Waves From The Nook
Sep. 1st, 2014 09:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
teddy_radiatorIt usually occurs to me around once a month that I am positively in lurking mode, and realise I need to update. Things are busy, and yet, I really don't have anything very thrilling to write about. So, I'll just state the state of the state, as it were.
The main thing is that I had a huge breakthrough regarding some of the reasons I have been failing at attempting to live a healthy life. In the past, I have managed to sabotage every attempt to eat healthily, exercise properly, do the right things for my body. It bothered me, but I kept pushing it away. This week, I had a huge epiphany about it, and rather than go through all the grisly details of the whys, I will just say that things 'feel' different now. I understand a lot of what has happened, and I've changed a lot of things. While it's only been a week, I can already see huge dividends. Yes, I'm still vastly overweight; but I'm no longer 'bloated' if this makes sense. It will take a long time, and I will have to be ever vigilant not to let that small voice urge me toward failure (but now I know what this voice is, and more importantly, who this voice is), but I'm no longer afraid to take a stand against being my own worst enemy. This is a problem I have fought since I was about 8 years old, when the voice first came into existence. I know it was trying to protect me; as time went on and I matured, it changed its remit into trying to protect itself, and this meant making sure I gained weight instead of lost it. We're driving in the same direction now, and it's a complete lifestyle change. It has changed everything.
It helps that TheHubs™ is so determined to get healthy as well. And he's not precious about helping out in the kitchen. It's been an incredible week, and we've made mistakes. He did a gig last Saturday, and we both had Diet Coke at the venue, and it made us feel terrible. Water seems to be the only thing that I want to drink right now, and I'm cool with that.
Writing wise, it's been a bit slow this week, but hey, you can't expect to have a life-changing epiphany AND do the dishes, yanno? I'm in pretty good shape with the novel;![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
stgulik has two chapters, and I'm about 1/3 through the next, and the end is definitely in sight. I had to drop out of two really nice fests; the stories just weren't getting anywhere, and I hate to turn in a crap story just to turn it in. i am happy with my ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
hp_silencio story, and while I know I'll regret not participating in sshg_giftfest, I know it's for the best. Times are changing in our fandom, and I'm not sure I fit in too much anymore. I did have a lot of fun writing a short PWP for hp_het_taboo, and I hope to ooccasionally write there and grangersnape100 to keep my fandom feels going until I'm ready to do something more serious again. I still love SSHG; it's always going to be my OTP, but I think I need to break for awhile. I'm starting to let the stuff get to me, and my attitude was getting too passive/aggressive. When all is said and done, I'd like to be remembered as a force for good in SSHG.
There is a sadness to writing this; I feel in many ways that my outlook on fandom has been irretrievably damaged during this long hot summer, as if something got broken that's always going to be fragile, even with all the excellent patch jobs it was given. And I hate walking around on eggshells in my own fandom, for fear that I'll be next in the line of fire. I think in this case it's best if I took a break from it all and allowed the beauty that will be Giftfest to fix it and allow us all to move on.
It looks right now like I won't be going to MISTI-Con, as much as that breaks my heart. I will keep on trying to get a cancellation at the hotel, but finding that we missed getting a room, on top of all the fandom woes this summer in general has left me wondering if that's not just a sign I should be reading. I do know my attitude about the people I want to see and meet hasn't changed; I still long to see everyone again, and the backdrop of MISTI is such a positive one. It was like the best high school reunion ever, and I was really looking forward to it. Well, if we're meant to go, there will be a cancellation and we'll get it, simple as.
While I was writing Burn Down The Mission, I was given a strong impulse by my Muse to re-read Stephen King's Dark Tower series (I even quoted from the Author's notes of it when I archived it on Ash and TPP, not that it helped all that much). Even as I started The Gunslinger, I was berating myself. Reading through the first time was an exercise in frustration and heartbreak, and I kept asking, "Why on earth are you making me read this thing again?" I know now why. I was supposed to see it with new eyes - I was supposed to read it with the eyes of a writer now. I have always admired King's turn of phrase, his way of blindsiding you with a tender moment in the middle of his gleeful carnage, but never more so than now. It also amazes me how he puts you right in the middle of this foreign land, set thousands of years in the future and the past, and you find yourself speaking their language. It's infectious and beckoning and so damn, damn cruelly wonderful.
Oh, I know that the last two books are self-indulgent in the extreme (I mean, he self-inserts as a major character FFS), but the first five books have some breathtaking moments of prose, insight and character/world building. I understand now why Eddie, Jake and Susannah fall under the thrall of Roland of Gilead, the gunslinger. King loves his archetypes, and they are fully formed and real here. I also think about somethingkellychambliss said in her excellent fic Right Nor Wrong about Severus:
"Severus were a man what made people feel things -- strong things, dark things, needy things. The Headmistress weren't the first person to want him. To want to understand him or save him or join in his righteous darkness. To want to share the power of him. To have him want them."
That is how I feel about Roland of Gilead in a nutshell. Not so surprising, since there are a lot of similarities with Roland and the way I wrote Severus in Mission. Heck, they even look a bit alike, except for the colour of their eyes. Roland, too, lost his first love through his own foolish actions, and those actions have placed their stamp on everything he does for the rest of his life. Those of his ka-tet love him, and hate him too, but they would spill their last drop of blood to bask in the sun of his regard. And when King speaks of the 'dark romance' embedded deep within this pragmatic (and dogmatic) character, I just shiver. He is a character who's heart can never belong to anyone or anything else; we watch him grow into a man of worth, and it breaks your heart to know that nothing, not even you, can lure him away from this quest. He can never belong to anyone, because he has given his heart and soul to this Tower, and you hate it for that, but you love it because he does. Another in a long line of these characters that move and shake me. Even though I know this series and this character are going to break my heart, I, like Roland, will keep going until I reach that Dark Tower. The ending is inevitable and horrible and left me blind with rage and betrayal, but in the end, it was probably what Roland deserved. It was his ka.
I just received a very sad update from my former student T and his wife Glenda, who has terminal cancer. Things have taken a turn for the worse since they took a few days to go to Puerto Rico, and it looks like she will be entering Hospice care very soon. Sad, sad news. It's just amazing to me that this vital, powerful woman has been destroyed by cancer in a mere four years. Too young, too dynamic, too unfair. He lives in Texas, so there's no way I can be there for him physically, but I truly wish I could. I thought my regard for this fine man could rise no higher; I was wrong. And I know that he has been made in part because of Glenda, and his life with her. I am just so sad I will never be able to meet Glenda during this lifetime.
I'm going on holiday for the first time in four years this Sunday, and it has occurred to me that I have forgotten how to vacation. I have a zillion things to do before we leave, of about which I've done maybe four. In fact, I really should stop boring you and get my (eventually to be less) fat arse in gear and start doing stuff.
Hugs to all who needs 'em, do it please ya.
The main thing is that I had a huge breakthrough regarding some of the reasons I have been failing at attempting to live a healthy life. In the past, I have managed to sabotage every attempt to eat healthily, exercise properly, do the right things for my body. It bothered me, but I kept pushing it away. This week, I had a huge epiphany about it, and rather than go through all the grisly details of the whys, I will just say that things 'feel' different now. I understand a lot of what has happened, and I've changed a lot of things. While it's only been a week, I can already see huge dividends. Yes, I'm still vastly overweight; but I'm no longer 'bloated' if this makes sense. It will take a long time, and I will have to be ever vigilant not to let that small voice urge me toward failure (but now I know what this voice is, and more importantly, who this voice is), but I'm no longer afraid to take a stand against being my own worst enemy. This is a problem I have fought since I was about 8 years old, when the voice first came into existence. I know it was trying to protect me; as time went on and I matured, it changed its remit into trying to protect itself, and this meant making sure I gained weight instead of lost it. We're driving in the same direction now, and it's a complete lifestyle change. It has changed everything.
It helps that TheHubs™ is so determined to get healthy as well. And he's not precious about helping out in the kitchen. It's been an incredible week, and we've made mistakes. He did a gig last Saturday, and we both had Diet Coke at the venue, and it made us feel terrible. Water seems to be the only thing that I want to drink right now, and I'm cool with that.
Writing wise, it's been a bit slow this week, but hey, you can't expect to have a life-changing epiphany AND do the dishes, yanno? I'm in pretty good shape with the novel;
stgulik has two chapters, and I'm about 1/3 through the next, and the end is definitely in sight. I had to drop out of two really nice fests; the stories just weren't getting anywhere, and I hate to turn in a crap story just to turn it in. i am happy with my hp_silencio story, and while I know I'll regret not participating in sshg_giftfest, I know it's for the best. Times are changing in our fandom, and I'm not sure I fit in too much anymore. I did have a lot of fun writing a short PWP for hp_het_taboo, and I hope to ooccasionally write there and grangersnape100 to keep my fandom feels going until I'm ready to do something more serious again. I still love SSHG; it's always going to be my OTP, but I think I need to break for awhile. I'm starting to let the stuff get to me, and my attitude was getting too passive/aggressive. When all is said and done, I'd like to be remembered as a force for good in SSHG.There is a sadness to writing this; I feel in many ways that my outlook on fandom has been irretrievably damaged during this long hot summer, as if something got broken that's always going to be fragile, even with all the excellent patch jobs it was given. And I hate walking around on eggshells in my own fandom, for fear that I'll be next in the line of fire. I think in this case it's best if I took a break from it all and allowed the beauty that will be Giftfest to fix it and allow us all to move on.
It looks right now like I won't be going to MISTI-Con, as much as that breaks my heart. I will keep on trying to get a cancellation at the hotel, but finding that we missed getting a room, on top of all the fandom woes this summer in general has left me wondering if that's not just a sign I should be reading. I do know my attitude about the people I want to see and meet hasn't changed; I still long to see everyone again, and the backdrop of MISTI is such a positive one. It was like the best high school reunion ever, and I was really looking forward to it. Well, if we're meant to go, there will be a cancellation and we'll get it, simple as.
While I was writing Burn Down The Mission, I was given a strong impulse by my Muse to re-read Stephen King's Dark Tower series (I even quoted from the Author's notes of it when I archived it on Ash and TPP, not that it helped all that much). Even as I started The Gunslinger, I was berating myself. Reading through the first time was an exercise in frustration and heartbreak, and I kept asking, "Why on earth are you making me read this thing again?" I know now why. I was supposed to see it with new eyes - I was supposed to read it with the eyes of a writer now. I have always admired King's turn of phrase, his way of blindsiding you with a tender moment in the middle of his gleeful carnage, but never more so than now. It also amazes me how he puts you right in the middle of this foreign land, set thousands of years in the future and the past, and you find yourself speaking their language. It's infectious and beckoning and so damn, damn cruelly wonderful.
Oh, I know that the last two books are self-indulgent in the extreme (I mean, he self-inserts as a major character FFS), but the first five books have some breathtaking moments of prose, insight and character/world building. I understand now why Eddie, Jake and Susannah fall under the thrall of Roland of Gilead, the gunslinger. King loves his archetypes, and they are fully formed and real here. I also think about something
kellychambliss said in her excellent fic Right Nor Wrong about Severus:"Severus were a man what made people feel things -- strong things, dark things, needy things. The Headmistress weren't the first person to want him. To want to understand him or save him or join in his righteous darkness. To want to share the power of him. To have him want them."
That is how I feel about Roland of Gilead in a nutshell. Not so surprising, since there are a lot of similarities with Roland and the way I wrote Severus in Mission. Heck, they even look a bit alike, except for the colour of their eyes. Roland, too, lost his first love through his own foolish actions, and those actions have placed their stamp on everything he does for the rest of his life. Those of his ka-tet love him, and hate him too, but they would spill their last drop of blood to bask in the sun of his regard. And when King speaks of the 'dark romance' embedded deep within this pragmatic (and dogmatic) character, I just shiver. He is a character who's heart can never belong to anyone or anything else; we watch him grow into a man of worth, and it breaks your heart to know that nothing, not even you, can lure him away from this quest. He can never belong to anyone, because he has given his heart and soul to this Tower, and you hate it for that, but you love it because he does. Another in a long line of these characters that move and shake me. Even though I know this series and this character are going to break my heart, I, like Roland, will keep going until I reach that Dark Tower. The ending is inevitable and horrible and left me blind with rage and betrayal, but in the end, it was probably what Roland deserved. It was his ka.
I just received a very sad update from my former student T and his wife Glenda, who has terminal cancer. Things have taken a turn for the worse since they took a few days to go to Puerto Rico, and it looks like she will be entering Hospice care very soon. Sad, sad news. It's just amazing to me that this vital, powerful woman has been destroyed by cancer in a mere four years. Too young, too dynamic, too unfair. He lives in Texas, so there's no way I can be there for him physically, but I truly wish I could. I thought my regard for this fine man could rise no higher; I was wrong. And I know that he has been made in part because of Glenda, and his life with her. I am just so sad I will never be able to meet Glenda during this lifetime.
I'm going on holiday for the first time in four years this Sunday, and it has occurred to me that I have forgotten how to vacation. I have a zillion things to do before we leave, of about which I've done maybe four. In fact, I really should stop boring you and get my (eventually to be less) fat arse in gear and start doing stuff.
Hugs to all who needs 'em, do it please ya.
