understood or communicating my internal life to others in a way that they will get or care about; it’s hard for me to open up or be spontaneous with people. There’s all this damage that makes the regular stuff so hard, and it’s hard to explain that in a way that doesn’t feel like a bid for pity or a plea for recognition.

With self-care, it can often be that a small change yields big results. Without stress management or coping mechanisms, the medication I take for ADHD can make it more likely that I’ll hit “hummingbird brain” — which is counter-productive to what the medication is supposed to do. Taking just 15 minutes in the morning to encourage quiet and focus can be the difference between a hectic but successful day and a total hot mess of wasted opportunity.

It’s important to do what you need to do to make it through the day; we all have those things that make us better people. It could be exercise, or conversation, or medication; writing, or singing, or hiking. Whatever it is, do it — and make space for others to do what they need. We never know what burdens other people might be under. We scarcely know how our burdens will affect us. But if we encourage and support one another, it makes everyone’s burdens a bit easier to bear.

 
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Posted by on April 3, 2017 in Buddhism, mental-health, Self-Reflection

 

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(Fandom) 2 Words

21 Mar

 

Fandom 150Comedians who use shocking or transgressive humor are often no strangers to controversy and criticism. Even the best of them sometimes tip over into the gratuitous, but most don’t stay there very long. The transgressive nature of stand-up comedy is used by these artists as a tool, a scapel that scrapes away the flab of public discourse to reveal the wounds buried underneath. Then there’s 2 Gryphon. He’s the most recognizable furry stand-up comedian we’ve got and has made transgressive humor a centerpiece of his act for over a decade now. However, that humor isn’t in service of exposing and ultimately healing the sensitive topics he frequently covers; it encourages flippant dismissal of the people who disagree with his stances. The “jokes” and comments he makes online encourage his fans to dismiss concerns that he’s engaging in bigoted behavior, spread misinformation and act on it in ways that hurt furries who are most in need of our compassion. 2’s irresponsible and insensitive attitude towards public discourse helps him to shrug off criticism but hurts the fandom as a whole — and that’s something we can’t tolerate any more.

Last Wednesday, 2 Gryphon announced his performance at AnthroCon had been canceled by the board. He did this by responding to a tweet not obviously directed to him from a Twitter account that hasn’t posted in two years before then. In the absence of any official word from the convention staff, it was assumed by both his fans and critics that the decision was made due to a long history of offensive comments made from his personal blog and Twitter account. The way this news broke is important, because it shows us how 2 handles controversy when he has control of how to present it.

The exchange with his fan puts 2 in a sympathetic light right away. He gets an innocent show of support from a fan excited to see him; he then has to disappoint that fan with the news. This allows him to present his absence from AnthroCon as “the convention is denying you, the fans, something we all want and they didn’t tell me why.” This framing primes his fans towards a particular reaction. It shifts focus from him towards the convention and lays the foundation that the convention’s board is responsible for this situation.

But it’s suspicious that 2 responded to an account he doesn’t follow two minutes after it was posted, especially since there was no obvious way to know it was even directed at him. It’s also suspicious that an account that had been dormant since August 2015 just so happens to make a random tweet right around the time the decision came down. The facts of the tweet and his response to it should make us question if what we’re presented with — an exchange between a comedian and his fan — is really what’s happening. But if 2 (alone or with someone’s help) orchestrated this exchange as a way to break the news, why would he do such a thing?

It’s because 2 understands the importance of framing. Political commentator Jim A. Kuypers describes framing this way: “Framing is a process whereby communicators, consciously or unconsciously, act to construct a point of view that encourages the facts of a given situation to be interpreted by others in a particular manner. Frames operate in four key ways: they define problems, diagnose causes, make moral judgments, and suggest remedies. Frames are often found within a narrative account of an issue or event, and are generally the central organizing idea.” In argumentation, even the informal kind, how you sell your argument matters just as much as — if not more than — the content of your argument.

2 is a very smart guy who is great with sophistry — using clever but ultimately fallacious and/or deceptive arguments to win over an audience. He frequently targets and engages with the most extreme forms of criticism to dismiss any criticism outright. He mischaracterizes the content of those arguments to benefit his rebuttal against them and paint his opposition as foolish, ignorant, uninformed. He demands proof of what he’s being accused for, then dismisses, deflects or outright ignores it when it’s presented. He moves the goalposts constantly. He offers up token friends as proof against transphobic or racist remarks instead of addressing the remarks themselves. He uses a suite of different tactics to make sure criticism doesn’t stick, shifting the field of debate from his actions to general “SJW” fallacies that are functionally red meat to his fans.

The way he broke the news is consistent with his handling of criticism in the past. He knew that being disinvited from AC would create a controversy, and in the absence of definitive information or any official response from the convention itself he used the opportunity to set the frame of the debate and subsequent response. Tying the announcement directly to a fan exchange allows him to spin the narrative that the fans want this show and will be very disappointed if they don’t get it; that’s his basis for argument, and to be fair this would be true even without the work he put into framing the debate that way. However, opening with this also allowed 2 to provide a reason without any evidence, blame “the SJWs” for that reason, and encourage outraged fans to email Programming and demand an explanation — even though they’re less likely to trust anything besides the one they were given before. Instead of discussing the reasons that his critics have been giving for years about his comments and behavior, he picks a straw-man argument that we “have spread the lie that he’s a Nazi”, asserts that the Board has been duped by the lie and shouted down by the “silent majority” who just want to be entertained by his brand of comedy.

But I’m not a critic of 2 because I think he’s a Nazi. I haven’t seen any other critics of 2 say he’s a Nazi. His defense of Richard Spencer arguably makes him a Nazi sympathizer, but that’s a debate for another campfire. I’m a critic of 2 because he’s irresponsible with his language and insensitive to the social and racial issues that a large segment of the fandom have to face in their daily lives. In an environment where that kind of sophistry and insensitivity has given rise to the alt-right in our own fandom AND in the White House, we simply can’t tolerate that kind of behavior any more. It’s unacceptable to target the people with the least power to combat the narratives that are formed about them. It’s unacceptable to promote racist, misogynist, othering ideas under the guise of comedy. It’s unacceptable to take no responsibility for the environment you create and expect others to put up with speech and behavior that makes the fandom a less-welcoming, more-hostile space.

The fact that I disagree with 2 politically isn’t the reason I’m writing this, or advocating that he should lose his space at AC. He’s, of course, free to believe that this is a valid argument against Kaepernick’s peaceful protest on behalf of #BlackLivesMatter, even though he hasn’t done a single thing to be thanked for. He’s free to believe that this is a simple joke about Detroit with no reasonable link to racist undertones. He can say that this is just comedy and that anyone who takes offense should “just get over it and move on“.

I’m also free to call bullshit on all of that. 2 never defended anyone’s rights in any way that mattered; he uses free speech mainly as a smokescreen to avoid consequences for saying something shitty in the same way most Internet trolls do. Colin Kaepernick drew attention to a serious problem in a non-violent way as well as donating time and money to communities of color. Everyone knows that Detroit is a majority-Black city and there’s a long-standing history of racist comments comparing black people to apes. Comparing being transgender to claiming racial ancestry not your own is at best false equivalence, and moving from that to the absurdity of “burritokin” means that we can reasonably infer just how seriously he takes the whole idea. It doesn’t matter that he has black friends or transgender friends; he made comments that perpetuated tired yet persistent stereotypes that hurt disadvantaged populations. If he was truly a friend to these people, he would be sensitive to the social conditions they struggle with all the time and work to legitimize them as people with every right to self-determination that he has. But he doesn’t. Instead he mocks and diminishes their protests without ever touching the legitimate issues that cause the protests in the first place.

As a fandom, we’re better than that. If we hope to reverse the damage caused by people who feel entitled to say whatever hurtful thing they want, we have to start in our own backyard. That means calling out the people who promote bigoted and harmful ideas. That means pushing back against the people who insist on being as irresponsible as they can get away with using the platforms they’ve been given. That means demanding that those shouting “Free speech!” understand that there is a responsibility to accept the consequences of that speech.

2, by consistently attacking progressive activists and making jokes about marginalized groups, has proven what he thinks of us through his actions time and again. He doesn’t care who’s hurt by the things he says or does, or how his rhetoric makes the community a smaller place filled with narrow-minded ideas about what’s “valid”. And that’s his right. But it’s also my right to demand that the institutions of our fandom (including AnthroCon) refuse to legitimize that carelessness by denying him the platform he abuses, especially since he continues to deny and deflect criticism instead of actually trying to see the perspective of other people. It’s my right to say there’s no room in this fandom for a comedian who compares people like me to missing links, then tells me “Relax, it’s just a joke!”

It’s not a joke. It’s my life. And I won’t put up with someone who says — by word and deed — that my life matters less than his.

 
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Posted by on March 21, 2017 in Furries, mental-health

 

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(Personal) Technical Difficulties

13 Mar

Myth 150The thing that really sucked about 2016 is that I never saw it coming. I went into the year with the sense of excitement and optimism one usually does, confident that I could get my shit together a little more and find success with things that had always eluded me. The Jackalope Serial Company started in January with an ambitious first serial, a novel-length story that would take me the entire year to complete. Now that I had my mental health issues figured out, more or less, I was impatient to get to all of the things that I was too busy fighting my own broken brain to get to. Of course, that boundless energy and optimism didn’t last long.

As the year wore on, I found that it was a bigger struggle than I thought to undo three decades of bad habits and poor decisions; the serial faltered, then stopped altogether. In the wider world, political discourse had gone from rancorous to toxic as Donald Trump somehow managed to beat 16 career politicans (and a few outsiders) to take the Republican nomination for President. Great Britain surprise-voted themselves out of the European Union, kicking off a wave of far-right xenophobia and racism that would be repeated on this side of the pond months later. Surprise that Trump made it this far into the Presidential process turned to shock, and disgust at his incompetence and inexcusable behavior became horror, when he became President thanks to razor-thin victories in three states that gave him all of the electoral votes he needed.

As we were reeling from the shock and facing down the prospect of a disastrous four years of a Trumpist administration, I thought that I could be prepared for 2017 knowing that it was going to be a rough one. I expected that there would be a lot of hard days ahead, and most of my friends would be frightened, depressed, in trouble, and struggling. I resolved to plant my feet and stand my ground as best I could, help out however I could, resist and endure. While I was facing the oncoming tsunami of political bad news, I was blindsided by a few personal crises.

First, my family. I received a letter in the mail asking me if I was related to a child whose name I didn’t recognize. Sure that it was some kind of mistake, I brushed it off until I received a follow-up phone call that told me my sister had been deemed unfit to raise her two youngest children and they had been placed in foster care. The woman on the other end was a social worker looking for relatives to take them in indefinitely.

Suddenly, my husband and I were faced with the prospect of raising children. As an adoptee myself, I know how important it is — but there was no way we were prepared for such a huge task. I couldn’t ask my husband to blow up his entire life for children he had never met, and I knew that saying yes would put all of my plans on hold for who knows how long. There were a lot of hard conversations and frenzied calls to family; I finally got to reach my sister and pledged my support, but I told the social worker there was simply no way we could take them in.

Since then, I haven’t heard anything from either of them. I have no idea what’s going on, despite repeated attempts to get in contact.

Two weeks ago, I was involved in a five car accident that pretty much wrecked my car. Since I rear-ended the car in front of me and the driver of that car was able to avoid the “main” accident I was deemed at fault and will have to pay a huge deductible if the cost of repairs are under the car’s value. Since that’s looking less and less likely, I should be OK with the total write-off but I’m not looking forward to the rise in my insurance premiums later this year. Besides the stress of uncertainty about the status of my car and the fact that this was my first major accident, things turned out a lot better than they could have there. Still, it’s been very stressful.

On top of that, we’ve had persistent plumbing issues with our kitchen sink over the past couple of weeks that got progressively worse until we learned that the sewer line from our kitchen had been corroded completely. That’s been repaired, but now we’re back to square one — our kitchen sink drains very slowly, as if something is not quite blocking it. A fourth/fifth visit from the plumber is likely later this week.

The family crisis, accident and plumbing issue has been taking up a good deal of my focus; the Argumentation & Debate class has been eating up the remainder. As a result, I’ve been stressed to all hell and those old avoidance behaviors have been creeping back into my days. If I’ve been flighty, distant and unreliable online that’s why. I’m feeling overwhelmed with everything going on and I’m just trying to tackle the biggest problems with what limited energy I have. I have to reserve a lot to fight my worst impulses, which makes it even harder to deal with anything new.

I’m hoping that things will shake themselves out in a few weeks or months, but in the meantime things will continue to be a struggle. I haven’t had the spoons for activism or volunteer work yet, and it bums me out. I know that the administration of 45 and the Republican party are up to their persistent fuckery, but I just don’t have the emotional space to tackle that right now. I need to step back and try to right my world for a little bit.

Of course, this blog post means that I’m digging myself out of the hole, bit by bit. Hopefully I can return to a regular posting schedule soon.

 
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Posted by on March 13, 2017 in mental-health, Self-Reflection

 

(Friday Fiction) A Birthday of Legend

03 Mar

Writing 150A dear friend of mine celebrated his birthday a week or two ago, and I offered him a quick short story as an impromptu present. As usual, it took me a little longer than I would have liked to finish it up, but here it is! 

Crux is preparing for a nice, quiet birthday celebration; however, one of his friends has different plans in motion and he doesn’t really take no for an answer.

The knock on Crux’s door threatened to bounce it off its hinges. The blue-furred labrador startled on the couch he was sitting in, nearly dropping his phone. It had taken him longer than expected to respond to all of his birthday wishes. He must have lost track of the time.

He shut down his texting app and checked the time — 7:00 PM. It was about the right time for dinner, but he wasn’t expecting anyone to show up at his apartment; everyone knew the restaurant the quiet party had been reserved at. He chose it because it was nice and open and quiet, a relaxed spot where his…variable-sized friends could lounge and would be encouraged to behave reasonably well. After all the…excitement of the last few months, Crux could use a break.

The door rattled in its frame more violently this time. Crux could feel the entire apartment tremble from the force of the knocking. He frowned; anyone big enough to do that would probably have a hard time fitting in the narrow halls of his apartment building. It’d be best to answer the door and walk to the restaurant as soon as possible. He didn’t want to cause any more of a scene with the neighbors, after all.

“Hold on!” he called out, slipping off the couch and jogging over to the door. He opened it…and saw the entire frame blocked by a wall of a man.

“There you are!” A voice boomed way too loudly. “I was worried I might haveta kick the door in and drag you out.”

A great, shaggy head lowered from where it had loomed above the door frame. Hux gave him a big, toothy grin from under that mop of headfur.

Crux’s heart skipped a beat and his stomach sank. As happy as he was to see the giant, he also realized in that moment his plans for a quiet birthday were completely shot.

“You should know by now that you wouldn’t have to do anything that drastic to get me to let you in.” Crux felt himself blushing already, his mind racing with all that he would need to do to change his plans.

“I’m not comin’ in, pipsqueak. We’re goin’ out!” With surprising speed for his size, Hux slipped an arm around the back of the smaller blue dog and gathered him in against his bulk. “You know how cramped these little shoeboxes you like to live in make me feel.”

Crux squirmed as he was lifted off his feet and hugged against Hux’s broad chest, but it was no use. The forearm against his back was a steel beam wrapped in velvet; that chest might as well be a moving brick wall. He wasn’t going anywhere. “Well, the apartment’s only rated for citizens eight feet tall and smaller. It’s not meant to handle someone of your size.”

The giant snorted and rose as much as he could before his head crunched the ceiling. The cheap material dented easily, dusting a small shower of plaster and paint over Hux’s shoulders and Crux’s head. “Humph. ‘S discrimination if ya ask me. Can’t help it if I’m studly. Don’t you worry none, though. I know the perfect place ta go — you can get one of them sweet drinks you like and I’ll have room to really stretch out.”

Crux could have sworn he felt that massive chest stretch a little wider, saw the giant’s broad shoulders push towards either wall in the hallway. The whole apartment rattled as he stomped his way towards the front door. “I…actually have reservations at another restaurant, 30 minutes from now.”

“Awww, and ya didn’t invite me, little man? I’m hurt!” Hux squeezed the smaller male against him and slowly, carefully hunched down low. One shoulder pushed out of the front door, and then the other. Even still, it was a tight squeeze. Crux was almost buried against the much larger torso, unable to respond for several heart-stopping moments.

Even being as ginger as he was with the door, the frame still warped around the giant’s body. He ground his rear and package before slipping out onto the street with a grunt, rising to his full height with a satisfied groan. “There. Much better!”

Crux squirmed more as soon as he was able to. Hux had grown in the short jaunt from his apartment to the street; the canine had to be at least 15 feet tall now, maybe more. “I tried to reach you! You’re not an easy guy to get a hold of.”

Hux chuckled good naturedly as he stomped his way down the block. He took up the entire sidewalk now; other animals were brushed aside even as they scurried to flatten themselves against buildings or parked cars. “I guess that’s true. You don’t mind me tagging along, do ya? I’ll be your plus one!”

“Of course not.” Crux allowed himself to nuzzle Hux’s chest as he was carried along. “You’re going to have to scrunch down a bit though.”

Hux glanced down, an incredulous eye visible through that shaggy headfur. “Awww c’mon, pipsqueak! Yer killing me here! Don’t they have rooftop service or something? Can’t ye help a little old pup celebrate your birthday?”

“I’ll….see what I can do.” Crux wriggled in Hux’s grip to see if he could grab his phone.

“That’s the spirit!” Hux boomed, almost immediately surging up another five feet in height. “You’re the best, little dude.”

“You’re quite a handful, you know.” Crux was texting his friends, letting them know that there would be a very large change of plans.

“Nothin’ you can’t handle, lil blue. You know you love it.”

Crux’s cheeks warmed at the realization he couldn’t argue. “Yeah. I guess I do.”

“Heh. Damn right!” Hux rumbled as he leapt over a car to move into the street. Much more room there. “We’ll go to your little dinner party, and then I’ll take you someplace where we can have some REAL fun!”

The two canines walked to the restaurant together, one growing larger all the while. The rhythmic tremors took that much longer to diminish; car alarms blared in their wake.

 
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Posted by on March 3, 2017 in Furries, Thursday Prompt, Writing

 

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