Tag Archives: Blog

Journal – The Girl with no Fear

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Here’s a funny thing about myself. I always have majorly overblown confidence about a thing until I’m halfway into it.

“I’m not afraid of people. I love talking to people! I can face down a crowd.” Then I blithely stand up to tell a story about a coworker at a small friendly retirement party. I am shocked when, halfway through, my hands are shaking hard. I have to breathe and calm down but my punchline falters a bit. Am I afraid of public speaking? Looking back to when I did theatre in college, it was the same: one hundred percent confidence followed by shakes on stage.

“I like rock climbing! I like nature! I’m gonna sign up for this little class and learn the knots and then I can hang (get it?) with my rock-climbing big brother and sister.” I take the class, start climbing the first little practice tower, and hit critical mass. I am shaking so hard I don’t trust myself to climb any higher. My hands have locked down on the rock climbing nubbins. “I forgot I’m afraid of heights!” I call back to my bemused classmates from a whopping ten feet high.

I got to meet a new friend on videochat recently. No fear there. Slept like a baby. Excited, happy puppy enthusiasm. “Yay, a new person to love!!” We talked, and she was awesome, and the conversation was easy, and everything was fine as long as I didn’t get distracted by my own reflected strangerface and lose track of the conversation.

After I hung up, I started making some oatmeal. As I stirred the pot I thought, “Where is that quiet screaming coming from? It’s getting louder. Oh, right! My own head.” After some puzzling I figured out that it was latent anxious adrenaline rush from meeting her. DID SHE LIKE ME WAS I STUPID DID I HURT HER FEELINGS???

 

Anyway, I thought it was just a funny character trait, but now that I’ve written it down, I see it’s my old friend Emotional Repression popping up. Hello again. Let’s never talk.

I have definitely gotten better, but digging my emotional core free is a slow, slow process. Sometimes Repression pops up and bites me in the ass, just like old times. It bites less than before, but it still bites.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Finding Your Voice, sort of

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People keep asking my advice lately.

Lol wut.

Well, I guess it’s fine. But I’m just a pair of eyeballs posing as a human being. Keep your salt shaker handy to liberally season anything I say. I will not be held responsible for the stupid things you do with my advice.

On having a voice:

When I was in writing classes people kept asking the teacher about how to develop their voice. It confused the hell out of me. What is a “voice?” As long as you’re not trying to be anyone else, you’re yourself right?

Unfortunately, I was so confused by the question I never paid attention to the answer. Or maybe the teacher just bullshitted so I forgot what they said. Bullshit answers tend to lay pretty light in the brain. You can remember them talking but not the words they spoke…
I think, though, that I finally learned what they were asking. They were still kids. They were asking the teacher who they were. Poor kids! Poor teacher!

I don’t know much, and everybody is different. What works for me may not work for you. But lately I keep hearing people talking about their inability to be creative. Not having a voice is a similar complaint, in a way. At least, the solution is the same.

Here goes:

Empty your brain. Upend all that garbage and start fresh, empty. Nature abhors a vacuum, right? The second you empty your brain, a thought will rush in to fill it.

This is fine. Use this. Put your pen to paper and start writing.

Writing poetry, for me, is a conversation with my subconscious. I’m always a little bit curious to see what it will say next. What little monster will pop out of the deep Id? What strange conclusion will be drawn from this inauspicious little starter word?

I read once that creative people actually have a stronger link with their subconscious than non-creative people. It’s that little touch of madness… too strong a link makes you unfit to live in a society; too weak a link, you’re a robot I guess. But all you robots, do not despair. If you envy the wobbly reality on this side of things, you can work on breaking down that wall. Start by emptying your brain. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

Oh, you’re done emptying your brain already? Now write, or draw. The first random word or phrase that comes to mind, or the first line you draw. Kick it around. Follow where it leads. The Rationalist inside of you will tug on your sleeve and say, “hey… this is stupid, what is this shit?” Grab that rational person and upend them, over and over. You’ve ears only for your muse and her name is Crazy.

There is a thin, thin line between controlling your verbal rabbit chasing, and pure schizophrenic word salads. It’s like controlling a lucid dream. Very fine balancing act.

However, if you can master the art of tapping into your crazy, you will never be creatively blocked. Once I learned how to do this, I wrote my novel. Every time I found myself slowing down, not knowing where to go from here, I turned off my thinking brain and let the schizophrenic lead the leash for a few seconds. She never lets me down. Sometimes she takes me on a really strange, dumb, or unexpected journey, but if I just leave her to her own devices, she’ll sniff out the truffles. I think I mixed some metaphors there… schizophrenics aren’t good at finding truffles. Who knows, maybe they are.

How does this relate to finding your own voice? Well, I’ve always been an oddball, so I’ve always drawn or written odd things. A logical person will write logical things. And a normal person writes normal things. What if you’re ordinary? If you are, guess what? Ordinary people will love you. And there are a lot of ordinary people in the world. You’ll be a hit.

Help, I don’t have a voice! The anguished writer cried aloud, with her loud voice.

Yes, you do. It’s probably not the voice you wished you had. You can’t iron the uniqueness, or the normalness, out of yourself. That’ll only make you sad. Instead, embrace what you are. Accept the flaws. I must accept that I always write free verse with small words, frequently recurring words. Blah blah darkness blah blah time blah blah wild blah blah me I myself me. I get so bored of myself. I want to write like Edgar Allen Poe or Mark Twain, but that’s not happening. I’m too lazy to try, and if I did, it’d be stilted and wrong. It’d be more like an autotuned voice, or a helium voice.

You’ve got to be who you are. You’ve got to write what comes naturally. Don’t try to impress. Stay true. Don’t fake. Don’t act. Relax your mind and find that thin line between rabbit chasing and schizophrenia, and tread the edge. Don’t let the Rationalist hook you away. If you do this when you put pen to paper, then whatever you write or draw is pure untrammeled you. The hardest part is not about finding your voice; you already have it. It can’t leave you. The hardest part is shutting that inner critic up, and accepting the voice that you have.

Edit:: Conversations with these two are what inspired the above post. Read their stuff.

Lille Sparven speaks the raw truth:

www.lillesparven.com/2019/02/censuring-mirror.html?m=1

Paul Sunstone asks the good questions:

https://cafephilos.blog

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Journal – No sound of crickets here

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Yesterday was my birthday. Since my birthday is a national holiday, quite a few people were allowed to stay home. Instead of working I chased my nephew and nieces around outside, sat in front of a fire, and had a nice dinner.

The kids had erected a steep five foot slide out of the snow, with no stairs. It was packed slick from many kid butts, so the only way to really use it was to throw yourself facefirst over the side wall and then slide down on your belly like a penguin. The kids managed to sled down it, go down on their knees, all kinds of tricks. I was just happy to be able to manage the penguin thing.

For my birthday present, I made my sister buy me cricket powder. Then we made cricket crackers (the cricket-eating community like to call these “chirps” instead of chips) and her whole family was forced to eat them with dinner. It was all that I could have asked for and more!

We learned that crickets taste odd. Very earthy. They’re little earth golems, so they taste like dirt, cocoa, mushrooms, strange buggy overtones, and the occasional tiny gravel crunch that makes you stop chewing and go… what part was that? All in all a very brown flavor.

I could get to like them. They’re healthy, sustainable, and a source of protein in many other cultures. But it’d take some training, some mental gymnastics, and a lot more cricket powder. It’s too expensive! And why should I work so hard to train myself to enjoy a food which would just further cull me from the herd?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Journal – How to be Cool at the Boba Tea Place

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I’m all out of (good) poems, so here’s a story from my day.

 

 

Cowdog Creatives and I went to our favorite boba tea place yesterday.

320px-bubble_tea

I don’t think everyone has had boba tea before (please correct this ASAP), but when they give you the tea at this place, they give you a clear plastic cup, and they laminate a plastic film over the top instead of popping on a conventional lid. You are also handed an oversized, stabby-ended straw. Then you get to stab your beverage. This part alone worth the four dollars.

Being whatever the fuck I am, one day I decided to order an avocado flavored one. It came to me vivid green and unsettlingly viscous. I commenced the drink stabbing ritual. But the cup was flimsy, and I hadn’t supported it correctly. The film was only partially perforated by my action. Instead, all of the pressure I applied went into crumpling the cup, which in turn pressurized the contents, which ejaculated out of the hole I’d made and coated the counter and floor in neon green avocado flavored boba tea. As a final indignity, the cup fell over lamely, spilling more.

This was of course hilarious. Cowdog Creatives and I laughed ourselves weak. I grabbed a handful of napkins to mop up the mess, not noticing the little ceramic napkin weight on top of the stack. It got hefted and landed hard with a teeth-gritting clank, but did not, by some miracle, break. So that was just more awkward.

I realized, after we’d inexpertly wiped up the mess, that the nice Asian clerks, usually ineffably kind and patient, hadn’t lifted a finger to help us. They just sort of pretended we weren’t there.  Was this penance? Or perhaps this was the polite thing to do in their minds?

It turned out to be a stroke of luck that I spilled much of that blasted drink, because it turned out to be weird, rich, heavy, regrettable.

 

Yesterday we were in the same shop. There was a guy next to us with three friends, and he did the exact same thing. He failed to quickly and humanely execute his beverage. It bled out two-thirds of the contents all over the floor, an even bigger mess than my own epic one.

I told him not to feel bad, I’d done the same thing once. They asked the clerks for paper towels and a roll was passed over the counter to them. Once again, the guests ended up cleaning the majority of their own mess. The cashier actually did come out with a mop this time, but too late, the mess was already gone, along with the entire paper towel roll.

As we were leaving, we overheard the guy say, “why is everyone in here helping me clean this up, except my own girlfriend?”

She alone sat placidly sipping her drink, unconcerned by his public outing of her behavior.

 

The moral of this story is, go drink boba tea, but support the walls of your cup if you want to perform a clean execution. It tastes better without the shame, manual labor, or avocado.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Deep down, we’re all like-and-follow whores

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A friend asked me about getting more likes and followers, and I drafted this in response. It’s a little summary of things I’ve picked up since I started blogging.

I figured it would be worth sharing with you all, too. Maybe there’ll be something in this list that you never knew.

 

  • Content
    1. Find the thing you enjoy writing/posting the most, and stick with it. Whatever you want your site to be, there will be an audience for it somewhere. If you enjoy writing it, it’ll be an enjoyable read. The thing that comes easiest to you is most likely your strength.
    2. Honesty is key. People respond to the humanity of others. People love to read about people.
    3. Titles should be succinct, searchable, intriguing.
    4. Tag your posts with every possible search term. It’s OK to go ballistic on this, especially if you choose to hide the tags so they don’t clutter your site.
    5. Brief content is more quickly read and processed, and gets more likes. You can spam the hell out of people with one-liners, and they don’t seem to mind.
    6. When you create a website, you are fostering a little culture of your own. Whatever your content, likeminded people will follow your site. Whether or not you write weightier content or fluffy content is up to you; go with your gut. You’ll make weightier or fluffier friends, so choose wisely what you want your friends to weigh.
  • Consistency
    1. Post consistently. This is major. Consistent readers want consistent writers, and you want consistent readers. It doesn’t matter if it’s every day, every week, or every month, so long as you deliver on the same day each time.
    2. Write consistently. Choose a theme for your site and stick to it. Your readers get more comfortable once they know what to expect. If you have a variety of interests, consider organizing them into a consistent pattern. For example, you could do a real life post on Monday, a song post on Wednesday, and a quote on Friday. If your interests are too disparate, consider maintaining different sites for each.
    3. It takes time to build an audience. Don’t give up, don’t slack off. Schedule posts ahead of time if you need a break.
  • Marketing
    1. The more links there are to your content, the more searchable your work will be online. This means the more time you spend being active online (commenting, tweeting, FB group posting, etc) the more people will find you.
    2. Comment on other pages. If you consistently give feedback, you’ll make friends, and they’ll come back to your blog and comment back. This is especially rewarding, but you will find yourself investing a lot of time in reading others’ posts. It’s a question of what kind of an effort and reward you’re looking for. You get back whatever you put in.
    3. Take advantage of writing contests, prompts, word-of-the-day, etc. Readers who are curious about responses to the prompt will be driven to your site.
    4. Search for websites related to your favorite topics and make comments on their pages too. Don’t pander for likes, but an informed, thoughtful, or witty comment followed by your URL might get some attention.
    5. Follow the trends. If you truly want your site to be big, then take a look at which of your posts got the biggest responses, and lean your content that way. Be very careful with this tip: if you follow the trends too closely, you could end up a successful blogger, spend all your time blogging about blogging, and lose your soul.
  • You don’t want to be popular anyway
    1. The popular kids are the ones who don’t care about being popular, right? It’s a catch-22. If you don’t want to be popular, and don’t try to be popular, then people will be drawn to your confidence. You’ll post what you want, and your work will have integrity for it, and people will be drawn to that, too.
    2. Have FUN! There’s no point if you don’t have fun. Odds are you won’t be famous. But you will learn lots, and you’ll make friends, and you’ll have a creative outlet to be proud of. If you’re good, might get your site to pay for itself. If you’re downright amazing, you might get your site to pay for your sandwiches.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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