Surrender Dorothy

Fri, 31 Mar 2017 01:08:56 GMT

I am so tired, up from a nap with new devouring poetry books, and I feel weird about the greed that goes with an anthology; that goes with a greatest hits album; look, it's everything.

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snap it work it quick erase it

Mon, 13 Mar 2017 03:53:31 GMT

That's what we do when we don't know what to do, we put on Steve Perry, fucking loud.

( no it's not Journey lyrics )

So that's me. I don't understand myself sometimes, but I think I like her okay.

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Do-Over (and Over)

Sat, 09 Jan 2016 18:42:31 GMT

Here I am again.

Got my first ever job, did it all by myself, and here not six months later going to get another, bigger, better job.

Only, I'm getting it in no small part because of who my parents are and what my parents want, and--I want it, too, I've always wanted to live in literal paradise and this is my chance. I'm not stupid.

But there are already caveats. I mean. I'm learning quickly (finally) that there are with everything.

I just don't know. I know this is what I want but I'm not sure this is how I wanted it.

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dragged (needle skip)

Sat, 11 Jul 2015 16:37:23 GMT

I am so tired. I feel like I say that constantly, just as an observation, to myself. Fighting a sinus headache with coffee and a broken coffee maker with sheer determination and additional coffee packs. Fucking Keurig. First thing I want in my own apartment is a drip coffee maker. I've never had a Mr. Coffee and I want one.

My goals in life have rightsized, haven't they. Dude, whatever; Grainger wants to hire me and I want to let them, even if the words "sales rep" make my intestines turn over and back up in self-protection. I also want to finish this "Clu and Shaddox react to a stadium disaster in a way that makes it clear 1) they are Together, 2) they want to add Tron to the set, A U B," over a year later and totally separate from anything. (A, union B, intersect C.)

I looked up a 500 calorie no-equipment workout on youtube and I'm not sure I want to do it. God bless Kai Wheeler though.

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sure sure cool cool

Thu, 25 Jun 2015 17:10:46 GMT

( Let's pretend. )

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Tue, 23 Jun 2015 22:22:34 GMT

I don't know anymore. I'm trying to get it together and I feel like I don't know what that entails. I have a to-do list on my desk and I'm nurturing a burgeoning headache, refusing to really do anything for it other than sit here and willpower past it. There's a certain sense of not knowing what I want.

I'm making apartment budgeting plans, restlessly, and I don't think I can afford it regardless of where I want to live. I might as well cost out living on the moon. It's not really a lark, planning for the future, not when the future is a sea of No Exit signs.

I read an article to get away from this screen, this insight I've been wanting to dump my day into for hours. Get here and then don't want to do it, what is this weird habit, it's like a diet.

Before I went to bed I took a shower and had milk and honey and slid into a freshly-made bed with my hair wrapped in a blanket, nice and warm. I woke warm but not sweating, and felt rested in a way I typically don't.

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Chord Progression

Sun, 07 Jun 2015 17:03:25 GMT

This entry a catch-all, hot and cold running bullshit on tap, full of successive edits today. Stream of consciousness until I forget or remember to stop, until I'm done.

Started by reclaiming the way I clean things, the only way that ever worked: didactically following the UFYH weekend challenge list daily, subbing "make your bed" for "wash your sheets" six days of seven.

I just got over the mental hurdle of not having toilet cleaner by arming myself with PineSol instead, so the bathroom's next on the docket. I just want Results in at least one area of my life today.

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a thousand tiny textures you can't even see

Tue, 19 May 2015 15:37:28 GMT

In which the title of today's effort is a general comment on the feeling of looking at the icon that resulted when I hit "random." How terribly deep.

( Triviata )

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Thu, 05 Mar 2015 18:03:12 GMT

I don't even want to look at what I've written before; I don't want to see where I've been. I don't want to reflect too hard.

I am such an ugly, arrogant everything. I hate who I am as a person. I wish I were a cute little sunflower.

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oh god who's flying this thing

Mon, 26 Jan 2015 15:35:02 GMT

Wow, if you look down at my last few entries, my life has done its circle again. I might graduate in the fall if I can get This One Class. I swear to god. It's like a medieval unicorn hunt. Except medieval pilgrims actually stood a chance of seeing a unicorn.

I had ugly dreams that are totally about this spring that I'm not psyched about.

Sure, why not tell the entire Internet; I was always most comfortable yelling at a roomful of strangers.

We were moving--the implication was from Florida, to here--and my old fitness instructor had called up a bunch of his friends to help us haul furniture, which we did until late into the night. Everyone was tired, and we finally cajoled them into taking five.

Stepdad was going to give them a bonus and wanted to, you know, announce it. And everybody's chatting amongst themselves, like you will do, so we flip the lights and kind of ask for quiet.

And this one woman, who looks exactly like a bygone difficult relative, keeps talking. So I ask her to be quiet. And she glares at me and keeps going.

I was so, so pissed in the dream that I am mad typing this. "Are you five? Is this first grade and we have to say OH THE TEACHER IS TALKING, if you shut up for a second you'll get a cookie? Just, just shut up."

We did that three or four times and I woke up out of sheer irritation. So it's going to be that kind of day?

I mean, it doesn't have to be, but that's the stack I woke up shoveling out from under.

I have a lot to do, today--this week in general, and today's the day I get to do most of it.

( You care so much. )

You don't understand I've been procrastinating for a semester on this one thing, so it's huge and scary even though realistically it's fart-out-paragraphs tier, mechanical and shallow. Mostly I've got to do all this prep over.

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briefly (back to the groove)

Sun, 14 Sep 2014 02:04:05 GMT

I'm terrified of this book review assignment, she said, and checking it? I have a month to do something I thought was due next week, praise the Lord.

What remains now is to get my ass off this ottoman and go get ice cream, can I get a hoo-rah.

(Reading my CJ Cherryh again, and that diction'll be sticking to me awhile, not least 'cause it's close to my natural mode.)

I woke up at 3am or so to my dog barfing; at first I thought it was something scratching/rubbing the wall and came up out of a deep sleep telling her to lay back down, then it was to hold her and mop the mess out of the carpet.

Except she was promptly sick again. So 3:15 I carry her downstairs, quietly, in the dark, held to my chest and feeling my way down one rung at a time. I let her out on the lawn and she immediately starts chomping down grass. This is the dog that won't touch the lawn, that wouldn't sit down and get her ass wet in the lawn for a fresh treat, won't go near it on a bribe, let alone a dare.

She was devouring it, frantic and mechanical, like you usually see them do with meat. So I knew she was real sick, or about to be, pretty sick, and there she went, hrrk hrrrk splat on the stones. I swept it up and dodged her trying to kiss me with that face, telling her what a good girl she was and coaxing her inside.

She threw right up on the floor. I wiped that up and just held her a while while she shivered and whined and was generally miserable.

We sat like that a half-hour, me holding her against the chills, thinking I ought to call a vet, maybe when she whines, burps deeply, and relaxes in my arms, soft and still.

When she relaxes like that, she's just a fat fur pillow. I imagine Tribbles are like that, only less cute.

She sat with me until the sun came up and meanwhile I got some homework done.

This narrative has no point, except to tell you, I'm a good pet parent, and soon there will be ice cream, and really, that's sufficient.

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here we go again

Tue, 26 Aug 2014 05:04:02 GMT

Ahoy there, Sacramento.

I think I'm still not registered for thesis hours which would piss me hugely off. I got the hold on my record resolved, at least. I'm tired and cold and haven't enough sleep and typing on my knees feels weird; I never will, I fear, get the hang of a laptop.

I have a damned video due next week and I don't know if I can pull it off. She complimented my writing I think; I can't tell if that was backhanded or not and lately I doubt everything.

I'm going to try for sleep; goodnight.

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gonna drink all my money and don't give two shits

Tue, 18 Mar 2014 14:30:10 GMT

I was on and off the fence, like you do, about burning this fucking thing to the figurative ground. (I think I cited something ~~stuffy and pretentious~~ deep and important about cyclical optimism and perpetually incomplete goals--as if daring to have them made them worthless, just because I didn't also achieve them.)

Gonna let it stand.

I live in California now. I get to keep that. It's fact. Sweet merciful fuck-all else is going right, but that worked out, at least. I am literally where I wanted to be.

I don't graduate now until at least fall, everyone's between jobs again (again, which I feel is just a soft-sell way of saying perpetually, which is like the heat of a furnace, blinking it away reflexively, flinching back) and a friend of mine died over the weekend. Made her some promises I never will fulfill, now, but I don't think she holds it against me, which just sort of makes it worse.

I'm just going to go do something, anything, about next term's classes, try to get something together, try to talk to my committee and see where I'm at and whether I should just fucking withdraw from the whole program. I am so tired of not doing anything. Therefore, something.

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Inferno (Opiuo Remix)

Fri, 10 Jan 2014 18:09:33 GMT

New year, new angle of attack; tiny blurts of update on writing-before-life, but also life, but also whatever comes to me at the time.

I just set off a seismic crisis on my desk by reaching for my headphones; a whole passle (passel?) of stuff fell to the floor in a gentle cascade of paper. This is perhaps a sign that I should clean it.

For a start: I honored my agreement with myself to complete my writing warm-up in its alotted time. This is big for a few reasons: I usually skip out on agreements to me--I always come last and my contracts For Me are the most breakable and the first shit to go out the window when I have other commitments; second, I've been so hardcore write-blocked for eight months that it's started to impact my academic and professional career. The ice is thawing in the nick of time and I'm making demonstrable progress at a number of things, but writing particularly.

Also, this is the first day in over fifteen weeks, maybe twenty--since I made the decision--that I have both been excited about doing a thesis and come up with a fistful of viable potential topics for it. Gotta see what kind of questions I can answer/ask/research with these ideas but I HAVE THEM without prodding or word from on high and that itself is no small feat.

There are no minor miracles.

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and then the room turned orange

Fri, 28 Jun 2013 16:32:29 GMT

There we go. Stayed up too late on Tumblr and woke up mentally alert without having slept too deeply, shrugging off layers of fatigue and depth. Woke up thinking about what bothered me about a sequence in The Internship: during the Quidditch match, the dude coded as the venal outsider who will do anything for a buck and torments the interns we're meant to identify with, he takes the field with a wordless alpha-male war cry deliberately electronically deepened and distorted; it's the kind of bellow they use for movie monsters, for the Balrog or Godzilla. This guy is explicitly coded as an outsider and almost inhuman.

And Lyle, the nerd with the hair and the glasses and no self-assurance, he shouts "Bangarang!" in a small thin voice that breaks, and his team get their asses handed to them.

There are a few possibilities here: either he's referencing the movie Hook, the post-Hook Avatar: The Last Airbender career of Dante Bosco (90's kids say what), or the Skrillex album of the same name.

Point being, we are supposed to feel a couple things: a hurt for his team as smaller, weaker, and hopelessly idealistic, and a motivation to kick ass for Peter Pan, even though in this incredibly ill-conceived film Peter is a forty-five year old dude in a suit--all of which is so much ickier than it was when I was a kid.

Yeah I had this whole complete mini-narrative analysis of the scene in my brain when I woke up, thusly, and had the ancillary thought that I can't just enjoy movies anymore.

I went back over K-Pax and wow, that movie is so much different now than it was the first time I watched it. I have all these theories about family dynamics now, and relationships, and how this is really just a movie about two dudes who can't communicate for shit, and the psychologist doesn't go through any development in that regard--he just gets passionate about his work again; nothing about his family life improves (and in fact it worsens; an actual human woman would have divorced his ass over what happens in the barbecue scene) despite all these magical life lessons~ and new respect for human life~ that he's supposed to be learning from this guy who might be an alien.

In sum: tepid, not excellently scripted movie benefits exorbitantly from lead casting choices.

College, and grad school, have ruined a lot of films for me. I'm making critical inquiries in my sleep and wow, now I want to watch Easy A again with my blinders off and critique mode on, except, no, don't, just let me have this.

In other news, I dreamed ElecTRONica was back--that it was a seasonal thing Disney only did in the summer.

How does that song go? We found love in a hopeless place.

Man, I wish.

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and pretty soon, he learned to fly

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 20:37:46 GMT

Having no luck writing new. It's the usual; I get up under dumb circumstances, manage to shake them off by sheer GODDAMN IT NO NOT TODAY, then get pushed through a second set of dumb circumstances that leave me frozen up.

^ I don't know what that means, but I want it left there as part of the process of becoming a new person, of finding a new voice; look, see, I am doing a new thing; the old is passed away.

There's a lot on my plate today and I should be doing that instead of this, but that's not new.

I'm going to go finish my time logs like an adult. ~~And then I'm gonna THROW IT ON THE GROUND.~~

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if i scream, if i cry

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:54:59 GMT

Let's see.

Client project is a go; I've got to do peer review and transcription today. California--if this goes right, I can live there, please god, please please please please.

I have one life goal and it is to live on the West Coast. Preferably in California. My boner for CA is not entirely rational, but yes I've been there and yes I want to go back and yes, yes yes oh, oh. I will do whatever it takes.

I've also got to pitch a rightsized, three-meeting interview to the client, instead of the six that were planned, because ahahaha, California.

Oh god. GIVE IT TO ME.

Still can't drive for shit; my connection doesn't get back until what, Sunday. I did pay for my damn tag, though, just under the wire. I'm trying to think of what other deadlines there are that don't involve projects and production. I may just be down to those. Those and housework?

Where is the other shoe, and when is it going to drop. I don't feel on kilter, but I never do anymore, so I guess that's good too.

I tried to type good and cool at the same time and that makes ghoul.

I also always type goals as gaols.

I haven't researched or studied something for my own edification/interest/fun in just about a decade.

I can't believe I just typed researched and fun in the same sentence, but there you go. That just happened.

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we are basic life

Sun, 23 Dec 2012 18:23:27 GMT

I flunked the driving test, that opportunity is being the mixed bag I fully expected, and Christmas Eve is tomorrow night. Culver City fell through completely, and so did Frisco. Not that you knew about Frisco, but. Well, you do now.

To the good: two weeks away from the people in my life helped me see the good in them, us, and everything, and I scored them both some truly awesome unexpected presents at the last possible fucking minute, in addition to the ones I made. They're never gonna see it coming, and it'll be fantastic. I'm looking forward to watching them light up.

They got home and I got shit sorted and shoved into the fridge in record time. Is this too neat, because it's really all I have done and have to say.

Gonna make progress on this manuscript. Gonna do it today, since gettin' it done means I buy myself a 48-hour window of no contact. I just hate the phone so much and lalala, issues issues dumping issues too personal for a fucking blog.

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take what we can and bring it back home

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 20:42:10 GMT

I scored that opportunity. It is mine.

And after all that? Driving is easy. If everything goes perfectly, I'll have my license before Christmas.

Dude is burned out at his job and doesn't quite realize it, but that's not my problem.

Listen up. Repeat after me:

EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD IS NOT MY. FUCKING. RESPONSIBILITY.

Just as much as this is about saying, I was a jerk, I was wrong, I fucked up, I should pick up after myself? Because you can be, because you will be, because you do, and because you should. Period.

But that's not all there is to it. Learn how to shovel your own shit, and when not to pick up anyone else's.

Yep, nope; sorry, dude. I have boundaries too. I have time needs, and the business meeting is not more or less important than the movie the day after it; I have been planning both occasions for weeks (and months) now. My time is just as valuable as yours.

I've been waking up for sunrise, and that's going well. Better. I can feel where I'm more in my element and just. More capable of evolved thought throughout the day.

Culver City's off the table, but that's kind of a good thing; I've got a huge proposal due at week's end and basically tomorrow to do it. The assignment says two pages of copy, plus attached requirements, so of course, he wants three to four pages of copy. I may also have to do a tutorial on something other than Adobe Photoshop, because I don't really want to do two tutorials on the same subject.

Given that at least two people in the course have mentioned not having a lot of HTML experience, and I have my share? I may do something for that; I think I'll teach them how to write a page in Notepad, how to write a simple style sheet for it, and why and how you want to link-rel your stylesheets.

That'll have four distinct chunks and present three main task topics (one concept topic, that being the "how").

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dog day sunrise

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 13:36:56 GMT

There's an opportunity staring me in the face and I don't know if I can grab it. I don't know if I've got what it takes and I'm terrified. Why is it my response to opportunities is fear.

I just don't know if I've got what it takes and obviously the stakes would be very high and I've got so much to prove, to myself, to my parents and what if I fuck up oh god.

You know what? I've decided, I just decided. If I fuck up, then I'm not meant to be a nerd goddess; if I fuck up it's barista time.

Holy shit The Game Has Changed literally just popped up on my randomizer.

Yes, I believe in coincidence. I believe in the innate wizardry of math and odds-making and the sharp-tongued palaver of careful statistics. It's science.

I think I'm supposed to at least throw my hat into the ring.

Now, this I can do.

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but you've known it the whole time

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 15:39:51 GMT

Jesus, I don't care.

I can't seem to do anything about driving, so, whatever. I flat out just got told that I'm not properly grateful and that I'm not acknowledging her enough and it's got to do with how I don't love myself or something, and I know she doesn't understand that I'm not really a person, that I don't feel things, that I just feel angry and tired and sick of her shit.

And then she does that thing where 'did we even achieve anything' well maybe if you would ever make up your mind where the fucking finish line is, I would know when I'm allowed to stop.

Maybe I'm not allowed to stop, maybe no one's ever allowed to stop, maybe we're all just supposed to hurtle toward a crash. At least it would wipe the slate clean.

I'll just compromise some more and be an adult about this; what else can I do.

God, once I have my own money, I won't have to do this anymore. Until then I'll write my little stories.

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these dreams under my pillow

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 15:10:04 GMT

Clocking in on the first break of my day; downloaded Illustrator and I'm gonna try using it again. Trying to freestyle it the way I remembered from my CS2 classes resulted in a lot of frustration. No shortage of people on Youtube who want to tell you how to do it, though. I should learn enough to at least not make myself want to die.

Keep calm and create the perfect system. I hope renting these things through the cloud doesn't come back and bite me financially, whether or not anything comes of it.

Whether or not anything comes of it is a pretty good way to live.

Culver City is a done deal! Looks like it'll be happening sooner than I expected, which is nice. And that's the story of how I'll get out to California twice in one year. I almost can't believe my good fortune, to the point that it's difficult to type the word.

I'm back to waking up with a sore throat and a stomach ache--acid kickback--not sure if stress or actually getting sick. Under the circumstances, I really really hope it's just stress. Stress can be Alka-Seltzered into submission.

Can you feel like you're living too hard when you're not actually doing anything and you go to bed at eleven every night? I do, sometimes.

This thing is no joke. My entire body is changing shape in ways I never thought it even could, so that's rad. I mean, I'm not even doing it right, because lol I can't quite lift it.

And there's the bell. Gotta dash.

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when i love someone; we're going up, we're going up

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 14:18:43 GMT

Getting sorted with my coffee to the beat as it's been for years, for all the years, for always--Pendulum helps.

Autumn is my favorite, and the neat thing about hurricane season being so long is that I can wake to driving winds, hard enough to pull the door from my hand and kiss my lips, pulling for breath on the exhale, trying to suck its way inside.

Nobody ever stopped to find out if I had an oral fixation. Being an eight and looking too young is a lonely fucking business, but it ought to pay off well within the next three to five.

I have some awesome opportunities staring me in the face, if I can marshal up the courage to go after them. (I've always confused marshal and martial; I confuse words with the same sound, regardless of whether the spelling is remotely close--see, aloud for allowed.)

I dreamed all night about organizing and opportunity: something that I don't remember now, that had to do with apartments, with the way they look looking out, all the balconies facing each other in that square, that compact rectangular yard. A lot of staircases and elevators, proceeding up and down, motion and change.

No, dear. When I have sex dreams, somebody gets stabbed. Blood and fire are more my speed.

This is an organizational dream, a dream of preparation--structural layer dream about changing living habits. Compare the subway dream and the highway dream, both relationship-issue dreams.

I have a recurring nightmare about dying horribly in an elevator shaft, in a crash or a straight fall, or being crushed when the cab returns.

In general, my dreams are intense, recurrent, and largely locale-or-setting-based. I don't know, I've met so few people that remember their dreams, let alone get in the habit of writing them down, that I don't know if that's how everybody does it.

We spend a third of our lives asleep. That's 33.3-bar percent of our entire lives. Why wouldn't our dreams be important? Even if they're junk cycles. Partial files. Chance music, interesting for its own sake.

I can tell I'm getting older when I'm excited about my purchases, and they're as follows: a closet rack, a lint roller, and a pretty beach towel--a conscious act of not-like-the-others.

Look at all this cleaning I'll be able to do.

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there was never a man like my johnny

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 22:13:04 GMT

Recently, I finally found amazing writing music. Downloadable massive mixes of slow ambient dubstep. This is what the stars sound like. It's perfect for writing to, which I don't seem to do, lately.

I talk and talk and talk about writing, and vomit ideas into the ether of the internets, but I don't write them; I talk and talk and talk about tagging, and slowly manage one or two tags a day before I collapse into bed.

Some of this is biological, cyclical. Some is just pervasive. Some is the constant distraction and general loud atmosphere I work in and am expected to function in. Some of it is just that the gloss is off the hobby and even hobbies, lately, seem more like work.

Cursory Googling suggests that others with grief-based PTSD have reduced dream recall. This has bothered me, off and on, and my total empathy score has taken a long, slow, almost sixteen-point slide over the last three years in particular.

In brief: grad school has turned me into a noxious bitch.

I am going to play Tetris and then I am going to power through this decaf coffee, and then, THEN, I am going to write, whether it's tags or fanfic or something else or just more (and more personal) bloo bloo bloo, woe and torment, bloo.

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'til i can get my

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 11:30:23 GMT

Taking solace today in two facts:

I will, within 98% probability, be going to Culver City later this year. Tron fans know what's up. It's just that it usually looks like this, in one's head.

Two: Barcade is a real place and an excuse to go to New York that isn't the Met. (You try getting your friends on board with cultural opportunities and then try beer and videogames. See which one works.)

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