Monthly Me - December 2014

Almost the end of the year! How did that happen? I'm sort of devided about how I feel--on the one hand, I've gotten a lot better with my health and my depression; on the other hand, there's a whole lot of other life-shit that's gotten worse and more in the way of my / our plans. So I guess as a whole, the year is a wash?

I'm back down to 161.8, almost as low as I was before Thanksgiving and several days of not doing a great job of not eating wheat, but I've done real well with not over eating, and with eating strategically--when I know there's a big dinner, eating less during the day, and so on.

I finally kicked that UTI, which is great, and I'm happy I went back to my herbalism to solve the problem. I sort of want to just buy all my herbs ever, but I think investing in seeds would be cheaper AND a better bet. Plus, it's more for the garden, which is always good. I'm determined to have a lush jungle by the end of next year.

We're in the middle of moving, and, as we were hoping to avoid, it's also the start of holiday shopping so everyone is working more AND it's cold AND it's a much more fractured chinch of time because of work and weather. I'm trying to move my stuff in a reasonable way, but I'm worried we'll wind up just throwing stuff wherever and it not being much better than it is now--and now, organization is nonexistent.

I'm planning for next year. December is always full of plans for te coming year, and I'm determined to devote the year to expanding and doing and learning--I'm going to write a story a week and a poem every day, which I've done before, and miss. I'm going to expand the nailpolish shop and reopen the crafting shop--possibly with a slightly new direction, depending. I'm going to memorize poems and soliloquies to see if it makes my memory better. I'm going to make art; Mandy Steward says I can and should! I'm going to figure out a niche and exploit the crap out of it, and integrate my fragments, and set up work space for myself so I can always work. I'm going to start writing letters to random people I admire and seeing if any write back, because why not?

2015 is my 35th year; it's going to be a good one for me if I have to claw it out of the cold bare ground. 

So there.

That's me this month. How're you? Let's keep contact with each other!

Moving toward a better sort of life

The more I learn about being gluten free, the more I stumble across all these other details about eating well and eating clean and living better. I mean, I knew the food system was messed up, and I've always sort of been a do-it-yourselfer, but I don't think I really knew just how messed up it was--or how easy, a lot of the times, it is to do stuff yourself. To just think about things beforehand.

Okay, I'm not going to be one of those creepy preachy sorts--I know what I want to do, and I'll be telling you guys as I go what's appropriate to whatever I'm doing, but I'm NOT going to harp on you. First of all, I have no business telling anyone else what to think when I'm trying so hard to just get my own thinking in line. Second, I really, really dislike being told what to do myself, so I'm not going to do that to you. And third, I really don't like that impulse of new converts to anything that goads you / tries to goad me into talking about it all the time while being super high-and-mighty about it, too. Nope. I'm avoiding that at all costs.

But I know that this life I have right now, though improving, is not the life I want.

So I'm working toward doing better--to building the life I want by:

• Eating better--I'm continuing with the gluten free living, and figuring out how to do that without spending a lot of money I don't have, or going completely seedy-paleo, which seems too extreme.* I'm also slowly replacing white starches with whole starches or with non-starch alternatives, battery-farmed stuff with sustainable stuff, and fake stuff (like margarine) with real stuff (like butter and coconut oil).
• Replacing weird chemicals--In my body-care products, my food, my household cleaning, my food-storage containers. This one is really hard and tends toward expensive or do-without-y, but there's only so much stinky-hippy-stereotype I can deal with, and I'm researching all the time.
• Figuring out where my personal spirituality is right now--I went through all sorts of phases as a kid, and I was a happy neopagan for a long time, but I think I'm just amorphously spiritual now, and I want to define it better for myself so I can work and life closer to my spiritual core and my core beliefs. That takes sifting and weighing--and the space to do that on my own.
• Getting back in shape--I'm still heavier than I want to be, and I'm still wildly out of shape, but I can almost always walk, I know enough yoga to get by, and I'm looking for movement classes I can take that won't break the bank or kill me or add too much extra stress.
• De-stressing--so I can refind balance and peace and listen to myself and the universe more without getting all jammed up in that narrow tunnel of freaking out and worrying about EVERY SINGLE THING.
• Figuring out my priorities--I'm damned sure of Travel, Peace, Balance, Self-Determination, Creative Expression...but the rest of the world and life is a little hazier. It's a start, though, and it's a thing.
• Fully embracing DIY as a lifestyle--Especially in the food arena, because why should I spend so freaking much on store bought versions of things I could make my damn self with very little effort? Especially if they taste better and are healthier?? I'm also going to look into making clothes, get back to making accessories, I've already got the garden squeaking back into existence, and I'm going to make jam this summer if it's the only thing I do!
• Looking for a better place--I'm going to start, little by little, visiting people and checking out their cities. Somewhere, there's got to be a city that clicks with me as well as the UK does without the requirement of selling my soul, leaving everything behind and giving up my cat, to get there. Somewhere that better fits what I think of as a city, as a climate, as a neighborhood I'd like to live in, as a scene with people more like me and less like idiots and jerks.

Most of this is just barely started, or barely gotten back to, but I'm looking. I'm trying to pay attention to myself, and to look where coincidence is showing me what I haven't really noticed yet**, and I've given myself deadlines for deciding and doing.

And that's a start.

How do you decide to change when change is needed? I'm really curious, if you're willing to share!

NOTES:

*Paleo itself is fine, and I've found all sorts of meals that are SO DELICIOUS LOOKING that are paleo; but when you're eating basically the same things that are literally in birdfood in basically the same forms, it's too far. And I don't like any diet that excludes whole chunks of available foodstuffs--I'm too poor to not buy the cheap options, and I'm too convinced that we're omnivores for a reason to not be omnivorous.

**I'm pretty sure that almost any form of divination, including Looking For A Sign, is just our conscious brains filtering what the unconscious mind is picking up because the unconscious already knows where it's going and it takes a while for the conscious to catch up. It looks like it's telling you a message because it's pointing out what you already know and getting you ready to admit it and face it.

What I'm doing with my life

Hello blogosphere! I don't post here nearly often enough. Right now, that's because I fear I'd just sound like a depressed broken record, but I'm getting to the point where I have to do something and I have to do it soon (and I really should have done it months ago) and I can't stand to hear myself being depressed and beaten down anymore.

I'm making plans.

Always a bad idea, I know, since nothing ever goes according to plan, but I have to do something or I'm going to just accidentally jump off a cliff or something. In Florida, which means I'll have to build a cliff and then accidentally jump off it. Which is too much trouble.

I've been applying for real-life jobs and online writing jobs left and right and I'm struggling to maintain faith that I actually know what I'm doing there, but it gets a little easier every time to put myself up for positions I really want. It's not that I don't think I can do the jobs so much as it's that I'm afraid of getting the job I want and then failing and being right back here. But I can't possibly do more than another year or so of a job I know I'll hate just because I need the money. I can't. I'll die in some fundamental way, and I won't become one of those beaten down, hateful waitresses that are all over TV, because I doubt some rich millionaire will fall for me and bring me back to the land of the living the way they do on TV and romcoms. Real life isn't that nice to me.

But what I'm really doing is trying to set up my life the way I want it. It started when I discovered Puttylike and Rightbrain Rockstar and then all the other people who are doing just that out there, and suddenly I was hopeful again. There really are people out there doing what I want to do. And they're successful at it! Which means I can do it, too, once I figure out how.

Right now, I'm looking at the list of things I like doing and trying to formulate an overarching theme, while pinpointing the life I actually want to be living. In no particular order, here's what I do know:

• I love writing more than I love any other job I've done, and I have Ideas I want to pursue there
• I love embroidery and silversmithing, and I want to make pretty things for peoples lives
• My dream house is not really a house so much as a collection of all those little movable houses that green designers keep putting gorgeous pictures of all over the internet--so I can take it with me and go anywhere
• I don't want to live in Florida anymore
• I do want a garden, even if the garden, too is portable--and maybe especially if it's portable
• I need to get some stamps in my passport before I go insane
• I need to work online because offices make me sad, but a good office is a different matter entirely
• I'm tired of being solitary, but any non-solitariness needs to happen on my own terms or I'm just going to feel smothered and bitter again
• I have far too much emotional investment in television, which means I need to make more of a living off it so that the investment matches the income
• I really, honestly love making video games that tell fun stories
• The Where Should I Live? test told me I should move to Bartimore--or Minesota, but I think Baltimore is more reasonable
• I like making lists and paperwork and handouts more than anyone else I've met
• I need sunlight to finction
• I am not a morning person, and I'm less each time I wake up in the morning
• I want to take up piano again, and learn to sing
• I'm so tired of being non-creative in large parts of my life that I feel like I could burst into flames--I'm already diagnosed as semi-dysfunctionally-rightbrained, and that isn't going to change so I should figure out how to use it

And that's what I have to work with

Collecting Acorns

One of the blogs I follow (Well, I say follow. More like get the email and sometimes remember to read it, but always appreciate it.) linked to an old post about how to spread out New Years Resolutions so that they have more chance of actually happening. And that linked to his various updates about how he was doing, one of which referenced Firefly (and automatically got my attention), and then went on to explain this idea of collecting acorns. Basically, it comes down to doing one small thing every day to lead you closer to your goals. This is one of those revelatory moments for me.

I mean, sure, people say to make lists and sublists, and I read a lot about organizing and have an organization scheme for myself and all, but I think I forget that I should also like what I'm doing. And I like acorns--both for their tiny cuteness and potential for greatness, and for their metaphorical uses for the same thing. This is acorn season; I bet I could come up with some reminder-trigger thing with actual acorns in it...

But the point is, I think I've hit a clarity point today. I have a lot of balls in the air right now, and they get overwhelming sometimes. But I can walk for twenty minutes in the morning, and that's an acorn for weightloss. I can apply for jobs I want to do, and that's an acorn for the future. I can write my four pages, and that's an acorn for publication. I can clean one thing, and that's an acorn for getting my damn life in order.

I can do it.

musings: the life i want

I have been very busy of late, probably over-busy based on how hard it is to stay asleep and how much difficulty I'm having just sitting down to read the books I need to read. But I'm starting to figure out more of what I want out of life.

For one, first and foremost, I've discovered that I don't care if I have to have arm surgery later on: writing is definitely all I want to do. I mean, I want to eke out time to craft and make and redecorate, I want to have the money to travel and see new things and not get left behind when friends invite me places because I just can't afford them, but I want it all to be because I'm writing. I made a list the other day of all the books I have lined up in my head, waiting to be written. There were twelve just off the top of my head, and that's not even counting sequels and half-thought-out probably-novels, or Wolfe and Raven which informed me that now it wants to be a webseries (10 x 6 minute episodes, probably four seasons).

I want a house somewhere with weather I like and enough land to plant several gardens where roses will grow. And cannas. And lillies. And lilacs. And a big ol' victorian-style greenhouse where I can grow oranges and lemons and let them out into the sun in the summer like they do in Italian Villas. I want a house I can stay in, where I can plant my poor sickly pine tree in the ground and know that I'll still be living there so he can thrive. Where I can have / get kids and plant a tree for each of them, too, and start a forest dedicated to my family.

I want to decorate from Ikea and Urban Outfitters, yes, but I also want to find beautiful antiques that people don't know the value of-- a velvet fainting couch, a canopied bed (especially if it's a Chinese wedding bed!), an old wash-basin stand. I want to gather trinkets and art pieces from everywhere I've been and display them properly. I want a house full of color and eclectic wonderfulness. My sister once described my bedroom as a treasure-box, said there was always something more to look at; I want a whole house like that.

I'm not terribly picky about who lives in the house with me. I don't necessarily need a husband, and even if I get one, he would have to be very special for me to want to live with him. I'm getting far too indipendent and unusual in my advancing age.

I think I want a writing cottage. I want my books and my desk and my working computer to be somewhere separated from the house, a little beautiful thing that's only for me, where I can hole up when deadlines are tight and I need the separation from distractions.

I think I want to dance. And I want space to dance in. I might even want an audience. I definitely want classes.

I want to never have to learn how to drive. Which means I want a big-girl bike that can get my longer distances with a lot less trouble and uncertainty. I love my baby-bike, but it's just too slow and too rickety for the long haul.

I want to carry my babies on my back and plant my own food and live somewhere where the cats can go in and out as they please without having to worry about cars and dogs and diseases. I want to make my own furniture and do it well and love doing it. I want to publish more than one book a year, every year, until I die or I go mad, and even then still have seven or ten or twenty books written and waiting, started, planned out, that others can finish and publish. I want my house to always be surrounded by nature and full of people I love, talented, opinionated, beautiful, glamourous, wonderful people who laugh and cook and drink wine and home-made ales. I want to raise kids in that atmosphere. I want to change the world just a little bit. I want to be famous enough to never have to be poor again. I want to give back to the community with a scholarship and maybe some community funding, like a garden project or something. I want to start a school and save a publisher and edit anthologies. I want to visit friends who live far away, and maybe sometimes live far away myself, but always have this one beautiful house to come home to.

And you know what? Sometimes, I feel like I'm getting there.

test run for life

My day job is going to spend most of the rest of September renovating the other store, which means that this store has to give partial hours to two stores' worth of employees, which means I'll probably get less than half time at least twice and as many as four times over the next six to eight weeks. I was bummed, since money is already tight with H in China, but I've decided not to worry about the money just now.

I've decided that I'm going to use this time as a test-run for the sort of life I want to have in the future, when I don't need a day job to get me through the bills.

I know I don't have enough other income to make up for it, and I know I'm not nearly organized or disciplined (no matter that people keep saying I'm so laser-like in my focus) enough-- but what other skills do I need to work on? How will I pattern long strings of days when nothing is required of me but self-determination?
- Will I write more story, more articles, more proposals?
- Will I look for other work and follow up on it?
- Will I have time to craft, to photograph it and to get it up on Etsy? Will having that time even actually matter to my sales and my income?
- Will I be able to effectively budget and keep myself out of the hole?
- Will I keep ahead at school and maybe get more involved?
- Will I have time and spending money to get the jam business off the ground, and will I be able to convince anyone that it's as tasty as I say? Will anyone want to buy it?
- Is there anything in the community that I'd like the Garden, the Historical Society, the Archaeological Society?
- Will I have time to cook and clean and keep house the way I want it?
- Will I get back on track with eating correctly and lose the rest of my weight to my goal?
- Will I be able to keep up on paperwork and filing and all the rest?
- Will my social life pick up when I'm not working an endless string of mids and nights?

These are a lot of questions, and I know that a week off won't tackle all of them, but I can at least test the waters, as it were, and see about getting it done, you know? See if I really want a life without a day job (which I'm pretty sure I do) or whether what I want is a different day job with more flexible hours or something like that.

Wish me luck!

wanderlust...

Every year, as summer starts to emerge out of it's spring-skin, I get that itch-- it's in my hands and my feet and my eyeballs, and it means I want to go somewhere I've never been, return somewhere I haven't been in a while, see new things, smell new air, taste new foods. There's a reason they call it wanderlust-- it's a lot the same as wanting a person, only bigger, wider. It's a life thing.

(Borrowed from Justin Gaynor, without permission, but gratefully)

See, when we were growing up, summer was when we Went Places. I'm sure it was a huge pain in the ass getting three young children to do what they were supposed to do and behave so far away from home, but the result was a constant nagging idea that I should be going somewhere. Thats summer is for travelling. That there's still things I haven't seen, and I need to see them now, before they're gone or changed. And since we moved back to the States, I haven't been hardly anywhere-- a quick Study Abroad to London years ago, an even quicker trip to Canada by way of Ohio, a few jaunts back to Orlando, a trip to DC and New Jersey-- and none of them where really right. I want long-term trips.

(Borrowed from BeloBlog, without permission, but gratefully)

See, I have amazing friends. The lovely Rah-Chelle takes many of her summers and goes away on adventures. She's thinking of going to a Kibbutz in Israel soon, and she's gone to a commune in the woods and spent a year at sea. And I'm so equally enthralled and jealous that I could burst.

Also, I know these two wonderful brothers that have a boat apeice (well, one has a boat, one is shopping for a new boat since the old one sank), and they live there. They grew up on boats. They sail like sea gypsies in the summers, as often as they can, for as long as the money holds out.

And H is going to China for a whole year to learn the language and hopefully find a job. A whole year in a foreign country! The luxury stuns me.

And I want to do it too.

(Borrowed from Flickr, with gratitude)

Here's my plan. Not only will I entirely give up day-working within the next five years (really, closer to four now), but I'll find a way to save enough money that I can take summers off and travel, even if I have to do it on the cheap. I won't do any work but the work I want to do, which will likely be writing, and I'll talk my friends into letting me crash on their distant floors, travel in their many vehicles as they go somewhere else than here. I'll go to other countries. I'll get new stamps in my passport. I'll participate in semesters abroad and at sea, or I'll join experience groups for a month at a time or a week at a time. I'll be going to school at the same time, but I'll slot the trips in around the semesters-- and I'll just go. I'll find new places to be. I'll come home with a new appreciation of my own space.

I'm most at home in airports. I feel most like myself when I'm on the road. It's time I got back to who I am.

switched-on x: desperately seeking wardrobe

After going to the dayjob's Christmas party in a long skirt while all the other girls wore sexy dresses, I realized that my wardrobe is pretty sad lately. I've got some cute summer dresses and a selection of long skirts, but no winter clothes (which will be a problem next year when I start school where there's actually Fall and Winter), I haven't owned a Little Black Dress in years, and I have almost nothing to dress up in. I'm desperately low on accessories outside the earrings-and-necklace range-- I don't even own a belt, I have shawls but only a few of the square variety of scarf, my hair jewelry is limited to about fifty hairsticks and two headbands, I don't have any gloves, and certainly none of the sweet lace type-- and only one pair of warmers because my friend made them for me last Aveomas. My underthings are severly limited to one bra (that's seen better days), a few pairs of panties that are getting more and more beat up by the constant washing, none of which are particularly sexy, no slips, one pair of thigh-high fishnets with a garter belt I'm too fat for right now, nary a merry widow, and two corsets that I'm hoping I'll fit back into before too long. I still own clothes I wore in high school, and most of them don't fit anymore. I have some cute shoes, but most of them no longer coordinate with outfits.

This is pathetic.

So here's The Plan on this Issue:

- I'm looking for a Little Black Dress (or, better, three) that will accommodate the fact that I have up-and-down weights and will look nice and flattering either end.

- I'm looking for dresses that are versatile enough to be dressed up or dressed down, and used in a variety of ways through styling (Avon has two that I want), and come in solid colors that will last a while (all my current dresses indulge my fondness for large patterns, usually involving flowers or paisley).

- I'm looking for wide belts / patterns to make them myself.

- I'm looking for fascinators and cocktail hats / ideas to make them for myself.

- I'm looking for headbands and hair clips and flowers and little felt whimsies for my hair, now that I've figured out a few ways to make it not suck and don't mind drawing attention to it.

- I'm searching through Etsy and DaWanda and 1000 Markets and Indie Fix.

- I'm looking into making my own retro under-roos, and finding cheap romantic fancy-time underclothes like corsets and merry widows; if I can manage it, I want to start wearing these things more often, preferably in place of traditional bras, which I hate.

Inspirations for these wardrobe renovations:

- Zooey Deschanel in the Cotton commercials

- Emily Deschanel as Bones, when she's wearing softer and more romantic clothing (especially the big ethnic necklaces, and her parade of wonderful shoes. And her party dresses. Man, I wish I had a stylist.)

- The girls in the Mark catalogs, specifically the ones labeled 'rock' and 'punk', blended with the ones that are labeled 'retro' and 'romantic'

- These key words: Fun, Unexpected, Flirty, Romantic, Rock, Retro, (I hate to say it, but) Hipster (in the sense of the above words), Vintage, Hand-made, Sweetly Sexy, European, Long-wearing, Gypsy-inspired; Hand-embroidered; Feminine-but-not-girly; Green; Blue; Earth-tones; Ivory; Jewel-Tones; Sexy-but-not-slutty

- Other noted search terms: Owls / Birds / Feathers / Leafs / Branches / Acorns / Seeds; Roses / Cherry Blossoms / Lillies / Dandelion Puffs; Japanese patterns; Retro patterns; Russian nesting dolls; The Ocean; The Sky; The Earth. How fortunate that so many of the things I already love are fashionable right now (and will probably soon be not fashionable, and will all go on sale).

appropriate weight and other matters

I just spent half an hour looking up appropriate weight-to-height ratios, and aside from one really scary chart that said I shouldn't be over 99 lbs for my height (?!?), they all sort of agreed that I should be around 120ish for the middle-range height (max, somewhere around 130, min somewhere around 100, though it seems unfair that my min is further from my average than my max).

Now, I'm currently at 159, as of this morning. I know this is too much, but I don't feel like I'm well into obese as far as these charts are concerned-- I mean, I don't look like those women that come in and order triple-scoop icecreams, have three chins and huge elbow-fat, and look like they're smuggling pillows under their shirts. I'm also not as mean as them, but that's a different story. And I know from experience that at 100, I'm bony and boobless. 120 should be about where I was when I started college, though I carry my weight in all new and different places now, and I think I wouldn't feel too skinny there, but that's alot of weight to lose to get there, and-- well, here's a confession:

In highschool, I was anorexic. I spent more than a year eating once or less a day, and at my lowest, I was under 89 lbs. At the same height I am now. I didn't realize at the time that I was anorexic because I didn't have the mental problems or the exercise addiction that went along with it, but I did (and do) have a stomach-valve malfunction that makes it hard to eat sometimes. In high school, it made it better to just not be hungry, so I stopped eating. But now, I know my triggers, and I know that when I cut my intake too much, I start obsessing, and I develop the OCD I didn't have then. And it would be so easy to just stop eating again. After a few days, I'm just not hungry any more.

But I don't want to starve myself, so I have to be careful to keep this reasonable.

And I still hate exercise.

I'm working on only eating when I can sit down and have a proper meal. I'm drinking more tea again, both because I love tea and miss it and because it speeds my metabolism without getting me so wired that I can't function (although I have to be careful about drinking it too late, it seems). I have a hoolahoop that I really like, and there are apparently hoola-hoop-exercise videos on YouTube, and maybe I'll take up poi or something, too. Things that take effort but are about the opposite if boring. When it stays cool, I'm going to try to walk more and maybe start running some, when I can afford to buy a pair of shoes that aren't flip flops. I'm working more, and that means I'm lazing less, and that's already good. And I'm going to start enforcing weekly weigh-ins so I know where I am and have to face it when I eat poorly.

And that's where the Plan is right now.

And in other matters:

I think we're getting a pitbull puppy. I'm not ready to pottytrain a baby dog, but I think as long as we're nice to it, it should grow up nice, right? Just because they're bred as fighting dogs doesn't mean all of them will clamp on and have to be killed to get them to release, right?