Weekly Words 2

Push yourself in school and get good grades. Get good grades and get into a good college. Graduate college at any cost, because you will be handed a career after college that will carry you through the rest of your life. Now get a car. Now get a house. Now get a mortgage so you can get a second car. Now get a credit card, use it constantly, and tell yourself it is for the card rewards. Now remember that this is the only way to become an adult.
A whole generation of people came of age at the tail end of an old way of life that was not a viable solution to living in the new millennium. This generation of people, whose parents were lucky enough to come of age when a high school diploma was enough to get somebody a steady job they could support a family with that job, has been struggling to compete in an economy built off the old ways of living life. Competing not only with each other but with people from older generations that are still competing for the same jobs due to the recent recession. Jobs that the lost generation doesn't even want in the first place. Jobs designed for the old economy with 40+ hour work weeks that leave little time for a personal life or creative endeavors, unless sleeping for less than 6 hours a night is fun for you.
For most people this is just what's necessary to hang on from paycheck to paycheck. A lot of people are dealing with crushing student loan debt and high rent prices that make getting by an accomplishment in and of itself. Trapped by expenses in big cities with dwindling job prospects and exploding populations. Few are able to get it together to get out of where ever they are, faced with a paycheck that leaves them two choices: spend what little extra was earned on something to make their stuck lives better or live with the patience and lifestyle of a monk to save up and get out. Neither is terribly appealing given that the two options are mutually exclusive in most cases.
I don't know where I'm going with any of this. Certainly not toward a new profound understanding of the problem or a solution. It's just been in the news a lot lately. What with Bernie Sanders is leading the national conversation with his presidential campaign. He's a crafty politician who is using the truth about income inequality and the rampant bribery passed off as political donations from corporate lobbying groups to get the population motivated to vote in next year's presidential election. Whether you're voting for him or not, he is still striking a nerve with the population that understands the way the world looks like it is shaping itself and doesn't like it.
I can't help feeling part of the statistics being talked about in most of these news stories. I still remember how excited I was back in 2008 to leave my then "unbearable" job to start looking for work elsewhere. At the time, I'd received a few other job offers while working at the place, so I'd expected it to be an easy task. Then the national economy fell apart and I stumbled for 5 months before I found something else. All it took was 5 months for the white picket fence dream to evaporate. That is an empty feeling that is hard to fill when you're unemployed. It's been a long while since then though. I'm way overdue for building a new happy ending dream. I'm just not sure what it could be yet.

Weekly Words 1

What's in a title change? Less obligation to an arbitrarily specific idea and more flexibility in this case. I get distracted by my weeks sometimes. Coming off a weekend and wrestling with the fact that I've got another 45 hours of work time before my next weekend, obsessing over the things I didn't get done. Life gets away from you when you pay too much attention. Needless to say I've decided my goal isn't a specific day of the week to spill my head, as long as it's done once a week. This could be the death knell of my whole effort: giving myself room to ignore my goals. I don't think so though, but this will be a good challenge for me anyway.

This week The Midnight Disease by Alice W Flaherty has been staring at my from my shelf for a while now. A book about inspiration as a replicable brain state that is written by a neurologist. She talks about how certain brain states caused by trauma (two examples she uses are postpartum depression and people that had injuries to their brains) compel the person toward creative express without every really knowing why they have this new need for it. Some people turned to painting pictures after a brain injury, after having spent a life with no interest in it previously. Her own experience with postpartum depression caused her to write prolifically. The book is very interesting in parts, but then other parts read like they were written by a neurologist.
It forced me to confront the idea that all the periods of my life that have been filled with my most prolific writing have been a result of whatever unique brain chemistry cocktail I had pumping through my noggin at the time. It is strange trying to wrap my head around the fact that my inspiration had been a compelling force out of my control, but it came from a place within me. Inspiration from my brain guts and not some exterior force. The idea helps put my efforts into perspective. At least in the sense of knowing that my chemically induced brain state is replicable. At least I don't remember any physical trauma to brain during any of these times; and I don't have any new scars on my head that I can't remember getting either.
I don't know that bringing about those specific brain states that caused all that activity in the "gotta write" center of my brain is necessary. I think moving forward is more a matter of training the conscious part of my brain how to better interpret the parts of itself that I try to avoid. It will be an effort in understanding the absences and silences in all my thoughts. When I find those places where there are things I can't say, won't say, or don't know how to say I'll look for the shape, broad strokes, and edges of it. The details come out in whatever I end up writing. Now if I can just figure out how the hell I'm supposed to do any of that I'll be set to have carpel tunnel inflaming hours of writing.

Wednesdays Words 4

I woke up this morning with my eyes feeling extra sensitive to light. This happens from time to me. It is my genetic inheritance's fault really. Some days it leads to a migraine, but today doesn't feel like one of them. There isn't that unpleasant beehive static buzz feeling behind my eyes telling me to prepare myself for the worst. It's been months since I got one of those. 

My heart isn't in this post this morning. I'm still distracted from last night. I ran a game last night with a surprising amount of success given a lack of sleep, feeling burnt out, exhausted, and hit by a caffeine crash during the break that nearly had me cancelling the second part of the game. I decided to suck it up and powered through (roll +Might = 12, WOO!). It was well worth it. The second half picked up the pace of the action and kept me going through the rest of it. I also feel like I'm getting better at story telling with this. It's given me a lot of ideas about the nature of story telling and what makes a story dynamic and interesting. Maybe that's a full post I need to do sometime. Though it'll probably end up at the other blog when I write it.

My morning got away from me, like it always does, and now I get to cram an hour's worth of morning life into the next 30 minutes. Happy "It's all down hill from here" day.

Belated Wednesday's Words: Monday Musings 1?

I missed it last week. I didn't even think about it on the day. My bike, aka my best method of getting to and from work, was on the mend due to a damaged cone nut. Panic set in a heavy blanket of background stress that kept me on edge most of last week. That panicked feeling of: what if it's totally fucked and I gotta get a new bike? How will I get around? Will I get chubby again cause I'm not exercising regularly?

I ordered parts and tools off amazon, they arrived, I set to work and realized I didn't have all the tools I needed to complete the job. I ordered more tools off amazon and set to work a second time only to realize that my freewheel as stuck on and I had to take it to a bike shop just to loosen the freewheel, then I get it all reassembled only to find out that the axle isn't placed right and the wheel won't turn. New panic set in around there, where I completely redo my monthly budget anticipating an expensive repair and/or needing to take the bus for a while to work.

Found a place that was open Sundays, took it in to get it worked on. 30 minutes and $12.18 later I've got a running bike again. Needless to say though, most of last week my brain was consumed with the bike and what my next few weeks would be like if my bike was not ride-able. I forgot my Wednesday's Words last week. This week will just get Monday's Musings and Wednesday will still have it's words, so it's a double dose of my over caffeinated morning blog posts.

http://www.tmcm.com/tmcm/

Wednesday's Words 3

I can't count the number of times my mind has brought back the memory of high school English class as justification for some wonky aspect of my writing or my methods of writing. Why am I still doing that? Today I'm thinking specifically of a time when my teacher was discussing what he felt was the great tragedy of the modern age: word processors eliminated the draft's existence. He sited examples of hand written manuscripts from Shakespeare or the idea that the change the text underwent would be lost. At the time, my head was empty of ideas and this one sounded like a solid one. I swore to myself that I'd forever write in ink so that I'd always have my original unedited piece of writing. I insisted on handwriting everything, so that my drafts would be preserved. Later on in college I decided that my brain thought quicker than my hand could move with a pen, so I needed a new method of writing. I sought out type writers, figuring this would somehow be a bargain between the speed of typing and a permanent record. Turns out they are a pain in the ass to use for the most part. Their novelty quickly wears off when you've made another typo and have no choice but to cross out a word and retype it for the sentence to make sense.

I'm not sure why I stuck with that for so long. I guess I never really questioned the idea that writing by hand was a better method of writing for me. I type somewhere between 70-100 words per minute, depending largely on my caffeine intake. There is just no way my hand can move that fast. Every essay I ever wrote was done electronically and never once did I hand write a draft to any of them. It doesn't make much sense for me to keep at that strict analog only writing method.

I think this comes back to giving myself the time to write again. That ever present issue I cause myself , needing to dedicate time to a skill rather than be empowered by some magical force that just uses me as a conduit to spew greatness into the world. Hopelessly romantic ideas about what writing is meant to be. I can't hold on to those ideas if I really expect to make any progress. I just need to keep reminding myself that changing an idea is not an admission of defeat.

Wednesday's Words 2

It's Wednesday again. I've already talked myself out of doing this and then talked myself back into it and then out again and here we are. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find time in the mornings lately. There are chores and other random things that take my attention away from this. I'm of course making excuses for giving other things in my life a higher priority than this. I have been struggling lately with the idea of writing. If you had asked me 5 years ago what inspires me I could have spouted off a does ideas that I would have written a poem about. I can't tell if my cynicism has taken over or I've just got nothing to really say. What ever did inspire me? Is it because I'm too aware of a critical audience and don't want to disappoint an unknown group of people who can't be pleased? Probably don't need to waste my time trying to figure it out.

I've always talked about inspiration while reminding myself that was just a word given to well thought out ideas to give it a more fantastical feel to it. Inspiration only gets you so far if you have no idea what to do with it. It takes time and daily efforts to make progress at it and to turn inspiration into something usable. Waiting for inspiration is a mistake. Looking for inspiration is a mistake. Creating inspiration is what I need to practice more. Hard work and effort will get it for me. Harlen Ellison, my spirit animal, once famously sat in a bookstore window for five hours and wrote The Night of Black Glass based on an unseen sentence that was given to him. He stressed that that's what writing actually was. There wasn't a trick to it. You just needed to work on it and give it time until it became what you wanted. That is something I have not done in a long long time, if ever. I used to dedicate whole nights to writing and giving up sleep as a means to do it. I have not done that in forever. I can't even remember the last time I spent more than 40 minutes working on writing something creative of my own. I should change that. I will change that.

Wednesday's Words 1

I woke up this morning and didn't think I had much to say, but then I always do. There are a handful of blog post drafts I have half finished. I usually start where I feel like I'm on the cusp of something great and then never get to that point where I think THERE it is. I'm overly critical of my own work though and I'm addicted to "what if's."

There are times when I feel like I need to just get it done. That's when I post a whole grip of blog entries at once and they all get lost in each other. I set schedules I know I can't stick to, because I feel like I should be able to stick to them. It's a matter of establishing a good habit, but even the best of habits are hard to jump right into full force.

I am not gonna filter my head one day a week. I don't know what I'll get out of it, but that's not the point. I need to build a habit and the best way to start is with a first step. I can't keep holding onto endlessly justified what-if delays that stagnate my efforts to a near stand-still.

There is this feeling I get when I start brainstorming story ideas. I like to think of it as new idea energy, similar to new relationship energy that people like to call the honeymoon period of a relationship. I get excited about the idea and cant' wait to run around with it showing it off to the world. The problem is just like the honeymoon period of a relationship, it doesn't last. My idea starts asking for more out of me than just pillow talk and grand plans I won't end up following through on. That's when I start to lose interest.

Coming up with the idea is motivation for me to get it done, but without a genuine need to manifest the idea it tends to fizzle. This has been a huge step for me in breaking that habit. I'm stealing the title of these posts from a guy I knew in college who would make a myspace post every Wednesday where he ranted about some random thing at the college or about society that angered him. It was mostly recycled South Park jokes, but who doesn't like alliteration in their titles? Also got a friend (and player) who has been spitting out a block of text daily for the past year or so just to do it. Hell if that guy can do it, I can get to it at least once a week. -AB