whew

So I woke up this morning at 7AMish because it was all hot in my room. Gross-sticky hot. I think it’s all these central heating things we’ve been dealing with. And the cedar.

Everyone in Austin is wildly allergic to cedar, or at least they have strong opinions about it. It crawls up the nose and makes you sing badly. It provokes reaction. It makes everyone crazy in some way.

Sure, I could blame it on that. Whatever. Really I’m just feeling random. When I do this I make lists. So here’s another one. UNLIKE yesterday’s which was a BITCHY list; and an excuse to freak out because I was afraid of something happening which I Cannot Control and which will Eventually Happen Anyway – THIS list will be fun. This is going to be a list in the spirit of what my lists are meant to BE!

And since people are reading this, I may put a list of QUESTIONS, and see if anyone will answer them. If NOBODY does, I may post them in other fun places until I get my WAY! Just beause I am curious about people.

RANDOM THINGS ABOUT MOI YOU MAY NOT HAVE KNOWN
1. I used to call myself moi from time to time, until someone (don’t remember who) told me it was pretentious, and that Miss Piggy did it. I think it was just a diary thing.
2. I’ve been keeping journals on the computer since 2001 other than blogs (and possibly longer on the 3.1 machine), and re-reading them is REALLY strange.
3. There is a really SAD looking apple on my coffee table in front of me which I will not throw away because I hate to waste food. It won’t get eaten. I will intend to cook this apple, but never will – and Mike will end up throwing it away behind my back.
4. I don’t like the scent of Patchouili and (alas!) I cannot spell it, so why did I get the soap and consent to keep it from the stocking stashes for Christmas?
5. I got the Beatles re-masters for my birthday, and they RULE!
6. If you let piano sightreading go, even for a MINUTE – and it’s not your thing – it will slip like bad elastic.
7. It doesn’t bother me about the religion of a famous writer whose stuff I like (as per a post I saw in one of my feeds) because I fully expect famous people to have religions that don’t fit in with my world view – plus I can’t really talk, can I?
8. The UT Longhorn football under the TV kind of annoys me, but I’m glad my husband found something he enjoys doing with the guys.
9. If I ever lost my hearing, I wouldn’t be like Beethoven, I’d just complain.
10. I love my UT LHB drumline jacket because of the way it fits and because it says my name on the left lapel (like the Pink Ladies or something )- but I wish it didn’t say “Longhorn Band Drum Line” or whatever on the back, because even though it looks cool and I can’t wear it anywhere. I was in the pit, for crying out loud!
11. I miss writing in CAPS and only going to numbers 11 or 13 because it doesn’t make sense. Because I’m too lazy to type in italics or whatever.

THREE QUESTIONS FOR YOU and ONLY THREE, for I AM LAZY
1. What’s the BEST salty snack in the whole WIDE world, EVER???
2. You’re on a deserted island. You brought something you’re REALLY thankful for, but you also FORGOT something you really need. What are these items?
3. Do you like perfume or smellynice stuff (yes, this works for boys too) and if so what is it / are they(these items)? Or is it a secret? Because if it is that’s totally okay. Some of my nice smelly stuff is secret too.

(You don’t have to answer these questions publicly. You can just answer them in your SOUL if you want. I’ll know they are there. This could, of course be preemtive because I don’t think that people are reading my blog … not really (parenthetically burried pity party) … but whatever) .

On paper …

I have never advertised any blog that I’ve ever written on.  I have one little signature which I put at the bottom of some emails.  Mostly I don’t like to blog because all my blogs are about not blogging.  Now, my diary entries are about not writing in my journal.  I don’t write in the morning now much either, which used to be my old routine.  I used to be able to count on at least all of the writing routines.  Now, rather than just avoiding a public that wasn’t really ever interested in me, and then avoiding my friends (who have too much to do to listen to my never-changing crapola); I am now also avoiding myself.

I think that “me” is sick of my self-loathing.  It is now causing me to avoid work, even.

It’s been quite a year.  Mostly, I have just sat around staring at people and feeling.  Having strange little thoughts and trying strange little things on for size.  And always, trying to figure out how I could write without nauseating myself with this whining.  I still have not been very johnny-on-the-spot about the writing.

I don’t know what to do about all of that.  

I am very afraid.  There have been some “hard knocks.”  That’s what my dad’s side of the family calls it … the “school of hard knocks.”  I feel bad even saying it, because I live the luscious Western life.  I am fed and clothed and am in the top eschelon of the top 1% or whatever.  I live in a city where bad things hardly ever happen.  I am safe from everyone but myself.  When I want to complain about the “horrors in my life,” it’s really not going to impress anyone that much.  But it’s very scary to me.

On paper, I do not look very brave.  There are a lot of things about my life that look very different on paper than they do in my head.

I’ve decided to be okay with the fact that I’m not perfect.  This hurts a lot.  I want to be perfect.  It feels like giving up.  I didn’t really want to do anything at all unless I had an unshakable plan.  This includes writing anywhere every day.  I thought “I’ll come back and do this-or-that when I am a whole person.”  So I have vegetated.  Waiting for perfection.  I was going to come out of nowhere, a complete being.  If I am ever complete, I will be too old to care.

So I will write some things down and stare at them until they make sense.  It’s important that I keep words spooling out onto the page and that they keep popping up onto a screen.  And that I keep organizing them somehow.  And that they are going through a filter, because I still have my secrets.  I used to not think I deserved to have little things that were just mine.  I am a married woman of 35 … who has blown all her chances at stuff.  I didn’t get to have any mystery.  But I don’t think that’s fair.  I’m sick of being told what to do.

I have rediscovered the simple pleasures of writing this kind of thing in a cafe where all the songs are just stunningly perfect.

Proactivity …

When I started the blog – it was sort of like when I started my lj. I promised myself here that I would do my morning pages before I did any blogging – in lj I’d promised myself that I’d write in my personal private journal. I feel like I have a split personality now (perhaps I do!), because I still have all four things. I actually have a couple of other things that I do that are “writing-type-things” as well.

I’ve always has trouble deciding – ‘musician’ or ‘writer.’ This is actually a struggle that has taken up a lot of valuable career time that could have been spent working. I’m happy to be blogging about this in this blog – because whenever I talked about this in my lj I feel as though I used to whine a lot about it. This could be because I was still in my church. I felt a lot of pressure to be one thing or the other, to be something else, or to be nothing at all. There were questions over the type of writing I would be allowed to do. I couldn’t write anything that was too frank, that spoke poorly of my religion or made it look bad – or revealed it’s less than savory parts … I couldn’t write anything “rated R” (or really even PG / PG-13). I eventually decided on “sci-fi” because you could make up your own cuss words. That slowed me down as well – because I’m a perfectionist – and not a scientist. I’ve always described the difference between science fiction and fantasy novels as a question of dragons. In sci-fi the dragon has to be aerodynamically plausible. You have to explain both how he flies, how his species came to be in the evolution of things, how his planet came to exist, how he in particular came to be and why he-in-particular is so special, and how he co-exists and communicates with his humans and/or other natural/supernatural creatures (which would also have to be scientifically plausible). It all has to have an explanation.

In fantasy, a fat dragon can fly with tiny wings and cast random spells. The science is superfluous. That’s not the point of the story. Although I think this is changing and there is really much cross-over. A fantasy enthusiast might be really offended at this and feel like it’s a blase toss off. But there I go – apologizing to a non-existent audience (although I’ve gotten:

52 HITS!)

I don’t know what that means though. Maybe it has something to do with spam. I don’t know what constitutes a legitimate reader of one’s blog, so I haven’t gotten too excited. I don’t know when you know. I also haven’t advertised yet. I’ve also viewed my own blog without logging in, I don’t know how many times. I’m sure that counts.

I’m also glad to be doing this at this physical place. I never seem to have this identity crisis here. I’m a musician, I’m a writer. It’s the same thing. I wanted to be a writer when I was young (jr. high … high school) – I just “fell into” being a musician because everyone else in my social group was writing songs (that sounds really pathetic, doesn’t it?). But at this particular cafe, neat things are always happening – like today I walk in and it’s fresh and breezy and the barristas are threatening each other with freindly bodily harm. I can’t even review Garden District (this is their myspace page) now … because it would be biased.

But I walked out onto the porch and I heard ‘Closer to Fine‘ and I was really happy to be out in the sun on the porch. It made me think I could actually pull this off … all these plans that I can’t articulate … all these things … I can do it without anyone’s help …

Of course, I’ll need help, eventually. But sometimes you feel like you are out there all alone. And I’ve got quite a bit to knit together before I’ve got anything cohesive to put up. What have I got. Fifty songs (only half of which I’d record) and 40-50 MB of writings (not all of which are good or finished … much of which is poetry and stuff). Only one of those 25 is on myspace and it’s not the one that comes up … so it’s not a good (or mastered!) recording. But I need relationships with people to record, as I have no soundproofing.

I’m trying to work through these problems logically. I’m trying to work through the part of me that feels like I’m “bitching to the internet.” I’m trying to be a Problem Solver.

So I’m off to Go Solve Problems.