chronicled & illustrated

liquid
Originally uploaded by nuanc

Today I seem to be swimming freely in my life once again.

For a few weeks, I got stuck. I felt completely bogged down. Any kind of effort toward unsticking myself was a tiresome slog that left me only wanting to retreat back into my rutted state.

This wasn’t that noticeable to others because I still went about my daily life…I just wasn’t as productive. As I’ve written about before, I spent long hours mastering a certain computer game that shall remain unidentified lest someone else fall under it’s marblicious spell.

I continued doing what I could to get away from the rut that included only Me and The Game. Eventually, I began to tell people—my husband, my sons, my trusty girlfriends, and my mom—that I wasn’t really doing that well. I felt at the time that this ‘coming out’ was part of the process of recovery. That if I hadn’t been on the road to recovery, I wouldn’t have been able to admit it.

Today, I woke up feeling that my hated rut had been washed away by a good strong soaking. I can still sense the route that it wore through my brain, but it no longer has depth.

This has happened before of course. I think though that as I get older (pushin’ 60, girl) I have the mental calm, perspective and actual quiet in my life to be able to analyze what this feels like and what’s physically happening to me when I overtakes me. In earlier days, I was too busy with kids and had too many insecurities to look at it without fear clouding my view. Now I can imagine and actually feel (or feel that I’m feeling) a neurological rut—an overused, perhaps over-stimulated linkage of neurons; one that becomes prominent and doesn’t give up dominance easily.

It helps me understand—in an organic way—what people who have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder go through every day. And, it comes up very close to Depression—something I used to suffer from for months at a time. In Depression, certain thoughts or categories of thought (negativity! worthlessness! hopelessness!) become dominant. It’s changing those thought patterns that pull us up out of the mood (to be utterly overly-simplistic).

I don’t understand any of it well enough to predict its coming or its going, but I do have confidence these days that it won’t stick; that somehow I’ve accumulated enough coping strategies to be able to pull out of these neurological quagmires. But I have to be careful with that line of thinking. Maybe it’s never what I DO that pulls me out of it. Saying that implies that anyone can pull themselves out by sheer “coping strategies” and I don’t believe that. I know that if it were that simple, people wouldn’t suffer from it so painfully and so persistently. But on the other hand, that sense that I am doing things that help to get me over the distress is important to my feeling of control over my life. Always important.

This morning, I feel a fresh fluidity in my mind, I’m able to glide freely through the little pond that is my life, and for that I am supremely grateful.

The illustration was taken in Houston over the Christmas holidays at the home of The Newmans who graciously let us use their amazing house in exchange for looking after their greyhound. The koi pond was a practicing photographer’s dream.

Yesterday I wrote about being drawn off-task by the newest shiny thing. Well, here it is: animoto. They’ll make slick videos of your photographs…pretty much effortlessly.

Yes, I paid them money. No, you don’t have to, but yes, they make it seem like something you reallllly need to do. Hey. I was vulnerable. I needed something shiny.

Anyway, here’s one version of my first video. The photos are of my granddaughter, Cadi. She was playing in a fountain in the park. Nearby were anti-war protesters who have come out to the park in Bar Harbor, Maine each Sunday since the invasion of Iraq and stood in silent protest. I do not know the priest’s full name but his colleague told me he’s Father Jim and is retired. He couldn’t resist playing with Cadi and she, as you will see, took to him immediately. I’m so grateful I was there not only to see the spontaneous joy of their sharing but also to capture some of it with my camera.

Enjoy Acadia and the Priest, perfect strangers sharing a perfect moment.

Thanks to Beth Felice who first posted an animoto video on Being Practically Creative and to Suze Corte who showed me how to play with them!

window
Originally uploaded by nuanc

I love this little blog. I started it in full expectation of NOT posting often enough and then I did pretty well with it.

I am not a consistent person. Moodiness is so much a part of my genetic make-up that I am always astounded to learn that some people aren’t controlled by their mood-of-the-day. I’m drawn off task by not only moods, but also by the newest shiniest activity that catches my interest. And yet, I almost always return to what I love. And this blog, I love.

It feels like me, she said, shyly.

Fertile, then fallow, quiet without being private or secretive, heart-felt and earnest but with tongue-in-cheek.

Inconsistent. Also ambiguous. Moody.

January was a real up and (mostly) downer. I started an overly ambitious writing project that didn’t last more than two days. That led to a slump which caused me to seek solace in mind-numbing computer games, an obsession from which I haven’t fully recovered. There were other things. Emotional snowfalls began piling on, adding layer after layer of weight. Because it wasn’t a blizzard but a steadily growing accumulation of tiny things, I was unaware of what was happening.

I’m on the mend. Writing this is part of my recovery. I love this blog. I must do it more often and then I will remember other things that I love doing and I will rediscover the path to feeling that. Then, I’m sure, I will also get excited about the next new shiny thing that catches my interest. I can do both when I’m occupying the busy part of my life.

The illustration is of winter taken through the old stained glass panels in the stairwell of our house. Part of it I can see through and part I can’t and that is Like Life.

Hugs all ’round.

Well, NaNoWriMo is done for another year. It was a month of steady-steady-steady writing. I think I had three days when I didn’t get my quota (1667) done and one of those was Day 1 when I’d just returned from being out of town for three weeks. Even in that steadiness, however, I felt many ups and downs.

The bottom line is that I didn’t end up with a cohesive novel. I spent time the last day, after reaching 50,000 words, just writing notes to myself about what seems good about the writing and what doesn’t. One of the things I did was to list all the subplots I had going on. No wonder it never gelled! There were about ten separate things, some of them introduced once and never revisited!

I also wrote what I thought the plot should be. After spending a month immersed in that world and those characters, of course I know better what directions I should gone. I think the notes helped and will help in the future. I have more of a overview of what I wrote rather than being left with the impression of the last few days of writing which was less than inspiring. I also feel that the notes will serve me well later when I want to go back to it. It will give me a way into the story.

So that’s a wrap on Nano 2007.

On the other writing front: I finished the first draft of the short story on Saturday.

Ahhh, such a simple sentence.

Finishing a short story was once close to impossible for me. I had a writing teacher early on who was in the habit of spending 6 months to a year on a short story. She was a very bad influence on me!!! I have since joined a writing group with some wonderful role models who are much more practical. They have been a very good influence on me!!!

This story was a personal challenge to see if I could come up with an idea, write it, edit it, polish it, and send it off to the Nova Scotia Writer’s Federation contest all within 3 weeks. Oh, one other thing: it had to come in under 3,000 words, a feat I’ve never managed before.

So you see… it’s a simple sentence with much import for me. Yesterday I edited and rewrote the ending. Last night I read it out loud and felt it was choppy so I worked on transitions today and did line editing. This afternoon I gave to two trusted readers. While handing it over is always nerve-wracking, I did feel proud that I’ve gotten it to this point with four days to go before it has to be postmarked. The verdict is in from one of my readers; it got a thumbs up!

Now, finally, I have time to clean the bathroom.
What a reward, eh?
Oh the glamourous life of a writer!

…IT’S DONE!!!

Or, at any rate, it’s over.

I’m happy I did it and more than ready to get on with so many things that I’ve neglected this month.

I’m not through with writing for the year, however. I’m deeply embroiled in the antics of two characters in the short story I started last week. Still trying to write it in as few words as possible. Quite a challenge for me and a different way of writing than the novel, but it seems to be progressing. I’m determined to get it into shape by December 7th in time to mail it out in the the world.
A Christmas present I’m giving myself.

Happy. Relief. Sense of Accomplishment.

Sighhhhhhhhh…

spires
Originally uploaded by nuanc

I’ve got nothin’. It’s been a long day. I’ve written, talked and altogether used up too many words. Instead of words, I offer this odd, rather mysterious photograph.

But just before I quit using words for the day, I’d like to make a toast:

Here’s to the inexpressible. The tangle of feelings that has no neat label. The overwhelming moment that leaves us not only wordless but breathless as well. The times words will not do. Here’s to tears, screams, moans, dancing, making love, wrestling, climbing trees, falling down, skipping, running for the joy of it. To laughter. To music. To drumming. To throwing paint and pounding clay. To all the non-verbal languages giving voice to that which we would otherwise be unable to express.

G’night sweet bodies out there.