Tag: life

Crazy Reads

Man, I love good books!

I usually do not read scary or sad books, and, though I wouldn’t say it is exactly scary or sad, the book series I am presently reading is definitely intense.

I mean, it’s totally rough, and has me rather on edge at night, and wondering if I might not start carrying a hammer in my bag, too, wherever I go…, but it is not at all focused on the terrible stuff, but on the genius at work within the minds of everyone researching and brainstorming to figure things out and solve various problems that arise, connecting puzzle pieces of the various mysteries throughout the story… or is it really just one big mystery?

As it stands, I love the writing style and the story outline and slow but satisfying piecing together, and it is difficult for me to stop reading the book.

Shoot, even in the opening lines of the book, I was totally hooked.

I am a fan of this book and this series so far.

What’s more, I feel like I have learned valuable tidbits for life from the various characters, and especially the one who shares some points of struggle with me in my own life… yeah.

Reading this book has definitely been more than just reading a story – it has helped me to evaluate parts of my own life and my own thinking.

Perhaps that is one of the signs of a truly great book… the reader does not approach life in quite the same way after reading the book as he did before reading it.

I’ll keep that in mind for my own books.

Post-a-day 2020

Surprise, surprise

Sometimes, I feel myself on very comfortable, sturdy, well-understood ground when I go into something.

And then, after I arrive, I discover that the terrain is nothing like I had expected it – and I can’t tell if it has merely changed, or if it is actually deceivingly treacherous…

Today, I am both grateful and proud to know that, when presented with such a situation, I comfortably acknowledged to myself my discomfort st the discovery, and then I actively took on staying present and analyzing what lay before me.

I remained true to myself and my own wishes – it with a bit of hesitation at times, I still did it – and I readjusted my feet and found my footing again…, and I can breathe oh, so well tonight because of it.

Aaaaahhhhhh…….. ; )

Post-a-day 2020

Third time’s a charm

Or so they say, anyway, the people in my life. 😛

Tomorrow morning, we shall see if the third time, indeed, is a charm.

I have arranged now three times to meet with someone to make and create music together; the second two times being due to rescheduling from an unplanned event in the other person’s life.

Tonight, I had someone reaching out, asking me to do something that would be at the exact time of our third-time-arranged meeting tomorrow…

No, no, I just can’t do that… especially after making the joke today about – is it millennials? – millennials and how they can never seem to make plans and keep them… haha

So, I arranged for an undetermined future occurrence of the pop-up request from tonight…

Which leaves me free to attend our regularly scheduled Saturday morning program… I found myself wanting “One Saturday Morning” last weekend, so this is almost like a version of that for me: a Saturday morning of creativity and fun and interest.

In conclusion and in short, I hope tomorrow’s musical meeting happens and that it is delightful.

P.S. I helped my friend with the first leg of moving today, and I got home kind of late… I am utterly exhausted right now, and my eyes are heavy and burning… Once again, I did not realize that I hadn’t even gotten my shirt on for sleeping… I’ve just been sitting here in only my underwear, and had no idea… I am ready for some much-needed rest, especially if I’ll be musicking tomorrow morning!

Post-a-day 2020

Women’s Bodies

Periodicity.

Did you know that that’s how we got the use of the term “period” for menstruation?

I was researching for a paper that tied in social views of women at the time of the book The Awakening with the concept of insanity, and showed that women were seen as crazy back then when they did certain things and behaved certain ways that are rather normal today.

In that research, I found somewhat shocking information on fertility and on when science actually discovered how the timing of the female body’s reproductive cycle worked specifically (as opposed to having only the general idea that sexual intercourse is the way to pregnancy), as well as beliefs on the female reproductive system as a whole.

These were not my focus of the paper, so I, with disappointment, had to skim them and move on to other things, but they stuck with me nonetheless (and I was just thinking tonight that I might still have them somewhere, either on the computer or in a stack of papers in a box).

I always seem to remember discovering the doctor’s use of the phrase and term “a woman’s periodicity” in one of those papers.

It shocked me, but it also finally gave me the answer to my long-wondered question of the word origin for calling menstruation “a period”.

It was, simply, a period in time, yes, but also a specific period in time that came with consistency and a time-frame… it was a woman’s periodicity that gave her these emotional phases.

Anyway… this is somewhat depression thinking for me, because those were not happy times for women, back then… not women like myself, anyway… frankly, they sucked in many, many ways, far beyond our struggles today.

I am extremely grateful to be here now, to be the powerful woman I am now, in this time and place in existence and in this world.

One final note: hysteria.

It originated as a term used in a belief that a woman’s reproductive organs were causing her to lash out or be inappropriate with her emotions somehow… you know, like how hysterectomy is removing the uterus… hysteria was the irrational emotional state caused by the uterus.

(Roots of the word go to Greek, with the term for the womb being there hystera.)

Kind of makes you want to stop using the word, right?

Well, that’s how it makes me feel, anyway…

But I like the word hysterical… that one makes me smile even bigger, knowing the root is “uterus”. 😛

Haha

Okay, I feel better, now. 😀

Post-a-day 2020

Just do it

I did it!

I started work on creating my first book, and I started work on producing the first edition of the online women’s magazine I am starting!

I came up with ten (10) plot ideas for the book, as I said last night that I would do today, and I even really like certain ones of them… like really like them.

I got on the phone with a friend whom I want to be a secondary voice on moving the magazine forward with me, and she helped me organize out certain bits already for it.

I sent her the general outline I had of everything this evening, and she will look at it tomorrow, and get back to me on her response to it either tomorrow or Friday.

I compiled the contact list for the various contributors who are confirmed, and whom I am considering bringing on to the project.

I reached out on social media for contributors (without saying what specifically the reason was) in a couple areas that were lacking contributors.

And now, my brain is going almost nonstop, just chugging along with considerations regarding the magazine.

It is a good kind of busy in my brain right now, and I think it is definitely helping keep me away from thoughts of the intense citrus smell in my room right now – and the accidental addition of isopropyl alcohol to the steaming mix over the burning candle – due to not only the dying roach I found downstairs this morning, but the live one I found crossing on top of my swimsuit an hour ago in my bedroom… and that is currently trapped in my painting water jar downstairs…

Yeah, so, moving on…

My task for tomorrow with the book – I think I need to give myself a task every day for the book – will be to come up with five (5) more plot ideas that seem particularly crazy and out of my typical comfort zone of writing and style (think zombies and goth and erotic romance novels!… :P), and then to flesh out at least two of my plot ideas, including one of the crazy ones.

Yikes – tomorrow will be a silly one for the book! 😛 Haha

I’m excited, and I can hardly wait. 🙂

Post-a-day 2020

Book-book

I have been thinking so much lately about writing my first book…, but I keep not writing it.

I ponder and giggle and sigh over various ideas I would like to include, but I never sit down and start putting any of them together.

And it suddenly hit me just now clearly what my main struggle is with writing this book:

I’ve got all the details – they come to me all too easily, and almost all the time – my struggle is that I don’t have the big picture, the main story and plot.

And it practically paralyzes me, leaving me to do no work on it at all, and instead worry more and more about all the time that is passing without my writing this first book.

Hmm…

So, I guess I need to start working specifically on ideas for a main plot tomorrow… I will take out my writer’s book, start reading it, and then start a list of at least ten ideas for general plots for a book.

They don’t have to be good or likely at all – they just have to be.

I can do this. 😉

Post-a-day 2020

Books and movies

Today, I finished reading the book (well, listening to the audiobook, anyway) Crazy Rich Asians.

I had read the book, because I had enjoyed the film, and discovered that it was based on a book, and that there was actually a whole little series of books, and that it was written by a man…, and my interest was piqued… especially by that last fact.

I had just recently been to Singapore a couple times, so the film easily held a little warm spot in my heart, especially since they go to eat at one of my favorite places in the world to eat (the hawker stand when they first arrive to Singapore).

At long last, I got hold of the audiobook, and dove in, and, though it was different from the film, I enjoyed it.

I mean, I knew it would be different from the film – books always are different from their film counterparts.

Except, perhaps, The Princess Bride… that one is purty darn near exactly the same…, though it does have slight differences still…

Anyway, two things came from this, but I’ll wait…

Whenever I finish a book, I let goodreads.com know, and it adds to my list of books read.

It also sends me an e-mail: You finished [fill in the blank book]. What’s next?

And then it gives a brief bit about the book, including the first few reviews on it, and then info on the author and how to follow him on the website, and, finally, other books that people who read this same book also liked/read.

On this e-mail, I saw part of a review that interested me, and so I clicked and was led to the full review, which I read.

The writer of the review and I had very different impressions from the book – I very much enjoyed it, and she was somewhat annoyed by most of it.

I easily disregarded the review, knowing full well that I often disagree with most reviews I see of books.

(Also, I almost never accept film recommendations, because people seem to have such terrible taste in films and in film quality…)

I have certain people I trust with book recommendations, and I rather distrust most others in the world for a book (or film) recommendation.

But this got me thinking more on the book…

There are probably loads of people who dislike and have terrible and ugly things to say about just about any book, right?

As JRR Tolkien wrote in the beginning of the 1976(?) edition of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, there will be always those who dislike things he likes, and also who dislike the way he told these stories.

(He said a lot more, but that is the most relevant part in this conversation.)

As I thought about the film’s being so different from the book, I found myself wanting to talk to the author, Kevin Kwan, and to ask him how he felt about that all, and what his thoughts were on it…

Is it not basically a group of individuals declaring that your story was good, but just not good enough?, I thought at him in our mental interview within my own mind.

Then, it had me wonder, What is it like with reading the various reviews of your books by readers? All those nasty comments and thoughts…Do you just ignore them entirely and never read them, because that isn’t why you wrote them, anyway? You wrote them for those who would enjoy them?

And this idea had me think about whether it mightn’t be a good idea to go ahead and gather together people who love me, and have them tell me how they dislike or do not like something that I have done or created… practice the rejection, so to speak.

Not to experience the suffering, but to learn to separate their unkind words from my own satisfaction and pleasure from the work I have produced… to aid me in learning to love my creations period, with no dependency on what others’ opinions are, good or bad.

My mood is up to me, and my art can be perfect just for me… everything else is insignificant.

If it brings others joy, yay: joy for them and for myself.

If it doesn’t bring others joy, yay: joy for myself.

That’s why I wrote/made/created it, anyway, was for myself, right?

In some way, anything I create must be for myself… it is something I was ready to express, and in this particular form at this particular time… it is for myself that I do it, whether I realize or acknowledge it or not.

Yet, those bad reviews really stick with us… as I recently was called to consider from a quote by Orson Welles:

Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that’s printed about him.

So, I wonder, how can we move past that?

How can we be untouched by the bad reviews?

And, even, the good reviews, too, for, if they suddenly were to cease, would we be saddened?

How can we be self-sustaining in our joy and satisfaction with our own art, and untouched by the opinions of others?

The second idea was about how films are always different from the book, even when the book is spectacular already.

Why must the book always be changed?

Why?!

Ugh.

Post-a-day 2020

I, phone

“You have too much on our mind,” he said…, “Hai troppi pensieri per la testa!!”

Is he right?

I haven’t felt like I’m thinking about loads and loads lately…, but am I worrying, having thoughts run silently in the background, like the pesky applications on my phone, secretly using the signal and draining down the battery power without my even realizing it until I’m suddenly at only 20%?

Mayhaps… perhaps… it may be… it might be so…

Yes, yes, I can see it… the money and the fitness and the job-related… those have the tell-tale arrows next to them in the settings section, declaring that they were recently using my location…, as well as a lot of “should”s… I don’t even support shoulds, yet, here they are, attacking my brain, eating up the battery life…

Ugh…

I don’t even want to think about it right now… that’s how tired I am – I don’t even want to put forth the slight effort of sorting it out… I just want to go to bed already…

So, I’ll do a run or two or few on the mala, and clear out my active mind, so I can fall asleep powerfully… hopefully it can and will last for longer than it has been doing, and I can wake up with energy tomorrow morning, ready to take on at least one of these pesky background apps in my mind… 😛

P.S. Happy End to WWII Day, and Happy Mothers’ Day!! 🙂

Post-a-day 2020

Margarita mix

I was passively thinking tonight about margaritas and how much I love them, when I had a sudden memory resurgence.

It started with how my mom and I would be together, eating directly out of the bucket of frozen margarita mix that seemingly lived in our freezer throughout my childhood.

It became a totally normal thing for me to pull the bucket out in any given day, and snag a few bitefuls of the delicious, icy mix…

Basically, then, margarita mix was like my version of ice cream while growing up… it was my regular freezer-housed delight.

Granted, I loved ice cream.

However, the margarita mix was more of a regular deal, because, even though I would have only a few bites at time, I would have it on many more occasions than I would have ice cream.

You know… I don’t know for sure that there wasn’t any alcohol in that mixture… I say this, only because I can’t see how it wouldn’t freeze solid f it didn’t have at least some alcohol in it… right??

Plus, I can’t seem to shake the feeling that I was somewhat sneaking the icy bitefuls… suggesting I knew I wasn’t really supposed to be having it…, but maybe it was just because it was a dessert-like treat at not-dessert-time… hmm…

I am definitely checking with my mom on this in the morning.

Speaking of underage drinking – well, you get it – we can mention my first experience of drunkenness… I was somewhere around the age range of 4-7 years.

We were at a restaurant, and the person next to me had a margarita.

In my family, we were basically always allowed to taste anything, so I was granted a taste of the margarita.

And I loved what I tasted.

It so happened that the family member on the other side of me also had a margarita… from her, too, I tasted the margarita… and then I continued to ‘taste’ the margaritas on both sides of me throughout dinner, knowing full well that I wasn’t really supposed to be doing it, yet doing it anyway, and just being very cautious not to be noticed.

Later, in the bathroom with my sisters, I was standing on the counter, kind of dancing around… definitely a bit loopy, though I say so myself…

In short, I very likely was intoxicated.

I remember my sisters laughing at how I was being silly, but no one seemed to think anything of it… I certainly didn’t at the time… it wasn’t until years later that I looked back and couldn’t see anything reasonable but the absurd likelihood of my having been at least a little bit drunk.

Face palm for sure, right?

Haha

But don’t worry: I didn’t turn into a drunk.

As a matter of fact, I hardly ever drink alcohol at all… and it is for lack of wanting it – I don’t even care about alcohol 99% of the time, it seems.

What I do love, of course, is margaritas.

I got lime juice yesterday at the grocer, just so I can make some healthy margaritas here at home… and we can’t have alcohol here, which doesn’t bother me, so I’ll be able to see if I can make something delicious to drink without that edge of flavor the tequila usually gives it.

(Note: I actually only seem to like alcohol for the edge it gives to something else, and not for the beverage itself… the only exception is champagne, which I find to be a lovely beverage.)

Anyway… we’ll see what Mom says tomorrow… haha

Post-a-day 2020

A delirium Of night

This week has gone so fast… I am so tired…, yet I cannot tell why…

Perhaps it is from the increased speed that must have been involved in this week’s going so quickly… when you run like crazy, you’re exhausted at the end of it, right?

I don’t know…

I stepped into an oddly-low-flowing shower tonight – only a few adjectives stronger than a trickle – and stood under the hot water, feeling the intense contrast between the newly-arrived cool air and strong winds from outside and the slightly-too-hot water falling onto my skin…

I rubbed casually my skin and my muscles for longer than I know, and eventually cleaned my body as I had intended with the shower… my toes were all prune-y… my eyes were barely open… I was barely moving… just standing there, slowly changing the angle of my head and neck under the water…

My headache subsided, but did not disappear…now, I sit(?) on the floor, my shins and knees and elbows and forearms pressed to the floor, occasionally dropping my head to hang limply or to rest sideways against the carpet…

My thinking is sporadic, my ankles and feet and elbows tingling… I feel like I have missed something that everyone else knows about for tonight, but I can’t distinguish even what sort of something that it is… a sense of delirium seems to be clouding my view…, but, perhaps, it is just the exhaustion beginning to close the edges of my eyes, thereby blurring the periphery…

Sleep…. is a necessity now…

Sleep… is my solace and my comfort… my medicine and my confidant…

…

Post-a-day 2020