I’ve spent a few years cleaning up my act.  I’ve done a good enough job that, in general, I find talking about my life to be sort of dull.  Excellent.  Additionally, I’ve gotten my act together enough that I have a sufficient living and a house with a shop and, eventually, gardens and orchards and things.

Lovely.  Good.

Somehow, though, in the span of about six weeks, I am fraught with drama again.  I didn’t want it.  I don’t want it.  I don’t believe that emotional turmoil improves life, nor is necessary.

But here it is.

I’m still parsing which bits I can speak of publicly without causing myself problems, so I’m afraid that’s about what I’ve got.

At the behest of Aberdeen:

http://www.brokenpatternltd.tumblr.com

That’s pretty much it.  After a decade of credit rehabilitation, we have purchased and are living in a house.

… and for reasons I can’t explain (cause I don’t know) I am less frightened of repercussions for displaying my life and my feelings.

I have been sent away to Seattle, bereft of home, hearth, an my honey.  Life is empty, life is drear.  I took part in the computer geek activities that took the first portion of the day, and had a couple hours to kill.  Nothing called to me, nothing sang my name soft and low, so I walked through the cold rains where none knew me and all eyes were filled with suspicion as I passed.  I went down and north, then down and south, and north again.

Until I came to Beecher’s Handmade Cheese.

I had no need of cheese, but the glamorous and brilliant-edged Libby, daughter of my soul, once worked there, building her mighty cheese-making arms and honing her magnificent tourist-cutting grin (both thumbs up, of course).  I had my own grin, and the tourists were wary of me.  I walked around the place, viewing it from all angles, considering the ways of it, how it changed the environment by laying as it did.  I thought of cheese that came my way, and stories of the thankless anguish of a cheesemaker’s life, and how things taste better with a bit of good cheese sprinkled over — or how life is better with a bit of a cheesemaker in it.

I pressed my hands and face to the window, hoping that one of the captive cheesemakers within would display their mighty thews or favor me with a well-cheddared grin, but was disappointed and had to make do with being chased off by the proprieter.

Thanks, Libby — I needed the grin.  How you did that from so far away is beyond me.

If one is being channeled into decisions or values that one doesn’t agree with, that is a form of oppression. If one gives in to this, one’s natural reactions will generally be rage or identification with the oppressor — adopting the oppressor’s values and expectations. Once one is identifying with the oppressor, one’s inner conflict is manifest as dissatisfaction with one’s own qualities, that one is falling short so badly.

…and, if one is constantly urged to not exhibit anger, this is an attempt of the oppressor to make the decision between rage/identification.

Oh.

No lengthy analysis. And no single cause. But.

I am enjoying the opportunities afforded me by a host of others who want things of my behavior. They either want me to do things — “because you want to, not because I tell you to” — or to refrain from doing things — because that’s how I ought to act (if I had their values, not my own).

Then the punishment free and frank exchanges of ideas begins, because I am an utter failure at being what most people want me to be, or even understand me to be.

I’m not entirely certain what, if anything, is appropriate to do in these cases. On the one hand, it seems self-annihilating to feel one set of things and act in an entirely different way based on the expectations or demands of others. On the other, that’s what keeps me from being arrested in civilized society. I imagine there’s some sort of continuum rather than polar states, but I confess that the discrimination to see the gradients eludes me.

I will note here that my expectations of others is that they will behave as they see they ought, and that they will act in their own interests where they can — whether that benefits me or not. My expectations are generally met, and that strikes me as appropriate; I don’t believe that others would benefit from living their lives to suit me (however much they would benefit from my superior judgement).

I’m also not entirely certain how far is appropriate to go to avoid the punis– the exchange of ideas. Obviously I don’t need to welcome them, but do I need to permit the venting? Do I run and hide? Strike back? That last doesn’t suit me; I don’t, in general, see much point to angry confrontation.

Hrmph.

I had no idea that this was frightening to me, but I slumped with relief of tension when I read comments on Sight Unseen (published about ten days ago on Pseudopod).

Given that this is obviously masterbatory, I’ll toss off behind the cut.

– is available to your willing ear as Pseudopod, the Sound of Horror

So.  I am become illuminated by the processes of stress.  Briefly, as I’ve another meeting to attend:

Stress begets angst.
Angst acts as an obstacle in the path of correct action.
Suppress the angst by role-playing that it doesn’t exist.
Suppression of emotional response begets stress.
With the suppression of the angst, it is possible to dispassionately act on the initial stress.
The initial stress gone, the angst dissipates.

The stress born of the suppression remains, but no longer has cause with the initial stress gone, the angst born of it gone, and so the suppression no longer necessary.
This stress begets angst.
Suppress the angst… producing tertiary angst.
And fail to act on the secondary stress, as there is no longer a cause for it.
Keep the initial suppression angst.
Keep the secondary suppression angst.
Experience stress as a result.

Cycle until explosive decompression resets the internal pressures.

There may be some sort of a problem with this practice.  I believe that I’ll be working on a new syllogism.

When I’m feeling pleasant, all things in order and making progress in the world, I tend to hum. After a bit, left to my own devices, that will progress to a sort of un-hip scat, and eventually I can be expected to burst out in a line or two of song. It’s anyone’s guess what the song might be — I’ve never known why I pick the bits I pick.

Today is going well. I hummed. Left alone and continuing to thrive, there was a small field of “dah-doo-wah” around me. And then,

Does your girlfriend got the butt? Tell her to shake it, shake it –

– in my best lounge singer voice.

At work.

Er. I’ll just go back to humming for a bit, I think.

So. Without anything in the way of explanation, here are some webutiae of the spiritual significance of bats.

From Phylameana:

The bat totem can trigger change or transformation. Its visit can be a warning that change will soon occur and not to be afraid. Sometimes the bat is a symbol for facing ones fears. It can also indicate a time of an awakening because the bat, a nocturnal mammal, awakens in the dark. Its presence can illuminate dark shadows. It can also be a sign of opportunity.

…and from StarStuffs….

Initiation, death-rebirth, changes are taking place which are blessings, facing facts in ones life, fears are always beneficial, trust instincts. Bat tells us it the end one phase of life and the beginning of another. Bat can show how to navigate in the dark and unknown. Soon you will see the world with a new perspective, teaches sensitivity to vibrations around you, navigation, introspection and demonstrates ability of observation and power of meditation and solitude along with ability of working in groups when necessary. Bat shows how to make those important transitions.

…and Shamanic Journeying….

Bat’s wisdom includes shamanic death and rebirth, initiation, viewing past lives, pollination of new ideas, transition, understanding grief, the use of vibrational sound, camouflage, invisibility, ability to observe unseen, secrets. [...] Bats help us to release fear and patterns which no longer fits within our pattern of growth.

Bat flying into your life signifies that transformation of the ego self is about to occur, the end of a way of life and the start of another. This transition can be very frightening for many, even just to think about. But you will not grow spiritually until you let go these old parts of you that are NOT NEEDED. Facing the darkness before you will help you find the light in rebirth. The bat gives you the wisdom required to make the appropriate changes for the birthing of your new identity.

If this is your power animal, you would benefit from all types of yogic practices, especially those to do with awakening the kundalini. [...]

Sunday, I attended the Rite to Write workshop by the glamorous, clever, and VERY energizing Jen Violi. It’s difficult to say whether the workshop was healing using writing or writing using healing…either way, it would have likely been beyond me a year ago, as I had some issues with things that are not measurable/reproducible.

There was this one bit, in the workshop….

It’s difficult to say exactly what this was for, or what it did. All I can report is that it appears to have done something in [balancing me/adjusting my perspective/clearing old thought forms/cheering me up].

These days I’m all about What Works, rather than What I Can Reproduce And Explain Empirically. So.

This was the procedure.

0. Determine a focus, a situation that is unsatisfying and would do well with restructuring, or with a new resoltuion
1. Select three cards from a tarot deck
2. In order of selection, dub them “Beginning, Middle, End”
3. Write a story with a paragraph devoted to each card, relating allegorically to what was determined in step 0; you have 15 minutes. Start with “Once upon a time”, to encourage you to not recite history, but something removed from it a step or two.
4. Read the story aloud, preferably to someone else.
5. Remark (or let your audience remark) on the indirect cues, ie tone of voice, patterns of emphasis, facial expressions, change in diction or meter or whatever might indicate emotional emphasis
6. Rewrite the story; same three cards, same step 0, same order, but resulting in a victorious or positive story; you have 15 minutes.

This should not produce anything but two hastily-written stories. In fact, the outward signs are two hastily-written stories. I seem to have found something more in the exercise, though.

My step 0: “I haven’t been writing, or doing much of anything else for me. I love writing, I feel good when I do it or have done it. Now most obstacles are out of my way and … I am still not writing.”

I drew from an animal-oriented deck.
The Wheel, showing all animals
Eight of wands, showing ants trudging in a labyrinth
Nine of swords, showing a crow on a shattered stump, lightning behind him

First round:

One upon a time –

–there was a man who could be anything. The secrets of how to share the strength of all things was his when he could focus to employ it, to take part. He knew to soar, and how, what it was to play and frolic in the waves or dance through the plains. The myriad possibilities were overwhelming to him; with all good things open to him, how could he choose what was right and proper to do? And the maelstrom of potential success and fulfillment bewildered him.

There were those in his life that he had chosen to love, and they had their own abilities and problems, different from his. They could do for themselves, but they chose not to — for whatever reasons — and so were unhappy. The man (who could be anything) decided to help his loved ones, and do for them what they did not do for themselves. Their needs were not sated, but multiplied, so the man split himself endlessly in the form of millions of ants, to fetch and find and carry and dig and care for. Soon there was nothing of him that was not split among the millions of ants.

The world, in form of a mighty black bird, found ants nourishing and pecked away at the man. Little by little, his split power and self was eaten until there was only an ant left. He took shelter in a tree, but the storms and the bird tore at it until it was shattered and uprooted, and he was trapped.

…

Okay, my inner 16 year old was alive and well. I got that.

I was paired with a lovely woman about thirty years my senior. We traded thoughts (having written oddly similar stories) and then rewrote.

Take 2:

Once upon — you know.

There was a man who could see the world. He not only could see what was in it, but could see the patterns of how it moved, and understood the reasons and the ultimate good of it. Knowing these things split him endlessly at first, but understanding the patterns of all things, he was able to guide his attention into a new vision of order, a grand march of majestic grace and power.

There were malefic entities in the world, and these took the form of the tiniest of creatures; ants. The endless scattered ants of trivial pain and petty frustrations bit at him, ran at the edge of his awareness and distracted him. With his new understanding of the patterns of all things, hew as not moved to resentment or anger — that burden would be too great, and not needed — but recognized that the pettiness and trivia need not be so great. He spun his understanding, guiding the ants through a labyrinth of his intention, spinning off the malefic portion each carried and leaving the ants to be merely ants, a part of the whole.

The trivial pains and petty frustrations he gathered up and laid at the base of the rotted stump of the tree of good and evil, piercing it through nine times (once for each of the charms Oden learned on that tree, so long ago) to hold them in place; if they needed to be malefic, they could do it there. Seeing that he had freed not just himself, but the ants as well (and perhaps even the malefica, which wants its own poisoned kind for company) he took wing — for understanding can let one do that — and returned to the majestic grace of all things, to see how he could take part in the beauty of the interwoven patterns.

…

So here’s the odd bit:

I’ve been writing, now.

I wonder if I’ll ever be smart enough to understand how this stuff works.

This hypnotherapy stuff has had immediate and far-reaching, damned near comprehensive, results. That isn’t, in my experience, how any kind of mental hygiene works. Normally, one talks things out until several things fall into place:

Define the situation
Determine what actions are creating non-optimal results
Recognize the stimulus that provokes actions
Consider alternate actions that will either preempt the situation or change the reactions to the stimulus
If you’re really on your game, you think up indicators that will mark success

This is, necessarily, a drawn out process. One has to define the world, define oneself, reformulate based on hypothesis, and then change with no more motivation than a willingness to see something new happen — which usually (again, my experience) means gritting one’s teeth and carrying through the new actions without feeling motivated to do so.

And, natch, it doesn’t work terribly efficiently, people being ineffective at concision. A lack of accurate or complete concept at any step will cause trickle-down faults.

I imagine hypnotherapy varies widely from provider to provider, and possibly from application to application. But. What was done with me was asking me to set a scene from my actual past. This was analyzed briefly for relevance and proximity to my issue-origins. When the scene was revealed as not actually terribly close to the origin, we went further back, finding related scenes closer in, and so forth. Eventually a scene came to light in which formulation of behavior was still taking place, and then a fictitious scene was improvised wherein I was asked to step in as my adult self and redirect my younger self.

I’m fairly good at visualization and role-playing, so this was an actual experience for me. The result was that I actually experienced a rewriting of what actually happened, and, without necessarily thinking much about it, carried forward an altered experience of events that I shuffled into my existing life, which provided slightly altered reactions to current events, and when new actions were called for, slightly different motivations were present to let me make changes with greater ease.

What, I wondered, was the difference between the two methods? Both found the situation, the stimuli, the reactions, the new actions.

One was explicit. One was subtextual and inclusive by implied relation, based on a gestalt.

I think I get it.

Talking things out, thinking them out, is only as useful as the thinking. Acting something out includes many factors that are not necessarily consciously considered, and so factors that are not known, not acknowledged, or poorly understood while acknowledged as significant are all worked into the solution. Everything, every action in the scene became symbolic. The symbols bore the meaning they did because I assigned the symbols and took their meaning they had without my having to formulate it in words, thereby granting each symbol and symbolic act greater bandwidth and greater impact because of that.

Magic.

Good stuff. I approve.

I write the words
Tracing paths of golden pollen on the page

I write in beauty
Beauty in the sentence before me
Beauty in the sentence behind me
Beauty on the next page
Beauty on the page before

And in beauty will I edit
And in beauty will I edit
And in beauty will I edit
And in beauty will I edit

The writing magic raises me in its pen
And I am come to the page, blessed

Sa’ah naaghéi, Bik’eh hózhó

Interesting. New things keep popping up. Nothing traumatic or world-shaking, but sort of … pervasive.

Apparently, what I’ve done is go to the foundation of many of my behaviors, lifted the edifice, and pulled out the chunk of gravel that was caught under the sill. When you put the building back, it’s the same building, but just that tiny bit more level, more stable, and when you stand on the dining room table and dump out a crate of ping pong balls, they will bounce in slightly different patterns than they used to. And the plumbing is less prone to leaking.

Erm. Perhaps not the most facile metaphor, but one gets the idea.

I had session 2 last night. I noticed just as many — or more — things about the basis of my behaviors, and was more involved in the forward motion (since I understood the process better), but there was nothing … well, nothing world-shaking or traumatic. I think I may have found an awareness of the one or two bits in my head that relate to me going all stupid periodically, and what I have left is the settling of everything that used to rest on those, and the trickle-down effects that will continue to manifest as I, ah, *waves hands about, looking for a word*, re-collate myself.

This sort of business is difficult to relate, I’m finding.

In any case. Beneficial. Useful. Clarifying. Empowering (however much I hate the overcommon usage of that word).

In conclusion (to paraphrase Libby, that darlingest of rock-stars), I have eaten my inner child, I am Iron Man, and my head is a light bulb — all of which, on reflection, makes me wonder if it is the surreal aspect of this approach that makes it so much easier to move forward.

I’m just going to name anything to do with this sorting-out process related to the hypotherapy “Trilby (variable)”. It’s likely to be highly internally oriented, poorly explained, and easily skippable.

So.

I’m wondering how much of my current amiable aimlessness has to do with the fact that, until recently, the majority of my behaviors were determined by pathological means. Take away the pathology and I can no longer recognize a motivation — that is, I can’t recognize a motivation that doesn’t show up with several unseemly friends, lightly slapping a billy club against its leg while it asks me to come play.

This would seem to be a training issue, if so. I can do that. I’m a fair wonder at learning new patterns.

I keep finding that I’ve just gone through some decision that, a week ago, I’d have made badly, only now I’ve made it well.  I’m asking for what I want, no difficulties, no will needed, no tooth gritting.  I don’t even notice it until afterwards.

While I was nice enough to me today, and have had a nice day thereby, I still haven’t written.  Dunno if that has anything to do with anything.  Sat at the computer for a while, and just surfed until I got up and found food and a book instead.  My current goal is to do the things I want to do, but not make them duties, nor flog myself until I do them.

Y’okay.  Rome wasn’t burnt in a day.  I’m pleased enough, and have another appointment on Wednesday.  Meanwhile, I’ll just make certain that I spend a certain amount of time each day giving myself opportunity to procrastinate.

Years ago, I decided that anything I wrote about specifically in a bitchy tone on more than three occasions, I had to do something or shut up about. I’ve been okay with me yacking about very closely similar things, if some tiny aspect is different, or if I have tried something - anything - to change the patterns. However, over the years, it has become evident that there are a couple of things that I am stuck on.

I did what I usually do; I wrote about them, I talked about them, I came up with deft syllogisms of emotional health and created plans of breathtaking scope based on them…which work as long as I follow them.

But I don’t follow them.

Something Ain’t Right.

When I’m particularly down on myself, I declare that if, for instance, I sabotage my writing time routinely for years and years, I probably don’t want to write and don’t have the guts to say that. But I’ve been there, and I like it - love it, sometimes. Besides, it isn’t just the writing. It’s the writing. And movies I want to see. And desserts I’d like to have. And sex I’d like to have. And sleep I’d like to have.

Yeah, something’s broken when you are willing to give up on sex and sleep for the pleasure of feeling like hell, and you can only stop for a while — as long as there isn’t a huge emotional backlog that breaks me.

I have honed it down to two things that all other problems are based on:

1. What I want/need does not have the priority to me that what others want/need, and I don’t like that but won’t change it
2. I will, at the drop of a hat, judge me as a bad person who doesn’t deserve Christmas when I fail to meet whatever lofty ideal I’ve set for my behaviors, my thoughts (wait a minute, you can’t always control your –), and my emotions (ALL RIGHT, THAT’S JUST STUPID)

Yeah. Okay. Something is pretty broken in there.

I have been reluctant to take up therapy. I’ve done it before, and it was wonderfully helpful. I have high regard for Vicki, my therapist, and the work that we did. It probably permitted me to change enough to be ecstatically happy in my marriage. But therapy is, in general, talking and thinking and sometimes taking drugs. I’m already doing the first two, and don’t think I have a chemical problem, so don’t want a chemical answer.

What’s that leave? Deus ex machina? Walk it off, soldier, and get back in ranks? Professional floggings?

I chose hypnosis. That was last night.

…

I have decided not to relate everything that took place in 90 minutes of work, not until I’ve fully digested it. I know me, and I tell my stories to the audience I’m in front of…and sometimes cleave unto truthiness rather than fact. I’d rather get full value out of this than talk about myself.

And now we know how badly I want to change. I’m willing to pay $190 and not tell anyone what happened. This might be unprecedented.

It’s a bit early to tell, but initial indicators seem to point toward good things having happened in my head. I shall report in fullness when I have fullness to report.

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.