kodecy

Creative rage and self-knowledge

June 4th, 2023

Since the middle of last week, things have been heading a bit downhill for me. I got in, maybe too deep, with my writing and computer work.

Since the 1st, I’ve been relatively offline. I would not be surprised if I triggered myself with my last Creative Nonfiction post. This is why I’ve veered away from Creative Writing…it brings up really, really deep stuff that often ties in directly with my life, even if the events of the narrative didn’t actually happen.

I have been trying to shift back to my old pattern of stopping screen time after 7 PM, getting ready for bed at 9 PM, and then doing whatever I want to after that point, until falling asleep. (Tonight is different, as I need to work through this material.) The night of the 3rd, I was thinking deeply about my issues with anger and how they have impacted my life and relationships, essentially making it so that I don’t know how I’d do in a job if I had to continuously interface with the public.

The major issue I can see is how much I’ve given up in an attempt to be noncontroversial, and how much I resent it when other people assume they can overrun my boundaries, on top of that. Does that count as, “pretending to be cis? Pretending to be straight?” I don’t think so.

But because I haven’t made a large effort to mark myself, people often see me as a cishet woman, and it — simply — is unwanted. The problem is that people who assume I’m cishet, I fear will stereotype me as another thing I’m not, just worse, if they knew I wasn’t what they expected to find. Because for one thing: they assume cishet is the default. That doesn’t speak to a sophisticated level of knowledge of human diversity.

But I mean, seriously, I’d think most queer people go through that. I’m using “queer” in the U.S. reclaimed context, here — not as an insult. There is no other word in the English lexicon that means the same thing, as a coalitional term between and among gender and sexual minorities. The fact is that we’re targeted by (mostly) the same people, regardless of our internal differences.

So anyway. I’ve been working on…trying to recover my mental, “level,” over the last couple of days…seriously getting into the mental nurturing part of self-care. That does mean that I’ve gravitated away from most writing, and it means that I haven’t been pushing myself to progress in my self-paced courses.

This has partially precipitated because of the pressure I’ve felt recently to either get a job (I do want to work, but I’m not sure at this point, how I’d interface with other people — particularly straight men), go back to my Vocational program (which I’m really not sure about, given that they allowed me to think I was suited to Librarianship because of my values alone, for a decade), or declare myself as officially unable to work.

I find myself to be in a relatively…well, it’s a coherent place, right now. That’s why I’m writing this now, instead of getting ready for bed. Socially…well, to be honest, there’s not a lot. There’s family, my nonbinary community, my online life, and the women in my life who are neither friends nor family, who have been supportive in one way or another.

I make jewelry and write, as hobbies. I have spent…about a decade and a half, trying to make life work, as someone who is assumed to be a woman. Obviously, it hasn’t been greatly successful, if the large part of my communicating with other people has to be through text, where my embodiment is not apparent.

I’ve been resisting the desire to transition for a little over 20 years, now. I’ve gotten out of transgender meetings because of having a hard time retaining my own concept of self. I knew I was different from the other people there. How was I different? My life is female-centric, even though I am, in practicality, not a woman.

When I compared myself to people in Queer Women’s groups, I recognized that in certain respects (like knowing I was different since early high school; and knowing that not all people who are categorized as female, see themselves as women) these people did not share my experience. When I was in mixed Transgender groups, I realized that I was not yet ready to transition, and maybe took too seriously the comments from (one) trans* man that he could not connect with my experience. Then there was the rampant hate on one online FtM support group. Then I tried out Nonbinary groups, and found — surprise — a fit.

My largest problem is my temper. I learned early on that no one would take me seriously as a boy, unless I exhibited behavior beyond the ken of “girls’ behavior”, such as anger or rage. Because of this…that bad behavior became reinforced. I don’t suggest this: I did know one person who claimed a male identity and would consistently display threats towards random, conveniently absent people, as though their violence in itself, made them masculine or a man. It didn’t lend itself to believability; it lent itself to the idea that they had serious unaddressed psychological problems.

My drive to transition, at this point, if I have one…is to winnow out the root of this rage, and get it out of my life. The main reason I even began identifying as transgender in the first place, was to quiet my own rage at my own gender situation. My trans* joy at finding myself embodied in such a way that I appeared as a man even when pushed to try on a ball gown, was to see that I had proactively and intentionally altered something about myself in such a way that I could not be erased.

There is more to it than just rage. The rage is simply a cue to examine what I might not need to tolerate anymore. And the rage is also often paired with a quieter, clearer, calmer sense of identity. It is not always destructive, that is. I don’t know how to…explain having a clearer sense of self, when painfully confronted with what you are not (despite trying), or what you need to change.

I can say that I got into Librarianship partially because I hoped that I wouldn’t encounter people saying I shouldn’t be there because I wasn’t a man. Instead, I encountered degradation and disrespect, largely from male patrons, because they perceived me to be a woman. (Simply: there does not seem to be an escape from sexism.) On top of not being able to talk honestly to anybody outside of family and therapy, and crushing in my own opinions for the duration of my contact with anyone outside of family and therapy, the situation required medication to tolerate.

There’s this outer case. Then there is the fact that I have not transitioned so far, specifically because I did not want to deal with anti-transgender stigmatization. But being closeted to most of the people I’ve known, and being stuck in one place in my life, and not really living a full life…that can only continue for so long.

This does remind me of some of the trans* women I’ve known who tried, intensely, for decades, to be men. I don’t know how old I was when I heard some of these stories, but I empathized at the time. (Maybe there was a reason for that.) It also reminds me of the years I allowed my hair to grow out on the job, because I didn’t want to deal with harassment from idiots who thought that because I looked like I had ovaries, I should never cut my hair. Even if I haven’t desired to keep it long since before I was 16, and the only reason to keep it long, was for the sake of not jarring men’s sensibilities.

But that dynamic is avoiding targeting from other people who most likely have serious psychological scrambling, themselves. I really shouldn’t be living to please (or cloak myself from) the lowest common denominator.

That’s regardless of what I end up doing with my body, or my life.
Routine

May 31st, 2023

I need to find a way to manage both my writing practice, and my courses, with my health. Maybe I need to work out my priorities; set alternate days to work on specific tasks; or break things down into bite-sized chunks so I can keep them continuously in my mind, day after day.

Today I’ve found myself — at least initially — preferring to spend time composing written work, then spend too much time on my courses. That’s probably natural, now that the honeymoon stages of the courses are over, and I find myself obliged to work on things even when I don’t want to. But that is the purpose of laying out tasks, and is the nature of work.

Very possibly, my fatigue is related to staying up late on the computer, and randomly waking early. It did happen again, this morning; and I’ve been dealing with it off-and-on, for months. Exercise helps avoid it, which is a non-weight-related reason to exercise.

My lessened drive with Programming likely relates as well to the realization that I’ve been chasing a goal I’m not prepared to handle, educationally speaking (based on a decision I made when I was 18 or 19: that I didn’t want to deal with Math if I didn’t have to; and that decision, made without Academic Advising).

I’ve just come off of completing a course which revealed that Data Science requires Math skills I don’t have…which could explain much about my mood, on its own. I also just completed the short overview which followed…showing me that Python isn’t a bad first language to learn (for Web Development, which is a newer goal), but in practicality, I will want to work on JavaScript as well, plus refresh and expand my HTML/CSS skills, at the least. I am now aiming for Web Development rather than Data Science, that is — though I’ve written about this a recent backpost.

Possibly, the fact that I’ve been drawn more to writing today, than my courses, is related to my realization that I can write anything I want. I don’t have to be stuck on old untold stories. I actually don’t have to veer away from my life as subject matter.

When I spend time exercising, I also give my health a higher priority than my courses. In reality, prioritizing my health probably is a good thing; but it means that I suspect I am able to accomplish much less on the days I work out and shower. That’s especially so, as I often end up cooking on those days, so I can eat a lot of high-bulk, nutrient-dense, lower-calorie foods that my body actually needs. Not to mention that I’m less likely to stay up late, as my body needs to repair itself — and I find myself actually ready to go to bed at 10 PM.

But I don’t know yet that I actually can’t handle everything simultaneously at this point, because I haven’t even attempted to do everything in one day. (I’ve learned to prioritize getting one main thing done every day, and everything else is extra.) Then there’s the problem that I could easily spend all day, every day, writing and reading — and getting ticked off enough by my reading to spur more writing.

That, in itself, sounds like a career and lifestyle. As to whether it can sustain me financially, I’m not sure. The business of Writing was beyond the scope of my Creative Writing degree. I do remember that I have both the books, The Business of Being a Writer, (2018), by Jane Friedman (which is a good book — and repeated a lot of the advice I got in Undergrad), and The Well-Fed Writer, 3rd Ed., (2021), by Peter Bowerman, here. The latter is a bit…commercial, but if you’re willing to let go of some of your values in order to get paid enough from Writing to survive, he’s your guy.

Of course, if I was going to go that route, I probably would have done it already.

I should note that the first chapter in Friedman (2018) is: “Can You Make a Living as a Writer?” It’s not a long chapter. I did get the book to re-read it, having first seen it at one of my libraries; it’s probably worth the effort to revisit it.

Languages

I can feel myself getting lethargic with at least my main Japanese language (nihongo) course — though that feeling was worse, before I worked on it for the day. The lethargy partially may be because I’m switching back and forth between two apps: one reading-focused, and one audio-focused. I could hear the fatigue in my own voice, earlier.

I’m not sure whether this is because of the intimidation factor of needing to memorize and learn to read and write thousands of 漢字 (kanji: characters directly sourced from written Chinese) and words spelled using the same kanji, having different context-dependent pronunciations. Now that I investigate it, I do have a number of potential helpers here, though. (I’ve been collecting kanji learning materials for years!)

The one I’m thinking of right now, is Crazy For Kanji: A Student’s Guide to the Wonderful World of Japanese Characters, (2009), by Eve Kushner. I recall reading in this book that any one kanji can stand for either a meaning or a sound…and common sounds may carry common radicals. Radicals are modular parts of a written kanji. I never got deeply into this book before (it was way above my level at the time I bought it), but I think it will help.

Actually, expanding my study to include my books, may lessen the feeling of treading water where it comes to studying 日本語.

Español (Spanish language), in comparison, is much more like English in structure, and shares most of its written characters with English. However, it has much greater difficulty in verb conjugations, tenses, and gender agreement, than Japanese language. That means that in español, certain parts of the sentence can be omitted, with the missing parts understood.

If one uses the ellos/ellas/ustedes verb tense in a sentence, for example (like ”¿adónde van?”: “where are they going?,” in Latin American Spanish), we know you’re referencing a group of people, which doesn’t include yourself — without your directly stating this.

This probably wasn’t the best choice of example: to the best of my memory, ”¿adónde van?” can also formally mean, “where are you [all] going?” in Latin American Spanish (using the ustedes form) whereas, “where are you [all] going?” is conjugated differently in the vosotros/vosotras tense in Castilian Spanish — that is, Spanish as spoken in Spain. I was never taught the vosotros form, however, so I’m not confident in using it here.

Context-dependent understanding of what is happening to whom, occurs in Japanese as well, but not in relation to the verb’s conjugation, to the best of my knowledge (which is two quarters of Japanese in Undergrad, plus decades of watching and listening to Japanese-language media, what little I could teach myself before Undergrad, and one Summer session in Middle School). In contrast, though: because of the fact that kanji are used in writing, it allows extra information to be encoded in that writing, which may not be apparent simply from the sounds of the same text, read aloud!

That is, writing everything out by sound, as we would write in English or in Spanish, loses a layer of added meaning. It can make the writing non-specific, as I wrote earlier about 雨 (ame) versus 飴 (ame) — which are told apart in speech through pitch shifts. These pitch shifts are, often enough, entirely missing from being encoded in written language. From context, you may be able to make out the fact that in my writing the sound あめ (ame), I’m writing about the rain as versus candy; but wouldn’t it be nice to actually explicitly know? Especially if I’m not there to tell you?

This is one of the reasons I’ve really wanted to move into kanji: it makes reading much easier. To the best of my knowledge, kana (syllabary; for example, あめ) serve a different purpose than kanji, where kanji most often denote nouns, and adjective, adverb, and verb stems; and the kana denote the conjugation and modifications of the base meaning of the kanji (for example: 美しい [utsukushii] versus 美しさ [utsukushisa], or “beautiful” [adjective; thus, the second -i] versus “beautifulness” or “beauty” [noun; thus, the -sa]) plus the grammatical particles which denote what part of the sentence is doing what, to what other part of the sentence (or unspoken context within which, the sentence operates).

I know fairly securely that I can succeed at español, in a relatively short amount of time. I did study it for five or six years, as a youth (I can no longer remember precisely what year or semester my last memories are from). But I mean, give it two or three years of diligent study, and I’d likely be capable to the extent that I could use español in a job.

Mastering 日本語 requires faith in oneself and one’s resolve, and commitment to progressing in it — not just wishing for it — over the long haul. That’s not to even mention 敬語 (keigo: specialized respectful language used in Business) and the other respect- and status- and formality-based language changes that occur throughout other realms of life in Japan. (An easy way to deal with much of this is just to be polite most of the time — this seems to be what a lot of people do!)

That’s not even to touch regional dialects…which also exist in español, as well. I had significant influence from a teacher who had a Chiapas dialect, so it’s likely that I sound a bit rural to native Spanish speakers. (But what does that mean, really? To get into that, and what my accent may imply, is to get into Politics…)

There’s also the question — not only of how much of the planet uses each language, but how much specific use I will get out of the language. When I’m learning español, I’m learning it to help other people. When I’m learning 日本語, I’m learning it to better understand myself and my own history.

You know, the stuff that U.S. culture tried to erase, but which carried on under the surface, anyway.

It’s likely I’ll eventually learn both languages. It’s just hard to pick one over the other, for now! I mean, really hard! But I’ve delayed long enough because of that indecision. Right now, I’ve just got to move forward.
Grounding

May 29th, 2023

The night still seemed young, coming from someone who could type straight through to 3:30 AM without feeling discomfort. Since waking at 12:30 PM, with only breaks for biological necessities, and the occasional check-in with family to punctuate the mood and reinvigorate her, she had been here.

Sometimes, being on the computer was an effective escape from embodiment. Maybe that was why it was comfortable.

When the work began to become too much, she would feel the mild ache in the two core muscle groups at the center of her back, or the burning of her spine, or the tightness between her shoulders. The pop of her spine somewhere internal, in the front of the spine instead of the back, she felt deep beneath organs. Staying too long in one place could make it so she couldn’t stay functional at all, without pain.

Focusing in on awareness of these muscle groups reminded her of the time when she had last worked successfully at building her body. The best body image of her life had been intentionally constructed at the gym, and on walking miles through her redwood-filled campus.

20 pounds had packed themselves onto her slight frame in one and a half years; most of it muscle, or simply burned off due to a high metabolism that kept her warm in the cement bloc of her Winter dorm. Since taking Women’s Weight Training, during which she was one of the only “women” to actually train her upper body, there had been days in which she would eat the equivalent of two dinners in the dining hall. Or, maybe they just served conservative portions.

Where all that had been stored, she could no longer remember.

Coming back home had been a trip: as when trying on a formal gown, she found that she appeared very much like a quarterback in drag: small, lean, with bulging, defined arms and shoulders, and hair clipped close on the sides. In sparkly, rough, slinky gunmetal fabric which dropped to the floor, her unshaven leg peeking through the side slit.

The sight did entertain her a bit. She had succeeded in naturally countering her feminine cues by masculinizing her body so far that now she — actually — looked to herself, like a man in a dress. Without trying.

And that — to be androgynous, without medical intervention, without shots of testosterone or surgery — was what she wanted.

It was easy to look up to the person in the Waiting Room with the short brown curls and the long flowing jacket, whose gender she couldn’t tell. Whose history, and identity, she couldn’t tell. But, she knew, she had no idea whether this person was friendly or not. Especially, here. There were ideological differences between different variants of androgynes, that weren’t possible to suss out without actually talking to a person. Ideology was very important to be aware of, and one could easily get oneself into trouble by disregarding that.

Of course, that time of her life was now over; and it was easy to look back with nostalgia. Now her hair was long in places; her body heavier. The muscular, hard, strong angularity of her 20’s was replaced with softened curves. Maybe too soft. She kept having dreams about going back to the gym to lift and build muscle. Going back to the gym and flying on a fabric swing, like in Cirque du Soleil.

Maybe the dreams were trying to tell her something?

Maybe if she focused on building muscle and strength, taking care of those little muscles that often wind up forgotten and lost, and toning down the fat — not on losing weight — she would be more motivated to exercise? Even healthier, simply because she actually was exercising, and looking more physically masculine was a better motivator than trying to become more conventionally attractive as a woman?

Weight loss be damned, she would change her BMI instead?

Her last experience of Spasmodic Torticollis (as was the diagnosis from the ER), during which she blacked out from spinal pain on a Zoom call, had taken months to properly heal. But it was apparent that this was more of an issue when she was under stress; holding tension in her shoulders and neck, holding tension in her back and jaw.

When she had a choice about her computer time, it didn’t seem so bad.

The class that indirectly caused the muscle seizure had been an introduction to Computer Science. Five units. Her mother had told her she could take up to nine, but that would have been suicide in Summer Session. It was unclear as to why her mother did not see this. Three units might be the sane maximum, for Summer Session. With a five-unit class, unable to sit at a computer for weeks, staying enrolled wasn’t an option.

It really never seemed clear as to what the standards would be, at that District. Sometimes she got award-winning Professors who became upset at the lack of engagement of the class. Sometimes the work was simply reading, and a Discussion Post. It wasn’t predictable.

Why none of the hazards of potential lost sleep, of potential injury due to staying too long at the computer, bothered her now, she did not know. But maybe it had something to do with becoming alienated from her body. Maybe getting back in contact with her body, could help.
Finding my way

May 28th, 2023

Alright. I think I can write now: I put in my three hours of Programming study, and I’ve run through two chapters on the more writing-and-reading-based Japanese-language learning app I’m using, which parallels the content of the speech-based app. Even though I wanted to write this post earlier today, I held off…and that’s probably a good thing in this case, because I can approach the question I needed to answer earlier, with a bit of certainty (instead of with a hunch).

I don’t want to do Data Science. I was correct in my intuition that it was heavily math-based, but I hadn’t had it confirmed to me, until today. If I go into Data Science, there is going to be a long road of mathematics classes ahead of me, before I become capable of working as a Data Scientist. That’s not to say that I’m terrible at Math. I have specifically social trauma around Math, because kids/teens didn’t understand how I could be so good at it and still be in this body.

Because of this, I only have, essentially, a High-School education in Math, except for Statistics, Financial Management, Accounting, and up-until-the-first-test in Differential Calculus. At the very least, I’d need more Statistics education (I still can’t remember what kurtosis means, or “R”, or the meaning or functionality behind Chi-Square analysis, though I’m sure I can look all of these up), along with Probability, Calculus, and Linear Algebra. In essence, that is the Sciences, not the Humanities.

This is all great, if I want to be a Data Scientist…but the demonstration of the application of coding to large data sets, etc., that I’ve worked through today, had me thinking back also to the Social Sciences.

You may recall that I initially wanted to be a Geologist specializing in Magmatics, switching to Sociology (with a particular interest in LGBTQ+ realities) once I found it existed. (I had a hard time growing up, and realized that I understood very little of what was actually going on, all those years. “Now,” I thought, “I have a chance to figure it out.”) After I found my Sociology classes to be too mainstream for me (we ended up studying things like how the dominant culture came to be dominant), I ended up switching to Creative Writing, going to my new University specifically to become a Writer.

Creative Writing is a Humanity — not a Hard or Soft Science — and based more in Art and (loosely speaking) Communication, than in Math. I switched to Creative Writing because I was under pressure to choose a major, and Writing was one of the only stable elements in my life, at the time.

I realized years later that Writing may have been stable for me, because I had trouble tolerating the world as it was; so to survive, I had to create a world I could live within. Writing was my way of externalizing that world instead of just living in my head. But as I’ve said, at some time, one has to come out of the cocoon.

And it’s really funny — maybe “funny” isn’t the word I’m looking for, more than “peculiar”, or “curious” — but I think a lot of writers have had trouble living in the world, and that’s why they write. If that weren’t the case, I don’t know why smoking and drinking have been so prevalent in the subculture. (Please note that I do not recommend smoking or drinking.)

The method of hypothesizing a connection between two (or more) different variables, and then testing that hypothesis, looks really similar between Data Science and Social Science.

Now that I know this, I can’t be shot down by under-informed people saying that you don’t need Math to be a Librarian. I’m not aiming to be, “a Librarian.” If you’ve been in the Public Library job market, you know that there is a specific type of person being sought, when the call is for, “a Librarian” (as versus, say, a “Systems Librarian” or a “Cataloger” or a “Metadata Technician”).

Generally, this means that one is good with people, an excellent communicator, very social, does not hesitate to reach out to all different types and walks and kinds of people, and is able and willing to talk and write to people constantly to connect them with information; or set up the next public gathering; or go out of their way to invite them into the context of the Library as a “third space” in which people can gather publicly without paying (much like schools, parks or community centers — or, if one is lucky enough to have it, a home).

I am not that person. I appreciate people like that, seriously; I got into the field because I aspired to that; but I’m not that person. And aspiring to be her, doesn’t change the fact that I’m not her, and am not going to magically become her.

I’m into books and the Internet to contact the rest of humanity, precisely because I have trouble interfacing with people. I may have been a Library patron for so long, exactly because I have trouble interfacing with people.

The profile I’ve seen widely given for “a Librarian”, in the Public Library sector, at least, does not cover the entirety of human variation — different personality types with different skill sets — who may gain a Library and/or Information Science degree. If I go into this field at all, now, I know that I am most likely to succeed in something like, specifically, Cataloging, or Digitization, or something else in the back room. And that, specifically, because I’m not highly social and don’t desire to be highly social.

I got into Library Science because I was interested in reading, locating and accessing Information, and the game of research. I really don’t care that some patrons think I’m the embodiment of a Librarian stereotype who is just waiting to release “her” unbridled libido.

That’s until I become averse to said patrons.

But avoiding people — specifically avoiding this dynamic, and specifically removing me from a situation in which I experience so much social anxiety that I have to take medication to manage it — in this job market, doesn’t seem to leave me a lot of options (if I want to work in the Library field). I’m really uncertain that I even want to touch trying to endure sexual harassment, at this point — and it seems that every Professional I broach this with, knows what I’m talking about.

Happily, there is something adjacent that I can do, which I have had training in, and which I already know I like, and that is Web Development.

I can’t be definite about this, but I think that if I become a Web Developer, I will run across fewer of the dynamics I want to avoid, and have greater measures to address said behavior, when it does come up.

From my Web Design class in the Library Science program, I already have a base to work from with HTML5/CSS3. I will have to review, but why not? It’s not hard! As well, working through Python 3 (or restarting it and working the rest of the way through), should help me in learning JavaScript. I have some (not particularly great) experience with XML and know that it can be converted into XHTML or HTML for Web display. I have had some high-level exposure to SQL and Apache through Database Design. I know about PHP, though I haven’t learned much of anything about it yet — I only know that it’s a server-side language, and that it’s powerful.

But if the biggest hurdle here is being able to work directly with servers, I’d say I’m doing pretty good.

The most apparent key here is that I’ve been involved with a lot of creative work; from Writing, to both Digital and traditional Art. I did even take — now that I look at it — at least six classes which can apply to Graphic Design in Undergrad, not including any of the multiple classes I took in Grad School which can apply to Web Development.

So…maybe it was not a mistake to focus on Digital Services, during my time in grad work (though I thought that it was when they wanted to put me on the Chat app). Like maybe it was not a mistake to major in Creative Writing, or to take extensive classes in Art.

One of the things I realized when my most recent course was comparing/contrasting class pathways (the second half of the course was essentially an orientation), is the fact that most of my chosen education has had me building things — if not stories, artworks. And I’m told that Web Development is a good path, if one actually likes to build things!
I…definitely have enough to do

May 27th, 2023

A lot has happened within the last month…and the last week has been a whirlwind. At this point, I don’t even know why I was thinking about taking on more classes — except to impose some order on my creative process, and prioritize it at the same time. I can, however, impose some internal order on myself; and I should remember that I choose my priorities. The scheduling has been working, but like I said: for the last week, some urgent work pulled me out of my newfound routine.

Right now I’m dealing with as much as I can. I’m already in two long-term course sequences, in fields where proficiency, skill, and hours put in are more valuable than the name attached to wherever I study. M has recently begun to encourage me to take on a PhD…but do I need it? Am I ready for it, where it comes to Data Science (one of my Professors told me that Cataloging is essentially “applied Data Science”)? I’d say that without experience in the field, I doubt that I’m ready. (I might want to try searching for jobs with the keyword, “Data Science”!)

I’m glad to have bought into the courses I did, when I did. I’m also glad to already have had the foresight to get a number of notebooks — which I’m now finding, I need. That is: the courses I’m engaging with, are serious enough that I actually need to take notes. That’s despite the fact that they’re essentially private online courses, and I can run back through them and replay them. Writing down the information is just much easier to review, and helps with remembering the information, in the first place.

Having taken public online courses before, I recall that not taking notes is a sure path to downfall and wasted time. In the Master’s program, I got into the habit of not taking notes on my first run-through of the material because I would hesitate to begin, otherwise — and that leads to falling behind. The material was also so difficult that I actually had to run through the readings and videos, twice or more. What I’m dealing with in Computer Programming is explained in a much clearer fashion; where it makes sense to take notes, the first time around.

The major issue I’ve run up against with the Programming courses, is having had to go back to a foundational course in order to understand the questions being given in Python. Because I’ve been spending time in the basic course, I’m probably going to have to restart Python from the beginning. The details of coding syntax don’t stick when you aren’t engaged with them, and haven’t taken notes; and this is apparent when you try to write your own code, and it doesn’t work.

I actually am still making progress — by which, I mean that I’m still learning things. That’s the key point. But I should note that on this specific platform, I’ve been told to commit 5-15 hours a week (1-3 hours a day over the workweek) to training for at least a year, in order to become proficient enough to use it in a job…which does mean to aim towards seeking part-time employment, for now. If, that is, learning Computer Programming is important to me; and I think that going forward, having at least the fundamentals of Programming is going to be an asset. (I’ve been told that once one knows at least one Programming language, the rest of them come easier.)

Right now, I really can’t recall how often I’ve been back to my Japanese course (or the second Japanese course I got from a different producer, which is helping me with my handwriting — and eventually should help me with my reading)…but I can tell you that it hasn’t been often, over the last week. Actually, I just grabbed my notebook, and I can say it’s been about a week since I’ve substantively checked in.

I’m not surprised.

Apparently, if I complete all modules, the lessons will take me through the first two levels of the five JLPT stages; which is decent. It’s decent enough so that I should be able to begin to understand written and spoken Japanese, that is.

In any case: I’m considering the majority of the surprise work I’ve had to deal with for this week, finished.

I also contacted and heard back from the people I interviewed with at the beginning of this month. Apparently, there were a lot of highly-skilled applicants: I didn’t get the job. (M and D say that the reason might have been simply that I’m not physically strong enough [I would have to have been able to lift 60 lbs.])

That is a weight off of me, unfortunately — pun not intended. But I know now that it may help to narrow down the jobs I’m looking at to part-time positions, specifically in Technical Services: which means that I’ll also mainly be looking at jobs in Higher Education in my local area. That should narrow down my search, considerably.

Then there is also the possibility of freelancing as a Writer…meaning that I’ll want to look at some different web sites for gig work. I have noticed that I get specifically disinterested in my own work where it leans too “literary”…I don’t know what that’s about. Maybe it’s the extreme upper limit of my Academic voice (as versus a more colloquial one)? Eh.

And then there’s the specific possibility of working in Illustration, but right now AI is probably doing to Illustration what the camera did to Painting. The issue is that Illustration and Photography are now immediately available to me as routes of employment — although I question to what extent I want to enter into the Visual Arts. But I have reasons for the latter that I’m not getting into: it’s not just AI.

Writing, Illustration, and Photography are all things I can do, Remote.

There’s more I have to say; I’m just uncertain whether it would be to anyone else’s benefit for me to get into it.

And maybe it would be good to state that in looking at Programming, I’m largely following the recommendations of my alma mater, which…I’m very sure, would not have taught me as well as I’m being taught by the program I’m in, now. It certainly would have been higher-pressure, though…
Just a note:

May 24th, 2023

I’m leaving a brief note here to anyone who is interested: I’m going to try and start posting again on my other site, spectralbeads.com. I’ve put a new post up for the first time in a while; the layout over there is much more amenable to images (even though I still haven’t figured out how to use the Gallery block).

Right now it still looks like it’s a commercial site, but that’s because I haven’t revamped it yet. Just wanted to let you know, in case you’re wondering where I am.
Why do I feel like such a student?

May 21st, 2023

I gotta be honest: this scheduling stuff is tiring. Well: Real-Life Stuff in general, is tiring. Let’s say I’ve been putting out effort to get things — other than Writing — done, for about the last month or month-and-a-half. (I can’t really be sure; until about a month ago, I wasn’t taking regular account of what I was doing, each day.)

I am getting a lot done. There’s just more I need to do, than I can tackle in one day — and then there are the daily things that need to be taken care of. Not just cooking, exercise, hygiene, sleep…but then there are the two (or three, if I’m being particular) classes I’m focused on, plus my Writing practice…

…and, well — now that I think of it, I have had my attention diverted by a couple of things that actually can be difficult to deal with…though getting into those problems may be too deep, to talk about online.

Maybe I wouldn’t be so stressed out, if I actually cleaned the bathroom and didn’t have to look at it and think about it, anymore (at least, not for a number of weeks). I also believe I wouldn’t be so stressed, if I didn’t have what I think are the beginnings of arthritis, in both hands. This may have been the actual cause behind what I thought was a repetitive stress injury, beginning in late 2021.

And for the record: no, I don’t know why I turned 40 and suddenly got pains in my hands and wrists. This is another reason why I don’t want to rely on physically making things for my income, however.

As regards the study: for the moment, I’m participating in a foundational course instead of throwing everything I’ve got at Python. As I think I mentioned before, I was dealing with substantial difficulties because I got to the point where the use of undefined vocabulary made the questions I was supposed to answer, opaque. Luckily, the vocabulary is clearly addressed in the foundational course (which is provided without additional charge).

I am now a bit ticked off that in my MLIS program, I had to take a class covering the basics of Programming and pseudocode (i.e. breaking down the steps of a process), which cost more than it would have (free), had I taken the course elsewhere online. Right now I’m working with Python 3. This was being given at my alma mater for about $1400/semester, if I’m recalling correctly; I’m taking it online for under $300 for a year’s access to the course. (I should note that I’ve heard that skill is of more use in the Tech field, than a diploma.)

I suppose we can say that I’m a bit…irritated with University structure, at the moment. Actually, that’s not true; I’m irritated with University classes when they’re overpriced and inferior, at the moment.

Yeah, maybe I wouldn’t want to be a Professor teaching a student like myself. But when we get into new types of topics (like Programming), especially when learning online…there are better ways to teach for much less cost, than one gets through a course based on a University model, ported to the Internet.

I’ve mentioned before that published books on technology…they tend to go obsolete nearly as soon as they come out, and then have delays in new editions. When you’re learning from online sources, at least they have the ability to quickly, cheaply, and easily update their reference works to keep up with current definitions and practice. That doesn’t mean they do, but it means they can. The issue I’m seeing is that the Internet is a better source of information as it refers back to current technologies, than books are.

The Internet can also be a better trainer, because it’s multimedia and interactive, as versus just text. If I were paying to attend classes in-person, that’s an entirely different animal; that means someone is actually there to interact with you and physically see what you’re doing wrong, and analyze how you got to that wrong point, and help correct your path. But that doesn’t happen often enough, online: especially in a University-style class. It seriously won’t happen, if you don’t ask for it, and in an online class, you don’t necessarily see other people asking questions, to help encourage you to ask a question.

Japanese language study is progressing, but I haven’t been paying as much attention to it as I should have, largely because I understand much of what is going on, already, and it’s tedious. (How often can you learn how and when to say “konnichiwa”?) It’s not as quick progress for me as I wish it were, that is; but information I don’t know will likely come, soon enough. And I still need to practice making my kana look correct/attract-ive. Though — just taking notes, will allow me to do that.

I have decided against taking on any more classes, at the moment; after all, the ones I’m involved with now, are teaching me things. I’m only on the first module of my Japanese course, which has…21 modules, total. I have just looked at the last module…and either I knew a lot more than I thought I did before beginning, or I am really going to have to reach beyond this course to functionally enable my knowledge of the language.

Realistically speaking…it’s probably truer that I know a lot more than I think I do. I’ve become more aware of the fact that understanding can lie below conscious awareness; and NHK World is a basic mainstay of TV in my household. I did opt for the choice of class I did, because it’s supposed to launch one into intermediate Japanese by the end; it also has a strong audio component, which I need — and can’t get from books, unless they have a Web presence, as well.

Then there is my Writing practice. I haven’t been back to my actual Creative Writing project, for a good amount of time. I haven’t wanted to risk it, yet. Although my classes and scheduling are taking up a lot of my energy, my mood and outlook are better than they have been in months, if not years. I can’t bet on that continuing while I’m working on the Creative Writing project which brings up some of the dregs. Anyway: the classes and scheduling are just tiring: and you see I basically blasted the schedule today, to write here.

It remains that I do still have to master some tools that I will need to fully fledge: one of which, is driving. That shouldn’t be too scary, but I still feel a bit nervous about it. I have a tendency to be hypervigilant, trying to see everything around me, and so I can miss some obvious cues that an experienced driver, would see.

But I suppose that actually taking the time out to cook — and more than “help” cook, but at times take the lead in cooking — is a good sign. It shows I’m putting out effort to do better than I have been doing; I’ve rarely ever been expected to help with cooking. But if I want to eat what I want to eat, I need to get on it and do the work.

I haven’t been on top of the job search so much, recently; but I think I should aim for part-time employment, right now! I applied and inter-viewed for a full-time position, and am now nervous about it: I have never worked, full-time. And I don’t know that I’d be able to handle everything else in my life right now, if I held down a 40-hour/week job. For that matter, I don’t know how I’d be able to survive on my own with a 40-hour job and no partner (or parents) to pick up the slack, at home.

That is, maybe the 40-hour workweek is a remnant of the old model of having a domestic partnership as the standard living unit — just from the “men’s” side, rather than the “women’s” side. I’ve written about trying to find anything good about being a woman, before, and how many of the crafts I’ve participated in while trying to be a woman, most likely will not financially support me (on their own).

I am, that is, striking out into a truly undefined space — not only in my personal gender identity. When it moves past who you see yourself to be, to how you’ll survive, that makes it real enough. I seriously don’t want to be a housewife and/or mother. And it doesn’t make sense to be a “bread-winner” when you don’t have a partner or children.

But I guess the thing that matters is to make enough money to support myself; not, to work 40 hours per week.

Of course, if I got the full-time position, it’s only for several months. I could try it out. I just know that what I did, would have to be something for which I have stamina. I’m seriously considering looking at Writing jobs, now. It’s something that I’m good at, and something I can easily work all day, at.

I also want to get deeper into coding and the technical side of Informa-tion Science, though: although I know for a fact that it’s tough, for me. (Or maybe I just did not have an optimal learning environment.) I did have to review the Order of Operations, just recently (PEMDAS: Parentheses, Exponents[/Roots], Multiplication/Division, Addition/ Subtraction). Yeah. Seventh-grade material (though to be honest, I can’t remember most of being in seventh grade). It came up in a coding quiz.

Apparently, later on in Chemistry and high-school math, I neglected to notice the fact that the numbers above and below a dividing line were often within parentheses, thus specifying that they were to be worked on, first (before being divided).

But hey: I’ve been told that PEMDAS doesn’t even apply in some Programming languages! It’s just a convention of notation so that people consistently get the same answer from the same written problem.

And then, then…there is the (English-language) writing. Writing, on this site; writing stuff that I really shouldn’t publish; writing for my 15 minutes per day; and writing my own Creative project. I had been putting the last off, because I was going to focus on it during the Summer if I didn’t get the 40-hour position (or maybe even if I did). But now I’m not taking that class (that’s about $1000 saved: you see why I was griping about tuition for online University classes, above), so I have no framework for my project, there.

An easy way to start, is to get back to reading — which I’m definite, will spur the writing. I don’t know exactly how it works; I just know that it does. As for why it’s easier for me to write, here: it’s probably just out of habit. The blog format is also like a journal format, which is psychologic-ally easier to grapple with, than making bad first drafts which one edits and rewrites and polishes into something that makes sense and is aesthetically pleasant (if that’s what it chooses to be).

I should also note that M is now presenting me with the possibility of pursuing a PhD. I’ve thought of it. Maybe it isn’t a bad idea. But if I do that, I need to take stock of my skills and desires: what do I already do that I love? The PhD is primarily a gateway to teaching at the postsecondary level…and maybe that is better than trying to deal with randos off the street. Maybe.

But the real issue may be that I would rather think, and accumulate and disseminate knowledge for a living, rather than work with my hands. And still, most of my reading is nonfiction. A life as a scholar is attractive, that is. The only difficult point is in dealing with people; though if it were on a topic I knew and understood and loved, maybe it could work.
Prism

May 15th, 2023

This is just…it just feels strange. For the past week or two, I’ve been trying to get on track with various…well, ways to spend my time constructively. So I’ve been participating in classes, and investigating whether I even want to take the classes, which has the effect of drawing me out of a contemplative mood (and into a responsive one).

One of the things I’ve found, though: when I’m learning, I get very engaged. I’ve been reading a number of books relating to story structure…none of which, am I all the way through. I am lucky, however, in that I’ve been able to learn certain principles relating to Critical Thinking which keep me from being drawn in by tautologies (as in, a story is what I define it to be, or it isn’t [defined as] a story [to me]. Apologies for the lyrics: they weren’t intentional [but I’m not deleting them]).

I can also spot pop-psychology being passed off as fact (or at least, as valuable theory). Both of these have come up in one of my readings, which I’m not going to name right now, because I don’t want to be pushed to defend myself.

I understand that different modes of thinking about something as messy as Creative Writing, are pretty much inevitable; but attempting to apply an Ancient Greek lens to all work…all work…well, I can see that my viewpoint is not, “traditional,” and that forcing this Author’s/Editor’s lens on my work would amount to a misreading. This is not a person I would want to submit my work to, that is.

There are a number of qualms I have with the book I’m speaking about. It’s very formulaic. I’m reading it primarily to assure myself that I don’t want to take the class the author gives, and to see what — if anything — of value I can glean from his thoughts.

At the same time, I recall Meander, Spiral, Explode, which goes over alternate story patterns than the traditional one I was taught in school, which looks a lot like a model of climax. Meander, Spiral, Explode is probably best read along with the books it references as examples, however.

Then there is Craft in the Real World, which is a critique of the academic Creative Writing establishment from a PoC (apparently, Asian male) perspective. It’s interesting, but I’ve read (in a review) that the author never really paves out a solution to the problems he has encountered. Still, raising the question (of why Creative Writing in Academia is, philosophically, so White-Cis-Het-Male-[add-dominant-status-here]-centric) is the first step to remediating it.

Neither of the latter, have I finished so far.

I have also heard within the last 48 hours, someone expressing the idea of creating a character and then, “putting my words in their mouth,” to paraphrase. The repetition of this by family indicates that they don’t understand my own writing process.

This gets back to the point I was attempting to talk about before, as relates to building a character from the inside-out, rather than building a character from the outside-in.

Granted, I don’t get into all of that in this post…because it’s a lot to explain. My work is less puppeteering, more method-acting. I want to get into it; but it requires an amount of mental heavy-lifting that I didn’t expect to enter into, today. It would take days, at least, to express my thoughts fully and cogently to someone who doesn’t know me, in writing. And actually, I could probably write on this topic, on its own, for quite a while.

Maybe what I’m meaning to get at is the idea that a good number of people don’t necessarily take the care I’d like, when they create characters and character motivation. Granted that creativity is not even parallel to reality (it can’t be, if it isn’t a straight line…and in my experience, creativity is more spreading and mossy, than geometric).

One of the things that really drew me to manga and anime in the first place, is the fact that the characters — particularly antagonistic characters — in my experience, tended to be better thought-out and more relatable than most Western antagonists, who tended to be the way they were, “just ‘cause.”

I haven’t read any Murakami (to my memory), however, to reference a famous counterexample. Some have found issues in his characterization, particularly for female characters as a group existing only as the male characters wished. I can also think of examples of some pretty bad anime where the above generalization doesn’t hold, possibly related to the fact that the premise of the anime itself is a mess and the investment of the characters comes off as false…often not helped, by the voice actors.

I’m fairly certain that the relatively believable character motivations relate abstractly to the cultural ideal that everything that exists relies on causes and conditions which bring it into existence. When those causes and conditions change, their outcome changes. This thought I was first exposed to via Buddhism, but whether it originated in folk knowledge or is specifically Buddhist in nature, I don’t know.

This is as versus the idea that some people are “evil” just because they feel like it; i.e., they were created that way by some other being, or made the choice not to act, “correctly” (assuming they know what, “correct,” is, or how or why it is, “correct,” or care about the rationale as to why it is, “correct”).

The idea, that is, is not that the human world is dysfunctional, its norms are dysfunctional, and this character is the way they are because they have intergenerational trauma, they’ve suffered, they don’t ultimately understand why, and they can’t cope with existing in this world in a harmonic and nondestructive way…but I’d say that the latter is closer to reality, on many fronts.

Of course, that expands the scope of culpability from the ultra-individualistic actor, to the entire society. And we’re trying to sell this story, to society.

I’ve never really gotten into a study of the dominant Western ideas of evil or the origin of evil; it turns me off, for multiple reasons. Prime among them is the fact that I can’t see the people who wrote the work ostensibly about studying or defining the, “evil,” as in any way, “good.” It’s more likely, in my experience, that they are scapegoating others, inventing absolute villains, and writing political propaganda; and there is the very real question of why I would want to waste any of my precious life, listening to that.

Remember, this is coming from someone who has repeatedly asked, “why not read,” any particular text to which I’ve had access. But crap in written form, is still crap (this is one of the rare times you’ll see me swear on this blog: there’s no way around it). Did it encourage death and harm to innocent people? Why are we still listening to it?

The upshot of the Buddhist idea of anatman, or as loosely and perhaps antagonistically translated, “no-soul”…(I’m not getting into Robert Spence Hardy [again] here, though I now realize I may have written about him in some Academic context, not on this blog)…is that it becomes far easier to retain compassion for people or characters one may not agree with. There is a cause (or multiple causes) and a path that brought them to whatever point at which, one may observe them. Not all of their circumstances are of their own choosing. This can lead an antagonistic character ultimately to become a tragic character.

I think it’s safe to say, however, that what I mean by, “soul,” may be qualitatively different from the idea of, “soul,” or atman, as negated in some thousands-of-years-old version of anatman. There may be no duality between “soul” and “no-soul”, as what we are talking about may be closer to the present-day idea of identity, especially the continuation of identity, between lives. Identity is not the same thing as essence. Identity can be fluid, even within one life.

I’ve written out a bunch of material on this, which is unpublished. I’m not sure I want to get into it again, right now. It takes a lot of effort to explain, and could use expansion/fleshing out on some (many) points (such as the actual Hindu idea[s?] of atman, which I have not been able yet to access [and truly understand]…though understanding may be much easier, given hyperlinking, than I’ve thought). Plus, I’m not even confident my thought is a truth, rather than intuition on the page.

But I could very well use it as an organizing principle for the story I’m hoping to work on, in the near future.

I began this post talking about entering into a lot of different teaching environments, which has the effect of deliciously diversifying what my brain is engaging with, on a day-to-day basis. That’s still going on, on top of researching and applying for jobs (and it is so rare to hear back from anyone). What I’m finding is that writing and posting, now takes me out of my new routine. The latter is still (probably) a good thing: as I mentioned recently, it helps when writing, to have something to write, about.

It also helps, though, to have a (constant) writing routine established. The closest thing I have to that right now, is the 15 minutes of free-writing which I’m attempting to accomplish every day, with mixed success (though I am writing, most days). The thing about free-writing — where you write anything that comes to mind, just so long as you keep writing — is that it will show you what you really want to write about. It will break down the psychic walls that are reinforced in Editing.

Even 15 minutes a day can be tough, when I’m working on other, simultaneous, written projects (this blog, my beadwork blog [and site], my current unpublished in-progress Fiction project — and until I realized I didn’t want to do it, a submission to an online Literary Magazine) and haven’t yet satisfactorily solved the problem of consistently tracking my time with them.

For that matter, it can be difficult to really intentionally reach into myself and find these characters and build a world and have them spill themselves to me. The “woo” factor is not absent, which — I gather — is why it is unusual to see anyone writing about a process like my own. But at least with blogging and free-writes, I am keeping some kind of a channel and skill-based practice going.

My major problem, at this point, is how to avoid throwing out my schedule for a day, and devoting it all to writing…let alone, devoting it all to writing on my blog! But this practice actually does get me to clarify (and process) my thoughts. Spirit willing, someday it will be as easy to delve into my own Fiction writing (and retain my emotional health at the same time), as it is to blog…
Time pressures: Discerning what I love

May 10th, 2023

It is…actually, amazing, how good it feels to get concrete helpful activities, done. I didn’t post Monday, largely because I was pushing myself to actually do something rather than write, again. After all, if you’re a Writer, it helps to have to have some experience to write about.

Unfortunately, I then spent most of Tuesday trying to put into words, what happened on Monday. It’s now Wednesday evening, in my part of the world.

Bead stringing

Monday night (two days ago, now), I finished M’s bracelet for Mother’s Day: which falls next Sunday, for us. I haven’t taken any pictures at this point, because I’m not sure I want the fame (or recognizability). But it was basically a simple strung piece in glass, gold-plate, and solid bronze. I got the bronze mostly because it is pretty, but I really don’t know how it is going to hold up without lacquer.

I used a very small bronze swivel lobster-claw clasp for the closure. It wasn’t until Monday night that I realized the clasp is amazingly difficult to handle, as it tends to flip away from its opposing ring instead of catch on it. I also had to cut my thumbnail to keep it from being bent back by the lever (my nails have been soft recently, much to my annoyance). Good to know: don’t do tiny swivel clasps, again!

I may end up restringing the bracelet just to replace the clasp, which in turn would make it more wearable; but it isn’t as though that’s difficult. I could otherwise add a drop of cement to the swivel portion, to see if it will stop the random rotation.

I also went through most of my bead storage and dusted things off, on Monday. I found a number of projects which are ready for me to jump back into them. Actually, an amazingly large number of beadwork projects, are ready for me to jump back into them. They’ve just been stashed and/or ignored, for weeks or months. Maybe years, on some of them.

They’re also all made with “patterns” I devised and am open to changing. Am I getting tired of developing them? I’m not entirely sure. What I do know is that if I’m not planning on selling any patterns or jewelry, my preoccupation over distinguishing the uniqueness of my work ceases to be important.

And maybe that’s the way it actually should be, at least in handcrafts.

日本語 (nihongo; Japanese Language)

I was able to get through more than an hour of Japanese lessons, on Monday. I didn’t do it Tuesday, instead opting to begin writing, here…although the language practice tends to be interesting and fun (which is the accepted definition of 面白い, a.k.a. omoshiroi). I’m wanting to put more time into the Japanese language study — particularly, in reading — but I’ll have to see what I have in books, that are at my level.

I have a lot of print materials intended to train a person in beginning Japanese. The issue until recently has been that I know Japanese is a tonal language, and so two words which are spelled the same in kana (syllabary) and romaji (Roman letters) but pronounced with different pitch inflections could mean totally different things. An example is 雨 (rain: ame) versus 飴 (candy: ame), the first of which starts with a higher pitch and then lowers, the second of which starts with a lower pitch and then rises.

Then there’s 水飴…mizuame, which sounds like it should relate to rain (水, pronounced mizu in this word, means “water”), but is actually a Japanese name for a sugar substitute made from starch (as it is clear like water, liquid [albeit viscous] and sweet). If Google is right, I’ve been pronouncing it correctly (though with an accent)…but the tonal inflection differs because it’s a compound word. The tone drops on -め, or, -me, even though that makes it sound like you’re saying, “water rain,” when you’re closer to saying, “millet jelly.”

I guess this is the kind of thing one just accepts.

For those who don’t know, kanji are symbols originating in China, which in written Japanese text stand either for a concept or for a sound. Kana represent sounds. There are two kinds of kana: hiragana and katakana. Hiragana are more rounded, much simpler than kanji, and represent native Japanese language. Katakana are more angular, also simpler than most kanji, and used somewhat like I’m using italics, here. Katakana most often are used to spell foreign words or emphasized words.

I’m still not totally comfortable with my Kanji Learner’s Dictionary, which requires one to look things up by number of strokes and radicals (the little modular parts which make up most kanji). That means, if I want to look it up, I need to know how to write it first: but I also have Kanji Learner’s Course here, along with other material on learning kanji.

I also have a relatively frequently used Furigana Japanese-English Dictionary, which allows me to look things up by sound. (Furigana are small kana next to a word containing kanji, denoting the kanji’s pronunciation, as the same character can be — and often is — read differently in different contexts.) In that dictionary, I have to go through the order of the Japanese syllabary to locate the entries. Not so difficult, when you remember the order of the syllabary; it still just takes a little effort for me, at this point.

Of course, that’s barely comparable to being able to highlight something and search for it on the Web…the only problem being that most pages returned when a kanji is searched, are likely to be written in kanji. Google’s Japanese-to-English translator is decent, though — as distinct from the Google Translate app.

Monday, I realized that I had entirely forgotten how to write せ by hand (stroke order matters a ton with this character, and I’d lost it). That’s now corrected and in my notes. It’s notable that せ and セ (both of which transliterate to the sound, “se”, in hiragana and katakana, respectively), are kana that I consistently forget. I’m not as forgetful with せ as with ケ (“ke” in katakana), but…well, there is a whole family of katakana which look like the latter. I could go on, but maybe I shouldn’t get into it, right now.

Python 3

I haven’t made tons of progress on Python, largely because I found that my primary learning platform was much deeper than I had known. On top of it, I’ve lost a lot of the practical skills I gained before I started working on these courses regularly. I may have begun this course, last year.

And, well: beyond that, I’m running across instances of words I have to look up, to understand what a question is asking me to accomplish. Function, parameter, pass, and variable are instances of these (I’m not sure if they hold the same definitions as in Math, for example), and they’ve just reached a critical mass where I’m not understanding questions. I did eventually find the documentation of what these words mean through Google on the same site as I was using, but it was in an entirely different class than expected. I don’t know why, unless the teaching platform is expecting people to work several courses on the same language, at once.

Not to mention that the Web interface for that site doesn’t operate well on my favorite device, which is frustrating.

The device I’m talking about is excellent for writing in different languages, and it’s excellent for Art. But the Developers of my Programming environment didn’t optimize that environment for functionality on my device. For that matter, Web browsing in general doesn’t function optimally on this device; and there are some sites which just won’t load on it because of safety issues. Which, now that I think of it, could be why the learning environment only sporadically works.

So I’m going to have to switch back to a PC in order to work on my Programming class without frustration…which, I really don’t like. It wouldn’t be an issue if the PC didn’t have to be constantly updated against zero-day threats and broken programs, and if I didn’t have to keep ignoring harassment from Microsoft to opt-in to whatever new thing they’ve made…but, it happens.

Priorities?

Last night, I wrote out a good amount that began to prepare me for the reality of having far less free time. Granted that I have not yet landed a job, but it’s only a matter of time until I do, and then until I actually need to be employed (and cooking, and driving). The past three years have generated an open schedule…but this isn’t an eternal vacation, or an eternal childhood.

Particularly, in looking forward to having my time cut down by at least a part-time job and my study — though that may be really, really great, depending on the job — I’m looking at what it is that I have tried and invested in, which I no longer want to continue to invest in.

For instance, I probably don’t want to get more quilting cotton, anytime soon.

This is now pressing, as one of the jobs I’ve applied to, I interviewed well for (if maybe a bit too openly, for)…and that is a 40-hour job; albeit a 40-hour job only for several months. I may not get it, but interviewing for it, and being actually hopeful about it, has made me consider what I do with my time.

40 hours a week isn’t a bad thing, if I actually like my work. But it’s a definite lifestyle change, and so I’ve been looking at what I would cut out, if I had far less free time. Particularly, if I had far less free time, and I wanted to continue my own development and education.

But maybe it’s better to consider what I do want to do, and look at it in that positive sense, rather than trying to discern what I should stop buying.

Writing is one of those things that I don’t think I can completely stop doing. At the most, this requires a device and an app; at the least, notebooks and a writing implement. Reading supports Writing, hugely; meaning, to set aside money for books. I haven’t been doing enough of it, in English — which (in addition to everything else) may relate to why I haven’t been writing Fiction in the last few weeks. (Reading Fiction helps model writing it.)

Learning Japanese language is also great, as is working to comprehend simple written Spanish language: Entiendo español suficiente que podría leer muchas cosas en línea. In other words, I have enough understanding of Spanish language, that I could read many things online.

I mean, all of that is actually fun, for me. I really enjoy being able to understand what I’m reading, beyond what I’ve been told is the translated meaning in English. For some reason, I find it fun to compose sentences (even if I’m not always clear if it should naturally be, “suficiente español,” si no “español suficiente” [“si no”: “if not”]). Then there are the artistic aspects of phrasing and word usage. I think written Translation would really be 面白い (omoshiroi: interesting and fun)!

Anyhow. There’s a lot I have going through my mind, that maybe is extraneous to the core of this post. I find that when I work on the same post over days, it becomes much easier to catch tangents and digressions.

The thing is, I have some pretty deep tangents and digressions where it comes to my life and the Arts and Crafts, that aren’t necessarily all that easy to edit out of my life. I could; but I question if that’s really something I want or need to do.

One of the biggest conflicts I have had recently is the amount I’ve spent on paintbrushes…which I’ve realized, after listing out the arts and crafts in which I’ve participated, in which I want to participate, and the number of different fluid media I’ve used, is probably OK. Especially when I consider the limitations of dry media, in comparison; which initially pushed me to brush markers, and then to brushes.

That actually does make me want to work with the inks and paints again.

And there is no way to make Art, other than making Art…or using AI (though it’s questionable if that could be called Art, as versus image remixing), now that I think of it. But using AI to generate an image instead of making the image oneself, entirely misses the point.

Yesterday, I received notice that I was not a finalist for working with the Japanese-American nonprofit to which I applied. That’s not unexpected; the same thing happened last year! They tend to have a lot of very qualified people (this time, it was over 200) competing for an extremely small number of slots. This probably results from the work being remote.

I still plan to read those four books I mentioned a little while back. And I have yet to hear from the people I last interviewed with. I should get back on the job search, in case I don’t get that full-time Term position (which is a very real possibility, even though I exceed the minimum qualifications).

If that happens, I have one or two classes in Writing that I’m looking at, and a number of job search boards I gleaned from LinkedIn which cater to creative professionals looking for gig work. I should also look at the sites and magazines I have which cater to Writers…there is no shortage of jobs for Writers, but the question is whether I’m a good fit for those jobs.

I doubt I’m going to be able to find that out, without experience.

I also need to actually put together a Portfolio section on this site…
Overworking

May 6th, 2023

Okay, everyone. I’ve been working my butt off on a post for four or so days out of the last week. I had hoped to have it finished last night, but it wasn’t to be. Today I looked at my file, and it is ten pages long, when printed. For the Web, it’s tl;dr. And I am about to go back to my schedule of working on small parts of large projects, every day: I cannot (or maybe should not) depend on my Writing to sustain my life.

I want to. I just think I cannot.

I’ve gone through the printed version with a highlighter, trying to pull out the substantive points I wanted to make, which tied in with Writing and Character Design (or as it may turn out, also Character Development) — which was the topic I initially intended to address.

What I wrote is not a blog post. It is a seed file for multiple posts, or a seed file for an extended Creative Nonfiction piece, or background work for the Fiction piece (finished length and form unknown) that I’m still trying to figure out, right now. Plus: the initial “thesis” with which I started out (that I’m working from the inside-out with character design, rather than outside-in), I found to be based on false assumptions.

I still have somatic feelings when Spirit, like a shapeshifter, takes on a certain form in me, and I transfer what that voice says, to the page. It’s really easy and natural for me. But to infer that it’s different when drawing — well, for one thing, I haven’t drawn enough to compare the processes. But when I draw characters, I do find myself asking who this character is, what their history is, how they got to this point, etc.

How one answers these questions is something of a mystery to me, right now.

My major issue with visual Character Design is that I have much poorer insight on how the process works, than I do with Writing. I have been Writing for so long (probably around two and a half decades), that I have a very good idea of some of the limitations and pitfalls of the form, and ways to manipulate the text to achieve effects that aren’t possible in reality.

I also know that not everything is pretty, in Writing…and even just thinking about transferring my stories to a visual form is difficult, because I have to think about drawing aspects of reality that I don’t like to acknowledge and don’t want to focus on. There are, simply, parts of life that will harm one if they take up too much space in one’s mind. Especially if one has a genetic tendency towards depression.

And so it’s…really difficult to think about. Even considering turning my eye for detail onto subjects like run-down inner-city corridors or homeless encampments, is painful. And yet, because my stories are not total fantasy, there is a good chance some of these neighborhoods could turn up in my stories. It’s somehow more approachable for me to write about these things, than it is to draw them.

It reminds me of what I know of the psychology of Japanese horror stories: much of the “horror” has to do with being forced to see what the society doesn’t want to acknowledge. It’s not necessarily scary, but it induces discomfort in a society where Art (e.g. in ukiyo-e prints) historically has had to do with idealization.

It definitely would be a good thing if people on the whole started paying attention to and assisting with solving these problems in a constructive manner, as turning a blind eye to them is the norm. As hard as it is for me to feel the discomfort of acknowledging my own vicarious pain, I’m not even one of the people who has to live in these areas under conditions of poverty or dispossession.

But I am aware of how close very many people are, to poverty. If I were not living with family, my life would be entirely different. If D had lost his employment while I was a child, my life would have been entirely different.

Homelessness is not necessarily the fault of homeless people, though they surely take the brunt of the blame. It’s a societal issue that causes the most vulnerable to fall through the cracks.

Similarly…it’s hard to think about the state of the “gay” community, even 50 years ago (though I should remind myself that 50 years is half a century). This history is part of my continuity…but it’s an extremely painful history. And it didn’t have to be that painful. It’s still painful, to be honest. Just nowhere near as bad as it was.

I wonder what the state of music would be now, had the mechanism of the spread of HIV/AIDS been caught and controlled, early on. But that’s water under the bridge. The powers that were, didn’t care.

Conflict and tension are key in Fiction. In Art, that’s not necessarily the case. There are issues that pop up at the interface of the two in Sequential Art, that I know I hadn’t necessarily realized. But I do think that, at least at this point in my life, I’m more of a Writer than an Artist. That’s mostly because my Writing skills vastly overshadow my imaginative skills in Art, and because the way I think about my creative expression, is based in a Writing paradigm.

I don’t know what that means for any Art practice I may have or pursue in the future…but maybe it should mean that I should do my Art for its own sake, and not as a vehicle for storytelling.

Languages

Bead stringing

日本語 (nihongo; Japanese Language)

Python 3

Priorities?