Applying Import

I think when someone, sets a difficult standard for themselves its easy to buoy up the morale by judging and mocking those that don't.

It helps.

Its also easy to mock people who have some rigorous standard when one doesn't understand or value or share, and when one feels judged or made less by not sharing said standards.

It helps.

In any one aspect, a person is usually sandwiched between varying degrees trying to alienate everyone to feel a little more secure, validated, motivated, and maybe less miserable.

It muddies the water.

Right or wrong, were all just people trying to juggle values in a complicated world. Whats important and what isn't. How important something is relatively. Whether its religion or food, money or people, we all have to decide what matters most. And for most, its an endless shuffle cycling throughout life.

I can disdain scantly clad people for their lack of modesty, and be baffled by the reasoning behind hijabs. But somehow I know that I am scantly clad to someone, and a hijab is just an extension of an ideal of modesty, which I value. I should both respect it, and have charity for those who don't keep to it. I both want to be respected for my values, and not be disdained for not sharing someone elses.

I'm vegetarian. Its sometimes wonderful. Its sometimes hard. Often, I'm not that good at it, and probably don't deserve to title myself so definitively meat-free. I feel/think/care deeply about why I'm doing this. I'm attempting to apply a moderately strict restriction to my diet, based on an ethical/moral/compassionate/ecological standard of practice I want to hold. There's no law that says I need to, my religion doesn't seem to have any particular fiery torment frighten me into submission, and my culture won't burn me at the stake for apostatizing from a veggie diet. The only thing keeping me at it, is my own belief in its import. Not even vegan natzi's* waiting in the wings.

Now is that so different from deciding to wear a hijab? Or not swear or watch R rated movies or eat pork, or volunteering every Saturday, or to never eat at McDonald, or play World of Warcraft or buy rare guns or get tatoos... Or anything that you find to be important? Anything not terribly harmful, that you value, but maybe get a lot of flack for.

When I avoid meat, I do it motivated by compassion. Motivated by a belief human rights, and just extending the logic. I do it because I don't wan't to be the cause of suffering. I want to decrease world suck.

I wish people would think of that before mocking it and attacking it. I'm just trying to make something less miserable. Perhaps they're just reveling in the joy of perfectly culturally accepted food group, and maybe ignoring misgivings they have about the practice. And if I here vegans or better vegetarians going on about how vile they think it all is, I'll sympathize and remember how difficult it can all be, to get a decent vegan meal you didn't have to cook yourself or about how they miss some food.

I guess to really refine it all down. Judge neither up nor down. Disdain and invalidate as few as you can. People need charity, (the whole generosity of love and spirit 'pure love of Christ' and all that). There are too many valuable people, and too many valuable facets of each one to just lump them together and discard them. And do unto others yadda yadda, because I don't want to be lumped and discarded by someone because I don't eat meat. Or because I did a couple weeks ago. Or because my hair is luscious and free or because I layer tanks under tees (ok actually I dont do that. Never really clicked with me).


*Never met a vegetarian or vegan who ever tried to force starve me of meat. I think its a myth.

Statement Piece

I'm in a rental house. And its spring. As a person who gardens, if only during the spring, this is a time of reflection and angst. I pruned the terribly neglected tree's. Someone needs to mow the lawn. There's no designated space for a garden so I've started planting things in pots, hoping that hot tub will finally finish being sold, so I can use that space too.

Mostly, I look at pictures of amazing gardens on the internet. And I look at the boring mediocrity of the landscaping here. There's plants a plenty. Bulbs and shrubs and trees. There's a trellis or two and a landscape rock patio. And there's cement curbed edging around it all. So there was some money put into this. And I look at it all, and think to myself how universally uninspiring it all is. A bunch of grass with a little gravel bubble outline. No risks. No maintenance. No magic. The Tuna-fish likes it to be sure, but there could be some compromise...

One of my angsts while eating a poorly flavored meal, is that the same ingredients, with a touch of forethought and skill could be something amazing. Take a peice of chicken, slap it on the hot pan, sprinkle some salt on it, and cook the sizzle out of it. Vs, Take that peice of chicken, season it so the flavor seeps in, not is scalded off, maybe pound it a bit so it cooks evenly, and cook it till its tender juicy and flavorful.

Skill, planning, foresight. Inspiration.

What could this yard be, for the same expense, if someone had put the brain power in to actually decide? If someone had only had the presence of mind to ponder the space and resolve its oddities into opportunities...

When I eat a meal, I'm giving up my calorie allotment for the day. I'm taking in food that will ultimately effect my health and my body, how I feel. And food that also has an impact on the world in the way it was grown and shipped and all of these things. When I eat a meal, I want it to be the BEST it can be. I want it to be a statement. Every meal, every side every ingredient every flavor, is an opportunity for something amazing.

Every yard, every space, every plant, is an opportunity. To create something magazine worthy. To create something dream worthy. Size is no object, money can be worked around, but the conscious decision to make something better? Its necessary. Especially if you aren't a ridiculously talented professional landscape architect/designer.

Take the opportunity, with meals, with space, with the things you buy, with the time you spend. And make it a statement. Make it what you want it to be, not a reflex reaction, make it with conscience.

Something Occurs

I really have been ending up at my blog, because I have no one else to talk to. And I'm avoiding writing on my book, but I figure any writing is an improvement.

Sure wish I could do it some time OTHER than past midnight.

-_-

I know I rambled for hours on my last post, on the same subject, and you probably aren't terribly interested in another round.... But since I'm mostly talking to myself here anyway and in a way you're only listening in. I'm going to go for it.

There's something else that might be evidence of actual interest in writing a book...

Its not the writing I hate. I like when words trickle off my fingers as I immerse myself in a scene. Striving for just the right word, just the right jot of color dropped here and there arranging meaningless speckles into a photo finish print job. Alright, more like a cheapo laser jet from the 90's, but the polish and shine comes from the editing I'm told.

Berkun says in the post that if you don't like writing words, then sentences and paragraphs and chapters... well you're discomfort will build. And kill you or you're hopes for writing a novel. Maybe both... But you see, I don't usually mind the writing, (except for bouts of voice-hate I get now and then).

Its the planning that's punching me in the gut. Last post I raved about love for my stories... I love the concept schemes. I love the scenes. I don't mind gently thinking through the rationals and the logic. But before I can get from idea to novel, I need to have something spanning the massive blurry dark gaping holes in my stories.

Its work. I'm not great at work. I usually just coast on my thinking skills, and let myself be abhorrently lazy. Some of me hopes that if I just write the parts I know, if I just let it hang out on the page long enough, the missing pieces will fill themselves in. That I can discover the story with the same pure inspiration that the idea came to me in the first place. The way it just seems to be there already, and I've just happened to look.

But what about when you're missing things like... a protagonist. A plot. A villian. Wait till another concept comes to match the holes? Create one intentionally to fit, using my apparently inferior waking mind? Then carefully air brush it with details to match the rest? Its the work stage, but not a pen to paper, phalanges to keys, butt in seat kind of work. Its a rigorous note-taking, brainstorming, decision making thought work.

I hate making decisions. And I hate work. And I avoid the things I hate, even when they're good for me and I know it.

Seems like I've almost convinced myself I really do want to write. Yet I still haven't touched on my ulterior motives yet. I should stop this post to keep it neat, but I need to touch on this.

I want to make money writing. - J.K. Rowling is a billionaire author.

I'd love to make a movie, from my writing. - Twilight made it, with as many haters as fans.

I'd like a little bit of fame. - It would be kinda epic to write a best seller, and have my name mentioned, and some fans.

I'd appreciate the lifestyle - Work from where you are, your own hours, your own place of inspiration...

Realize please, even if you don't know me, I'm relatively intelligent. I know the odds. I know about being "realistic". I know that if people love doing something, that they'd do it even if they don't get paid, that its usually a career you wont get well paid for. I know the authors and books and honors I sighted are rare, and flukes, and not the rule.

But I feel that I can't draw a line to walk that flows neatly between being realistic and giving up. If only 1 in 10,000 people can make a career out of writing novels, like Jim Butcher's website mentions... If I don't believe I'm the 3 out of 1000 that can do it... If I don't believe I can do it... How can I? If I don't believe I can do it, I'm stupid to waste my time to try.

So I choose to believe I'm the 1 in 10,000. I choose to believe that if I'm going for 1 in 10,000, I might as well try for 1 in a million. One in a billion. Shoot for the stars. People who reach them didn't always expect it, but they tried. And they look back and tell the selves they see reflected in another hopeful's eyes, try for it. Believe in it. Don't strangle it with doubt, believe.

You. Can. Do. It.

Vinegar

I made some refrigerator pickles the other day, to go with my epic (fine, they could use some work) bean burgers I made. They were fantastic, cut with all the burger accouterments. Seeing as I don't usually like pickles on burgers, this does mean something, even coming from the cook. They were however... a bit powerful, on their own. I didn't use a recipe exactly, but I had read breifly about how to make them a few days ago. The page I read said you didn't need to cut the vinegar with water, so I didn't. The result? Very potent pickles. Tasty yet bracing. Tart and tingly on the tongue. Largely from the vinegar.

Thing is, vinegar doesn't taste very well straight up. It needs salts and sugar and spices to give direction to its acidic drive. Alone, plain boring old white vinegar... just tastes bland. And sour, in a sort of diluted lackluster way. Abrasive and jarring too. Hits the back of the throat with a choking vengeance.

Know what else tastes like vinegar? Hearing my deepest doubts immaculately voiced by someones who's opinion I inexplicably trust.

Let me give you some back story. I don't want to tell people this. Because I'm afraid of hearing my doubts. Because I'm afraid of failure. I'm afraid of people knowing that I've tried, if the results aren't spectacular. I'm a perfectionist who hides in procrastination and underachievement and screams "SANCTUARY" at the top of my lungs every time my mind flirts with accomplishment.

Fears aside... I want to be an author.

I would say "I'm writing a book", but that is not entirely true. Rather, I'm preparing to write a book. I have words written, plans half formed, but I'm not consistent enough to merit the verb "writing." I am trying though in a round about terribly ineffective way. I've resigned myself to planning. I've looked up practical methods to go about it, to dispel the magic curtain that I've pulled between myself and the achievable goal of a book. I've read advice from some of my favorite authors. I've read up on the 'snowflake design'. And following the great minds of our age, I googled it.

It was on Scott Berkun's page that I found an exceptionable well perceived and accurately worded monologue about it. Wandering, late at night and beset by a headache, through his web of links, I met an unspoken fear.

"But many people who fail at writing really didn't want to write in the first place. They only thought they did. Perhaps they want to be famous, or to think of themselves as the kind of person who writes books, both of which have little to do with writing." Scott Berkun, "Why You Fail at Writing"

Ground shaking. Maybe the fact that it trips me up and strikes a cord means its true. Maybe the only thing I'm really good at, the only thing I ever come back to naturally... is cooking. And perhaps thats only motivated by the need to eat, so really I'm just a blob of sub animate consumption, with no calling in life at all.

Do I like to write? Do I want to do it? If I do, would it be so hard to sit still and actually do it?

He says that people only think they want to write, because of alternate motives. Why do I want to write? Bear with me as I over think my logic though this one.

I like to read. Like Jane Austen's Marianne Dashwood, I feel the highest enjoyment and appreciation of an art comes from participating in its creation. Therefore, it makes sense that I should write. That I could craft a book, exactly custom to the way I would imagine it.

Speaking of imagination, I love imagining things. Friends petered out playing make believe games with me long before I lost the desire to. I loved crafting and acting out scenes full of angst and betrayal and imagined beauty (I probably just looked silly of course, but thats the beauty of childhood). Suddenly, the only two outlets for that part of my being was acting, which I did, and writing. And thinking about stories as I fall asleep at night... So I guess thats three outlets. You could also almost include dreaming, but thats not on demand! There's still a raw creative force generating characters, images and scenes. And whats more, the emotions and feelings. The concepts and posturing. All of this is still swirling around in my head before I fall asleep, while I dream. What if I put it on paper? What if I gave it the attention of a wakeful mind, to help polish out odd discrepancies unconsciousness brings. (Like that yellow turtle creature named Frank, not at all a proper companion to a alien hunting psychic super agent). What if I could grow these characters into fully realized novels?

And theres the thing. I really really absolutely love my ideas. I love them. They're not perfect, and they grate at my brain with difficult decisions to be made and mind boggling discrepancies. They need the work to stand up to even my biased critical eye, but that doesn't take away my love for them. Purely biased, I may still be, but I think they're worth sharing. I think they stand up to much of what I've read on the market. (Then again some treasured few on the market are so mind bogglingly amazing, I wouldn't even know where to begin to approach that...) I think that they could find an audience. I turned this into a tentative market recption research isntead of what I meant. I guess what I'm saying, is I love them. I think they deserve to be realized. They deserve to be shared. And its like smashing a peice of inspired art to dust. No... that IS what it is. Only its not so substantial as dust, its an idea, shriveled and dead. Not even forgotten because no one else knew it.

And finally, here I am at the end of this monumental wordy post, at 3 in the freaking morning, articulating all this over thought nonsense. Dragging you into the dialog I'm having with my self. Writing. Maybe I just need to stay up till three more often. All day long I square off with my computer, trying to hog tie myself into writing. And all day long I shy away to go get food, or to tastespotting or facebook or browser history only knows where avoiding even a single sentence. Come midnight? Two o'clock? And the lights are back on baby.

Does that mean I hate writing? Or that there's something in my brain that tells me I can't, that's overwhelmed by the irrationality of sleep deprivation? There are similarities between extreme fatigue and intoxication. Its a good thing I don't drink, or I'd take the lazy way out and become an alcoholic author....

Half of me says I shouldn't post this and bore you all with this manifesto chunk of unedited insomniac ramblings. And the other half says if I wait for something perfect I wont get anywhere at all. I live too much in my head, and I want my ideas out. Even if they're long and rambling, and give me puffy dark circles and dry red eyes in the morning. If you haven't read this far I don't blame you one bit. If you have, thank you for being interested in me. Its a compliment. And I hope you got something good from it, for all your eye strain.

Granted

Things I've taken for granted, and incomplete list:

Clean Laundry, thanks Mom

Clean Dishes, again, thanks Mom

Alright... my Mother, in general. She's my sugar momma and my fan club and my therapist and grand vizier.

Theatre - I've been involved a little bit here and there since 5th grade. Looking around for my lil sister, its HARD to find the opportunity.

Arts - This town kinda blows, but it does have an unusually strong arts community for being small and in rancher territory.

The Internetz - seriously people. Think of something you'd like to learn... find it on the internet. Only thing limiting, you're own drive.

Turn of Phrase

Do you ever notice when you're watching the news or reading an article... that people sometimes take a clever turn of phrase, but modify into a form that makes no sense? My example today... the phrase "Who said you couldn't have _____". Fill in the blank with whatever you just figured out you CAN have. The problem with the phrase, is the "who said" bit at the beginning. I read on tastespotting, "Who said dessert cant come in a glass?" That's just the question isn't? Who said? No one did! The phrase is intended to show disparity of the general rule and the truth of the situation. If there is no general rule, if there is no who saying you can't... The phrase makes no sense!

So "Who said dessert cant come in a glass?" No one did. Why would they? There's no reason NOT to have dessert in a glass. What are the new shooter desserts at restaurants now if NOT dessert in a glass?!

Had a friend get a SuperMan Pez machine for valentines day. She posted, "Who says you can't order a boyfriend in a box. ;)" Now... for one... No one ever said "You can't order a boyfriend in a box." Probably, on a completely different thought path than "you obviously CAN order a boyfriend in a box because Pez machines can be put in boxes!" But you get the idea.

If theres no generalized rule, "white after Labor Day" for example. That everyone's heard of. Or a particular widely known individual who they're referencing. Like, who says Obama hasn't documented citizenship? Donald Trump, for one. These are things that you hear on the news repetitively. They establish the who, the generalized rule of "THEY" that the adventurous blogger should be proving wrong. And if there isn't a they? There's no "Who" to say anything!

Its always kind of fascinating to see words and phrases loose their meaning in the hands of people who don't think the thought though. News casters and FB posters and the one liners of world. Trying to sound interesting in as few words as possible is tricky. Using a catchy phrase seems like a great shiny recognizable creative hook. Using it wrong is just kind of silly, if someone actually thinks about it longer than you say it.

"Thieves in broad daylight..." "Theives in the dead of night...." They've lost the poetry in overuse. And really, when else are theives going to strike than day or night? "Thieves in the falling twilight..." "Thieves at high noon..." Oooh! "The early thief gets the loot!" All just feels kind of silly to me.

Self Improvement

You know how when you hear a recording of yourself you have the reflex to cringe and kill whatever happens to be mimicking what you "don't sound like!"? Ever try to overcome that urge? Seriously, I'm alone. I have head phones on. No one is listening in. And I'm so mortified anyway. Embarrassed to the verge of blushing over how I sound. Heck, I don't really mind singing around people, as much as I mind this. It drives me crazy.

I've always wanted to be able to sing. It just seemed like it would be so easy to have an instrument so intuitively interfaced to you, that it IS you. That you use it from infancy, without needing brutally strict parents and an instructor who overlooks child labor laws. Its simply built in. Sure, you still have to learn technique and proper safe handling. But you cant tell me its harder for someone to pick up singing (if they're vocally gifted) than it is to pick up guitar. I wouldn't believe you. Guitar hurts, even when you're doing it right. Singing doesn't unless you're doing it really wrong...

I guess thats always been the rub though, up in the parentheses. I don't have one of those one in million voices. Yeah yeah... EVERYONE can learn to sing, but... some of it ISN'T learned. Its gifted. Just as much as I was gifted my dads thumbnails that are wider than they are long by about double. I like my hair, but its never going to do Shaun Whites luscious care free tousle...

I got side tracked looking for another celebrity simile, looking at celebrities without makeup. They look like real people without and it makes me rather compassionate for some reason... It makes me think of olden days, like pioneer or old European. Where piano playing and dancing was a fantastic source of entertainment... When being pretty was the hairsbreadth difference in the jaunt of your nose or the angle of your brow...

Anyway... there's accepting how you look and accepting your talents and you're singing voice. That, while I probably don't look totally great in goth blacks (like I think it would be really fun to), I look good in other styles. While I covet Adeles voice, as much for its beauty and strength as just the... soul power she sings with. Wouldn't it just feel amazing to be able to belt that out? Hitting every note with just the perfectly artful rasps here and there...

I cant remember what my point was. I guess that I want to learn to sing regardless of my limitations. And that I think its the pits that I don't have one of those voices. Music is such a field of beauty and creativity and art. And it feels so strange to be so out of the loop of a creative art. Alienated and excluded(in my own head) because I just don't get it. Maybe this is what people feel like when they think they cant draw or cook. I don't put the time and effort to it, so its not like I deserve to know an instrument. I've just always wondered at the people born into music. Maybe I have cooking so I don't need music... and all of this is just broad aimed envy. Maybe I don't really want to do music. Maybe I just want people to think I'm cool, because then maybe I'll think I'm cool. Maybe... its a waste of time. But is learning things, ever really a waste?