Outside Looking In

This is where I am most of the time, on the outside of life, watching it go past and wondering what it's all about. I have always been an observer, and a recorder of observations. It's not really something I chose; it's a part of my nature.

Have you ever had the most intense realization about the most mundane things? Thinks like: I'm eating pizza that I made myself. I have been overwhelmed by such realizations. On some level, of course I understood not only that there was pizza, but that I'd made it and that I was now eating it. It's not as though I'd somehow failed to grasp this concept entirely. It's just that for a split second I was somehow aware of how incredible it is that a universe where pizza is possible even exists, and I was in awe. I somehow switched from 'participant' to 'observer' in my own life.

Or perhaps it was the other way around, or both at once. Perhaps I went from going through the motions to being acutely aware of my own participation in life. Whatever it was, I found myself looking at that pizza as though it held all the answers to life, the universe and everything (which is ridiculous since it didn't look a thing like 42.)

The pizza isn't the point. The point is that there is something in my nature that allows me to shift perspective at the drop of a hat. Life is constantly a case of looking at a vase and suddenly seeing two faces, and I think this is why I write. Scratch that. I don't 'think', I know. I write because no matter how much I find myself on the outside of life looking in, what I see is so fascinating that I must find some way of capturing it, recording it in such a way that I might be able to share at least a fraction of it. I write because the only other option is to sit here watching the world go by.

Do you ever have moments like this? Do you find yourself on the outside looking in? Alternately, why do you write?

Momentum And Why I Need It

This is perhaps the most fitting time for me to tackle the subject, since I seem to have stalled out on the blog a bit. It was looking pretty good for a while there too, wasn't it? Every couple of days, something new.

But then I let myself take a break. I told myself, "Eh, I'll write it tomorrow." "Ran out of time." "Next time I have a good night's sleep, I'll be able to post something." (Note that once sleep-deprived, it is very difficult for me to have a "good night's sleep" for quite a while.) What it comes down to is I made a lot of excuses for why I didn't post something and I let myself get in the habit of not posting instead of what I wanted to do, which was get into the habit of posting a lot. I didn't keep up my momentum. Now, it is totally possible to recover from lost momentum. I've done it. I did it when I pulled out that old novel idea for NaNoWriMo, and I'm doing it again now. And honestly, it's not that hard once I get started. Hence the momentum bit.

Maybe this isn't a problem for you. Maybe you've solved it already and are totally task-oriented, able to pump out content daily as a matter of course. But maybe, just maybe this is a problem for you, too. It's ok, I know. The secret is momentum. Each day, every day, I need to at least be actively thinking about my writing, by blogging, my book reviews, because if I don't, it can take me a long time to get back to it. Ideally, I'm actually doing something towards each of these things daily.

Yes, I slip up at times. But for the most part, I'm succeeding. Not a day goes by that I don't add at least a few words to my novel, or take down a fiddling plot point. Yes, it's been at least a week since my last blog post, but look at my previous dry-spell that lasted a good three months. The trick is to kick your butt into gear before too much time has passed and you forget that you even had anything going on. What's the best way to do that? Keep at it every day. Live it. Breathe it. Dream about it.

Whatever you do, don't lose momentum. But if you do, just be sure to pick it back up again as quick as possible.

For more about why blogging is awesome and some tips on how to go about it, check out Kristen Lamb's series on blogging starting here. And if you want to check out the rest of her stuff, I totally encourage that, too.

I've Agreed to Disagree With Ray Bradbury

I love Ray Bradbury. There are many reasons for this, possibly as numerous as the stories he's written, but there is one reason above all others: he's the first of my idols that I've ever disagreed with.

I didn't grow up with Ray Bradbury in the same way that I did with Douglas Adams(more about him in the future, I'm sure,) but he was there during that weird, confusing, universally upsetting period when I wasn't quite a child any more, but I definitely wasn't a teenager yet. I read Fahrenheit 451 in school, and made it my gospel. I cherished the copy of Something Wicked This Way Comes that I was given one year for Christmas. I remember fondly the summer spent on swing sets, reading Dandelion Wine with my mom and my sister. His prose had a way of carrying me away just that much more completely than other books, and for a child with an over-active imagination, who got lost in any story e came across, this was something special indeed. In my eyes, for the longest time, the man could do no wrong.

Then about four, five years ago, I reread Something Wicked. The book hadn't changed of course, but I had.  I'd grown up some, read a whole lot of other things, and had done some of my own questioning about the nature of 'good' and 'evil'. And as I was reading I realized that I no longer agreed with what he was saying, or at least parts of how he was saying it. I still loved the book, and I always will, yet it was a rare and precious moment, realizing that I could disagree with my idol's point of view but still respect him and love his work. It opened me up to the possibility of questioning my other idols without losing my love for them.

Why did I suddenly feel the need to share this with you all? Well, a few days ago TheEchoInside brought this video of An Evening With Ray Bradbury to my attention. It was a wonderful thing, listening to him talk about the art and the craft of his writing. There were many things he said that I agreed with, things like reading. A lot. Reading everything you can get your hands on, no matter how random or unrelated. Short stories, poetry, essays. Anything. And again, as with Something Wicked, there were things I didn't agree with. Mainly the value of the internet.

He seemed to view it as some sort of cultural sink hole, the information here trivial and without substance. I became incredibly aware then, the difference in perspective that a couple of generations and ten years of advances in information technologies can make(the video is from 2001.) I could see why, from his perspective, the internet could never hold a flame to hours spent exploring a library, and it's true that nothing can replace that experience. However, I don't see the internet as trivial or unimportant. Here I have access to information, even ancient information, that I wouldn't necessarily be able to find at my local library, and I have access to people I would never have come across otherwise. People I can share ideas with, who get excited about the same things I do, or have the same fears. Even ten years ago this was possible, if slightly more difficult.

In short, I love Ray Bradbury. His works will always have something to say to me, even if I don't always agree. And that's ok.

Getting Comfortable With Being In Transition

And I don't just mean the big obvious one, though that's something I've had to get comfortable with too.  I mean the whole big transition that is life, that thing we all do every day or else we become some stagnant, stale shell of a human being.

When I was a kid, I thought that all I had to do was figure out who I was, and that's who I'd be.  Forever.  Nothing else, and nothing less.  I'd grow up, find a few words to describe myself, and that would be that.  One thing I've had to come to terms with is the fact that that is never going to happen.  Who I am today?  Really not who I was yesterday.  Tomorrow?  Well, I'll be someone else again, won't I?

I don't mean every transition I go through is as big and life-changing as the one from trying to be female to finally being male.  Sometimes it's as simple as reading an insightful blog post, or engaging with new people on Twitter.  Or in real life even.  That happens too, on occasion.  If who I am is the sum of my experiences, then with every moment I'm in transition from being someone who hasn't experienced something to someone who has.

This also means that I have to update who I think I am at almost every turn.  I thought I was someone who was only romantically interested in people of a specific gender or type until I realized it wasn't that simple, not for me anyway.  I thought of myself as someone who hated kids and would never have any or want to until I met my niece.  And the big one?  Perhaps bigger than all the rest, even THE big one?

I thought I was always and forever an Artist before anything else.  That was the pinnacle of my identity, the one thing that I had always been and would always be no matter what else changed, I was an Artist and I would paint/draw/make jewellery until the day I died of some bizarre cancer or heavy metal poisoning from my work.  I believed this until I looked up one day and realized I was becoming a Writer.

I looked at what I had drawn or made in the past week, the past month.  Nothing.  I mean literally.  I hadn't made a damn thing the whole time, not so much as a doodle.  I looked at what I had been doing instead.  When I wasn't writing, I was reading about writing.  I was talking about writing, and I was on my way to someplace where I would be writing.  (Or I was at my day job, but even there I was thinking about writing.)  That's when I realized that I was watching my own transition from Artist with a little writing on the side, to Writer with a little art on the side.

I can't say that I was entirely happy about this.  I mean, I'd put how many years into that identity?  I now owe how much in student loans because of it?  And what will my Grandma think?  I was always the Artist in the family, one of her kind.  I felt like I was betraying a core part of me.  But that didn't stop the transition.  Because even though I was mourning the Artist, I was celebrating the Writer.  You see, the big difference between the two has been commitment.  I have actually been able to commit to one writing project, my novel, far longer and more consistently than any body of art I've undertaken.  And I've realized, that I'd much rather be productive and prolific at something that I love than be sporadic and occasionally brilliant at something that I love.

Sample Sunday: A Discussion of Self in Carl's Café

Obviously, some things have changed since I first wrote this.  I'd be surprised if it hadn't, seeing as this comes from that same 2007/2008 era as Friday's flash piece, and in fact appears on the page just before it in the notebook.  Does it mean that what I wrote then is now completely untrue?  No, not really.  It was true at the time, and I think I needed it to work through who I was and get to who I am.  The fact that I chose to do this through a fictionalized encounter with myself is also unsurprising, given my tendency in the past to use a fantasy world for both escapism and self-discovery.

Anyway, I've done more than enough babbling here about 'what it all means' and other self analysis.  I'll let you get on with actually reading it now.

A Discussion of Self in Carl's Café

"I'm not like other guys," he said.  "Then again, most other guys aren't perfectly happy living in a woman's body."

He laughed then.  "Hell, why shouldn't I be?  I mean, I get to live the 'lesbian fantasy' to its most satisfying fullness.  But seriously.  A man in a woman's body who's not about to do anything about it at all.  Am I being a coward?  Not taking the risk, not making the commitment to become 'who I am?'"  He shrugged.  "Maybe.  But I'm really only a part of who I am, aren't I?" 

He smiled at me and finished his coffee.  As he left, I smiled and nodded to myself.  What he'd said was true.

Musings Regarding Self-Preservation and Survival of the Species

I was having an interesting discussion with my sister today.  She's in nursing, mostly long-term care facilities thus far.  Of note, when she mentioned her crack patients and wanting to tell them to 'switch to weed for a week because they're too damn skinny right now.'  My response was that it must be a matter of trying to find the most likely solution in a bad situation, and she said that's pretty much what nursing is.  This, among other things led to musing about a general lack of self-preservation in humans to which she said, 'in this world, is that really surprising?'

I have to admit, she's got a point.  When you think about it, a sense of self-preservation is an extension of a sense of survival of the species, something that, based on daily life experiences, is hardly something we as humans need to worry about.  I mean, look around!  We are horribly over-populated, we cover every corner of the globe where human life is even vaguely tenable, and it really doesn't look like we're going to stop any time soon.  It's impossible to feel that the species is on the verge of dying out when crammed over-capacity on a subway train, when walking shoulder to shoulder with strangers in the street, when waiting hours in line to get into a party or trying to find good seats at a movie theatre.  When faced with this in daily life, I think the average person can be forgiven for thinking that, as a species, we're pretty well on top and there's nothing really to worry about.  So what if I die young as a result of drugs/alcohol/pervasive chemicals/cellphone radiation/etc.?  There will always be someone else to take my place.  As far as humans go, plenty more where I came from.

Now the thing is, I have a certain difficulty seriously believing this to be a problem.  I'll admit that probably has more to do with my personal cynicism about most things, and very likely has something to do with the pervasive attitude I just described.  The gods know I don't have a very strong sense of self-preservation myself.  If it seems like more fun than playing it safe, chances are I'll go for it.  Hell, my dearest friendship is based on mutually assured destruction, and really, I wouldn't have it any other way.