AW: Morning Pgs. 2025: Day 5

 Listening to cinematic music is giving me no inspiration today. Usually, I find myself inspired to write or make art to that style of music. Today, it's just background noise. I feel tired because I slept poorly last night. I think that I have definitely entered into perimenopause with this business of night sweats waking me up for the last few months. That was probably too much information but it's what's on my mind at the moment. Second puberty isn't going to be half as much fun as second breakfast, I know that for sure. Why? Because I have two sons going through puberty right now. We tend to lock horns on a regular basis and this is just going to be worse because we're all going to be moody and hormonal. I feel bad for Beloved.

I am hoping that I can get through this phase of life with out my brain going too haywire. It's hard enough with the mental illness stuff that I am dealing with. It does make me suspect that my year long depression last year was due to hormonal changes. This is a documented part of perimenopause, the depression bit. I think it was just worse for me because of the bipolar and seasonal affective disorder. I have been doing my best to avoid depression triggers but the news isn't helping me any.

I'm not going to go into depth on politics at the moment because I don't have the energy for it. It is enough to say that Donald Trump's behavior and blathering has been triggering me to some extend because of the fact that he is an abusive bastard. That speech patterning seems to be universal with abusers. Something about it just trips a switch in my head and I dissociate and get depressed. Like how I spent most of life during my teenage years.

I am, at the same time, struggling with the urge to document for history's sake all of the shenanigans going on in the government. I was raised with the hope that I was going to go on and become the family historian. That didn't happen but the deep sense of responsibility to future generations and the desire to pass on knowledge is potent.

AW: Morning pgs. 2025: Day 4

A part of me says that my streak of writing on this blog isn't going to last long. That pessimistic thought is a hold over from the depressive episode that recently ended. It's that mild sense of futility that keeps you up at night wondering if anything you do makes a difference, despite the fact that you had a decent day. I have to say, it is a really annoying feature of my brain. On another blog of mine, I posted something that was pretty long about worry. I'm not going to repeat it here, but it is enough to say that I have some opinions on the topic and frustration with my anxiety disorder.

Putting that aside, I am not sure what today is going to hold for me. The weather is warm and wet. They were calling for it to be cloudy but that changed overnight. The rain forecasted for tomorrow is showing up today in the afternoon and happening through the day tomorrow as well. Then it gets cold again and we have a chance of snow. To say the least, I have had a headache for a few days and I'm pretty sure it's going to persist through the week. Up and down temperatures and wild swings in the weather are migraine triggers.

I have a great medication that my doctor prescribed me for my migraines. The trick is, they don't know if it is safe to take more than three times a month. When I get migraines, it can be just one in a month or it can be weeks of them. It's really frustrating to be at the mercy of the weather. It's hard enough to deal with the fact that the weather is being stupid to begin with. Throw in crushing pain and eyes that are hyper light sensitive and it's just awful. I hate migraines with a passion that is deep and true.

World building: how much is too much? (spoiler alert: never too much)

 Dear Friends,

It has been quite a while since I have posted real content up here. I am looking at my journals and notes from the years I have spent working on my fantasy series. One thing keeps coming to mind, this is a lot of world building. I started working on this book series when I was in seventh grade. The first iteration of the first book in the series was a two page typed story. My grandmother was pleased that she was the first person I shared it with. She told me it had potential and I've been working joyfully on it ever since.

The core ideas in that first short story have been fleshed out and given more detail over the years, but so has many other things. Sometimes, I wonder if I have gone too far. I have literal volumes of material that never even made it into my books (published or unpublished). Then I stop and think to myself that all of this material can be carefully reorganized and produce more books.

I don't know if I am going to finish the 30 book series that I plotted out before I die. Other projects pop up and I get distracted. At the same time, my legacy of writing is going to be fun for my heirs to go through and see how it changed over the years. Unless they decide I am still boring. Having teenaged children makes you boring to them no matter what you do.

I hope that you find as much joy in world building as I have. And I hope that it keeps writing fun and interesting for you. It has for me.

♥

AW: Morning pgs 2025: Day 3

 I am not entirely sure what to write this morning. I am still dealing with the lingering after effects of a migraine last night. It was really irritating to have that migraine because I thought I had a few days before it happened. Things like wild changes in the weather trigger my migraines and this week it's going to go up and down in temperature drastically. My eldest son is looking forward to the possibility of riding his bike for the first time in months. Despite his hopes, I am fairly sure that the day it will be warmest is going to be full of rain.

We've arrived at the beginning of meterological spring. I think the birds got the memo early because they started showing up in the middle of February. Each morning, I can hear them out there making a racket. I am pretty sure that they're driving the cats bananas with it all. Beloved has started talking about putting up feeders again for the season. Basically as soon as he heard bird song, he started plotting how to vary his seed mix and get as many birds in our yard as possible.

He proudly calls himself a 'bird nerd' and it's delightful to watch him enjoy this hobby. He doesn't have many hobbies that he can indulge in so this is a good thing. The fun part is that the kids get in on the 'bird nerding' as well. It's kinda become a family affair, to be honest. And it all started with me getting a cheap feeder and a bag of seed so I could watch them out the window.

Fast forward about 8 years and we've had a war with squirrels, chased many of the neighborhood cats, and laughed at the antics of a rotund goldfinch we named Tennis. I have declared the birds to be his outdoor pets and he laughs. He puts just as much care and love into feeding the birds as I do into caring for my fish. Therefore, they must be his pets, right?

AW: Morning Pages 2025 - Pg. 2

 I have forgotten to water the plants again. It's been rather frustrating. I have lost many of my houseplants because I kept forgetting to water them over the course of the last year. You never realize how much depression messes with your brain until you take stock of how much stuff you had forgotten about or struggled with because of it. Last year was a hard year. 

I will be watering them after I finish this post. Then I have a ton of dishes to take care of because my 17 year old son is refusing to do his chores right now. I know that he loves his Chromebook but I may put a halt on its use if this persists longer. A week's worth of dishes is waiting for attention. I know there's no way that he's going to catch up if I let it sit and wait for him to take care of any of it. The ongoing contest of wills is aggravating but that's life with a teenager. And I have two teenagers in the house so it's double the fun. (If only there was a sarcasm font!)

I am not sure what else to write because I didn't come into this with a plan. I apparently am really big on planning before I write. Even if it is a few notes on a scrap of paper. I suppose it is a good thing that I have my planning notebook for my blogs. I know that if I give myself time and allow myself the opportunity to do research for content that requires research, I can get back to high quality posts again. I just feel like that's going to be difficult.

Having my home a mess is a stressful thing and it interrupts my thinking about other things. Navigating through a room full of toys and piles of projects makes it hard to focus on anything else. And that's just the living room. I am not going to give up, just make some strategic decisions on how I am going to approach everything. Like using my timer for making my morning pages  posts. It clocks 10 minutes to go from the sand in the top to entirely in the bottom. Ten minutes isn't a very long time and it makes the posts less stressful because I know that I'm not neglecting something important.

AW: Morning Pages 2025: Page 1

 I am not really sure what to write at the moment. I'm listening to random music on Spotify. I really enjoy that streaming service. No annoying commercials for a mere $15 per month. I don't get to listen to local news on there. But I have found that the local news outlets are doing less local content and more national level content, even in their 'local' sections. It's highly annoying. I'd go back to reading the newspaper but they're just as bad.

I kinda worry that we're heading full speed into a state run media outlet and censorship of the free press. There's a lot of things going on here in the United States that scare the daylights out of me. I feel somewhat helpless right now. I know that will change as I figure out something that I can possibly do to push back against the tide of fascism.

I am really angry with Congress. There's bills being floated that would do things like strip me of my right to vote because I changed my last name to match my husband's when we got married. Sounds crazy, right? But this voting act that is being pushed through says if your legal documents don't all match with the same last name, you're going to be barred from voting. That's just one of the things that's put a bee in my bonnet.

I'd go on but I think I'd spend a full hour ranting. That's not good for my blood pressure or my sanity. I just wish that I was wrong when I predicted this crap was going to happen as a kid. I had people telling me I was paranoid. But I saw all the warning signs and played Cassandra. Not a fun role. 

Posting to resume soon.

 Dear Friends,

Last year, I had a bad depressive episode that lasted just about the whole year. Things like writing stopped and I felt awful. Thanks to medication changes, patience, and more daylight, I am back to my normal self. I am in the process of reevaluating the directions I want to go with this blog. It is a curious feeling to reread your previous work and say 'Did I really write that? It's pretty good.' 

In the course of my working on spring cleaning, I found several old writing projects that I am going to dust off and share with you. It's good to revisit your roots and original concepts for how your huge project is going. It's fun to see how much you have grown and to find the gems that were buried in all of that brain drabble.

If you have books that you would like me to review, let me know in the comments. My personal library is pretty extensive but I know that there is always new things to look at. I will not be doing dual posts on LiveJournal and here for book reviews. I will leave up the LiveJournal links but I am not going to be updating it anytime soon. Too many blogs makes for a frustrated author. And less time for novel work.

ETA: I will resume working on the critical analysis of The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron around the end of the month. In the process of cleaning, I put it in a safe place. It's a sure way to lose things around here with my swiss cheese brain.