Tag: personal

Short hiatus time

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Unfortunately I am falling behind on a lot of my writing work lately, so I’m going to be taking a few weeks off to catch up. It happens from time to time…whether it’s the Day Job sapping my energy or other non-writing things taking precedence now and again, I just run out of space on the schedule. It’s not my favorite feeling, to be honest, and sometimes I have to sacrifice things here and there. It’s not always to catch up, either…sometimes it’s just to give myself a mental and physical break to rest.

Not to worry, though. I shall be back soon!

Long Work Days and Writing Sessions

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There are just some days at the Day Job that leave me so exhausted that you say okay fine, I’m taking a day off and passing out on the bed instead of trying to work through this chapter. And as all good writers do, I always feel incredibly guilty about it, even though I should know better that creativity rarely works well during a drain of energy.

It’s been a couple of busy days at the Day Job, mainly due to back to back holidays known to be extremely chaotic in retail (Mother’s Day and Memorial Day), a strong wave of warm and sunny days in the neighborhood, as well as the final days of the local middle and high schools wrapping up, bringing twitchy teens loading up on snacks and drinks.

Usually I can get a few hundred words done despite this, but the deal-breaker this time has been allergies. Those warm and sunny days have brought along several blooming and pollenating plants and trees that have kept me stuffed up and/or handling a migraine throughout my shifts. I look forward to days off when this kind of thing lays me low.

Still…I don’t feel too guilty about missing a few days or doing the least amount of writing work. It annoys me that I have to sacrifice that and not something else, but I’ve made my peace with that some time ago. As long as I’m able to get back to work soon enough.

New phone!

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We’d decided it was time to upgrade our phones and went with the Google Pixel 8a. We’ve had really good luck with this brand over the last few years and see no reason to change to anything different. The camera is supposedly even better than the previous iteration, so I figured I’d try it out by taking another shot out Spare Oom window looking north. Looks nice to me!

For the most part I don’t see too many differences but then again I’ve mostly been fiddling with the settings and deciding which apps can stay and which I’ll most likely get rid of eventually. [I mean, do I really need six food-ordering apps when I really only use three of them?] I would like to get back into the habit of taking more pictures again — I mean, other than shots of our two ridiculous cats — and maybe start using the sound recording app again.

And what am I doing with my old phone? Well, I’m planning on using it as an e-reader for the most part. Delete most of the apps on it but keep the Dropbox, Hoopla and B&N apps. Or maybe even continue using that as a camera as well? Who knows?

Non-writing creativity

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So what am I working on creatively when I’m not writing? No, sadly I haven’t been playing music or making art lately.

However, A and I have been working on the above — our own little six-by-six plot at the local community garden! It’s mostly A’s planning, perseverance and plant selection, but I’ve been, as they say, getting stuck in when we stop there every couple of days. One or both of us will stop by every other day, maybe harvest some of that ridiculously fruitful red and green lettuce, and give it all a good watering. [The above picture is courtesy of A, btw.]

Funny thing is, I never thought I’d be all that excited about gardening, even though we’ve been watching Gardener’s World on BritBox for a good few years now. But when we started working on this, I really found myself having a lot of fun with it. And not just that, it’s forcing me to get out of my reactive don’t wanna mode that often gets the best of me. The other weekend when we participated in a monthly garden community gathering to clean and weed, I really got stuck in and weeded the hell out of a significant area that had been bothering me since we got the plot. It feels really weird to feel that sense of pride in something I never thought I’d get actively excited about. It’s kind of made me rethink a lot about how I approach a lot of things in life, and that’s a super healthy thing to do.

Plus, we’ve been having a TON of free salad these days, and that can’t be a bad thing.

Outside

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I think it’s safe to say that the cold rainy season here in the Bay Area has finally come to a close (I hope), which means that I’ll be able to return to something I’ve been wanting — and needing — to do at work for a while now. And that’s go outside during my breaks.

I was doing it for a while there, heading up to the roof parking deck for my ten minute breaks and the back half of my lunches. For a while there I was just heading to our small break room and slumping into one of the chairs and, well…maybe not doomscrolling, but passively reading news sites and social media again. At least I’m not getting myself worked up like I used to, so there’s that.

Anyway, I think heading up to the roof, or even out to the side parking lot for a few minutes can’t be all bad, especially since I have a small notebook in my inside jacket pocket that’s been itching to be used for quite some time now. I’ve been using it to work out a few vague ideas for Theadia, but I think it’s time I start using it more often like I used to in the Yankee Candle days: working out what I want to write for the current chapter, that way I’m not wracking my brain at the start of my writing sessions.

As long as the weather is with me, I think this is a fine idea!

[On a side note, I can safely say I don’t need to head outside to do any exercise, as this day job keeps me on my toes and I can easily rack up a few miles’ worth of steps on my fitness app. I’ve joked with one of the bakery workers that any of the cake slices I buy from them get worked off by the end of the day, considering how much I flit around the store!]

Hrrmm…

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Yeah, I think I’m more than a bit out of practice when it comes to writing bigger stories. It’s been far too long since I’ve written in this style, I think. But I’m being patient and hoping that it all works out eventually. It’ll come back to me.

Over this past week I’ve been trying to write an all-new chapter for Theadia that introduces an important secondary character, but I know that this very rough draft is coming out a little, well…rough. I know I could do better, and I’m thinking I might need to give this another go-round before I move on to the next chapter. I think I’m more annoyed that my word count plummeted to about three hundred words a session when usually they’re an easy eight hundred or so. [It doesn’t help that I’ll find myself easily distracted by music and, er, blogging things like this.] But I’m not giving up.

I’m reminding myself that I’ve been in this situation several times in the past, where my word count can fluctuate at any point in time, where I might struggle to get a single scene done one day and breeze through another one the next. It’s just how the writing biz is. And no, I’m not going to use AI to help me, as this is actually my favorite part of writing! Heh.

I’ll get through it, one way or another.

I should be walking

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For a while I was walking to and from work, but due to the winter weather here in SF, it gets super cold and sometimes rainy and I’d rather either drive in or take the bus. I always feel like I’m being lazy and wasteful because it’s only eight blocks. It’s not even worth turning on the radio as it’s only a three minute drive. But it’s spring now, it’s warming up, and the days are getting longer so I won’t always be walking there or home in the dark, depending on the shift. And the walk is only ten minutes. [I timed it when I first went for my initial interview.]

What do I do in that ten minutes? It’s not as if I really do all that much deep thinking about things. Sometimes I’ll think about what I’ll be doing for the rest of the day when I have a morning shift, and after midday shifts I’ll wonder what’s going on in the neighborhood now that everyone’s come home and had their dinner already. I might even stop into one of the three coffee shops I pass and grab a cup to go.

I do think about my writing. Not always, but sometimes. Just as in the past, if I’ll use the time to work out something that’s bothering me, or plan out something I’d like to try. Going for a walk these days is more about me not having to think, taking a mental break from what I’ve been doing all day, but if I’m in that creative mood, this is a perfect and peaceful time to let my mind wander a bit.

Either way, I need to start walking again. I definitely need the exercise!

More on not holding back

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The last time I talked about this sort of thing was four years ago in this entry, but a lot of things have changed in my life since then. I wrote that entry in the first year of the pandemic, about a year after I’d been forced into heading thirty miles west into the office, ten months after I’d originally come up with the idea for Theadia, and six months after I quit that former day job.

Reason I bring it up is that I’ve been talking with some coworkers at the current Day Job about personal things and surprisingly they all say that I’m probably the most got-their-shit-together person they’d ever met. Which is kind of mind-blowing, considering my past. Ask me how I was four years ago, and I’d say that I was in a much better place than I’d been even a few years before that, but I still had a hell of a long way to go.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot as I work on the Theadia rewrite, because I’m once again at the point where I feel I’ve still been holding back. I’ve just gotten so used to doing it over the last couple of decades for varying reasons. Getting my emotions under control, ensuring my mental and emotional health (and in the process my physical health) was no longer going haywire because I’d just been reacting to everything for most of my life.

So now I’m thinking: yeah, maybe it’s time to trust myself a bit. Far past time.

What does this have to do with my writing? I think it’s that I’ve always felt that my payoffs weren’t as grand as I want them to be. I mean, other than the epic roundup at the end of The Balance of Light where the fate of everyone is held in the hands of two characters, Denni and Saisshalé. I love my books but there’s always this feeling that I could have gone so much further with them plot-wise. Raised the stakes more. Sometimes I feel my personal avoidance of conflict in real life infiltrated the conflict in my books to some degree.

But it’s here and now, and I’m definitely not as avoidant as I used to be. And that’s another reason I want to rewrite Theadia: I can make this story a lot bigger, grander and stronger than what it currently is.

I don’t want to hold back this time.