Never underestimate the commercial value of mental illness.
UPDATE 2025-04-04: This no longer works. Use WFDownloader (although the dev is awfully prickly) and follow the instructions.
And I do mean relative, but for a while, I was doing it one image at a time.
Now, how you organize your hard drive is your business, but I created folders and mimicked my board names.
God is a terrible matchmaker.
He was, I mean, once upon a time when he started playing with dolls. He looked down on my team’s handiwork and said, “There’s something missing.” He told Michael and Lilith to go wander around and see if they could figure out what.
Dolls.
God saw Michael and Lilith walking around, said, “That’s it,” and there he went playing in the mud. Meanwhile, he told Michael and Lilith to name the animals and plants and oh by the way, do this thing right here so I can see how it all fits together.
They did that thing. Right there.
They didn’t stop doing that thing.
“Okay, I got it. You can stop now.” Read more
Inspired by Sunita’s post, and having sat on the idea of doing my own productivity post, I decided to take up the challenge. Today I’m just going to talk about the most important piece of my productivity regimen. Read more
So I dug an old manuscript out wondering how/if I should rehab it. I wrote it so long ago, head-hopping was still acceptable, although on its way out. It’s 84,000 words. And there are no f-bombs. (IKR?!) The thing about headhopping, at least for me, is that I could tell a story in so many fewer words with it.
This story has a story.
Stop.
What are you doing right now? Right this very minute.
Stop for a couple of minutes and answer that question.
I am sitting at a table in my local public library, my laptop, a bottle of water, and my Galaxy Note in front of me. I have headphones on and I am listening to nature sounds because the not-very-socially-graced woman behind me (she and I have a history) is muttering to herself loudly enough that it’s clear she wants someone to ask her what she’s working on and her laptop is making funky bubble-popping sounds loudly.
I am at the library to escape loud mutterings, machine-made noises, and children who don’t care if they’re worming into my brain space.
A child, boy, ~9ish, whom I have never before seen in my life, comes up to my table as if I had birthed him and almost leans on me.
ME: [taking off headphones, trying not to look as annoyed as I am] What can I do for you, sweetie?
HIM: [looking at laptop] Can I play on that?
ME: [?] Play on what?
HIM: [pointing to the Galaxy Note without bothering to open his mouth when he actually needs to answer a question] [the exact same way XY TD does]
ME: [dumbfounded] Um… NO.
HIM: Never mind.
ME: [waiting for him to leave] [which he is not doing] I have a question.
HIM: Never mind!
ME: No, wait. I’m just curious. Why do you think it’s okay—
HIM: Never mind! [scurries off]
A child is perfectly comfortable with almost-snuggling up to a strange woman who’s obviously trying to block out the world, asking if he can play on an expensive device.
It never occurred to him I’d say no.
If the strangers won’t go to them, they will go to the strangers.
1. Vomit blue ink all over the agenda book with how cluttered and chaotic the mind is until clarity ensues. It may or may not take 14 pages, front and back.
2. Take the Female Tax Deduction to her art class. Walk through the park barefoot in the grass (for the first time in years) to get to the art gallery. Think about taking a yoga class. Finish a cross stitch. When XX TD is finished with her art class, solve a glass labyrinth with her. Walk (in the grass) (barefoot) (this is crucial) up the terraces to the gallery. Talk to tourists and answer questions about the new exhibit (the Green Man-ish sculptures) and good barbecue. Stroll through the art gallery after having responded to nature’s call. Sit and let XX TD sketch a medieval knight on a horse.
3. Share pictures that don’t even come close to capturing the magic that was yesterday.
My good friend Melissa Blue is celebrating her 10th anniversary of writing with a contest. A bunch of us writerly types pitched in to make it an awesome one, so a lot of people have a chance to win some good stuff. The contest started September 7, so I’m a bit slow on the uptake, but! It goes until September 13. Read more
I don’t like Facebook. I never did. I wouldn’t even get on it to talk to my relatives. There was always something faintly nefarious about Facebook I didn’t feel with Twitter (which may simply be better at hiding it). I also didn’t like and didn’t understand either the interface or its functionality.
But I’m an author and as authors will do (or try), we must market. And marketing was happening on Facebook. And, not coincidentally, that’s where my fans were, too. I made a page. I have a personal account, too, that’s really not so personal. So I went there and I posted there. Then Facebook changed the way it displayed what I posted, which was to say, there was a precipitous drop in how many people were shown my posts from one day to the next. Facebook is doing Things, and those Things are cutting out the end user from stuff they want to see. Therefore, why should the content creators continue to supply content?
I will be ramping up my blogging again because there is no reason for me to be on a platform I hate if my readers won’t be shown what they have asked to see.
I will also be starting a newsletter for those who don’t care for blogs.
Because you know what? I have two (yes, two) books coming out on May 1, 2014, and I’d sure like people to know about them. Facebook’s not going to help you find out about them anymore.
I have been increasingly frustrated with the way Facebook has been hiding what I post from people who have requested to see what I say. For those of you who don’t know (maybe don’t even care), this is a good explanation: Getting Facebook Slapped: Understanding Facebook’s Big Lie
Pertinent points:
My personal experience is the same, but what keeps my rage fueled are the DAILY emails from FB reminding me to post on my page. Really?
I am not posting on my page anymore and this is why: Nobody sees it. Not even the people who requested to. Yet FB wants me to continue to support my brand on FB by nagging me to do it.
No.
For a moment, Facebook was the only good game in town, which was why many of us were stuck here. However, once the users (not the page owners who are being throttled) realize they’re not getting the information they want, they’ll leave.
The sooner the better.
And so. This blog’s probably going to look like a Tumblr for a little while because a) I like to share things I find beautiful / useful / funny, b) I’m short on words right now, and c) I want to share my Zen as I stumble my way around life post-bucket-list to find it.
[[07/15/2025: This’ll teach me to use an embed plugin instead of screenshots, and also not to put in the text.]]
So this morning around 10:13 a.m., I read a piece in HuffPo about a possible alternative chronology to the New Testament that puts a new spin on things. I thought it was an interesting concept. I RTd the link, though I forgot from whom I lifted it.
My friend replied: [deleted tweet]
Another friend replied: [deleted tweet]
We had a nice little chat about that that lasted all of about 1/2 hour. Then I had to go do grownup things like work and take care of the gas leak I had and arrange for a plumber and new water heater.
And then this guy shows up six hours later: [deleted tweet]
And that’s where he started the fight without bothering to ask us to define our terms first. (First rule of Twitter when butting into a convo you want to involve yourself in: ask for clarification from the participants first. You’ll probably get a nice response and a welcome to the convo so long as you can keep it civil, even if you disagree.) Regrettably, we engaged for about three tweets each before we figured out he had no home training and blocked him.
But before I did, I did a little preliminary snoopage, as per SOP when strangers with an attitude butt into my convo six hours after said convo has been put to bed. Matthew Reeves is 20. He writes YA. How sweet of him. How … 20 years old of him.
I was 20 once. It was a nice year. I had fun. And yeah, I thought I knew everything, too.
So! He’s blocked and I go back to harrassing @mikecane, as per usual, interspersed with some time spent making my son do manual labor, and Matthew Reeves continues to rant at us, but who cares, right? Because we can’t see it and there are soooo many more interesting people on Twitter who really can school us on something.
But apparently Matthew Reeves needs to broadcast his point of view to the world, so without further ado, and because I’m occasionally a nice mommy to my own know-it-all son, I’m going to assist him in this endeavor:
Dude, I’m A Historian (but not in the subject being discussed). [dead link]
Bless his heart, picking a fight with two people he doesn’t know who are old enough to have shot him out of our vaginas, and is now mad because we won’t pay him any mind. Precious. Just precious.
And now he’s disillusioned: [deleted tweet]
Sadness.
Go away, kid. Ya bother me.
If I hear/see that one more time, I’ll puke in my wastebasket.
What bullshit is this? Who came up with this? Who thought this was a good idea? Oh, Churchill? Right, him. The guy who was leading the charge in World War II before Pearl Harbor was a glimmer in our tears. He gets a pass.
You could come back at me and say:
“Changing your tactic isn’t giving up.” That’s true.
“Retreating now to fight another day isn’t giving up.” That’s true, too.
But maybe, if you are stacking up too many “nevers” to modify your “give up,” you should probably rethink your goal or at least think about it in realistic terms. Without context, platitudes and proverbs mean less than nothing.
Sometimes, giving up is simply breaking out of a jail you built for yourself.
For me, “I can’t” is the most freeing phrase in the English language. Because I’m backward like that.
Not a week ago, I despaired of an emergent situation that had a deadline of 3 weeks, and wailed at Dude, “I can’t!” Yet here it is, less than a week from when I said that, and … the crisis is almost resolved. (Dude doesn’t really know this yet. Shhh.)
I got to thinking about how I felt a week ago versus how I feel today, spurred by Mike Cane’s post “The Universe is Made of No” and a following comment by Bob Mayer:
The world is full of no outside of us. If we believe it. The key is if someone internalizes no. Then the NO becomes real. Most no’s start from within. Then we hear it echoed around us. So YES starts from within.
That’s nice. If you’re normal.
I’ve never been able to resist a dare (and I shall not bore you with my more embarrassing successes). To me, “I can’t” is a dare, a catalyst, something my twisted mind takes and uses as fuel.
I have to be feeling pretty desperate to use it. The last psychological stop for me is usually “failure is not an option.” It’s useful, but it’s more to meet a long-term objective. The first time I ever felt desperate enough to use “failure is not an option” I succeeded—wildly and for many years. The second time … Well, I’m still rolling on that wave of success, which continues to grow.
“I can’t” is the last resort—a barrel of gasoline thrown on a spark of will.
If you want some droll (adult) humor, go buy this. Seriously. It’s the funniest thing I’ve read this year, and I’m not sure, but it may be the funniest thing I’ve ever read, period.
Amazon (print or Kindle)
Smashwords
“Everyone gets fired at least once in their life. And if not, well, they’re just not trying very hard. And we all think of brilliant and immature ‘shoulda saids’ and ‘shoulda dones’ for weeks after. (Okay, years.) In this collection of loosely related stories, Brett shows again and again that getting fired is really quite easy.”
(…who would know this blog existed if you ever bothered to come talk to us…)
We are not obligated to go ’round the neighborhood introducing ourselves and presenting ourselves for your approval as The Right Kind of People. Not when we moved in five years ago. Not now.
It’s yours. Your obligation to come to us to find out who we are. Until you do that, your judgments about us are your problem, not ours.
If you had come to our door, you might have realized we are quiet, well-educated and well-traveled people who live our lives with honor and dignity. The county government and police department have, fortunately, already realized this, thanks to your meddling.
You will not take that dignity and quiet away from us because you hate that your 40-year neighbor died and we bought her house. You will not take that dignity and quiet away from us because you hate that the neighborhood demographic changed nearly overnight from the nearly dead to the newly hatched. You will not take that dignity and quiet away from us because we don’t spend 24/7 working on our lawns because we’re too busy working on improving the whole of our lives.
We pay the same taxes you do, even though we don’t make as much money as you made when you were working, and you are now retired on the Social Security we are paying. You can judge us and co-opt our children when you start paying our mortgage, for the infrastructure repairs you can’t see on this 45-year-old house, and for someone to keep our lawn for us.
If our biggest sins are that we keep to ourselves, we’re quiet, and we let our tax deductions have a bit more physical freedom than you deem is proper, and we don’t have as much money or free time as you do, we can live with that.
No, we aren’t The Right Kind of People. And if you are, then we don’t want to be.
And oh, P.S. We don’t need to be friends with you. We need you to mind your own business.
This is my office right now:
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It doesn’t look organized, but it is. It’s organized two ways, and one is more effective than the other.
You see, the (1) clutter demands attention and for good reason: It’s important. Stuff I have to do. Stuff that, if I file it neatly away in the (2) three-ring to-do binder buried underneath all that mess, I will forget about and never do and screw up my life.
The goal is to not screw up my life.
But what about filing? you ask. Eh. Filing is for stuff you have to keep but rarely use: tax returns, vendor catalogs, vehicle and health and vet information. Stuff like that. If I had my ’druthers, I’d be able to stick it all in a file box like the one I keep my year’s tax receipts in after I’ve entered the bucket full of receipts into Quicken.
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What about tossing? you ask. Yeah, what you’re looking at is after having ruthlessly tossed and shredded. Trust me, I get rid of whatever I can the minute I lay hands on it and determine it’s worthless to me.
So after ruthlessly tossing-and-shredding, and piling things on my desk in a way that will remind me of its importance, the best way I’ve discovered to not screw up my life and still stay clutter-free is to hang all the important stuff up on the wall.
This demands cork. Or steel/whiteboards magnets. Something. Just get it off my effing desk! I want elbow room and work space. Throw in some effective cord management.
Stylishly.
I want style.
Because there is no style here. I can stick pins in the sheetrock all day long and it’ll do the trick, but I want some style. Martha Stewart Living style. Only more realistic. And cheaper.
So what I’m working on in my organizational efforts is to find a stylish way to hang all my stuff on the walls where I can see it at a glance without boxing myself into a stylish but useless and expensive space.
But I can’t even decide on a paint color.
The “end of the week” means Wednesday evening, 7 days hence.
Please see The Rules.
Go!