words.  words, words, words.  it's all we got.  
   i started this blog because i wanted to remain mindful of my writing.  i wanted something that could quantify the words in my thoughts.  these pages are a fragment of the words i am thinking and yet i feel i've compiled nothing.  
     in a few weeks, there is a book signing for something i ghosted.  i have a reminder on my calendar for the event.  i want to smile at the corpse with a nod, acknowledging that he did something my sporadic passion prevents me from doing.  he produced something that folks want to read.  - sure it came from my pen and skill, but the unfinished piles of incomprehensible words in my collection of garbage indicates that i cannot - 
     i started this blog to separate the strides i have in my writing measured against the hurdles i face with my mental illness.  in a moment of clarity, i separated the two; knowing if i ever read through an old chaotic journal about how stuck i am in my head, i would not be able to organize the words from my pen.  i understand without the one, i don't have the other.  both my words and my madness are important. 
     i spoke with a writer pal on the opposite end of the world.  literally and figuratively.  she writes something i do not.  she shared her struggle to squash a new story idea while she works on finishing the one she's writing.  her books appear on actual shelves that do not belong to her.   apparently finishing one thing before starting another works for her.  i do not share that skill set.  i have no less than seven projects going at once and three more in queue on the brain.  i am disorganized and undisciplined and a jumbled mess.  it's what i do.  
     it does not work for me.  i'm not delusional and i will never argue that this is my success; but it is my habit and i will aggressively support my position.  
     there was a time, when passion was high, that i would introduce myself as a writer [with a numbers gig].  sadly, i've reverted to capitalizing the numbers with a little voice squeaking, 'and i write toooooo.'  and every time i hear myself, i hate me a little more.  
     i hate that i haven't done as much as i want.  i hate that my stories do not contain two words on a final page.  
   but i digress, i was talking story to this fellow writer and it occurred to me that i have far more finished than i have unfinished.  what i don't have is a publishing contract, or an agent to sell a script.  i don't have a mass appeal for the public.  [or more to the point, i don't have the passion to sell my work to others]
    the conversation with this complete opposite made me realize that somehow i'm muddling through the writing.  the words are finding their way together even if i'm not noticing their movement.  it may seem like it's nothing, but it's almost like a shocking revelation seen at the climax of a horror movie blinked out with strobe lighting getting closer and closer until it takes my breath in a grasp and fades to black.
     i am a series of short stories that one day someone with find and compile into greatness. 
     THE END

     Double feature today!  i just wrote something over on Heating a Home on a Hot Plate.  but in writing that, of course my brain was a jumble of thoughts.  A jumble of words i struggled to remember.  Words i was  certain were important enough to remember. 
     The brain is a funny thing. - Maybe curious is a better word?  Maybe undefined is an even better word to describe what i'm thinking. 
     Remembering.  Let me work backwards  - in prep for my acquistion of the time machine... ha! - I saw a meme this week reading something about the write may not remember who you are, how you met, or even your name; but she'll remember the color of your shoelaces and the smell on your breath when you guffawed at an inappropriate joke, although the punchline too, escapes her memory.  
     Yesterday i was asked about some difficult experiences that make me the person i am.  I described them in as much detail i thought the recipiant needed to get the picture but curbed the detail to lessen the discomfort one hearing of such atrocities would feel.  I saw every detail of the moments.  I can smell things in the memory and i can taste - the bitter taste - figurative and literal.
     Two weeks ago i was asked if i remembered someone in the periphery of my childhood.  I remember.  Vague recollections of smiles and voices.  
     Nightmares.  Dreams are a means of filing memories.  Stuffing them deep into sleep with the freedom to cope without physical limits.  And yet, the details of some very bad stuff remain the same.  I'm never the victor.  I never come out on top.  Nightmares of real things that happened in my life.  Things that were just awful.  
     Maybe this belongs over on my heating page... but i'm struggling with this through words.  This is definitley a wriritng thing.  The good memories are bullied by the travesties of our past.  In my case, it's exhausting.  I don't want any more bad memories, but it seems like i can't stop them from becoming a part of me.  So i consider why?
     Character.  The shit - the waste - the stuff no one wants - it's necessary.   i'm not a hundred percent sure why, but these are the things that make good character.  Not just in writing, but in life.  
     My post today on the hot plate was focused on a mindfulness.  And i want to move forward with a mindfulness of memories.  I want to start relieving the file drawers in my brain of the stuff that should have been discarded a long time ago to make room for all the smiles and aromas in the periphery i should be drawing in more.  
     I need my memory to be better.  I need my brain to be better.  I need to be better.  Today i'm going to do my best to remember something that is not going to make me sad later when i think of it.  

    I cannot believe it has been two months since i have updated this thing.  i don't even want to think how far behind i am in writing jobs and writing for me.   
     Lots to share i think.  I know i refrained from writing within the week  after i cut most of the hair from my head.  I was walking around, a big ball of anger responding to inquiries that i had a 'crazy' episode or that it's easier to get dressed in the morning and my absolute favorite, the implication that i could not squash my homosexulaity down any longer. 
     First and foremost, although my hair provides an annoyance and frequently i want to shave my head, it is not because i lost my reason.  My life is an episode of crazy, with varying degrees that have nothing to do with my hair; although, i have an ex who would beg to differ with that opinion.  Next, and again, if the length of my hair had anything to do with making it easier to face the world, in or out of pants, i would totally keep my hair at the optimal length - for the very use of easing my days- sadly the length of my hair has nothing to do with the difficulty i feel while i breathe in and out around people.  Sign me up for the super powered hair, giving me the strength to face the world head on - pun unintended, but noticed... so i'll mention it.  And finally, this bit about sexuality linked to hair.  This is such a huge thing i could write essays on the matter.  A haircut does not make one gay, and unless i'm intimate with someone, i find the inquiry terribly vulgar..  That's all i'm going to say on the matter here.
     So how do i respond, and what am i getting at?  What i say - because people can easier understand the astetic reason for this reset:  I need to get comfortable with the grey and just had to get it all off my head to start over.  What i want to say - that would take hours over coffee or beer to explain:  I felt stuck.  What I've worked out in my brain about this hair stuff:
     In eighth grade i was pretty sick one day and couldn't go wherever it was everyone was going.  I looked in the mirror and saw the ugliness in my face.  The ugly crept through from inside and i was angry that i couldn't be normal.  I cried.  I could not verbalize the feelings or the thinking - both internally or externally.  I took scissors and cut my hair shorter than it had been - i was just going to say ever, but then i remembered that time in sixth grade where i had an uneven head because of a slumber party shenanigan.  :)
  But in eighth grade, i went to school, after this weekend of sheers, and people complimented me.  I, with my inability to draw in nice things, responded to each compliment with a growl and the words, "shut up."  
     Before, then, now, and i'm assuming forever, there is a modicum of care how i look - of course there is.  But i have never, nor ever will be, obsessed with how i look.  I much prefer how i feel.  And my hair was making me feel bleck. So, I cut it off.  Nothing more.  Except in responding to this most recent round of comments I realized that it is so much more!  It's everything.  I have this silver and grey hair under all the layers of colors.  I am struggling to embrace the grey.  But i'm warming up to it.  It's a little shorter than I'd like, but so is everything else in my life.  And as I stand looking in the mirror, smooshing the goop to keep the cowlicks under control for the day, I look at my face.  I look at the brightness that is coming through my face these days--  
     For anyone who doesn't know, I've been diagnosed with chronic pancreatitis and have had a few episodes of acute pancreatitis with some surgeries.  It's painful, it's exhausting and it's restricting my diet - which is killing my spirit.  I needed to reset my habits.  I needed to reset my routine.  In order for my body to survive, I needed to stop treating it like it was an extra in caligulia's life and care for it like the extraordinary machine i know it can be.  
     But my mind...?  My spirit...?  I made this commitment to writing and it feeds my soul.  I made commitments with writing - for myself and others - that i'm not keeping.  And my brain is starting to feel as pained as my body was.  I am struggling to find a balance.  When my body is malnourished, my brain doesn't work well.  When my brain is not nourished, my body fails in ways that would take hours to explain.  
     I'm trying.  I'm struggling.  ... the last doctor i went to calmed my concerns that i'm not getting better with the words, "you live with yourself everyday.  recovery is slow.  think about how you were when...."  
     So I have commited to a literary fair in September.  I have a few thigns to do to ready myself for the event.  I am going to do this - and i'm going to kick ass at it!   
     I'm still terrified on a daily basis of the reflection i see in the mirror daily.  But if i have to, I'll just cut off all the layers of extra and start over again - as long as i have it in me. 
     

     I am not a saleswoman.  i want that bit out of the way from jump.  i just want to write.  And there is a rotund little character on my shoulder crying out, "But in order to be a writer AND eat, one must do the pesky chore of selling."  I understand that it is not necessarily the art of selling my work, but it's selling myself.  (And i don't even want to take me home, so how can i do that?)

The days I don't write, I am perfectly fine just ignoring that bit about me.  But the days I DO! ...  I feel ... I just feel!  And that's pretty fucking good.  
     My commute for a few days has provided time with my thoughts, and if i was a shout out kind of girl, a quick enthusiastic one shoudl be hailed upon my meds that are being consumed in regular intervals as prescribed.  
     And there's the math isn't it?  ... My time is short because I work at a job that pays for necessities like yogurt and seroquel.  But if i just spent some time writing more, i could put efforts into being a writer even on the days when i don't feel worthy of the title.  (I only entertained the idea of having raconteur on my business cards for a day or two.)  And truly, aside from the selling, I make a pretty good go at writing.  
     I write my stuff, freelance, ghost a bit, have more coffeee and struggle with my bills.   

​ (Struggle no more or less with numbers instead of words in my days.) 

     At the end of the day, if i sleep, i don't stress with the same stress as working at something that is clearly not my passion although it remains my skill.
     I have this thought>> This jumble of melancholic wail over time and effort began because last night, i opened my computer to fill in all the brackets i jumped over during my yesterday commutes, and i was spent.  I didnt' have it in me to key another word on the screen.  But my mind raced and i had to get the words out before i forgot.  
     My brain was vomiting out the words and if i didn't sop up the mess right then and sort through the words, another minute would have come along with a wet vac and cleaned the whole mess away.  (into a vacuum - i rather like that image of my brain being overstuffed with words that it must purge, with a minute jumping from horatio's timepiece and moving it to a place words have no sound - no story.)   
     I wrote a thing about being clean over on my heating a home page... and it sat on my phone in a 'note to myself' over a week.  and this entry was actually started two days ago.  I'm struggling with finishing things.  I'm struggling seeing the end of projects and that punctuation on my sentences.  I blame lack of time and lack of brain, sometimes lack of sleep and often lack of eloquence.  but i have to finish.  if i'm ever going to make the transition from not a writer to a writer, i need to finish.