Bored Now

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

English: In a rut Footpath track near nursery ...

To a certain extent, I thrive on routine. My mental health appreciates it when I get up and go to sleep about the same time most days. I like having a pretty regular work schedule. There’s some comfort in knowing what I’m going to do the next day. I’m more productive when I have a good idea of what kind of time I’m going to have during the week.

In smaller ways, I like keeping a certain rhythm to particular times of my day. I watch the same succession of reruns in the afternoon. I take my shower at about the same time every morning. I go through the same basic routine in the shower every morning.

I like a certain amount of repetition.  It’s comforting.

That said, I’m not immune to ruts. I’m in one right now, as a matter of fact.

Liking routine doesn’t mean I want to be doing the same things ALL the time. It means I like doing the same things most of the time. The rest of the time I like to do other things to break from the routine so I don’t resent the routine.

When I’m in a rut, I find I get very bored very easily. Usually, I don’t have time to get bored. I work seven days a week and when I’m not working, there’s usually something else I can think of that I want to do. Something fun. But I can’t think of fun right now. Fun costs money (most of the time) and I can’t afford to spend much of that right now. Fun usually involves other people, but the other people I know are either too far away or too busy doing other things.

And all of the potential fun sounds either boring or too much trouble. When I start to do something that should be fun and distracting and a change, within minutes a voice in my head is saying, “Bored now.”

Everything gets boring when I’m in a rut. I’m tired of looking at the clothes in my closet. I want new ones. Most of the clothes I have are easily over five years old, if not more. I haven’t had the money to get new clothes for a long time and I’m aching for a new wardrobe. New clothes would help me bust out of the rut.

It doesn’t take much to get me out of one. A little nudge, a little push, a little change. A little deviation from the routine. Like new clothes. I ordered a new cardigan the other night and you have no idea how excited I am to have this new article of clothing. It’s enough to make some of my clothing new again.

It’s a tiny step to breaking out of my current rut.

A new pair of jeans. Some new jewelry wire so I can try my hand at wire rings. A little bit of Christmas shopping. Playing cards at my aunt’s house. These are things I’m all looking forward to, things that have the potential to bust me totally out of my rut in the next few weeks. I’m in a rut, but it’s not that deep yet to require major moves. Yet.

If I let it go much longer, though…

Because though I might wear quite the groove in the ground with my routine, that doesn’t mean I want to live there.

Music: Micky Dolenz’s ‘Remember’

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In case you missed it, I am a big fan of the Monkees. I’m also a big fan of the Monkees as solo acts.

Micky Dolenz recently released a solo album of covers called Remember. All of the songs on the album have a personal meaning to him and he did all of the vocals on all of the tracks (one of which features something like 40 different vocal tracks!). After hearing the samples on iTunes and a free preview of “Randy Scouse Git” in its entirety, I knew I was going to have to own this album.

First of all, the cover of “Randy Scouse Git” really sold me. It’s completely different from the original, but just as amazing. The sample of “Sometime in the Morning” (a favorite Monkees song) gave me chills. “I’m a Believer” as a country song intrigued me. These factors pretty much sealed the deal for me.

Not to mention my absolute love of covers.

Now, I’m no music critic; I just know what I like. And I really, really like this album. I listened to it five times in a row after first downloading it. There’s not a song on it I don’t like. The surprise standouts for me are “Sugar, Sugar”, “Do Not Ask for Love”, and “Good Morning, Good Morning”. I figured I’d like them, but I was caught off guard as to HOW MUCH I like them. Micky’s “Sugar, Sugar” might be better than the original if only for the ending.

It’s a fun album. I’ve always felt Micky has been very creative musically and this album reflects that. It also shows that his voice is just as good now as it was when he was in his twenties. The man can still sing. (Seriously, “Do Not Ask for Love” is just his vocals and it is unbelievable.)

If you want a break from the current radio pop airplay, this is what you should be listening to. It’s fun, classy, and genuine.

Writing–November Projects

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Fall leaves in Vancouver

It’s NaNoWriMo time!

This year’s project is called Night of the Nothing Man. In addition to the challenges raised by not coming up with this novel idea until a week before the start, I’ve given myself some other guidelines that I’m going to try to follow as I write. I’ll reveal those at the end of the month.

If you recall, I wrote a novel manuscript this summer in a different fashion. I outlined a few chapters, wrote those chapters, and then revised those chapters before moving on. I’m going to be doing something similar with this NaNo project. I managed to get about six chapters outlined before the NaNo countdown clock wound down. This was partly by design. I do better during NaNo when I outline, but in the course of my writing, I end up changing or deviating from my outline that typically results in some frustrating revisions and rewrites. I liked the outlining and then writing of the summer novel experiment in that I stayed on track, but I could make changes. So I’m going to attempt to do NaNo in this fashion.

Dangerous business for me, but I like living on the edge.

Also during the month I’ll keep working on my Lucy and Jamie story. I’ve got a good idea where it’s going and I think it might be good for me to write a page or two of something else while working on NaNo. Kind of like a morning warm-up.

I may or may not start poking at The World (Saving) Series again. I’ve got an idea of some revisions I’d like to do and I’ve been kicking them around for the past couple of months. They wouldn’t be too taxing to do when I need an evening break from NaNo, but don’t want to be unproductive.

It should be a good month full of words.

Pessimistic Pete

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Pessimism

When I was little, my mom used to call me Pistol Pete (no, I don’t know why; my family is random like that). Pessimistic Pete probably would have been a better nickname. At least a more accurate one.

Yes, I have a tendency towards pessimism. If you believe in astrology, then you can chalk up this trait up to being a Capricorn. If you don’t, then, I dunno, chalk it up to reinforcement or self-fulfilling prophecy if you believe in psychology.

I wouldn’t call myself overly pessimistic. Mostly I’m a realist and that makes me seem more pessimistic. That’s because I look at my past to help determine my realistic possibilities in the future and my track record isn’t that great. I hope for the best, expect the worst, and I’m delight if things turn out okay. That’s because rarely (so rarely that I can’t really remember any examples) do I get the best. I don’t usually even get the good. The bad is more likely and I know it’s more likely and because I know it’s more likely and that’s what I tend to expect, then I’m seen as quite the downer.

People have told me to think positively and you know, I do. Like I said, I hope for the best. In my head, I focus on the good, the positive and I try to project that energy. But there’s a part of me that knows no matter how hard I try to think positively, I do not attract positive energy. I just don’t.

I work at being less pessimistic. I try not to think of the worst FIRST. I focus on the good and the positive and then slowly let in reality until I get a decent, realistic expectation. I try to keep the overly negative thoughts out of the mix. But there are times when I’m prone to excessive pessimism. Sometimes I think EVERYTHING will end badly. Rocks fall, everyone dies.

It’s these times that I look at the state of things. I look at my mess of a life. I look at the financial hole I dug trying to pursue a career. I look at the decisions I’ve made and the risks I’ve taken with little or no support and/or not enough planning. I look at the physical ideals imposed upon women that I’ll never meet. I look at the responsibilities that I’ve taken on that never should have been foisted on me in the first place (and God forbid I should have refused them or else be labeled as selfish). I look at all of this stuff and more and I think “This is the life I’ve created. There is no hope here. There’s no point in being optimistic. This is it.”

I don’t like those times. I feel very alone during those times. I feel very tired during those times. And I feel very frustrated at those times because as tired and alone as I feel, as much as I want to say “fuck it” and drive on, just accept my reality and trudge through it until the end, I know I won’t. Because there’s something in me that won’t give up. There’s a little part of me that struggles and insists on looking on the bright side and striving FOR that bright side.

It’s annoying little bit of me, to be sure.

In the end, though, I’m glad it’s there. It puts the pessimism back in its cubby and insists that I get my head out of the self-pity oven and get on with it. There’s no time for this shit. I’ve got some living to do.

So, yes, I am pessimistic and have a tendency to be overly pessimistic sometimes, but I’m not nearly as pessimistic as you think I am. Because I fight not to be.

Aren’t you glad I haven’t surrendered?

Writing–Generating My NaNo Idea

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Notebook page

I wrote before how I was stuck on what to write for NaNo this year. I toyed with the idea of being a rebel and writing novellas instead, but even then I wasn’t too moved by the idea. I really wanted to stick to my November guns and go for my usual goal of 60,000 words before Thanksgiving. But I had nothing.

A NaNo buddy of mine whom I also follow on Twitter and also has a pretty rockin’ blog, Trinae Ross, told me that she was stuck for her NaNo idea, too, until she just started writing random words down on a piece of paper and then asking the usual questions of who, what, where, when, and why. It took her about four days for things to start to come together, but she ended up with something of substance that she could get to the point of outlining. She had a story.

At her suggestion, I decided to try it. Sitting and thinking wasn’t helping me any. The blank I was drawing was just getting blanker. So I grabbed one of my plentiful notebooks, flipped to a blank page, took pen in hand, and wrote down the first things that came to my mind.

“Guys like him aren’t very good at staying dead.”  The 70’s. Nighttime. A face in a window. A room full of newspaper articles. A missing girl. An attempted abduction. Two teenagers.

And from there I started asking questions. Who is this guy? Why doesn’t he stay dead? Why this decade? Who is this face? Who are these kids? What do the articles say?

The page filled up pretty quickly with my answers and other scribblings. More importantly, I was pretty happy with what I was jotting down. Just like what happened with Trinae, my story started to come together.

Even at the eleventh hour going into NaNo I still have some work to do (I’ll get into the details next week), but I’m feeling so much better about this project than I was a week ago when I didn’t even have a project to work with. At least I have a place to start when the clock strikes midnight.

I am horrible at networking and socializing. I don’t work very hard at including myself in the writing community because there’s a still a chunk of me that doesn’t think I belong because I don’t have enough credits to my name. But through NaNo and through Twitter, I’ve met some pretty cool fellow writers that don’t hold me to the same high standards that I hold myself to when it comes to inclusion and for that I am grateful.

Without Trinae, I’d still be spinning my wheels.

The One and Only

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I’ve grown quite accustomed to being just another face in the crowd. There’s part of me that really digs that kind of anonymity. I didn’t try for it; it just came naturally. There’s nothing particularly spectacular about me. I don’t stand out (since I stopped coloring my hair like I belonged in a package of Skittles). I’m not very memorable. In fact, most people don’t even remember or know my name. Around my little town I’m most easily identified as “Haws’s daughter” or “Lindsay’s sister” (the exception being Wal-Mart, where I’m a rock star, but that’s a different blog post).

So it’s really weird for me to think that I’m the only person in the country with my name.

According to How Many of Me, I’m it. Based on their math and taking into account the spelling of my first name and the spelling of my last name, one person or less has my name. As a fat girl, I certainly don’t qualify as less, so I must be the ONE.

What’s funny about this is that it wasn’t what my mother was striving for when she named me. Yes, she didn’t take popularity into account in the sense that she didn’t want me to have the same name as six other girls in my class (sorry, Jennifers). Christin was actually not her first choice; Carrie was. But when her roommate in the hospital named her baby Carrie, Mom went with the Christin. And the spelling wasn’t intentionally unique. Mom just thought that’s how it was supposed to be spelled…Chris-tin. Way to go, Hooked on Phonics. But my mom wasn’t the only one. Over 11,000 people have their name spelled the same way. I’ve met four of them.

And my last name, well…it is what it is. There’s only about 4,000 people with this last name with this spelling in the country, according to the website. I can’t help that.

But it’s the combination of the two is that really puts my name in the unique category. I am it.

WordPress stats are handy because they tell me what searches people do to find my blog. People get here a lot of ways, some of them very strange. But nothing grabs my attention quite like my name popping up in the search terms.

When you Google my name, first it will ask if you meant someone else (Christian or Christine Haws is usually pretty popular). Then the first five entries will be all about me. My Twitter, my blog, an old website, a blog guest post, my Smashwords page. Then the other names start to filter in.

Here’s the thing. If I’m the only one with my name and the people doing the searching spelled everything right, then that means people who come to my blog searching my name are looking for ME. When you go through life largely ignored, it’s bizarre to think someone Googled you.

Sometimes I think it’s a little creepy, but then I’m also prone to paranoia.

Granted, I imagine most of those hits are people who know me who can’t remember my blog name or haven’t bookmarked it or aren’t following it (that’s right, you feel shame about not bookmarking me). But odds are at least one of those searches was done by a stranger.

It’s a concept that’s kind of difficult for me to grasp.

But then, I’m strange like that.

It comes with being the one and only me.

Halloween Costume Mania!

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I dress up for Halloween every year. Usually it’s just to hand out candy, but even if I did nothing, I’d probably still dress up. It’s my thing. As a Halloween purist, I find it to be a fun challenge to attempt to make a costume without spending more than twenty dollars. That means I try to use as much as I already have. I’ve been quite successful at it.

Here are the costumes I put together for the last five years (also photographic evidence of my weight fluctuation over the last five years if you’re into judging me for that sort of thing). Three of them cost me nothing. The other two cost me less than twenty bucks. I’m pretty proud of all of them.

Halloween 2006: Mercenary
Halloween 2007: A Teenager
Halloween 2008: Belly Dancer
Halloween 2009: Madeline Westen from Burn Notice
Halloween 2010: The Perfect Housewife
Halloween 2011: Patient Zero

Happy Halloween!

Writing–A Morning Project

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Notes in a Moleskine notebook

Two or three days a week (depending on the week) I get up at 6:30 AM to supervise the neighbor boy before school and then I take him there. From 6:45 to about 8:10 every morning I sit at the table and let the boy know what time it is. Time for your shower. Time for breakfast. Time to go. In between this time monitoring, he plays his DS and I write.

I didn’t plan on writing during these mornings. When I first started the gig, I wasn’t sure exactly how much wrangling would be required. Turns out that there’s usually not much and since it is so early in the morning, Twitter isn’t exactly jumping. Once I’ve caught up on my timeline, taken my turn for SongPop and Words With Friends, and read a few blog or new articles on my phone, I still have quite a bit of time to fill.

So I started bringing a notebook with me so I could “scribble”. I didn’t really have anything in mind to work on that first morning, so to pass the time I decided to write Lucy and Jamie’s backstory. You might remember them from a previous blog entry about characters that pop up without a story. I had a pretty good idea who these to characters were, so I wrote about Lucy meeting Jamie for the first time, which began with Lucy talking to Jamie’s adoptive mother Lindy. It was a fun little thing with no expectations.

And from that bit of scribbling came an actual idea for a story.

That’s what I’ve been working on two or three mornings a week for the past month or so. I managed to get a page or two written while sitting at the table keeping track of the time. It’s a different approach for me, at least in terms of what I’ve been used to doing for the past few years.

First of all, I’m writing long hand, which isn’t that unusual when I’m writing short stories, but I sense that this will be longer (I’m thinking novella range). I usually don’t write longer stories longhand because what I write down, I must type up.

Second of all, when I am working on a project, I adhere to the write every day rule. For me, I feel like it’s important for me to get that first draft out as fast as possible. This first draft is only getting written a couple of pages at a time no more than three days a week.

Lastly, with my longer works I’ve fallen into the need for an outline. I prefer to know where I’m going when I start putting the story on the page. With this project, I’m just going one page at a time and not thinking any farther ahead than necessary. I’m just seeing where this story goes.

I have to admit, this is a fresh approach is rather freeing. It’s not quite so serious business. I’m not putting excessive demands on myself. I’m just supposed to write every morning while I wait for the boy to get ready for school. It’s just a way to pass the time.

It’s going back to a time when writing was just a hobby and not a career-in-the-making.

Call it a change of pace.

A Word About My Politics

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independent

I typically don’t talk politics. I find the conversations become unpleasant and anything but enlightening. Truly I think they bring out the stupid and make me change my opinions about people too frequently.

That all being said, I think I should explain a little bit of my political position so at the very least I have something people have a basic understanding of where I stand.

First of all I identify as an independent since I have no desire to belong to any party. I like the sound of it. In-dee-pen-dent. Free. I’m not bound by the rules of a party. No party lines to follow. I don’t suffer any second hand candidate embarrassment. I’m not compelled to vote for a particular candidate just because they’re on my “team” (a huge fallacy we’ve got going on with voters here; they’ve got government confused with sports). I’ve voted for Democrats and Republicans and Independents and Green Party members. All on the same ballot once. It was glorious. I vote for whoever I want to and for my own reasons. I have a nice, objective view of the races. I like it.

Second of all if anyone asks, I say I’m a moderate. I ride that line. I admit to being more conservative on some issues and more liberal on others, but overall, I’m in the middle. People can get pretty aggravated about that, demanding I pick a side. Sorry, scooter. I found me a really comfortable dip in this fence and that’s where I’m sitting.

Lastly, this isn’t a challenge. I have no desire to convert you to my way of thinking and I’d appreciate the same respect. I’m also not spouting this off to somehow say how much better I am than you because of my politics. Aside from the fact that you don’t really KNOW any of my political beliefs since I haven’t actually articulated much past generalities and labels, my politics are a small part of who I am. And by stating these basic facts about myself I’m not by any means calling you out. This is just for general knowledge purposes.

I’ve found that general knowledge helps prevent unfortunate assumptions. Even the bare basics helps.

Politics fall into the category of my personal beliefs. I don’t feel the need to bray about them and I don’t think that braying about them makes them anymore real. If I’m not in the market to change minds (when it comes to politics, I prefer to point out logic train derailments), then there’s no need for me to be spitting into the wind. I’m not compelled to add to the noise, particularly during this extra loud presidential campaign.

However, if you ask, I’ll probably answer. And if you’re an ass about how and what I answer, then your questioning privileges will be revoked. Probably rudely.

Remember, I’m not bound by niceties either.