Post migraine update.

 Dear Reader,

I am fatigued and in pain right now but the migraine seems to be gone. Now it's just my arthritis and such acting up. I'm going to try to do some writing by hand and get something ready for you. Look for another post later in the day after the pain medication kicks in and everything hurts less. I seriously dislike it when the weather turns foul, it just messes with everything. That, however, will be the extent of my ranting.

In the mean time, here's a link to one of my writing playlists on Spotify. I usually am working on fantasy when I'm listening to that one. There is some stuff for my sci-fi work on it, but I put it together before I figured out I could make multiple playlists. 

Serial stories update.

 Dear Reader, 

I would have the latest installment of the Iron Lily or Dacia's War up right now but I'm in the early stages of a migraine and the last week and a half have been awful because of a depressive episode. I'll try to post something soon as I can see straight. I apologize for any typos in this because I can't quite see properly at the moment. Again, there is new material coming. I just have to get through this damn migraine first.

Flora & Fauna: Earth-star

 Dear Reader,

I apologize for the lack of a sketch to go with this week's Flora & Fauna post. I simply haven't had the time or the energy to sketch this plant (well, fungi) out. If you look up "Puff ball mushrooms" you'll find the fungi that I am talking about. Just as they can be found and harvested in our world, they can be found and harvested in the world of Evandar. Evandari names for this plant range widely given the fact that there are seven independent kingdoms that make up the larger kingdom of Evandar. There are also many local variations. Almost all of the names can be taken to mean 'Earth-star'. 

There are two varieties of Earth-star. The first variety is edible when it is young. It has white colored, firm flesh and can be in a ball shape up to a foot in diameter. It is considered a very common food stuff. As the white variety of Earth-star ages, it develops yellow spores and seems to deflate some. It cracks open upon the top of it in a star like shape. When squeezed or crushed, the spores are released. The spores of the white variety of Earth-star cause mild gastric distress and can be mildly toxic.  

The second variety is purple and is inedible. Purple Earth-star causes intense gastric distress and can cause death if consumed. The flesh of the immature plant is a pale lavender. As the purple variety of Earth-star ages, it takes on a pale brown color and develops a star shaped crack in the top where spores that are yellow are released. These spores have a mildly hallucinogenic property but the gastric distress caused by their consumption out weighs any entertaining benefit of the hallucinogen. 

Both fungi prefer temperate conditions with a good supply of moisture and rich loam to grow in. They prefer deep shade, as would be found within a dense forest, but can grow to slightly smaller sizes in full sun gardens as long as there is some shade for them. The propagation of Earth-star is done by gathering small, mature fungi and sprinkling the spores over the area where one wishes to grow them.

Craft of Writing: Pandemic Fatigue & Patience.

 Dear Reader,

Here in my region, we've officially entered year two of the Covid-19 pandemic. Vaccines are getting rolled out and life is slowly returning to some resemblance of "normal." At the same time, people like myself who are high risk of getting complications struggle with the challenges of self-isolation and such. There's a lot of unresolved fear and a lot of unresolved guilt. At the same time, there is anger towards people who are not taking precautions for the sake of public health like flouting mask mandates and such.

All of this is exhausting. It's hard to do things on a regular day when there isn't the specter of death hovering over all possible social interactions. Being cautious and working hard to keep things running on an even keel is hard enough. The added constant threat just grinds you down until you're ready to just give up and become a hermit.

This sense of exhaustion is because we are living in extraordinary times and having an event that is traumatic on a grand scale. You can only live in crisis mode for so long before you start to burn out. I know that burn out is part of the reason why some people are casting away their masks and declaring that they're not going to live in 'fear' anymore. It's the most visible symbol of this silent killer. The exhaustion of living in crisis mode for over an extended period of time makes everything harder. Creative people suffer this especially keenly because we don't operate very well living in extended crisis mode. We need stability and safety to be able to create. The illusory stability of being a hermit only works so well. Then you run out of important groceries and you must mask up and go deal with people.

Be patient with yourself and your work. If your primary mode of expression is too painful at this time, explore other methods. Try picking up a paint brush and putting random strokes of color on the canvas to get the feelings out of your head if the words refuse to come. And if painting or other methods of art doesn't work, investigate other creative avenues that you have open to you. Maybe you have a pile of notebooks. Take one and just free write about everything that's going on. Or open a file in your computer to make digital creations that express what you're struggling with. 

Open your heart and let the pain out. And be patient. We are all on the long road to healing.  This pandemic has injured the whole world in many different ways. Some have died. Some have long term health complications that are still being discovered. Some have lost loved ones and friends. All have struggled with isolation and terror. These things are not normal. These things are not healthy. They are all traumatic and require us to be gentle in our healing process as to not re-traumatize ourselves. Don't expect yourself to create the next great novel or write an epic play. A few limericks are just fine if they help get the pain out and lift some of the psychological burden. Be kind to yourself, you are also still healing from this pandemic.

♥

Just a quick update.

 My life's gone completely sideways and I'm trying to get things back under control. Give me about two weeks and I should be back to posting daily content. First some moron tried to steal my identity. Now is the beginning of the ton of meetings to prep the kids educational programs for next year. And I still have a manuscript to finish editing that's about a month late because life keeps happening.

Say a prayer for me if you're so inclined. Any good thoughts would be appreciated.

Craft of Writing: Writing as Therapy.

 Dear Reader,

As I have mentioned a few times, I am disabled. My disabilities are related to mental illness. One of the tools I use to manage my condition is writing. Journal keeping is strongly recommended for people with post-traumatic stress disorder. It helps you to log what stressors are triggering your symptoms, the extent that the symptoms are causing you distress, and it helps you process the memories that come up.

There are many different ways to journal and use writing as a therapeutic tool. Bullet journals are popular right now. They're great for mood tracking and symptom tracking. They're alright for tracking triggers of flashbacks and psychological distress. It depends on the format that you use for the process. I have tried using a 'standard' bullet journal but I have so much going on between the bipolar II, the cptsd, and my anxiety disorder that it just turned into a muddled mess. I have ported things like tracking my mood and my symptoms into my day planner. I have a column on the right hand side of the planning page where I track my mood, my anxiety levels, how much water I'm drinking, my medications, and what my fasting blood sugar is like. On the back of the page, I give a summary of the day, including notes on if my symptoms are particularly bad and notes on how my doctors' appointments went.

I also keep a daily journal that I write in about my random thoughts during the morning. You could call it the equivalent of the bullet journal's brain dump page. I have a second daily journal that I write in at the end of the day (most days) and I do my best to get all of my anxieties and mental pain down on the page so that it isn't keeping me up at night. Some days, it works better than others. As I don't have a therapist to talk to about this stuff, I basically have to create my own system for addressing the high anxiety and low level terror that is ever present because of my mental illnesses. The trick with keeping these journals is to write in them daily. 

I haven't been doing such a great job because my anxiety is telling me that some random authority figure is going to use my journals to try to take my kids away from me. (Back in 2010-2011, life got really hard and we were facing that kind of situation due to a medical emergency because my mental medication provider refused to refill a psychoactive drug I was on and everything went down hill fast. At some point, I may tell that story. It's horrific and I am still traumatized by it, hence my difficulty writing.) 

There are many ways to keep a journal. I am primarily a verbal communicator. As such, most of my journal work is written. At the same time, people who are more comfortable with a visual medium or a combination of visual and written word can keep a journal that is a mixed medium thing. I'm still exploring that process. It's hard to find time to sit and work on it. But, my goal for 2021 is 'get shit done' and on my list is making artwork for this blog and for myself. I have done paintings and abstract pictures to attempt to process my emotions and memories via mixed media. I'm still trying to decide how I feel about this style of journaling. It seems to help when the words aren't working right but I have difficulty allowing myself artistic expression due to long term trauma effects. To say the least, it is a work in progress.

Ugh. I feel like it's Monday every day right now.

 Dear Reader,

I haven't forgotten about this blog. It's just been a really rough couple of weeks. I was sick last week. The week before I was sucked into major house cleaning. I'm still working on major house cleaning. I had doctor's appointments randomly sprinkled through out the time between my last post and now. There was a brief medical concern for one of my children (He's going to be ok. He just scared the hell out of us.) and doctor appointments because of that.

I'd go on about how things have been going sideways, but I think you get the picture. I'm exhausted because I haven't been sleeping well over the course of the last two months. I am struggling to keep up with just my daily planning and my morning journal. It's been hard to stay on top of everything. I am still eyeballs deep in edits on the fan-fiction project. I had planned to have everything done by the end of last month and turned into my friend who wants to publish it. Life just hasn't let me get that far.

Throw on top of it the business of Lulu screwing over people and I had to port everything I had on that site over to KDP,  well, that ate a week of my time and sanity as well. Now I'm getting ads for Lulu everywhere I turn on social media. I keep responding to the ads with a comment warning people off from publishing with them because of their bad behavior, bad customer service, and their tendency to take your money and not send you your books. I'm out about $20 for books they never sent me. I didn't realize that was the case because at the time there were people stealing packages around my neighborhood. I have written that off as a loss. I'm still hunting for a site I can self-publish books and have a bit more variety than what I've got up on KDP in format.

On the whole, the last few weeks have been exhausting, exasperating, and miserable. I apologize for not keeping up with my blog posting. This has impacted all of my blogs. Heck, it's kept me from my pleasure reading because I've been so busy putting out fires. Now that I have the mess with Lulu under control and I think I just about have the mess that is my home under control, I just need to get through the last of this round of doctor's appointments and maybe I'll have time again in my schedule to start blogging seriously again.

Flora & Fauna: Feather Fern

 

Dear Reader,

As you can tell, I'm back at sketching things. I'm not pleased with how this one came out. I really need better pencils because the leaf colors came out uneven due to the No. 2 pencil I used to outline everything smearing and smudging as I was filling in with color. I may have to go shopping for a decent set of colored pencils and give my collection of random inexpensive ones to the kids.

Feather Fern is a diminutive plant. It grows in deep shade, like on a forest floor. Feather Fern prefers rich soil with good drainage. The root structure is pretty close to what you would find for most real ferns. (I also suck at drawing roots, so I cheated and didn't do it.) Feather Fern makes good tinder when it is dried out.

It is reasonably good ground cover in shady spaces. It doesn't have any medicinal properties or folk uses aside from being a good fire starter. But it was kinda easy to draw.

Craft of Writing: Limitations and Difficulties.

 Dear Reader,

Limitations is something of a dirty word in our society. We are encouraged to "push past" them or "overcome" them. I have even indulged in using those expressions. But there are times, like what I am currently working through, where we can not push past or overcome our limitations. There are lots of ways we can be limited in life. Not enough time to work on our projects is a pretty common limitation. Not enough energy or mental capacity to work on our projects is tied with not enough time for the number one spot on most everyone's list of limitations that they're frustrated with.

As much as I encourage you to push past limits, it is important to respect hard limits. Trying to push past a hard limit will injure you. If you don't have enough time to work on your project, then you don't have enough time. There are only 24 hours in the day and you need to sleep for some of them to stay healthy. You also need to spend some time in recreation (and as much as you say that your creative work is recreation it is still a form of work). Schedules are a great way to work within your hard time limits. You may not get as much time in on the project as you would like, but a little done here and a little done there equates to great work over time.

There is also the factor of mental and emotional limits. If you have it the point where your brain is simply not functioning well enough for you to engage in creative work, all you're going to do is frustrate yourself and come away from the experience of doing that work feeling awful. I have days where my depression makes it very hard to keep writing and making things. It's awful and my guilt complex calls me lazy for taking days or even hours off from doing work. That's a mental habit that needs to be broken because when you're not well enough or focused enough to do the work, you need to rest. Rest is restorative and allows us to come back and attack problems in a new fashion.

Some days are great days and you will get a lot done on all your projects. Those are wonderful days but they are not the rule. Most days are going to be challenging in some fashion. You will have to decide if you have the energy, focus, or time to engage in your projects. There's no shame in saying "I can't do this right now." Honestly, that's been the hardest lesson for me to learn being disabled. That said, don't give up. Take a step back and a moment to recover and reorient yourself. Then re-engage your projects when you can within the limits you have tolerance for.

It may be that you are a fortunate so whose tolerance for various limits increases as you work. If you are not so fortunate and you are stuck within a smaller box than most people, don't give up. Every novel is written one page at a time. Every painting is done one brush stroke at a time. Do what you can, when you can. Don't worry about the rest because it will sort itself out in the wash.

~*~*~*~*~

Addendum: If you are someone who is working on a deadline and you're struggling, that's alright too. Break your project into manageable chunks and work on it in stages. Remember for every hour of work, take fifteen minutes to take a break from it. This gives your brain and body an opportunity to recharge for the next work session. We are not machines and should not expect ourselves to push forward through everything life throws at us. ♥