Category: psychology

Scene and narration

January 17th, 2023

I’m thinking that close attention to scene and detail may be one of the things that pulled me out of rumination, in my last Creative Writing class. Ironically enough, I’m very good at it, when I allow myself to focus on it — I’ve been concerned about becoming too florid. Getting a good sense of place, sometimes requires immersion in that place…which can be hard to really grasp, unless you’ve had the assignment of sitting in a public place and observing everything going on around you.

I had the opportunity to do this over 20 years ago in the Bay Area Young Writer’s Project, hosted at UC Berkeley (known locally as “Cal”). Cal has a beautiful campus, and for those who grow up around here — at least, those who have a chance of getting in, surviving the curricula, and being able to pay off any student loans — being there can also be associated with the rewards of academic achievement and a bright future.

I have memories of sunlight shining though the California Live Oaks onto the courtyard; the dappled light falling on the squirrels as they begged for food, the bubbling of Strawberry Creek (which is probably roaring, or flooding, right about now), and some of the quirky buildings (such as Dwinelle Hall, which — if I’m remembering correctly — has one more floor on one side of the building, than the other. Apparently, there were two different architects who couldn’t work together).

Being somewhere around 17 years old at the time, I (and two of my old friends from eighth grade, one of whom was the first girl I ever crushed on [at the time, it was tragic]) were high schoolers that summer. Our teacher, for at least part of the time, was an older guy who taught at Lowell High School. If you don’t know, Lowell is a top-of-the-line high school in San Francisco (which I have just looked up and seen is actually public!), and this person’s teaching was what one would expect, from that.

As an exercise in observation, he said he was going to go outside the room, and when he came back in, something about him would have changed: we would have to guess, what. I was the only person who mentioned that he had cuffed his sleeves; his metallic watch, with highlights of gold, was showing.

I really did like that program, even though it did require observing on the UC Berkeley campus. To elaborate, Berkeley in general is not the safest area. I’ve been on foot out there (twice, both times with a blissfully unaware friend) with nowhere to escape to, while policemen with assault rifles searched the streets for someone on the run. There were other areas that I knew not to enter at night, due to poor lighting and high rates of assault and rape.

Berkeley’s high crime rate — and the availability of a specific Creative Writing program at San Francisco State University (from which Anne Rice graduated) — is why I chose SFSU over Cal. Of course, that was when one could take the BART and a connecting shuttle in to SFSU, and not have to worry about much of anything more than catching the flu or getting robbed, on the trains.

That also meant that SFSU was a commuter school, which — along with my not being able to drive — made it particularly difficult for me to get into the literary night life at places like City Lights bookstore, or build connections with other writers outside of classes.

I didn’t realize the difference in quality between the California State University and University of California systems, prior to having participated in each one. I spent a little under two years living on-campus at a different UC, before I decided to attend SFSU. I didn’t understand in what ways the UC system was priming us for the future after graduation (or attempting to), and how the CSU systems had some…less practical degrees. Degrees one may want to major in anyway. Creative Writing was one of these.

My fifth grade teacher held a goodbye session at the end of the year, during which she named one thing about each of us that she would remember. For me, she recalled that my descriptions in writing were relatively ornate — though, of course, she didn’t mention the word, “ornate.” I just had a tendency to zero in on details. In high school, I was able to get through AP English relatively easily (despite the fact that I still have dreams about not having read my requisite 7 novels over the Summer).

It was in reading The Vampire Lestat that I realized becoming a published author was possible. Anne Rice isn’t really high literature; many of her works blend supernatural horror and erotica; she noticeably repeats a lot of the same adverbs (“softly”), and the premises of her stories can seem a bit far-fetched (why does no one investigate all the corpses drained of blood?)…but Rice’s works are accessible. She can show a 16-year-old reader that fiction writing is possible, even if the content might be a bit mature for a 16-year-old!

For some reason, it’s precisely the details in a piece of writing, or in a drawing, that I end up…sometimes, not wanting to deal with. There are a lot of minutiae to keep track of — part of the “real world” of the story — and these minutiae may shift continually during the process of writing.

These details often enough constitute a great deal of what needs to be communicated. They aren’t the conclusions; they’re the evidence. Without these, you end up with a philosophical treatise, or an essay, or a work composed entirely of narration. With them, you’re dealing with scene and location; things that can be shown in, “images.” I put, “images,” in quotes because I’m not just talking about vision, but also things like atmosphere, scent, temperature, texture, taste, sound (excluding voiceover narration, for the sake of argument). The stuff of life, that is: not, commentary on it.

Giving the details leaves judgment up to the reader, at the same time as the evidence presented is chosen by the narrator (or author, depending on the reliability and influence of the narrator…which in turn might be related to the degree of the narrator’s characterization away from God’s Eye [what I call Third-Person Omniscient narrative perspective]).

It takes some effort on my part to pull myself out of recording my discursive mind’s deliberations, on paper (or screen); into describing what is around me (literally or imaginatively) at any one time. It’s interior versus exterior; enabling rumination, versus enabling grounding. There seems to be a necessary tension between the two poles, but somehow it seems this is not the total story. One can have story entirely told in image…but story told entirely in interior thought, seems more difficult to pull off.

I’ll want to hold onto this insight. I didn’t expect to get here, today.
Confessional

December 25th, 2022

I think M is right: that I am in “survival mode” right now. I’m surviving, though what else I’m doing, is questionable. Speaking of that, though: I have been working through Creating a Life Worth Living, by Carol Lloyd.

What I haven’t been so great about is the, “Daily Action,” something small and consistent to do every day which I wouldn’t normally do, and which is in line with my creative goals. I had been doing a free-write every day, but somehow that turned from, “free-writing 15 minutes every day,” into, “writing at least 15 minutes every day,” which is obviously enough, different.

Free-writing is writing anything that comes to mind, and not stopping. It’s an exercise in not-editing. Writing, however, has a more targeted focus, depending on what I’m writing about. For at least several days…I’ve been doing targeted writing, whether it’s for this blog, or trying to process personal stuff that has come up because of engaging my own Fiction writing, or trying to re-vision the Fiction in order to constrain my “multitudes” (to reference Whitman) into believable portions.

I am, that is, having a difficult time separating my personal process writing, or problem-solving writing, from my other writing. And do I not write enough, as it is? Do I need to add more writing, to it? After all, even if I did go ahead with a job as some kind of Editor, and worked on my own personal writing during downtime (should I have any; I believe Editors are charged with doing their reading on their off-hours), I would need a nonlinear respite from all the language. This is the reason why I believe the Art will remain in my life for the foreseeable future. And possibly, the more I have to read, the more I will need to do Art.

Maybe I should change the Creative Action to, “draw (or paint) for 15 minutes every morning,” or something similar. This is especially as I seem to have hit a snag where it comes to my own emotional health, combined with writing out a reflection of my own internal state: which I didn’t realize was going to be a reflection of my own internal state. I have been wanting to get up at 10 AM, but keep falling back to sleep because I have no reason to stay up.

What about if I get up at 10 AM to draw, or paint, in the morning light? (D says to eat, and do a little exercise, first.)

In Chapter 7 of Creating a Life Worth Living, Lloyd writes: “…if you feel a lot of fear while you are thinking through a given plan, that may well be a sign that you have hit something exciting.” (p. 159) In that chapter, she asks the reader to think out three separate life paths, as well as consider what one wants out of life aside from career goals. I think this is the first time someone has asked me to think out what I want from life, since high school.

Now that I think of it, the lull in my production could relate to doing most of the work this book is throwing at me, and having decided to actually put energy into self-care. Projecting myself into possible futures (or, at least thinking about doing so) really isn’t the most stress-relieving activity, you know? Not to mention that yesterday I exercised for the first time in a week…and that can take up a lot of time and energy, especially if one needs to thoroughly bathe, afterward.

I just haven’t been taking care of myself very well, recently.

I’m also thinking that, “doing what I love,” is going to be a scary thing, at least initially; particularly because the only thing that falls into this category that I wrote out (for Chapter 6’s activity) is painting. Painting isn’t just putting paint on a canvas. It’s visually producing an image which is a window into one’s personal state. At least, that’s where I’m coming from. (I did order a book which is apparently on Art Theory which says a bunch of nothing about, “what Art is,” which, along with the literal book, What Art Is, is making me think that I shouldn’t pay attention to Art critics, either.)

Painting also, at least initially, is not a financially secure way to earn a living. It also would seem to require that I get out of the house to see and find things to paint — and possibly, renew my own Art training. (Then there is the question of how to get that Art out in front of people who both desire it, and have the money to buy it…which is not all that different from what I might have to do as a craftsperson selling jewelry IRL, now that I think of it. Maybe I could do both???)

There’s also the problem of what happens if I need to work into my old age (which, without a massive re-envisioning of Social Security, is likely), and end up losing my sight (which is possible, but not necessarily going to happen)…which, I suppose, would mean that I would just need to change my medium, or otherwise adapt.

Typing, I can do blind: which is a big reason I initially gravitated towards Writing. I could also do Ceramics (lovely and primarily tactile), or Music (auditory): two things I grew up with. The acoustic guitar is currently my instrument of choice, but I just got up the nerve to play it again, tonight. And that was because of the influence of one of my characters…who started out as a dream-being, and is currently a musician. Oddly enough, it fits…without my consciously having realized it.

The guitar (the real one) hasn’t gone that out of tune; I wonder if D has been secretly tuning it.

I had stopped practice due to posture issues plus, “you’re never going to be able to support yourself doing this,” issues — but it was mostly, posture. My body is aging, and maybe that was the beginning of, “no you cannot sit on the floor ever again.” (I took away the all-caps for the sensitively inclined.) If I’m working creatively primarily to keep myself balanced, however, it doesn’t really matter if I can “make money at it” or not. Sanity is worth more than money, after all.

I do keep having dreams (many dreams) about going to music stores…though getting a 3/4 (or 1/2) size guitar is likely going to have to wait until I get comfortable enough with the illness situation, to actually go in and play the guitars. Every guitar has a different voice, which depends on a lot of things: being the same brand, doesn’t mean all that much. The most obviously changeable part of that voice has to do with the strings, which I found out over 20 years ago, while picking sounds out of different guitars at Subway.

And yes, I am dreading the next time one of those strings breaks. Do I want to go back to Subway?

“Well, yes, actually. I just don’t want to get sick.”

That’s honest.

I also keep being attracted to mandolins, for some reason…

Though drawing and painting use different skills than the above, I do seem to remember seeing works by color-blind artists, as well as by painters who were losing their vision. It doesn’t necessarily have to end things. It’s just that I recognize that the ability to use all of one’s senses and physical capabilities as one wants to, is a privilege; not a guarantee. It probably wasn’t best to encounter that thinking for the first time, in Undergraduate training…

Of course, I’d love to get back into Art classes. The major issue — besides the obvious, of how to stay well when sickness is prevalent (if not for my own sake, then for my family’s) — is getting to classes. I still don’t drive, but that’s mostly because I’m concerned about road rage and accidents.

There is a lot going on in my life, which is incompletely done. Part of that is learning to take care of myself. I try and remember that I do have a disability that is thoroughgoing enough to have disrupted my early adult life — and that life has been disrupted enough that the disability itself, can’t be hidden (even if I am functioning enough now to be, more or less, in recovery).

Because I have the disability, I will basically be much better off if I maintain mental health care coverage, for the rest of my life: given that the mental health care system in this country remains compassionate and not punitive (to the tune of, “well, if you just acted like a normal person, you wouldn’t be so ill” — like that helps? “If you weren’t so ill, you wouldn’t be so ill”?). The issue with health insurance was more severe before the Affordable Care Act, when I was put onto a medication which had not yet had its patent expire, and which would have been out of my financial reach without health insurance. What was within my financial reach probably would have worked, but it would also have put me at increased risk of lifelong neural dysfunction.

So what I’m essentially doing now is cleaning up after all the years in which I didn’t know who I was, or what I was doing, or why (well, why is obvious: to make money so I would be able to afford healthcare, and so I wouldn’t become homeless, be forced to marry a person I didn’t desire for survival, or have to work in an environment in which I was disrespected).

There is a lot that I’m learning, from doing the activities in Creating a Life Worth Living…particularly where it comes to realizing how well (or poorly) I have thought out some of my options. On looking back across several job options I listed out for a recent exercise, I realize that having control over what I do create, is relatively high on my list of priorities.

The major reason I initially didn’t go into Graphic Design, after all, is that I didn’t want someone else making executive decisions over my work: especially when they didn’t know what they wanted, how to communicate it, or anything about Art or Design. This is also the reason I stopped pursuing the idea of making custom handcrafts: it’s just not worth it to try and people-please (especially when they’re people I don’t know, and especially when it comes to the image they want to project). Now that I think of it, this is also why I dropped a screenplay class featuring writing-by-committee; I didn’t want to deal with the social rules and hierarchy which made my ideas worthless when spoken from me, but gold when repeated by a white male classmate.

The only thing I wish is that they hired a better person to teach that class.

It seems that recently, doing one or two things for the day is the most I can bet on handling. I know I want to get back into my Buddhism reading, as it is probably going to help, over the long term. I also want to get back into reading on Art and art technique; especially as I can seriously play with abstractions (more easily) now, with the acrylic gouache.

The issue with the Buddhist interest (that is presently stopping me from doing that, and encouraging me to write here, instead): it brings into clarity my knowledge that, unless I die first, I’ll have to expect to outlive the people around me. It’s stupidly simple. If I die first, I can’t do much about that. But I need to be gaining skills and preparing to outlive the people around me, just in case it happens that I don’t die. Living is harder! For most of my life, I’ve not even really considered that I might survive, and that the thing to do is to prepare to survive. Not, to prepare to die.

That’s a pretty radical change of focus, and I can tell it hasn’t even fully taken hold, yet. The reason for me to write is to leave some mark on culture so that part of my experience is passed on — so that someone (hopefully, someone worthy) learns from it. I don’t wish to bear children, though I’m not sure how much of that is just my own gender stuff (I have no desire to be a mother — to children, or to a husband), and how much of it is sexuality stuff (the cause of which, I still don’t entirely understand).

So my relevant creations lie in my art and in my written work, not in raising one or more other individuals. In that sense, being a creative person is ingrained…and it lends more spiritual importance to my actually engaging with the work. I’m pretty sure that Lloyd would refer to this as part of my own “Mystic” creative type, popping up.

So yes, maybe it is relevant, to look back at my Buddhism texts. Even if I don’t want to be reminded of the temporary, and often painful, nature of life.

There are other things I want to do…particularly with my paints and brushes. And, beads. There is literally nothing stopping me. Nothing physical, at least…
Dukkha

December 19th, 2022

I’m reaching a point of conflict, here, where it comes to the story I’m working on — or was working on, before I took a break of a few days to reset. I’ve already written (EDIT: thought I had written) a lot of this out in my own log…but I thought I’d leave a note for myself here, as well (given that I tend to utilize this blog to remind myself of where I was at, mentally, at different points in time).

The reason I didn’t write that private log out, here? My public-facing writings tend to be self-edited. There are things going through my mind which I don’t necessarily want to share with the world, at this stage…and nor am I obligated to.

My own writings very much give me insight into what is actually going on in my mind: things I didn’t necessarily know, were there. (Or, as may be the case, still there.) Right now…I’m seeing the pain and bleakness of the story I’m working on (at least so, where it starts out). Because the story has been set up this way, it puts one of my characters at risk.

If I look at ways to resolve this issue…there are several, but none of them are totally, “clean,” except for the obvious and perhaps hardest one. It’s very clear that one of my characters needs to be in contact with others, in order to get through this period of their life. Selecting which others is going to be both their, and my, problem. I hadn’t worked out all of the backstory or my characters’ social networks before I started writing.

I’d say that I spent about a decade of my life, if not a decade and a half, interested in occultism (which is involved in most of the easy/emotionally tangled/sitcom reset, ways out). This was before I realized that a lot of what a person can absorb from books is rooted in culture, not reality; that the Western Mystery Tradition was, indeed, “Western,” thus culturally foreign to my sensibilities, even if we communicated in the same language. I could spend a lifetime studying this stuff and end up having wasted my life, if the goal was to find my own personal truth.

It’s the same thing as I recognized with Buddhism: one could spend lifetime(s) studying this, and still not know everything. (The question is, what do you want to know, and why?) We are also assuming that the field being studied contains useful information, not necessarily cultural constructions alone. Studying the entire canon and various schools about either Western occultism or Buddhism, one would end up knowing a lot about culture; and likely culturally-specific psychology. But culture does not necessarily ever reflect reality. Culture seems, in my view, to attempt to explain reality, though it doesn’t always find success in that, either.

In applying the knowledge contained in Buddhism to reality…well, it has a bit more obvious practical utility with fewer drawbacks than some other, “religions,” most prominently in the fields of mindfulness and meditation. I’ve noticed a theme of scholars being attracted to this thought — particularly people in Psychology and in Physics — but not being a Psychologist or Physicist, I have no especial insight into that.

The relative lack of drawbacks to Buddhism…it would be interesting to study why that occurs, but I think it’s related to being orthopraxic, not orthodoxic. “Orthopraxy” means there is such a thing as “correct conduct”; “orthodoxy” means there is such a thing as “correct belief” (at least as officially defined within the religion). Conforming to orthopraxy might mean not slaughtering animals to eat them. Conforming to orthodoxy might mean publicly espousing a person’s status as a literal deity.

Speaking to my knowledge alone: the “historical Buddha” declined to engage in commentary on metaphysics, meaning that we did not begin with any official position on what happens after death or in other potential worlds. It was seen as a distraction from the work of actually reducing or eliminating dukkha, which in turn was the point of early Buddhism.

This is, at least, if we’re looking at the big picture and not at specific sects like Pure Land Buddhism, whose adherents are said to wish to be reborn in a specific Heaven in which it is easy to attain nirvana…of course, the content of that, “Heaven,” in my view, is not necessarily going to be pleasant.

Whether there even was a “historical Buddha” named Siddhartha Gautama, has also come up — I don’t even know how long ago this started — though ultimately, it’s possibly irrelevant, if we’re looking at utility more than cosmology. Regardless of whether some guy named Siddhartha Gautama existed, the personage of Shakyamuni Buddha — who he is said to have become — does exist, fact-based or not. There is a thin line between the mythical or legendary, and valuable cultural heritage, here: we can’t expect people of all times and places, to stick to our norms of giving the literal facts when reporting on their reality.

One might be considered a virtuous Buddhist (live their lives according to “correct conduct”) without having to cleave to someone else’s thought. This also means that it’s possible to study or practice Buddhism without ever “believing in” what one might say are its tenets. (From personal experience, I’d say “belief in” tenets of Buddhism is a weak entry point; “retrospectively obvious statements on reality,” is closer to my own viewpoint, where it meshes. Of course, that does not apply to everything anyone falling under the label, “Buddhist,” has said.)

Granted that what we know about Buddhism in the English-speaking world is very much skewed, due to mistranslations and bias.

Mistranslations: such as the fact that there is no single exact word corresponding to the meaning of dukkha in English, so the First Noble Truth disclosed in many early texts, “Life is suffering,” is a lazy mistranslation which gives the wrong idea ab initio (“at the beginning”). Dukkha includes the English ideas of, “suffering,” and, “pain,” but also the ideas of, “unease,” and, “unsatisfactoriness.”

Essentially, the First Noble Truth just alerts us to the fact that life is going to include varying levels of discomfort, and that the inclusion of discomfort is a defining characteristic of samsara — or, everyday life. Nirvana is a liberation from samsara, but we aren’t told, really, what it is (other than “bliss,” and beyond the duality of life and death). I have my own ideas on this, but…you know, that’s me. And I’m not enlightened, yet.

Bias: such as the fact that the earliest popular transmissions of anything relating to Buddhism in English, were through the eyes of a missionary (Robert Spence Hardy) who was trying to convert people away from it in then-Ceylon. In short, he had a conflict of interest where it came to accurately representing the religion (if the people of Ceylon actually considered it a religion) to English-speakers who knew nothing about it, nor about the people — who were people (and not necessarily wrong people) — who practiced it.

So, for instance, now you have a situation where — in the U.S. — the most prevalent form of Buddhism is of the Pure Land variant, which is also one of the most strikingly faith-based variants. This matches the preexisting yearning for “faith” and desire to “believe in” something, which is widespread through mainstream U.S. culture: likely due to the fact that Christianity is the most widespread religion in the area, and heavily centers and values, “faith.” This is culture, again.

I’m not going to get into a discussion here of the transposition of elements of cast-off religions — particularly Christianity — into a participant’s adopted religion…though it’s a conversation to be had, and has been had, frequently, especially in the NeoPagan circuit. (Is NeoPaganism still a “thing”?)

And actually, now that I think about it, this is one of the reasons I was originally motivated to learn an East Asian language: I realized that, when I was studying Buddhism, I was learning about aspects of my own culture through the eyes of outsiders to my culture. Because I have a partially Japanese-American background, Japanese language seemed the most appropriate to study. And, yeah, maybe I should have gone through with it, as a major — even though it would likely have had me waking at 5:30 AM to get to class, for several semesters.

If I had done that, I actually might have had a shot — close to now — at becoming a Cataloging Librarian in an East Asian Library, specializing in Japanese Languages and Literatures. But I don’t have that skill set, as I didn’t go down that path. I majored in a branch of English instead, thinking that I would just confront more racism if I decided to major in a language which was spoken by people who had a pattern of treating others (including myself) poorly, for reasons of falling into stigmatized categories.

But hey — there are a lot of people in life who will treat anyone poorly, either for no reason, for stupid unthinking reasons…or, for rational but selfish (or, dare we say, “evil,”) reasons. And they speak all kinds of languages. It’s not like English teachers are, collectively speaking, the greatest at confronting their unconscious bias, either.

Anyhow — this thing with the story. Right now…I’m being led to make some decisions about the rules the fiction plays by. Although I don’t believe that what I’m dealing with right now really has to do with the bardo (at least as written in the Tibetan Book of the Dead), it is occupying that kind of space in my mind. There are ways to deal with it which…lead to less complexity, confusion, and suffering, and then there are ways which probably, shouldn’t be touched — even if they are possible (in fiction).

Going down any of the latter paths, is probably going to be dark and painful. I’ve had to consider whether I’ve wanted to go with it, and actually intentionally make the story dark and painful, or whether I’ve wanted to use my own creativity toward more constructive, light-based, harmony-based, ends. Especially, I’ve been concerned about the fact that Americans — just as a kind of overarching generalization — have a difficult time distinguishing fantasy from reality. I don’t want to give false hope that going down that path is possible — or even if possible, desirable.

My own major issue is that the finality of a character’s death is hitting me, and this is a character whom I’ve been dealing with for at least 25 years. But, I mean: even in the earliest versions of his character — the ones I drew out in comics, as a teenager — he was dead at the beginning.

The difference between now and then is that death didn’t seem final, then. At 14, I had no one in my life who had actually passed away. At this point, I’ve lived through deaths in the family. I realize now that he’s not coming back, unless we do some machinations which would probably be called “unnatural” in some sectors.

As a person who puts their trust in reality (including the unknown and humanly-unfathomable parts of reality) over myths which teach nothing about the real world (there are some — maybe many — which do), the idea of bringing someone back from the dead just out of the desire of the living, and without regard for the good of the dead person, makes me a bit leery.

It is, after all, one of the life lessons of aging, to learn how to understand death (and deal with the personal emotions it brings up). Running away from those emotions through “magic” is not productive, and essentially teaches nothing about how to deal with this in the real world.

In any case…I’m looking at getting back into my Buddhist texts as reference work for this story. I believe it will help me make my way through the story. It might also help, me.
Rumination?

December 16th, 2022

I know I need to write; I’m not sure where to write. That is likely because I don’t know at this point, what is going to come out.

It seems as though it’s always a struggle to be consistent about writing, though maybe that has to do more with personally disturbing content, and resistance to ritual, than anything else. There is also the fact that, as I stated above: I don’t necessarily know what is going through my sub- or unconscious that is saying, “Hey, let me out. Make me visible.” I just know that the urge to write, is there.

And sometimes it can be difficult to really…sit down and do so, knowing that something may come out that I may not know what to do with. It is nice to be able to know, however, that if I see myself starting to spiral into rumination, I have the option — once I recognize what’s happening — to disengage, and do something else.

Recently, I’ve had a tough time with sleep, which is being reflected in my daytime energy level…and my anxiety level. I’ve found myself ruminating about things that happened years ago, which don’t matter in the present. Should it really impact me now if one of my old co-workers meant to sabotage me or not, five years ago? I don’t see her anymore, I don’t want to work at that same site again, and — seriously, it’s over. At the time, I thought she was a “safe” person.

But there is a repeated pattern in my life of my attempting to trust people who are unworthy of that trust. There is also a pattern of trusting barely anyone in my life, whatsoever. At this point, I recognize that just because someone is significantly older than me, or higher in the work hierarchy, that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily, “good,” or trustworthy in any way. They may even be hostile. Even people who try to be mentors may have ulterior motives — some more apparently than others.

Due to circumstances I had no control over or awareness of at the time, I have not always had the best judgment. That doesn’t mean that I lack responsibility for my past actions, but it does mean that my decision-making was impaired in ways I didn’t understand, and in ways I had not been made aware could even happen.

Nor did I necessarily know how much others could (and would) amplify the effects of my mistakes.

For at least three weeks, I’ve been having issues with being able to have an uninterrupted night’s sleep. I’d have to consult my planner, to be sure. It wouldn’t surprise me if this has been going on for a matter of months.

I’m not totally sure what it’s related to, though I have trouble with anxiety at baseline. Of course, the entire situation with the ongoing pandemic + the flu, really can’t be helping.

I suppose it also has been recently that I’ve realized the entire “Library” career thing may be misguided. However, there are ways that I can use my skills in ways that do not confine me to a specific job within the limits of the Library sphere.

If I would like to read and comment on writing — and I’m able eventually to become comfortable dealing with people — becoming some type of Editor is possible. If I want to work with User Experience or Interaction Design, along with my Art skills, I may be able to utilize these within Front-End Web Design. My research skills would come in handy if I ever wanted to be a Fact-Checker…

…though those are only my initial brainstormed entry points to a paying job, beyond being a Content Producer, Cataloger, Collection Development Librarian, Indexer, or Purchaser (for a bookstore). Given my own self-knowledge, I’ll have to be creative in order to avoid a day job spent dealing intensely with the general public, or with my other major personal bane…which should have contraindicated me from working in Circulation in the first place: lack of sanitation. Cleaning other peoples’ babies’ vomit off of picture book covers is not the thing you want to be doing with your life — especially if you have a choice about it, and especially if you aren’t being paid enough to compensate for it.

In short, I need a job that is reasonably clean, and away from having to deal with people (and other people’s perceptions of me). This is why I had been looking forward to working with data; but working entirely with data is, seriously, very technical. Maybe a bit too technical, for me. And very much, not creative — unless you consider math and logic, creative. Some (particularly App Developers), may; but that’s not how I characterize creativity for myself. It’s the furthest thing from my own creativity, that I’ve recently experienced.

If I could learn Computer Programming and SQL, in a low-pressure environment, that would be different…but I see that leading into a field wherein my main skill set (in the Arts and Humanities) is undervalued. If I did get further into Web Development, I could feasibly become a Technical Writer…

…though there are decent options for learning this stuff online. Books really aren’t your best bet, here. They go obsolete too often, and the narrative quirks of the authors are too thorough (such as using homonyms at seemingly every available chance). Really…in the last technical class I took (on XML), the Web was more helpful than anything I was forced to read from a book.

Maybe I should take that into consideration; that trying to acquire XML/XSLT/XQuery skills, didn’t have to be as difficult as it was. It seemed like the curriculum was made to be difficult, so it would look like one actually learned something if one passed the class. Unfortunately, passing the class may have meant little, and what was learned may largely have been self-taught.

I don’t want to have that kind of experience, again. I didn’t pay tuition to teach myself.

But it’s over, now. Rumination, right?

And, I guess, if I could learn XML from the Web…it’s possible to learn other technologies from it, too.
Dreams and actualization

December 8th, 2022

The last week has been — to my mind — extremely productive. Unfortunately, that also means that the time I’ve spent here has been diverted to other passions. There are a limited number of hours in a day; not to mention, a life. I’ve started to realize that WordPress might be referred to as Social Media (where the user is the product), and so I’ve been pulling off of it a bit recently, in favor of my own projects and needs.

I have still been writing a lot. Some of this is through self-directed study, and some of this is just in different places: electronic and not. I’ve restarted writing for at least 15 minutes per day (I can produce about one A5 page per 15 minutes), which is good. I’ve also found that writing by hand, in private, is much more…it’s freeing, you know. I don’t have to worry about whether my content is appropriate to share with the world, or what consequences could arise from putting my thoughts into writing.

I’ve been working through the book, Creating a Life Worth Living, by Carol Lloyd — I’m about to start with Chapter 5. This book is essentially for creative types who wish to live lives centered around/honoring their creativity, and still live well. I had stalled for a number of weeks on two of the activities at the end of Chapter 2, then was amazed when it only took me 25 minutes to complete them…

I’ve finished reading Personality: What Makes You the Way You Are, by Daniel Nettle. I’m kind of sad it didn’t go on. Potential/”the dream” being more alluring than fulfillment/”the realization”, is a pattern with me: was it nicer when I had the rest of the book to look forward to? (Now that I think of it, that pattern has gone back at least to high school. In real life.) That’s very important to recognize, because it means that unless I do something about it, there is at least one inbuilt reason to stall.

I also finished Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain — which was recommended to me a very long time ago. I had lost interest in it, until I got to the point in Nettle where I realized I have a personality profile common to artists. This is the same personality profile that Cain seems to be talking about under the term, “Introversion,” at least if you check the back of the book where she gives notes on her use of the term.

Quiet is not really the most helpful book, however — at least, not in my life situation. It is important for historical reasons (it was one of the first recent books that got people talking about the value of introversion, was signal-boosted by Oprah, and is referenced both in Nettle, and in Me, Myself and Us: The Science of Personality and the Art of Well-Being, by Brian R. Little).

There are still a lot of other things I have to deal with…though not all of them are pressing, right now. I’ve gotten to the point where I now know that I can dream up more projects than I will ever have time to complete. This means that at some point, I’m going to have to select which ones I’d prefer to do, over others.

And now that I see what I’ve just written, I can see that it looks pretty classically like it’s coming from a “Generator”-type place (Lloyd refers to “Generators” as people who are good at creating lots of new projects…but not necessarily motivated to complete them [granted that it’s pretty normal to be more than one “type”]). I do have some follow-through, but I’d like to work more on actualization of the dreams, as versus spend a lot more time, dreaming.

I do recognize at this moment, that I am working on actualizing myself.

Otherwise; well, there have been some other things going on. I’ve been able to start using a new text-editor. I’m really not sure how I like it, so far. It’s great for writing, well, text (!) — which in turn is excellent for pure writing — but not as great where it comes to comic scripting. It’s kind of like the format of this blog: it works very well if one’s text is the key attracting factor — but if we’re working with images? Where the images might be more important to communication than the words are?

Yes, that’s different.

I’m still not totally sure whether the next project I’ve laid out in front of myself, will be better written as a literary novel with accompanying concept art, or as a scripted comic. The first is definitely further within my own comfort zone, but the second is alluring — and may reach a wider audience. Either one of them would help me develop my art skills, and practice my writing skills.

The major issue that I can see is that the project as it is now, contains “mature” content, and thus may be more likely to draw controversy if it’s illustrated — and thus seen as a, “children’s,” medium. (Granted that both the definition of “mature” and “children’s” are culturally dependent, from a subculture I don’t share, and don’t really make sense, anyway.) But, then, you don’t always base your decisions on fear of reprisal — especially if it’s going to come, regardless.

And, to be honest, a lot of this may get shaken out far before I can say any of the drafts are presentable. I won’t know until I engage the process, first.

Yeah, that sounds good! Maybe I’ll try and dive into this project (without an outline? Again without an outline)? I know outlines help, I’m just not incredibly motivated to take the time out to make them.

It’s either this, or work on my daily free-write, or start reading Chapter 5 of Lloyd…
Looking forward

November 26th, 2022

At the risk of smelling myself, I think I’m actually good at this art thing. Below is a copy of the scan I made of the other night’s work. I’ve cranked up the brightness and the contrast, so what I did is visible:

The reason I’m even publishing this? Well, after last night’s post (which was originally image-less), I wanted to put up something more decipherable. I haven’t been able to get any artwork done today — there were other things I had to do. I’m hoping to get back to exploring my gouache, in the next day or two. It depends on how quickly I can get the last of my classwork, done.

That class is nearly over (!), although when I get a burst of free time…I’m going to have to figure out what to do with it. I already have a good idea of what I want to do with it: reading, art, writing; but I feel like I work best with some structure — which is why I’ve been taking classes. Well, that, and the employable skills (if anyone learned anything). A plan for the upcoming days, would be nice.

(Just like outlines for these projects I want to edge into writing, would be nice! Giving myself a place to start, makes it more approachable. Art Journaling will also help me develop source material for larger projects; so I probably shouldn’t write it off as just being for myself. After all, drawing on scrap paper could be my equivalent of the Art Journal: something I feel has less pressure, because it surely will never become an actual art piece [and then it turns out good]…)

I’ve decided that I’m going to look into jobs that require art skill and/or writing skill. Getting into that, requires research. I’ve started in on it, but haven’t saved what I’ve found in my searches. It would make sense for me to actually note some of the things I find down, by hand. Handwritten notes seem foreign to working online, but they help. Compared to having nothing, they’re extremely superior.

I’m not used to looking for jobs that use skills I’m both good at, and like!

To get a job using writing or art skills, I’m going to need a portfolio (or two) to present to potential employers. I do have a backlog of work (although much of the lesser-quality stuff has been tossed). Unless I’m mistaken, I have an artwork portfolio already, though I may have to dig to find it. Or, I may have to reassemble it. I did just check, and I have a much reduced set of images from my Capstone class…I’ll probably want to fill that out. (Not to mention that I’ll eventually want to transfer my images off of last-generation jump drives.)

Of course, I’ll be doing new work, as well. It doesn’t make sense not to, when I’m hoping to use similar skills in a job setting. If I don’t like the work, I might not like the job. Start now, baby!

I’m thinking it will be easier, although much more tedious, to look at my writing output over the past decade: particularly, my journals. I may have stopped writing fiction after graduation, but my mid-twenties to mid-thirties were tough to get through — yet extremely imaginative. The hard part comes (largely) when you can’t distinguish fantasy from reality…which is also a large reason why I stopped writing: I would trigger myself, and it would seem real.

Artwork is somewhat more recognizable as a creative product, than are the things one tells oneself, which then get transcribed into hard copy. The brain has the somewhat annoying (but looking back on it, obvious) habit of believing itself in almost everything, until it learns to question itself. In my experience, I’ve had to pay attention to my somatic sensations to be able to tell when I doubted something to be true. No one is right about everything, all the time; but plenty of people never think twice about it.

I’m sure there is a lot of material I left behind which can be mined. I can spring off of it using fresh eyes and greater experience.

The visual archives will be more challenging…but also, maybe, more engaging. I already know I have photo notations that I never worked up into final pieces. That’s before sourcing new images, drawing or painting in the field, digital editing, etc.

How to balance these two things (the writing and the art), I’m unsure of, at the moment. It may become clearer, once I begin. I already have the writing practice of the blog, set up…but if I want to write professionally, I’ll need to both be reading and writing, creatively. Not just blog posts.

Yeah; how to divide the time is a significant problem. As is the question of what writing project to begin, first; which to continue to develop first, etc. I suppose I could schedule in Writing time in the evenings, and Art time, in the mornings and afternoons…and then read when I’m so blasted from everything else, that I can’t think…maybe in the evenings, before bed? It could be part of my daily winding-down time…
Mess

November 14th, 2022

Initiation

I was actually able to open the rest of the Liquitex Acrylic Gouache pots, on the 12th. I kind of wish I had asked someone to photograph my hands, after I was done: it’s one of those things that will make you feel like you’re actually an artist, to have your hands covered in spots of paint which you’ve tried to wipe away, but have mostly just succeeded in smudging more spots of paint onto yourself from a dirty paper towel.

Yes, I did immediately wash my hands after opening all the pots (it wasn’t worth it to wash my hands after each pot, and I didn’t have the foresight to wear gloves). I also clipped all my nails today, including the ones which I just barely scraped the stains out of, as I’ve started regularly flossing again (thus putting my hands in my mouth).

Of course, I later got fountain pen ink all on my hands, which is usual for pen maintenance. But this post isn’t about that.

Toxicities and safety

As I have said before (not necessarily here), I am grateful to my past self for having thought ahead about toxicities. I have apparently succeeded in avoiding the use of paints with known toxicities, at least recently (with the Liquitex Acrylic Gouache). Liquitex seems to be good in this regard, as a brand…and I found I have some nice colors from them!

I was sure not to buy anything last time around that carried a Caution Label (as versus an ACMI AP Certification)…which eased my mind greatly. (Note that Golden Paints uses a different system, explained here. They state that the absence of known toxins does not equate to complete safety.) It’s fairly impossible to paint without getting your hand wet from the paintbrush — unless you use gloves, and then the gloves get wet, and God/dess forbid you get paintbrush rinse water under your glove…

Particularly, anything with cadmium or cobalt in it, I’m not using at this time (though I think I have a Cobalt Teal Blue and Cerulean Blue Chromium in my watercolor palette: nothing really compares); I’ve also tried to stay away from Chrome Oxide Green: chromium is another metal to watch for.

And yeah, sometimes a color, like Chrome Oxide Green, just isn’t to my mixing taste. Straight Cobalt Blue, is one of them. I may also be lucky that Aureolin isn’t one of them (this is Cobalt Yellow…which is also rumored to be fugitive [hit Ctrl+F on a Windows device to search for “PY40” on that page; the entry starts with, “potassium cobaltinitrite”]).

There are some other pigments which might just cause sensitization (like Nickel Azo Yellow, a.k.a. PY150 [to the best of my memory]) — although I’ve tried Nickel Azo Yellow (through a dot card from Daniel Smith), and it’s beautiful. In the category of beautiful and causing irritation, I also know about bismuth orthovanadate…or PY184. It’s gorgeous in the form of acrylic paint and has excellent mixing properties, but will apparently irritate any part of the body it comes into contact with.

I did have a very old acrylic tube which used bismuth orthovanadate: the specific paint is no longer being made. The only reason I know it works so well? I tested it before I discarded it. I just had to decide whether its prettiness and utility was worth my anxiety, in replacing it (I’ve had to replace almost all of the heavy-body acrylic paints I bought before 2016: they age when unused, and get gummy).

Hitting home

I pay attention to this stuff now after having had a bout with what I was told by an ophthalmologist was conjunctivitis (it felt like extra loose tissue in my sclera [the white of the eye] that would wrinkle and itch when I shifted my eyes) — which may have occurred because I was brazing a type of brass which could cause that response. (I found this out on inspecting the Material Safety Data Sheets [MSDS] at the location from which I had gotten the brass.) I’ve been told that “conjunctivitis” only refers to an infection called “pink eye” and can’t be caused by chemical fume irritation, but the Internet disagrees (there are too many supporting sites to list, here).

Anyhow, I haven’t had that issue in a very long time. If I hadn’t experienced it, I would likely know much more about silversmithing, now — but I decided that particular craft, wasn’t worth my health. There are a lot of chemical risks, and physical risks and hazards, in Silversmithing (even at core, there are sharp objects and fire). I actually didn’t feel safe in the class. This is the reason I left.

I’m a color nut, so Painting is a very…appropriate outlet, for me. Moreso than Smithing, and moreso than beadwork (the latter of which, in my specialization, is limited by what colors of glass beads can be made). I’ve also known most of my other Art instructors to be much more careful about pigments and Art materials, and the environment.

I think the problem lies more in my psyche than anything else. After all, all I have to do is use a glove and not wash paintbrushes out with my bare hands…or ever touch the surface of the painting.

God/dess, maybe it’s not.

Maybe sometime in the future, I’ll consider working with more hazardous materials…like when I know what I’m doing, better. 😛 Or accept the risk. Or wear a glove. Or when I get my tendency to worry, under control (something I read said that worry was anxiety projected into the future…ah, that was The Anxiety Audit: Seven Sneaky Ways Anxiety Takes Hold and How to Escape Them, by Lynn Lyons [2022]). The thing is: it may only be, “anxiety,” if it isn’t warranted. If it is warranted, and isn’t excessive, it might just be called, “caution.”

Warrant

The problem I’m dealing with is, “baseline high sensitivity to anxiety,” + “risk factors that are real enough to be acknowledged by the Art community and the wider society.” That is: the risk isn’t all in my head. I just notice it more, because my brain is sensitive that way.

I know at least one Art teacher who had breast cancer and is still alive; I knew an artist who died from breast cancer at a very young age; and I’ve known Art teachers who have known artists who have had cancer (I don’t remember the types; only that the specific teacher I’m thinking of, admonished us not to blow pastel dust up into the air [it’s not good to inhale], and not to spray aerosol fixative inside the studio [ditto]. Both of those things happened, anyway — reminding me of high school Chemistry).

I’ve been warned about the case of Jay Defeo and “Deathrose”, where the artist — if I’m recalling correctly — died of lung cancer, which may have been caused by layering and repeatedly carving away white paint.

There are a number of things that could have gone wrong, here. The use and carving of plaster; the use of titanium dioxide as an opaque white pigment; or possibly (I hope not) Lead or Flake or Cremnitz White as a pigment; could all have been factors. So far as I know, lead-based pigments are mostly used in oils, these days. Toxicity in oils is a very large reason I opted to take painting classes using exclusively water-based media.

At this stage, Titanium White — or rather, the pigment titanium dioxide — is known to be a factor in the risk of lung cancer by route of inhalation. Although it isn’t toxic per se, airborne Titanium White — as a free dust — is an irritant to the lungs and is currently classified as a possible carcinogen.

“As a free dust,” meaning the stuff that the students were likely blowing up into the air from the pastels, in my Drawing class (see above).

“Wait,” you say. “Isn’t titanium dioxide used in cosmetics?”

Yes. Yes, it is. So is talc, when talcum powder is said to contribute to the development of cancer when it is contaminated with asbestos. (Of course, who tests the talcum powder before it is used, to see if it has asbestos in it? That would seem to be the crux of the matter, right? That nobody’s testing?) But that’s an entirely different rabbit hole…

Calculated risks

I’ve got to decide whether or not to take calculated risks; whether to make myself temporarily uncomfortable, in an effort to move forward. To keep myself safe, I realistically should have been wearing gloves, the other day. However, I feel relatively okay about it. The exposure is likely negligible, given how soon I washed my hands; the fact that there were no known toxins in my paints; and how rarely I would have done anything like that.

Sometimes, as well: wearing gloves can contribute to exposure by reducing one’s dexterity and making simple tasks, difficult. This is what happened when I got exposed to Cobalt Yellow during a watercolor painting class: I was trying to get a tube of Aureolin open with gloved hands.

The glove reduced my ability to feel and grip the tube, wrapping itself around the cap. I eventually took the glove off to try to open the tube with my bare hand. It wasn’t until I had done so that I realized that the paint had already oozed out of the tube (despite apparently being sealed shut) and spread all over the tube itself because of the glove: thus, all over my now-bare right hand.

I couldn’t feel it because the temperature of the paint was too close to the temperature of my hand; and at the time, all I had to get the stuff off of myself was my watercolor rinse cup, which was already dirty. To make it worse, I was out in the field and didn’t know the location of the nearest sink.

All I got was some mild itching (i.e. “dermatitis”), but that does mean I was exposed to the cobalt. You do not want this to happen: cobalt is toxic.

It’s essentially not easy, if it is even possible at all, to work with Art materials and avoid all health risk. The risk comes with the practice, just like I’d risk myopia, carpal tunnel, and spine issues, if I worked at a computer eight hours a day. Or, like I’d risk my near vision if I worked with tiny beads, a great amount of the time. Or how I’d increase my risk of adult-onset diabetes if I regularly ate a bunch of candies and sodas. Pretty much, life is risky.

The fact is that we can mitigate some of the known and avoidable risks, even if we can’t (or choose not to) avoid all of them.

Color mixing

In any case: Liquitex is fairly good about taking known toxins out of their paints. They also have a “Cadmium-Free” line which is designed to mimic the performance of cadmium pigments, without actually containing any cadmium. These are actually really nice paints! The drawback I can see is that the mixtures are proprietary, so you don’t really know what’s in them; but apparently they aren’t categorized as toxic. (At least this goes for the two I bought: Cadmium-Free Yellow Deep, and Cadmium-Free Red Light. They make a really warm, brilliant orange, together.)

I mentioned last time that I had an extremely difficult time getting the seals off of two of the Liquitex pots (one of which had the interior, donut-shaped seal [that’s supposed to stay there] somehow stuck onto the seal of the paint pot itself). Thankfully, most of the rest of them were nowhere near as much of a trial. I’m…fairly well impressed with the range of reds I was able to find: from Quinacridone Magenta, to a pinkish “Primary Red,” to an orange-pink “Cadmium-Free Red Light.” The middling, “Primary Red,” is not a lipstick red, to my relief.

Reds are one of those interesting color families that have more variation than expected…but then, that could probably eventually be said, for all colors.

I had actually started with a “Primaries” set for the Liquitex, then expanded because I could see that I was kind of past working with single primary colors. The “Primaries” set includes Primary Red, Primary Yellow, and Primary Blue, plus Emerald Green, and Black and White. The, “Primaries,” given here are more like, “Typical-Idea-Of,” though they do lean cool, for my taste. The Blue is close to a Sky or Cobalt Blue (neither of which I tend to enjoy using), while the Yellow is a basic…inoffensive, middling yellow. I love the Red, though; it does lean slightly violet, but not as much as Quinacridone Magenta. Their Emerald Green also leans bluish, which can be an issue if you’re looking for something that looks like chlorophyll.

If I really were at a beginning stage, this set would have worked; the thing is, I’ve been taught to use a split-primary palette. This includes a cool and a warm tone of each primary color. Because my definitions of “cool” and “warm” are a bit confused (apparently the color wheel is not evenly split between “cool” and “warm” colors, and I didn’t understand that violet was considered “warm” until several years after I must have been taught the definition), I’ll just explain the following in terms of color bias.

When you choose your primaries, the primaries chosen will really…affect everything. If you have an orange-leaning red and an orange-leaning yellow, they often make a warm orange (if they mix well, that is. I’ve been on the lookout for a nontoxic yellow pigment which is good at mixing yellow-leaning greens, for years…which I’ve mentioned in at least one past post). If you have a violet-leaning red and a violet-leaning blue (like Quinacridone Magenta and Ultramarine Blue), you get a relatively clean, strong violet. If you mix a green-leaning blue and a green-leaning yellow, they produce a relatively clean green.

If you then mix the colors with the colors directly opposite them on the color wheel, you should get first, muted colors; then, chromatic greys…which is what I’m looking forward to trying out, today. Yesterday, the 13th, I was only painting out the basic straight hues and simple mixes, as these paints are new to me.

Are you hesitating?

The thing is…and this is my analytical/fear-based mind speaking: I’m not sure how this is going to work out. I’ve tried to optimize for the most intense secondary colors…but the thing is, you don’t have to mix Ultramarine and Quinacridone Magenta to get violet. You can also mix Quinacridone Magenta and Deep Turquoise, and you get a redder purple: even with the green component of the Turquoise, the color isn’t strongly muted. Mixing a violet with a less-violet-leaning red, tends to turn out something closer to eggplant, in hue.

(I usually think of reddish violets as “purple” and bluish violets as “violet”…I don’t know how common that is.)

Muting, or the tempering of a color’s intensity, happens when you start to mix colors with biases other than the color you’re aiming toward, or when you intentionally mix a color with its complement (across the color wheel).

I even somehow got an ink blue out of mixing yesterday (close to an Indanthrone Blue color), though my mixes are somewhat of a mystery for me, as I don’t tend to write down what I’m mixing. When you can add upwards of five colors into one mix, and don’t remind yourself of their names as you’re continually adjusting that mix…trying to remember, gets tedious. Active experimentation is easier to manage — at least, in the moment.

The thing about getting paint colors is that each additional color you use, introduces a large number of new mixture possibilities, especially when you’re starting with a split-primary palette. This happens while everything you mix with your basic, chosen primaries, happens to coordinate and harmonize on some level. At a certain point…it becomes clear that using too many different pigments can actually be more of a problem, than a solution. The thing is, which colors you choose for your primaries, matters.

Principally, you can skew the selection in favor of either strong violets (involving blue and red) or strong oranges (involving yellow and red); but getting both at once? I’m not sure I’ve tried it…and I really don’t know what’s going to happen — particularly with complex mixes — when I do.

Of course, David Lloyd, interviewed in Creating a Life Worth Living: A Practical Course in Career Design for Artists, Innovators, and Others Aspiring to a Creative Life, by Carol Lloyd (1997), states that, “failure is built in.” (page 23) An artist has to be open to failure, in order to progress. So maybe today’s work, can be about embracing potential failure. 🙂

Kind of like the failure I got when trying to photograph yesterday’s work, in the intense blue light of early morning…

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with any of the paint brands (or books) I’ve gone over here, today, nor have they compensated me. I purchased the materials I’ve written about in this post, with my own funds. I am not a medical professional, and nothing in this post should be taken as medical advice.
Tired.

October 2nd, 2022

I’m writing now because — even though I do have things to do — it’s very likely that if I’m not writing, I’ll be asleep. Maybe I should be asleep? I don’t know. I got my Omicron booster last week, and am still fatigued. Of course, adding to this is the fact that I turned in a job application…for an academic job, this time. This job does work with people, but Academic Librarianship, I’ve heard to be less stressful (in the ways I have trouble with stress) than Public Librarianship.

As regards that application: I had to work fast, as I hadn’t been observant, and the second deadline for submissions came up a couple of days ago…meaning I was working until and after midnight for several days, doing things like trying to figure out what a Curriculum Vitae (CV) looks like for this potential post, when I had never made a CV before.

Yes, that was on top of being fatigued. And on top of missing the deadline for my XML work, which I’m not cheerful about, as my academic references are my main employment references. I looked back at the XML reading for last week a couple of minutes ago (I have 15 pages before the end of it), and I…really don’t want to do it, right now. It requires attention and thinking and cross-referencing; which I’m not sure I can handle, at the moment.

I’ve also been working through a lot about my history. I tried to write all this down…some of it is in my free-writing journal, some in my regular journal, and some in files or drafts. What we’ve been talking about in my counseling sessions is actually becoming clearer to me. I’ll have to seek out my other notes…I can’t recall everything, precisely, now.

I mean, seriously, this is like trying to untangle a knot… A huge, emotionally-involved knot, that took decades to snarl. (I guess, on the plus side, I do have emotions, even if I don’t understand them?) And no, I haven’t been writing much, recently. I probably should be writing, just to retain a record for the future. The thing is, I can start writing at 4 PM and write clear through to 4 AM (stopping a moment for dinner). It’s not always something that has a clear end point, other than exhaustion. Or hand-cramping, in the case of writing this out longhand.

A couple of days ago, I did start outlining what I could remember about certain people I encountered during my work…looking for patterns. There are patterns. To publicly divulge what those patterns are could be trouble, as I really don’t know how to phrase it in a way everyone would accept. Even psychiatric terms tend to sound…well, disrespectful, at times. (This is probably why people in Psychiatry tend not to use those terms with their clients.)

This problem went beyond people being jerks, to people being intoxicated and/or mentally unstable, at the same time as they’ve wanted things from me they weren’t entitled to, and wanted me to compensate for their behavior.

At last count, there were only seven particular (adult) members of the community whom I’ve really gotten upset with — over ten years of employment. Just: some of them, I had to deal with, continually. Like I said before, I thought I had anger issues, but apparently, I don’t: I keep myself under control too well. What I have are rumination issues, and grounding issues. I’m working on emotional modulation, basically. I have physical control, but I’m only learning emotional control, now.

I also never really learned to recognize when a person is high — with the exception of the one guy who kept coming in obviously smashed and complaining about his girlfriend (I’m being nice, here) — which likely would have helped me feel safer when I had to deal with them. “High,” is different than, “this guy’s brain just doesn’t work well.” The latter can be scarier; it doesn’t wear off. There aren’t necessarily periods of sobriety.

Of course, you don’t always get one with the absence of the other. Especially when one can trigger the other, or people try to “self-medicate” their troubles with drugs from their local hookup.

Recently, I had to take another Sexual Violence Prevention Training refresher course. I learned that what I had thought, at least for the first nine years of my employment; that I had to tolerate unwanted and harassing behavior as a condition of keeping my job, just wasn’t true. If it was, it shouldn’t have been, and I shouldn’t have been working there.

This means that I was undertrained (probably because, as Shelvers, we were not supposed to be dealing with the public at all: thus why train us to work with it), and the condition of my employment was such that it should be no surprise if I were turned off of public service by my experiences there. It also means that, should I go back into working with people, I do not have to tolerate that type of behavior…again.

I also know not to take my problems to the de facto supervisor, but the de jure supervisor.

The best I got at the time, amounted to, “these things happen,” or the knowledge that if I complained again, I could get the person’s library privileges (temporarily) suspended…which…I don’t know what that’s supposed to do, except upset them. And then they come back.

As well, what I learned via my initial martial arts training was, in effect, the definition of hypervigilance. I didn’t know about the harmfulness of hypervigilance, at the time; that constantly, “watching your back,” for decades, could be as harmful or more psychologically harmful than actually getting attacked. (Though, please: that is not a recommendation.) This is what I mean when I say that generational trauma can be passed along from teacher to student. At a certain point, you’ve got to ask what kind of person runs a martial arts dojo: though trust me, it should be different for every art.

This gets deeper, into things that I’m pretty sure would be safer to hold closer to the vest…I’m not sure if that stuff is going to come out at all, though if it does, it’s probably going to have a trigger warning.

I know that I’ve been surprised by stuff like this in the context of movie trailers, and after having seen it, I’m like, “That was totally unnecessary. I didn’t have to see that.” Then I’m left trying to forget about the trailer so I can focus on the movie, when my adrenaline’s rushing due to some recalled memory that I had no desire and no need to remember. But my body is thinking it has to do something because I’m obviously in danger.

No: I was obviously, triggered.

Yeah. I’m…working on emotional regulation.
Hodgepodge

September 12th, 2022

I needed to write. Most of this post deals with the present and future I’m looking at, at this point in time…including limitations and possibilities. This is not an easy situation. The near future looks bright, but after that?

I suppose this is personal

I’m not the only person with mental health difficulties in my household, and right now I’m being called on to consider that the other person’s difficulties are not my fault or my responsibility. Or, even within my power to solve.

Apparently, however, my working through years of trauma — and recognizing why I am the way I am, much of which relates to my upbringing, and some of which may relate to my own baseline mental reality — is a direct stressor for this other person. That stress then comes out as anger. Some of the anger is directed at me; the rest of it is just general aura.

And I think I’ve realized why I’ve been so silent for so long: I get messages from some of my family that they don’t want to know my experience. (Then they say later, “well, you didn’t tell us it was happening, so how could we have helped?”) Sometimes (as last night) I get emotionally attacked for sharing my experience and mental process. There doesn’t seem to be a pattern to it.

I really don’t know whether this person expects me to forget and cease to learn from all the negative things I’ve gone through: but that’s what it sounds like.

Maybe a good question to ask my own counselor is whether there is a middle ground between forgetting trauma (like it never happened) and continually reliving it. It’s also good to note that family advice is not a stand-in for appropriate mental health care by a trained professional. Even if that person has gone through their own mental health care.

Let’s call it “independent study”

I’ve dropped the Creative Writing courses I was going to take. I need to find a way to support myself, not a way to play around while my baseline needs are met by my family. That’s happening now, but realistically speaking, it’s not going to happen forever; and the endpoint of this situation is uncertain.

I’ve also realized that I’ve got to do what I need to do in order to attain gainful employment — not continue to indulge myself in learning things that are poorly-compensated, and trusting that it’s OK because my parents say it’s OK. I have at least the next three months to get my stuff together…instead of having it taken up with yet another class.

I do have an inroad to something that does pay well (a specialization in metadata, though this could bridge into more general programming); but I’m going to have to do my own studies and research in order to make any progress on it. And I can’t do those studies while my time is being taken up with writing assignments.

I also predict that I’ll have to move in order to take one of these jobs, or work remote…which, along with dropping the “professional writer” focus, is another reason I’m now iffy about our prospective move to the middle of the ocean. It’s harder to move from Hawai’i to New York, that is, than it is to move from California to New York (but perhaps, not by much). On the other hand, it’s greatly easier to move to Thailand from Hawai’i than to Thailand from California, I’d imagine…

The last work I read on professional Editing displayed to me how much I did not know about the functioning of the English language; hence, either I learn the fundamentals of grammar (I can do this, easily — and it may strengthen me where it comes to teaching English), or I probably don’t try to become an Editor, as I’ll be competing with people who do have more than an implicit understanding of grammar.

Functionally, I can edit; my own work, I can edit; but the rules I’m applying in order to create text that says what it meant to say, I’m unsure of. This is not a good thing when one has to go head-to-head with a belligerent author (there’s gotta be at least one in a career) about why their writing doesn’t make sense.

Japan

This does call in the fact that someone told me recently that English teachers are well-paid, in Japan. I’ve heard…some negative things about working as an English teacher in Japan, however. I take these into account, even though it is a given that I have wanted at least to travel to Japan, if not stay there (although, as I note below in reference to Hawai’i, I get the feeling that they aren’t necessarily welcoming to, “transplants,” even as traditional communities are emptying). The problem for me, right now: well, there are two: race, and gender.

I have been well-exposed to racism by Japanese-American people in my own lifetime, including from within my own family. This is, in fact, the reason why I did not major in Japanese Language and Literature in Undergrad: I saw no future in it (in which I would be respected, at least). The second problem, gender, may be looser for me because I would be from overseas: it is granted, however, that my gender configuration is not standard…well, for any culture, really. And from what I can tell, conformity is a big deal in Japan.

Of course, would a Japanese person be able to distinguish a LGBTQ+ foreigner from a Straight foreigner, given that the LGBTQ+ person did not go to the effort to mark themselves? Seriously, the only involuntary cue would be who they were or were not dating (or married to), and I could see myself experimenting with men if I were to move there. (My issues with men are largely [hugely] cultural, not biological.)

Japanese culture does seem to be more accommodative of gender difference than would occur in certain other places (I’m particularly thinking of Latin America, as the other language I have history with is Spanish); my issue is the lack of protections for female people as written into law. Also…from what I have been able to tell in the past, being queer in Japan is not necessarily great, either.

And, then, Hawai’i

Also on the table: this move to Hawai’i. I don’t know what the big thing is about Hawai’i. As long as I’m living someplace that’s diverse (and inclusive of my own variants of diversity), with the ability to earn a living wage on my own through non-menial labor (and preferably not directly serving the public — I could be a sous chef), I think I’m OK.

Hawai’i isn’t necessarily a place I’d opt to live; the cost of living is high, and the employment opportunities, not great. Whether this is going to improve with the spread of remote work and migration of technological workers to outlying lands? I think it will — but I don’t know how long it will take.

Employment is a concern for myself, my sibling, and possibly my sibling’s partner. It is not a concern for my parents. There’s also the fact that if I do move to Hawai’i, I imagine leaving it one day. Now whether that’s leaving it to go further overseas and out of the reach of the U.S. (which I have been considering: toxic culture is, well, toxic), is not totally something I can even think about at this point. I know I want to learn Japanese language; I know I’m interested in the rest of the Pacific Rim, and Hawai’i is a good introduction to these things. But generally speaking? I don’t get the feeling that Hawaiians actually want people to move to Hawai’i.

I think that’s been my biggest issue. I don’t think we’re wanted there — as residents. Visitors? Maybe. But the entire matter of the U.S. “annexation” is false; Hawai’i is not a 50th state, it’s an occupied nation. And the U.S. is doing the occupying. As someone from the mainland U.S., going there…you get my point? Do I want to intrude on indigenous peoples’ land? No. Do I want to try to integrate?…

I’ve recently realized just how much I do fit into my little Bay Area NB niche. The thing is…people with high-paying jobs are continually moving into the area and raising the cost of living, including for housing.

Do I like being part of this? No.

That aside…Hawai’i does, hopefully, have at least a better chance at self-government than some of the places where I have found jobs which are likely to, for example, run out of water. This is the reason I haven’t been considering jobs in Southern California. There are plenty of them: but the natural resources are not — well, speaking of water, they just aren’t there.

Southern California is basically a desert. It has to import water from Northern California — and from other states (I’m thinking of the Colorado River). Northern California estuaries — and aquifers — are already strained, where we’re talking about the Sacramento River and Central Valley. We’ve been getting less and less snowpack to hold the water in the mountains, and in some parts of the Central Valley, the land is subsiding because so much water has been taken out.

This is…something of a perversion of economic theory. People moved to develop where the land was cheap; the land was cheap because it had few natural resources; so we get major metropolitan areas with few natural resources which can’t sustain their own development.

Okay, off of that

I’ve greatly edited this version of this post. I do want to get it out, tonight. When I think about moving someplace outside of the United States…I’m greatly relieved. Maybe this move isn’t such a bad thing.
Social skills: They tell me to do what I love, part II

September 11th, 2022

I have been working offline on some seed material leading up to a Creative Writing class, starting in two weeks. I’ve not been able to generate nearly as much as I would like, due mostly to the fact that I’ve not been out of the house recently — with the notable exception of going to pick up food from a Mexican restaurant during the recent 10-day heat wave (which did sustain me for three days). The heat wave has now broken — it actually broke late on the night of the 9th, when cold air blasted through the area and all of the open windows. (Thanks, Tropical Storm Kay.)

If I look back on it, I’ve also finished reading a book on editing and grammar, and I’ve been working on a non-writing-related course. I’m still uncertain as to whether I’ll be able to handle two post-Graduate-level Writing classes on top of this technical one.

The technical one, I need in order to be able to be marketable in my field. Pretty much everyone in the class is having trouble with the material. The actual work isn’t difficult; the readings are, and jargon doesn’t help.

I need to keep this class at the top of my priorities, because it is “official”; it could reflect negatively on my skills, GPA, employment prospects, and future ability to take on Graduate work, should I not take it seriously. It could also reflect positively on me, if I do well.

Of course, that technical class could also turn into…something fairly hellish, should I fall behind (or otherwise become unable to comprehend the material).

The other two courses I have planned are Creative Writing courses, which I’m not taking for a grade, but for knowledge and practice. Still, you know. Post-Grad level. This is only my second time dealing with post-Graduate-level classes, in Creative Writing. Having to work on an assignment for one of the upcoming classes, prior to its start, kind of smacks of AP English — not the most enjoyable class, in my experience.

Falling behind in either of the Creative Writing courses, really won’t break me, especially as I’m not fully certain where the Arts and Humanities fit into my life, at this point. They are life-sustaining, but do they pay enough to survive on, if you’re doing what you actually want to do? The obvious alternative is to go back to working in a Public Library setting, which is where nearly all of my past work history took place, but I shouldn’t.

I don’t deal well with people. I can be pleasant, most of the time, but it takes effort to be constantly and consistently pleasant with everyone. It’s also stressful, to be pleasant with everyone; especially when individuals consistently overrun your boundaries, or intend to dominate or harm or frighten or humiliate or seduce you (as if).

It isn’t all bad — most people are decent — but when randoms don’t get what they expect to get (whether that’s a personal book recommendation, a personal connection, a personal favor, or the level of politeness [in reality, “masking”] they expect), they can get nasty, pretty quickly…and that’s not something I welcome.

My prefrontal cortex knows that how I respond is ultimately my choice. The thing is, I’ve been subject to so much disrespect and trauma over the years, that I have triggers I’ve needed medication to handle. This is why I haven’t been great about responding to job ads. It’s also why I’m currently in therapy. And taking a technical course.

Dominance games like sexism and racism are just excuses to enable abuse. The point is that some people want to treat other people badly, and they make excuses for it which generally include their target while absolutely excluding themselves by the same logic. That seems to be the rationale.

I guess the thing to remember is, it’s not about me. Even though they really, really want me to think, it’s about me.

And yeah, I’ve reached the point during this writing, of realizing that a lot of my difficulties with the idea of having to go back into Public Services, or having to take a job serving the public more generally, probably have to do with my being on the Autism Spectrum (or possibly, the other diagnosis I have which correlates with difficulty in social situations).

In turn, that relates…possibly intimately, with the gender-identity issues I’ve written about, before. Although I believe I may be, “neuroqueer,” I haven’t yet reached the conclusion of confidently taking on the term. I have something of a dual-pronged relationship going on here, where part of my queerness (which term I use in the most respectful sense) may be an extension of an urge to escape social control over my body, behavior, appearance, and affect.

Essentially, I have less-than-no interest in playing games surrounding traditional heterosexual womanhood (including the game of whether I’ll accept or reject compulsory femininity, and including games around ritual sexuality [both the unwanted and {hypothetically} wanted kinds]).

The path away from that is something I have to hack for myself — with no instructions (well, other than becoming a nun; and I don’t think that’s going to happen).

As I pondered whether my last post still applied after having written it down — and talked it out with someone — I realized that this was one half of the reason I have identified as gender-nonbinary.

The other half? Gender-nonbinary community has been one of the only places in my adult life where I have experienced fitting in, without trying. Part of this is due to our great diversity, though underlying that diversity, there is some commonality.

Before meeting other nonbinary people, I hadn’t brought up discussion topics to have multiple people tell me that they understood and identified with what I said. It hasn’t happened for me in queer Women’s groups; and it also hasn’t happened in wider groups largely populated by binary Trans* people.

I had thought that as a child, playing actively, not wanting to play with dolls, and wanting to play “Daddy” in House, meant I was transmasculine. However, I regularly break out of what I expect of myself as a transmasculine person, whenever I try on the identity. Some of those quirks may also be due to neurodiversity, however.

Because of what I’ve written out above, I consider that my identity as gender-nonbinary — or, at core, possibly neuroqueer, to use a positive term — is more than just a response to trauma. Being neurodiverse is one of those things you can’t get rid of. I see it as a wholly legitimate identity…which, in my case, goes to the foundations of who I am. Even if I am not Autistic, I am still neurodiverse, and I still have a diagnosis which can incorporate social difficulties.

Prior to this year, I hadn’t known about the overlap of the Autism community and the gender-diverse communities. I hadn’t understood that being, “slightly,” on the Autism Spectrum might affect me profoundly.

I suppose it could be like having experienced dysthymia as a youth. Dysthymia is characterized as long-term, low-grade depression. If crying every day until I was too numb to cry was, “low-grade,” there must be people out there who have experienced unimaginable suffering.

As well: being “slightly” on the Spectrum, could be enough to profoundly impact my adult life. Or, it could be enough to guide me into an adult, “best,” life, should I understand the circumstance and choose to learn from it.

I lived my life from K-12, trying to keep my options open. Waiting to get out, afraid to fail at anything. But social skills are something I’m — expressly — not good at. I tried to get better at them for ten years. But: is it important to me to be better at them? If so, why?

Do I want to throw another ten years, or twenty, or thirty, into trying to pass as, “normal,” with the general public? Especially when I know that openly not being, “normal,” may be an option that harms me less and leads me to enjoy my life more?

As I’m writing this, I’ve just tried to share the above insight with a family member, who wants to tell me (with legitimacy!) that I am, “normal,” and, “antisocial,” not, “Autistic.” Apparently, exploring the possibility that I might have a mental configuration (underneath the known trauma) that has profoundly impacted my life so far, and may in fact connect the pieces of my life and serve as a guide to the rest of it (should I become aware of the pattern), is not a safe conversation to have late at night.

I spent so much of my childhood trying to please the adults around me, that given freedom as an adult myself, I don’t necessarily understand how to find what I, “love,” to do. What is the content of “love” in this context?

The closest activity I can come to, is writing. Writing is not a stable vocation. Writing may require that I take a day job that I hate, in order to survive.

Whether or not Autism is the cause, social skills are not my forte. However, it’s extremely obvious to me that I have difficulty with interpersonal relations, particularly when I speak — or deal with a neurotypical person who wants me to follow a script (which has got to be the most boring way to interact). The exception to this is with gender-nonbinary people, who tend to appreciate hearing my thoughts.

I need to build my own life. I shouldn’t have to deal with my parents trying to define me, for me, at 40.

But this is what comes from being afraid to take a job because you’ll have to deal with people (and you have been exposed to abusive people — and people who were abused — for years).

Excepting my stints with Libraries (>10 years) and a short time Editing, I’ve had the same issue with not feeling safe enough to seek employment since I graduated with my BA. That lack of feeling safe was part of what drew me to Librarianship in the first place. I didn’t quite understand that someone had to keep the place safe; that it wasn’t necessarily easy to keep the place safe; and that it might one day be me who had to call the Police, to keep the place safe.

The problem is, you can’t always count on the Police.

As I write this final part of this post, the sun is rising. I can see a blue haze out of the broken slat of my blinds. What I want to say — and what I want to do — right now, is drop those two Creative Writing classes, so I can focus on the reading for Information Organization that I never got to do. I want to concentrate on my technical class, and go back to Python 3 and Spanish language classes…which are open to me, any time. I want to re-prioritize recording my thoughts in this blog. I want to read. I want to cook. After I get my booster, I can start practicing driving again.

All of that — well, maybe not the blogging — will help enable me to become a functioning, employable adult. Fiction writing, will not.

I have just under three weeks to decide if I want to go ahead with these Creative Writing classes…but I think the time I would spend in them is…incredibly precious to me. I don’t have a huge amount of time before I may be forced to launch. And I know how to learn; I don’t need a class.

Maybe I should sleep on it?

Category: psychology

Initiation

Toxicities and safety

Hitting home

Warrant

Calculated risks

Color mixing

Are you hesitating?

I suppose this is personal

Let’s call it “independent study”

Japan

And, then, Hawai’i

Okay, off of that