Tricky Pixie has a new album out.  After listening to it four times through (with extra iterations of The Mushroom Song and Water’s In The Hold, because, damn!), I have purchased the download.

Go.  Listen.  Fall in love.  Buy it, listen to it, sing it, pimp it.  You need this.

You do.

Work has been extravagantly furnished with opportunities to excel. That’s a positive spin on “too much to do and no way in hell will it all get done.” I have been failing, daily, to manage the production workload against the quote workload against the support workload against the helping-coworkers workload against taking a deep and shuddering breath.

And, of course, I’ve been house-hunting at the same time, and (this week) signing leases and moving at the same time, which precludes working late to catch up on some of the shortfall. The result is a world of people who want things from me, who aren’t getting what they want, aren’t getting what they get in a timely fashion, and who aren’t getting a chance to believe that things will improve any time soon. This isn’t my fault; we’ve had half our workforce shipped to other departments, and management isn’t fixing it anytime soon. It is, however, my responsibility.

Last Friday that thought gave me pause. I don’t have the power to change the situation, so I cannot be saddled with the responsibility, only the blame. I didn’t provoke the situation, so I cannot be saddled with the responsibility, only the blame. Blame is not something that one has to accept, so I chose not to. I wrote out my workload, and the algorithm that I use to determine what to do next, and showed concisely that, if I continued, the backlog and number of irritated customers would increase. I ended with a statement that I needed managerial guidance on how to change my algorithm to keep within the company’s best interest.

I got back a reply that provided that guidance, give or take. It’s a mistake. But. It isn’t my mistake. It’s how my leader is directing me. I shoved off several hours of work a day to poor souls who are already foundering, and did so with a clear conscience; it isn’t in my ability to manage the managers from below, even for the benefit of the Many.

It’s been a better week. I no longer wake in the wee hours dreading thinking about the next day.

I’m still not writing, I’m still not doing many things I’d like to do. I believe that, while moving and working full time, those are reasonable lacks, but they were lacking before we were moving. I think, I think, I think, that I have been living my entire life the way I had been working up until last week; I have my own load of work to do, and then see that things aren’t being done, and that people working next to me in my life have needs that they can’t meet, and I add all of that to what is rightfully my own load.

Effectively carrying other people’s load, as well.

And falling further behind, day by day, on my own life. Further behind on writing. On getting enough sleep. On being happy.

*looks impressed* This analogy thing, it’s pretty useful stuff.

I am, of course, my own Manager in my life, so I need to write me a nice email asking for guidance in prioritizing my life. I think it will need to include “sometimes do things even when those around you don’t want to, or are tired, or have conflicting needs.” Historically, I’m not good at that, but I have just had a demonstration that the results are good, and that I will be happier afterwards.

And we’ll see.

For a change, this is short.

Like this:  without ever having it spelled out in so many words, I was brought up to believe that doing good things was a Good Thing.  I extrapolated from this in the simplistic sophistication that children bring to philosophy; if I do good things, I’m good.  If I do bad things, I’m bad.  If I fail to do good things, which am I?  At best neutral, at worst bad, probably not good, because we’ve defined good as “having done good things.”

Y’okay.  Pretty simplistic, and failing to take other things into account, like ability, cost, circumstance, responsibility, responsibility to be happy and fulfilled…simple.  For a kid, it worked.  If it works, I don’t fix it.  And, being me, I took things to their extremes.  After all, if it is good to do Good Things, it will be better to do more Good Things…and if I don’t do Good Things, I won’t be a good person.

Hellooooo John Calvin.  I had, by accident, fallen into the premise of Virtue by Works, with the implied corollary that if I fail to provide Works, I fail to have Virtue.  No Salvation, to Worth, no Love.  No worth or love, either.  Implied in this is the concept of “total depravity”, which isn’t nearly the fun the name indicates.  Basically, it is the notion that we are inherently sinful and without value unless we do Works.

1. I am a valuable person only if I am useful to others
2. I am only loveable if I provide value to others
3. I have no inherent worth, only derived worth
4. I am inherently corrupt (well, that’s true, but I work at it, too) and worthless and unloveable

Wow.  I’m pretty sure that most of that is either wrong or is based on false assumptions.  #1 is false; I can have value to me without being useful to anyone else.  I can have value because they like me and feel better when I’m around.  #2 presumes that my being loved is in my control.  It isn’t.  People love who they love.  Given time and diligent effort I might convince someone to stop loving me, but it would be just that; convincing.  And, if they don’t love me, I can’t get them to do so by Works.  #3, I suppose, is just a restatement of #1.

#4 is what I say to myself when I am overburdened and depressed thereby.  I’m not accomplishing all that is set before me, therefore I am useless.

Which means that, if I am burdened to the point of failure at work, I determine that, by my failure, I am useless.

If I am fraught and tired and depressed because I am stupid and think I’m useless because of work, and I don’t write, I am further useless.  Not because I didn’t do something I enjoy doing, but because I didn’t Accomplish Things.

I am determining my happiness by my value to other people. No wonder I frequently fall short on my own best interests; they aren’t even on the list, except that they matter to those who love me.

Cotton Mather, you were a horse’s ass.  I can tell by your works.

The artist is, frenzied, pacing back and forth.  Piles of torn hair litter the floor, and there is a look to his eye that would send sane men skittering back.  A bit of white froth is at his lip.

I seem to be stressed.

There’s reason, of course — everyone has reason for what they do, however unreasonable it might be.  Mine are, generally, internally coherent.  That’s not happenstance.  I spend a major portion of my energy keeping an analytical eye on myself, checking things over and making certain I’ve not skipped my tracks.

I spend, in fact, what the philosophers call a buttload of time navel-gazing.

And there, the rub.

Backing up a bit:  I seem to be stressed.  There are many changes in my life just now.  We are about to move, about to take on roommates, about to make add some changes to how we treat money, budgetary changes, income changes.  There have been changes thrust upon us; both our workplaces have experienced upheaval.
Both of us are carrying greater load at work than we can manage, and more is coming.

That’s a lot of change.  Change — good or bad — produces stress.

Stress produces reaction.  Reaction, in me, produces spot-checks on my behaviors and thoughts.  The spot-checks produce careful analysis, which, in the end, will produce a shift in paradigm and my behaviors.

Again, I do this pretty much all the time.  I’m wrought, I look myself over, consider if my internal landscape needs modifying, and then do so.  A habit, it seems to me, that will continue to refine my decisions and behaviors, leading eventually to Buddha.

Part of the process, for me, is to challenge the base assumptions for fault.  This morning I was raking through the previous day, looking for ways to improve things.  I noted that I was doing so, and noted that, since there have been stressors, I was doing this rather more than usual, there being more opportunity and perceived need.

But I was in self-analysis and challenge-the-base-premise mode, so I pursued the thought.

Change begets stress, stress begets behaviors and emotions, which beget spot-checking which begets personal change –

–which begets stress, stress begets –

–

– oh, hell.  The more that happens, the more I am unbalanced, the more I think, the more happens.  I am perpetual energy.

My CBT is a mental disorder.

Woodwork is moving in tiny bursts, as I come to repeated dead stops to create jigs to perform the next task.  Writing is moving in tiny bursts, as I drag myself to the keyboard once a fortnight for a half hour, 2/3 of which I permit to be taken by minor emergencies.  Work is a full day ahead of deadlines than it was last week.

I am utterly failing to answer emails.  I am losing contact with most of the world as I try to juggle events.

This balance and perspective thing is difficult.

But.  Progress.  However hard to detect.

This is what it takes for Catie (C.E. Murphy, world-famous author and graphic novelist) to be pleased with herself.  I feel, in her shoes, I would be pleased as well.  And my feet would hurt, ’cause, well, big feet compared to Catie’s.

I suspect I don’t need that intensity of accomplishment to be pleased…and, with the recurring fecal storms that eat my brain, I think it might be productive for me to find out — if not where the line of please/displeased is exactly — what zipcode it has on its mailing address.

‘Course, the yardstick might be different from day to day, but that doesn’t make the question without merit.

I have a customer.  He wanted me to hold his hand while he tried some fairly complex SQL code on his own.  When it became evident that he was never going to take the time to learn the db he was taking the data from (and was thereby failing), I told him I could do the work myself as a billable service or he could be on his own.

He chose to accept my work as a billable service.  Fine.

It has since become clear that, if he knows what he wants, he doesn’t wish to tell me.  I have finally resorted to, over and over, asking him to please give me about three mocked-up records from his hypothetical output to demonstrate what he is looking for.  In answer to this (three times so far today) he keeps sending me the code he was working with when he admitted that he didn’t know what he was doing.

How can he possibly believe that offering me code that DOESN’T DO WHAT HE WANTS IT TO DO is going to help me produce code that does?

I think he doesn’t know what he wants, and is afraid to admit it.  I can’t explain his behavior any other way.

Rose City Romance Writers, of whom I am a member, met yesterday, and I was in attendance.  This was my second meeting.

My initial goal in joining RCRW was twofold; to do something that, monthly, would remind me that I have mentioned from time to time that I want to write professionally, and to get Lisa off my back follow Lisa’s suggestion because it was good and wise and I agreed with it.  In fact, Lisa was right, and I’ve considered this at some length.

Which, for a change, I won’t recount here.  It has to do with, where you put your time and your money, there, too, will go your life, for if you don’t follow the metrics of your life you suggest by implication that you have squandered them.  Fair enough, and borne out by my experience; since last meeting I’ve been moving back toward the writing.  Good.

At the meetings there is opportunity to declare goals.  To do this, one writes down a measurable goal and throws the script, with a dollar, into the pot.  Next meeting the goals will be assessed; those successfully met will be entered as tickets in a drawing, and the money from all the goals is won by one of those who met theirs.

The chance to win is as nothing to me; I have little belief in luck, for all that I have the scintillating, tripped-on-winning-lottery-ticket sort.  The opportunity to fail means something, though.  ”Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes” — that’s about right, and if the stakes aren’t mortal, at least there are stakes.  I like having stakes, however slim, in games I play.  And there’s the stuff I mentioned about money, above.  Thus, this meeting, I entered three goals:

• I will write each Sunday (and perhaps other days, but at least then) between now and next meeting
• I will complete my (first draft of) Christmas short story by next meeting
• I will write a flash fiction (probably with Lisa) and submit it professionally by next meeting

My money was tendered, and I am laid bare to the potential of a soul-rending failure; my goals unmet, my declaration of accomplishment shown to be so much air, and three dollars gone from my pocket — or success, wild success, such as has never been known by man nor god.

Well then.  Off to the mills for me.  I’ve coffee at elbow, detective-story jazz on Pandora, and my chores largely done for the day.  I believe it’s time for the Toughest Christmas Elf to get roughed up by some shady characters.

ETA:  Wrote.

Last night I hennah’ed my darlin’s head.  She suggested gloves, but I was all manly and stuff.  Besides, the gloves were at the other end of the house, and who wants to walk that far to keep his hands clean?  It’s just skin.  It’ll wash.

Heh.

45 minutes later her hair was covered in the slop, and so were my hands.  Washing it off, I found that I had a lovely burnt orange complexion on my hands.  And fingernails.

And it doesn’t come off.  Not with soap, nor salt scrubs, nor anything.  I look like my mother was frightened by a yam when she was carrying me.

Far be it from me to fail to admit when my lovely is right.  I just sent her:

• Oomp loompa doompadah doo
• I wouldn’t be orange if I’d listened to you
• Oompa loompa doompadah dee
• My hands look like yams for the whole world to see
• I put a henna mudslide on the head of my love
• Refusing to consider wearing protective gloves
• How bad can it get? is what I asked of you
• Then stuck my hands in the staining green goo!
• Oomp loompa doompadah doh
• You have the chance to say “I told you so!”
• You knew I’d turn a bright orange hue
• Like an Oompa loompa doompadah do!

Most nights my brain has gone away from me, and so writing doesn’t happen.  While that’s true, it’s still nice to do something that makes me feel I spent my life doing more than watching, slack-jawed and glassy-eyed, reruns of Friends.  Lately, I’ve been accomplishing that with a bandsaw.

More on this later.

Word wars with Lisa and the War Room at the same time; 900 words that I didn’t have before, and moving along well in my short story.  I’m having a very easy time writing a detective; I’ll have to try another one of these when this one is done.

One without a Christmas elf as the detective.  That part is throwing me a bit.

Slept in.  Ate.  Avoided doing anything useful.  Fiddled with fitting together some woodwork I’m playing with.  Finally sat down to write, failed, waited, still didn’t write anything, logged onto the Word War and, with others doing just exactly the same thing, wrote passably for a half hour.

I think that I’ve left myself a place to pick up again.

Writing for the first time in, I believe, ever.  My darlin’ told me she’d build breakfast if, in return, I sat down with my cup of coffee and tapped out words.  How could I refuse an offer like that?  Besides, I was fresh from the RCRW meeting, and was suitably inspired with “huh, people write stories.  I remember liking that.”

I immediately began to slump at the notion of slogging away at Self Sacrifice some more.  Dutydutyduty called, and I wanted to let it go to voicemail.  Writing wasn’t a joy, wasn’t fun, wasn’t anything but heavy and gray and unlusterful.  Clearly it was time to contact the Muse and order up a fresh batch of joie de’ecrit.

So this morning I’m working up Hardboiled Christmas Candy (working title), a cross between The Maltese Falcon and Rudolph The Rednosed-Reindeer.  How can I not have fun with that?

scurries off for more fun with that

Me:  Let’s go to bed.

Shannon:  Good plan.  You kept me up way too late last night.

M:  I kept you – you kept me.

S:  How did I keep you up too late, Mr. Pokey-fingers?  I was rolled over and going to sleep.

M:  Well, yes.  Obviously.  You know what that does to me.

S:  <stunned look>

M:  I mean, I’m only human, and if you’re going to lie there and do nothing, quietly going to sleep, what do you expect is going to happen?

S:  Are you ever aware of the noises that come out of your face?  When your mouth is open, do your ears close, or do they just not process?  I’m only asking because I’m curious.

This should probably be three posts, but I’m too tired of dealing with it to break it out.  I may or may not edit it into decent shape — some day.  This is the culmination of three months’ events, so just try to suss it out or go read Girl Genius or something.

We have endured what should be the last in-home personal confrontation without referees with Larry’s children.  I feel as if I have laid something heavy down.  Shannon and I are alternately possessed of high vigor and utter lack.

This has not been a charming several months for us.  It ended well, with an optimistic sort of business that I’ll illuminate later.

Or something.  Fill in your own title.

Larry died.  

My stepfather finished what he was doing and is dead.

The things I have to say are inflammatory in some circles.  So I’ll just not, for right now.  

“I heard a banshee last night. I wonder if there’s any connection?”

“Change,” Luke said. “They mean things are changing and they wail for what’s being lost.”

“Death. They mean death, don’t they?”

“Not always. Sometimes they just show up at turning points for dramatic effect.”

–Roger Zelazny, Sign of Chaos

My stepfather is in his last hours.  It’s for the best, and it’s sad, and it’s sad that it’s for the best.  And there’s a horde of regret that I have on his behalf, partly because he hasn’t the facility to have it himself any more, partly because he never did have the judgement to do so.

Work has seen personnel fluctuations that have a significant impact on my life.  The intensity has risen to a painful height, but the results should be a more pleasant and sustainable work place.

Illness has moved into the household and taken up rooms with the obvious intent to stay a while.  We are improving, but it’s slow.

I am about two weeks of Fast Drafting to the end of my first draft; I have been for three weeks, but haven’t the energy to take it up.  I carry Jarvis everywhere in hopes that I’ll come to it.  So far I can barely read for entertainment, let alone write.

I have taken up new projects that have every prospect of opening up new opportunities and changing our lives for the better, leaving more time to write and rest and be happy.  It isn’t clear where the time or energy will come from to pursue these projects, but the groundwork is laid for them.

Slow down, Kali Ma; the banshees can’t keep time when you dance this fast.

In which Our Hero finds he is not above petty tit-for-tat behaviors, and in which a stranger passive-aggressively masturbates at him.

This week I managed to put in 280 minutes.  Bafflingly, I have written fewer words.  I cannot account for this.  I imagine that there is something here about the curvature of the planet, or karma.  Maybe the fey took a hand.

Or, y’know, it could be more of that actions-consequences thing I keep hearing about.  Sounds like magic to me, but who can say?

Whatever, I only averaged 1,700 words/hr this week.  Only.  I think speed is not going to be my problem.  Duration, that’s my problem, and frequency.  I get those in line, and I’ll give Catie a run for her money.

I also note here that I seem to creep along when I count words, but I do damned well when I count minutes spent writing — and count the words as an interesting affiliated datum.

I have no idea what I would think of the Fast Draft method if I had the time to put into it daily, but I think the world of what I’ve been doing the past two weeks.  I think I’ll continue.  I may or may not keep posting my writing metrics here; it seems that would get fairly tedious to the casual viewer fairly quickly.

06:35 — Max 25 minutes

05:30 — Ringler’s Annex 35 minutes

Sat upstairs at the Annex this time.  I didn’t feel nearly so picturesque, but I could see where I put my beer.  Sometimes, things balance.

This has been very frustrating.  Nothing catastrophic, but it’s been very difficult to get to the keyboard.  However:

12:10 — Sun room @ Work 30 minutes

Ohgawd, so much better.  My diction was backing up and my imagery was compacted.

Almost.  Got ten minutes in, but today is a wash.

I’ve knocked out nearly 20,000 words in less than two weeks.  I am pleased.  Addtionally, I’ve put about 3,000 of journal posts.  Not bad for a two week stint.  I appear to have broken free the part of my brain that is happy to just sit and yammer, and that assumes that, if I say enough things, I’ll say something worth saying.   Well and, as the poet has said, good.

I’ve also broken free some part of me that is now aching in my hands and wrists.  

Until now the only repetitive stress injury I’ve had was a blister.  This sort of sucks.  It’s not debilitating, and I won’t let it be, but it’s an irritant.  Now I don’t just sit down and type, nor do I stop at having done so, leaping up and proudly announcing that today, again, I am a writer.

No, now I warm up.  Now I stretch out and cool down.  My theory is that, essentially, RSS is an athelete’s pain, and I’m treating it that way.  Warm up the muscles, get the blood flowing and the knots all limbered, use them, then gently bring them back down.  In between times, a bit of strength training to make it harder to get hurt again.

I’m still waiting for the endorphin rush.  Maybe this week.

So now I carry Jarvis around everywhere and carry a rubber ball, as well.  Gentle compressions on the thing beforehand constitute a warm up, and likewise a cool down.  I add some variety and use the supporting muscle groups by manipulating the ball as well as squeezing it.  

What else could that title be intending?  Jeez, you people are odd. 

Okay.  Warmed up.  Off to write.

Day 13 included no writing at all.  There was no good reason for this, but I’m failing to find any guilt I can actually get behind and push.  I think Day 13 is Sunday, and I’ll just presume that sometimes a day will slip away and leave no wrack behind.

Wrackless, then, go I.

5:37 — Ringler’s Annex, in the basement 32 minutes

6:15 — Max 23 minutes

Ringler’s Annex — very unlike me.  Not that being here (here being the refurbished basement of a tiny corner bar; glossy finished wood behind walls of windows above, but exposed concrete walls down here, pillars holding the floor overhead, celtic knotwork and whimsical elves painted in subdued gray on the walls, floor, ceiling, and mosaic of broken tile from more respectable construction moving in organic curves over some of the corners and pilasters) is unlike me, but to be here, alone, on a work night, when I could (and my training screams should) be home with my darlin’ — that’s unlike me.

But here I am, thanks entirely to my darlin’, who suggested that I was sot in my ways and could use a break.  ”Stop,” she said.  ”Replenish the spirit while keeping that increasing liver at bay.  Stay the flood of beer that is covering the countryside, and save us all.  And you might write a bit while you’re about it, and do it in a more pleasant place than you’ve been doing.”

So here I lurk, away from the upwardly mobile crowd sitting on their downward dropping backsides upward of me.  It may say something about my character that, with all of PDX to sit and drink and write in, I chose a cave.  This basement is lit with a dozen 25 watt bulbs in age-yellowed fixtures, with table candles to augment.  But for the barkeep, I’m alone, and in the back, around the corner and under the staircase.  My hat is pulled low over my forehead to keep me from idly watching the empty room, and there’s a beer at my elbow for pensively sipping while I consider what happens next in my novel.

Which takes me to it.  Go, you lot, back to your terrain haunts, and leave the shadows to me.

Oh — and Shannon, you are an excellent mate and I love you.

5:20 — Max 25 minutes

Oh — !

There’s a story I started some time ago that involves people breaking promises to voodoo loa, and the story ends badly (as it must) for the people, because you just don’t renege on deals with supernatural entities; they’ve collections departments that are uniformly more horrific than the IRS with PMS.

But the story didn’t really go, and got trunked informally.  I didn’t know why.  I mean, the people were showing during the story that they were going to deserve what they get, and I felt the horrific thing that they get was appropriate and unexpected.  But it didn’t go, so it went.

I just realized, while thinking about other things entirely (a quote by Neil Gaiman about bird’s eggs, and why data combined cannot be uncombined, and why people want things that they won’t want to pay for) when it occurred to me what was wrong with the story.  The collections department has to have a series of requests, then dunning letters, then threats of strong legal action, then the warning shot, and then the unexpected horrific thing.  You can’t just jump to garnished wages, you have to get there with a feeling that it has been a long time coming and there was a point, somewhere, when it could have been averted but everyone was too foolish to notice, and now things have become inevitable and Just Desserts.

– oh!

I’ve got to hurry through the rest of my novel draft so I can untrunk the short story, go through a draft of that, and move on with editing the novel.  Or perhaps edit then untrunk.  But the story is back on.

7:32 — Cooper’s Coffee 19 minutes

5:46 — Max 30 minutes

I was astonished to have a seat on the Max, but apparently they’re commonplace if one takes a train half an hour later than I’d normally.  I wouldn’t know this, but at the Max station, on a public street in the heart of downtown and next to the door to Borders, a man had forced a woman into a corner between two buildings and was bellowing profanity into her face, slamming his body into hers to bounce her off the wall, and waving his balled fists in her face and over her head.  She was screaming and crying and trying to get away.

The commuters split themselves into groups; those who looked away, those who watched with interest, and those who went up the block so as to have space between themselves and the spectacle.  The man was about my size, and I considered directly intervening, but decided it would be a bad idea.  The woman was being terrorized but not hurt, and I would lose any fight with the man unless I ditched coat, hat, and bag before engaging.  Instead, I called 911, stepped in close and announced to the man “911″, and stepped back (thinking he’d have to step toward me to hit me, and that would let the woman free).

He must have understood me; he started berating her because now people were calling the cops.  

After a time he decided to let her loose.  The tone of the thing seemed not to be domestic, but business, somehow.  He was pushing a bicycle when he left, so I can’t see him as her pimp.  Drug supplier?  Or customer?  No way to tell, now.

I don’t feel particularly noble.  I was supposed to set my jaw, lose my computer and a tooth or so, and let her get away in the fracas.  I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a good choice, but I still feel lessened somewhat for not having sacrificed and pummelled.

Ah, manhood, how are you so very different from vanity?

In my defense, I believe that if he had done something more than bellow I would have risked life, limb, and Jarvis.  I feel that the woman and I are both pleased that he wasn’t moved to go that far, each for our own reasons.  The police never did show up, although a car with lights and sirens blaring did show up a block away, where they tarried and asked onlookers for information.  I could see them, just not get their attention from where I was.