Tag: acatherinenoon

  • Self-Care September – Writer Wednesday | Journal Tools – Future Visioning

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    Future Visioning

    I\’ve been keeping a journal for almost as long as I\’ve been alive. I started with one of those silly little ones they give small girls with a dopey lock that doesn\’t really lock and only about a paragraph\’s worth of space for each day. Such constraint! I\’ve tried all sorts of things in the intervening years, settling on my trusty Strathmore 400 Series 9 x 12\” spiral bound journals with the hardboard cover, because I can use it anywhere – on my lap on the bus or train, on the ferry, in a park, at the beach, in my office, on my balcony out back, in my car… (Dr. Seuss anyone?)

    There are many, many different ways of keeping a journal, too – from the straight up \”Dear Diary\” type of chronicle, to bullet journals, listing, the unsent letter, and all sorts of methods in between. Today I want to talk about Future Visioning.

    What Is Future Visioning?

    Future Visioning is between creative writing, narrative non-fiction, and journaling. It\’s a way of spending time in our minds, fleshing out what we want to create and making it real to our creative brain. Like writing a book, we create the setting and characters and see how they interact. Like narrative non-fiction, it\’s telling a story about real or imagined real events. Like journaling, this is meant to be private: between ourselves and our imagination, and not for the eyes of anyone else.

    How Do You Do It?

    I recommend setting a timer for ten or twenty minutes. Grab your favorite journal notebook or a keyboard and fresh document. It\’s up to you whether you prefer to type or write by hand. I prefer (and recommend) writing by hand because there\’s something kinesthetic that happens when we do that, but use what works best for you. If you\’re not sure, they both and keep what method you like best.

    Then, write down what you\’re wanting to create. Let\’s say our statement for today is, \”I am a prolific author.\” So I\’d start by writing that at the top of my page. Then I take a moment or two with my eyes closed and breathe deeply. I imagine what does me being a prolific author look like? I imagine it\’s this time next year, on a Wednesday afternoon, and I\’m on my balcony with the birds singing. When I have that image clear, I open my eyes and begin to write.

    It\’s a Wednesday afternoon and the sun is out. It\’s not too hot outside and the breeze feels good. I\’m so pleased because I\’ve finished my blog posts for the day and I just hit \”send\” on my newsletter. Our next book is ready to be uploaded, since I just got it back from our book packager. This will be our sixth book in the series and our twentieth book overall. My body feels calm and grounded, and there are no butterflies in my stomach. Writing is so deeply satisfying, and I\’m so grateful that I finally allow myself to do it.

    Let your timer be your guide, and just focus on getting the picture as clearly as you can in your mind, and write down what you see. Try to incorporate all five senses. What are you seeing? What does it feel like in your body to be in this new reality? What are you hearing around you, and from others in your orbit? What are you thinking as a result of your new reality? What in your life is easier?

    We spend so much time complaining that it\’s easy to think that\’s the only thing we can do. But with a little creativity, we can use our journal as a potent tool for positive change.

    Tomorrow, join me for our first September Challenge!

  • Self Care September – Theme Reveal

    \"Calligraphy

    I don\’t have to tell you that this year has been challenging. Between the pandemic, learning new terms for windstorms like \”derecho\” (which is a land hurricane, if you hadn\’t heard it before, and occurred in Iowa and left devastation in its wake), the fires in California, not one but two hurricanes in the Gulf, shootings and protests and rioting, it\’s a wonder that any of us can sleep at night.

    Which brings me to my theme for this month: Focus on what I can control.

    I can\’t fix the weather, and I\’m not a doctor so my job as regards COVID is to stay healthy and stay out of the emergency medical system to the extent that I can – which means, wear a mask, social distance, and avoid travel. I haven\’t really left the house since March other than to walk, go to the community garden, and essential shopping – and I\’m stir crazy!

    Which got me thinking: I can\’t be the only creative, highly sensitive person out here with these challenges! I suspect there are a lot more of us than any of us realize, partly because when we\’re overwhelmed we don\’t communicate as loudly about our personal reality as we might during times when things aren\’t falling down around our ears.

    And thus, the image at the top of this post. Did you know, there\’s such a thing as \”faux calligraphy?\” Here\’s how it works:

    • Write out a phrase or statement, leaving extra space between the letters than you normally would.
    • On the descenders of the letters, draw a second line next to the line of the letter and then color it in – I used the same color for my letters but you could get really fancy and color in the spaces with different colors, even using a colored pencil!
    • When you cross the \”t\’s,\” be extra intentional and make a wavy line. You could even add flourishes if you felt called to.
    • Voila. Calligraphy. Who knew it could be that easy?
    • If you try it, please link me to your Instagram or other place you share your images; I\’d love to see!

     

    And in the meantime, tell me in the comments – what does \”self care\” look like for you? And I\’m not talking here about mani-pedis, necessarily. I\’m talking about really caring for yourself. What does that look like?

    And be sure to come back throughout the month while I share some ideas, challenges, and suggestions so that we can make September a great month together. And on September 3rd, I\’ll be back over at Delilah Devlin\’s blog for a guest post – watch for the link to come visit with me!

  • Letters

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    I\’ve been an inveterate letter correspondent since I was a little girl. I loved getting mail in the mailbox, because it was news from the outside. I was raised in what might be now termed a cult, in an environment of severe child abuse. But the letters existed outside of all that, in a clean, happy world where people wrote of the lives they led and everything was interesting.

    I remember once that I did a stack of letters for the post office. My mother had agreed to drop them off on her way to work.

    A couple days later, I got a call from one of the recipients, a lady that was a friend of my mother\’s. I\’d sent her a birthday card, but I\’d expected my mother to hand deliver it so I\’d just scrawled her name in big letters across the front. My mom, on \”autopilot,\” dropped it in the outgoing mailbox.

    It got to its intended recipient.

    This isn\’t because it was such a long time ago. (Please, I\’m not THAT old.) It had more to do with the size of the town where we lived. There were only about 5,000 people in the greater area, and everyone knew everyone else. I guess that the letter carrier knew the recipient and figured, what the heck, I\’ll deliver it. The only admonishment was, next time, use a stamp.

    We put the correct change for the stamp in an envelope and left it for the letter carrier on our route.

    And who says the post office doesn\’t bring people together?

    What about you, Dear Reader? Do you like to send or receive mail? I love to; leave me a note in the comments and I\’ll be happy to add you to my card list. Who knows – maybe I\’ll even remember to address your envelope! 🙂

  • Writer Wednesday

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    It\’s Wednesday, and I\’m a writer. That\’s about the only reason the title is what it is, and because I couldn\’t think of anything else to use. Check-in sounded too session-y, and holy shit the world\’s on fire a little histrionic. Both are, however, true. So this is a Writer Wednesday Check-In Because the World Is On Fire.

    And in some ways, my sentiment is, Burn, baby, burn. It\’s well past time we reckon with the consequences of the genocide we\’ve committed against Black and brown people in this country, (I\’m in the U.S. if that wasn\’t already clear), and the convulsive changes occurring here and around the world are necessary for growth.

    Sure ain\’t easy, though. Mr. Floyd was laid to rest yesterday. I keep trying to write something coherent about it but run up sharply against the fact that the world doesn\’t need another horrified white lady extolling … well, anything on race right now. No shit, it was horrible that he was murdered. But the truth is, this has been happening for hundreds of years, in big cities, in small towns, and in rural places in the back of beyond. Like Will Smith said, racism isn\’t new, it\’s just being filmed.

    So how do we move forward from this moment? Particularly when we\’re gripped in a global pandemic and an environmental cataclysm that may make everything else moot if we don\’t get on it?

    I don\’t know. And that\’s not a bad thing, this not-knowing. It\’s not comfortable, I know that. But I want to invite you to sit with that not-knowing, that place between what we knew to be true and the place of what is actually true, or at least the next threshold. The more we can hold this place of not-knowing, the better we can listen and have a chance to really hear the lessons we\’re being called to learn.

    What that looks like for me is a couple things.

    One is, I learned a new concept this week: \”Performative.\” There are many kinds of resistance and, unfortunately, we\’ve seen a lot of performative acts over the last week and a half in the wake of Mr. Floyd\’s murder by white people. The most egregious example of this are the statements by NFL CEO Roger Goodell, where he apologized to … whom, us? the players? Colin Kaepernick? for censuring players for their peaceful protests of police brutality. Why is this performative? It cost him nothing. Mr. Kaepernick wasn\’t re-signed, and the fines paid by him and other players have not been returned, at least as of this writing. But it\’s on a smaller, more localized scale too. Many of my fellow whites have been vociferous on social media about the horrors of racism and police brutality, and there\’s a subset of these folx who are acting as though they\’ve just become aware of it. There\’s also a sense that this is what we\’re doing this week, but next week when something else comes into our consciousness we\’ll go do that and forget about Black Lives Matter. What makes it performative is this aspect of publicly doing it: \”See? I\’m a good person because I\’m shouting out loud how bad this is, and how much it hurts me to see it, and how enraged I am.\” I\’m not going to restate things that BIPOC folx have said better and more informatively than I can, and frankly we should be listening to them.

    Which is my point: I\’ve been very quiet the last week or so because I\’ve been sitting with my own racism and unconscious bias, and asking hard questions about why I\’m posting this or that? Am I doing it to keep the focus on BIPOC voices and activists? Am I doing what they are asking me to do as an ally, or am I doing things to make myself feel better or express my horror and outrage without realizing that the BIPOC community has been traumatized from watching on video Mr. Floyd\’s murder? The young woman, all of seventeen years old, who filmed the murder has been the subject of frequent harassment and has been made to feel unsafe. Is my jumping up and down going to help her? Or Mr. Floyd\’s devastated family and friends? I ask myself, if it was my family member murdered on a video went viral so that I see it everywhere from social media to the news to analysis shows, how would I feel?

    And so, I\’m quiet. Because I\’d be fucking devastated.

    I\’ve joined a private reading group to wrestle with these ideas and educate myself better. The book we\’ve chosen to read first is called How To Be An Anti-Racist, by Ibram X. Kendi. The link is to Chicago\’s only Black woman-owned bookstore. It\’s a safe space to discuss the ideas in the book as well as a place to ask embarrassing questions like, what do I tell my Black friend when her neighbor is acting badly? I\’d just call the police, but I don\’t fear that I might be shot if I did that. I\’m at absolutely no risk of it, and in fact depend on the authority my whiteness gives me. What does wipipo mean? Can I use it, or is that not a term that I should be using? How do I talk to my friends and coworkers of color about race? How do I not be an asshole when I\’m trying to help?

    There are many resources, and if you\’re looking for things, may I suggest you look to BIPOC leaders who have already written extensively on the subject? You don\’t need me, a white person, educating you on how to be a better ally. We, each of us, need to be doing that work for ourselves and listening to the BIPOC thinkers who are willing to talk to us about it. And we need to not bother our friends, neighbors, and family members with it – they\’ve been traumatized by the events of recent days. It\’s not up to them to educate us. And we need to be very suspicious of our own desires to ask them: are we asking out of a genuine desire to know? Or are we asking them in specific so they know we\’re \”enlightened and woke\” now? If you absolutely don\’t know where to start, check out your public library. They\’ve got curated lists and librarians willing to answer all sorts of questions for you.

    I know this is a long one, but thank you if you\’ve read with me this far.  I wanted to share, and I wanted to write about what\’s going on, but it\’s been really difficult to find my voice in the middle of what\’s going on. For that reason, I\’ve decided to coordinate a session of Finding Water starting this Sunday. There is no charge for it and the course will go for fourteen weeks. Head on over to our writing group site, Writer Zen Garden, for more info.

    Other than that, I\’ve been learning to weave and having a ball with it. I\’m also taking a class on Herbalism called the Science and Art of Herbalism, and I made some lavender tincture with brandy this week. It will steep for a month, and then we\’ll see how it turned out. I\’m going to start featuring more of that kind of activity on my craft blog, Knoontime Knitting. If you enjoy making things, I hope you\’ll come on over the join the conversation.

    I hope you are staying safe and healthy. COVID appears to not be going away any time soon, so make sure to strengthen your immune system and be smart about being out and about in public. Hug your loved ones close and keep on writing.

    Love,

    Noony

  • Writer Wednesday – write-minded Podcast Appearance

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    Happy Wednesday, writers! I am hard at work on an application for a super sekrit program, which I\’ll share about as soon as I can. But in the process of working on the application, I came across this awesome podcast where fellow author Alexis Daria and I were interviewed on the write-minded podcast. I thought you might enjoy. Take a listen, here.

  • Anxiety

    \"Growing

    Anxiety sucks. It tells lies. It feels true. And it is constant.

    Why is it there?

    That’s a complicated answer. I am not a psychologist, so I can only tell you what I understand about my own anxiety. I am a survivor of child abuse. My mother was mentally ill and my father is a malignant narcissist and psychopath. These aren’t descriptors, in that I am not saying them to be insulting. They are factual statements based on evidence of behavior. While I am not qualified to diagnose either of them, I am able to evaluate their behavior over years of evidence and those two statements fit the evidence.

    Because of their prolonged brainwashing, I now struggle with regular, daily existence. I have a hyper-developed sense of danger, sometimes referred to as “hypervigilance,” which is one of the symptoms connected with Post Traumatic Stress. Anxiety is one of the symptoms as well.

    The thing about anxiety is that it uses all your brain’s faculties to create scenarios that feel incredibly real, yet aren’t. It can take someone’s failure to smile in line at a Starbucks or in the office break room and build an elaborate scenario about how they hate you, want to get you fired, and are dangerous.

    Take the coronavirus situation. I live in Bellevue, Washington State, the epicenter in the United States for the current outbreak. The hospital where the first recorded deaths have occurred (and are still occurring) is five miles from my house. Closer to my office.

    So of course, my anxiety brain thinks I have the virus, even though I have no symptoms and to my knowledge, have met no one who has been exposed.

    This, then, is a conversation with my anxiety brain:

    I HAVE CORONAVIRUS.

    No, you don’t. You haven’t met anyone with it.

    BUT I COULD HAVE.

    Yes. That’s true.

    SEE? I HAVE IT!

    No dear.

    THERE! I SNEEZED! SEE? I HAVE CORONAVIRUS!

    It was dust.

    YOU CAN GET CORONAVIRUS FROM DUST!

    No, you can’t. Dust is dust. Or cat hair. Besides. If you get it, you’ll be fine. You just saw the doctor yesterday.

    BUT SHE COULD BE WRONG.

    Shoo. Go write something.

    WHEN I DIE OF CORONAVIRUS, YOU’LL BE SORRY!

    Yes, that’s true. But in the meantime, write some words.

    NO!

    You could write about coronavirus. Write a romance in a post-apocalyptic world where there’s a continual quarantine.

    …

    Hello?

    I’M NOT TALKING TO YOU. I’M SICK.

    Okay, you go be sick. I’LL go write something.

    CAN YOU WRITE WHILE YOU’RE SICK?

    Yes. It’s a superpower.

     

    If you struggle with anxiety or other issues, I urge you to seek help. Psychology Today has a great therapist finder on their website, here.

  • Flashback Friday – Beneath the Surface

    Originally posted on Aug 17, 2012 , this is a little flash fic that I wrote in response to the prompt, \”unexpected spring.\” I hope you enjoy!

     

    “Holy cow, Monte! What the hell?” My voice carried, bouncing off the side of Monte’s house and sounding louder than it really was. “Hey! Monte!” I yelled and waved my arms.

    “Hey, Louise,” he called back and cut the power to the jackhammer. “What’s wrong?”

    “Look!” I pointed.

    “What the…” He laid the jackhammer on its side and walked over. “When did that pop up?”

    “Monte, you must’ve hit the water main or something!”

    “Can’t’ve. It’s over there.” He waived an imprecise hand toward the other side of the yard. “No idea what this is.”

    I edged closer. Water, brown with the stirred-up silt from Monte’s labors, swirled up from a crack in the fence’s foundation pole.

    “Monte, it’s rising.”

    He knelt on the other side of the fence and I could see his fingers poking around under the fence slats. “Shit.”

    “What?”

    He didn’t say anything right away. “It’s salty.”

    I stared down at the water. “That’s impossible!” I poked a cautious finger into it and tasted. Sure enough, it was salty. “Monte, there’s no ocean around here!”

    “They always did say California was going to break off.”

    “That’s not funny!” I snapped. “I’m serious, here! How is there salt water in our back yard?”

    His knees popped as he stood. I rose and met his serious brown eyes. “I don’t know, Louise. I really don’t. Maybe we’d better call the city?”

    “What do we say? ‘Hi, there’s an ocean in the desert?’”

    He shrugged. “We have to report it.” He glanced down. “Your shoes are about to get wet.”

    I stepped back, amazed. “Monte, what if it doesn’t stop? It’ll flood our houses!”

    “We’re on a hill, Louise. Calm down. It’ll flood downtown first.”

    I had visions of a wall of water sweeping down the Las Vegas Strip and almost laughed. He smirked. I realized with a slight shock he was trying to cheer me up. “Thanks, Monte.”

    He smiled, his teeth very white. “No prob. I’ll call my guy at the Water District. Let’s see what he says. Maybe it’s a pipe or something.”

    “A pipe.”

    He shrugged. “What do you want me to say?” He looked calculating. “You got anymore of that meatloaf?”

    I laughed out loud. “You need a wife,” I said without thinking.

    He looked intense suddenly and then turned to his equipment. “Yeah, that’s what my mom keeps saying,” he said over his shoulder.

    For some reason, my heart was pounding and I felt hot. “I’ll go make us some lunch while you call.”

    He waved at me without turning around. I walked back inside to the air-conditioned hush and got out the meatloaf. Truth was, I had made it for him. But not to flirt, I just knew he liked meatloaf. At least, that’s what he always told me. What if there was more to it?

    This was silly. I hit the lights half-angrily and set about making a salad and sandwiches. I set everything up on plates, got down my tray and the pitcher for tea, and made sweet tea. I glanced outside and saw him pacing back and forth by the fence, his portable house phone glued to one ear. He didn’t look happy.

    I walked out and set out the tray on the table. He saw me and walked through the gate between our properties and sat down.

    “Thanks, Mal. I’ll let you know.” He hung up and met my gaze. “They’ll come tomorrow at ten,” he informed me. “He thinks I’m crazy, but he owes me for some work I did on his pool last fall.”

    I looked over at the water. “What if we are crazy?”

    “We’re not,” he mumbled through an enormous bite of sandwich. “It’s still rising. See the trickle? There, on my side of the fence?”

    I craned my neck. Sure enough, there was a little brook forming, trundling along the fence toward our neighbors down the hill. “What if it floods?” I asked, afraid again. “You know how fast flash floods happen, Monte!”

    He shrugged. “What do you want me to do? Sandbag it?”

    He had a point. What could we do? I ate some more sandwich and worried.

    “Louise. Stop worrying. It’s going to be fine.”

    I heard a splash. Monte froze, and I could see the hairs on his neck wave a little bit. Weird. ‘Hairs rising on the back of your neck’ was actually visible.

    “Crap!” he blurted, spraying bread crumbs. “Did you see that?”

    Truthfully, I had been staring at his neck. “No, what?”

    He glanced at me, irritated, and then focused on the bubbling water. I looked over too, wondering what could capture his attention so fully.

    A black tailfin peeked up out of the water and then disappeared.

    I was on my feet so fast I didn’t remember moving. “Monte…” My voice sounded breathy and weird.

    He joined me a second later as another ripple disturbed the water. “Get in the house, Louise. You got your keys?”

    “Right here,” I said, patting my pocket. Another fin, black and pointy, emerged slowly. By the time the eyebrow ridge appeared, we were cowering behind my kitchen curtains.

    “Where’s your phone?” Monte whispered hoarsely.

    “You calling the police?”

    “No, the paper!”

    We had a brief wrestling match over the phone, which he won. He flipped it open and thumbed the camera button. He snapped two shots of the glossy black head as the thing climbed out of the hole. It was bipedal, covered in scales, and had dark purple eyes covered with some kind of web. It blinked vertically, opposite of a human, and stood about as tall as Monte.

    We watched it walk down the hill, following the water trail.

    “No one is ever going to believe this,” Monte murmured.

    It was then that I realized we were holding hands. Monte didn’t seem inclined to let go, so I didn’t either. I watched the black creature disappear as the sun set over Sin City.

  • Happy New Year! – Thoughtful Thursday

    \"\" I\’m glad it\’s the new year. It\’s an election year here in the States, finally, and I am optimistic about our ability to get ourselves back on the right track. It\’s funny, though; many years I feel called to set intentions or resolutions and I\’ve felt none of that this year. I\’m more interested in taking it easy and working on my mindfulness practice, which ultimately seems to be helping me with productivity. I feel like that\’s logically backwards but I\’m also superstitious enough to not want to mess with it if it\’s working.

    Writing

    This is still like pulling teeth. I trust that fallow periods are necessary, and things are starting to crack loose slowly, but man. Slow sucks. 🙂

    I\’m working on drafting Ambush, and playing with a couple other things. One involves crow shifters and that\’s got both Rachel and I excited. I\’ve been messing around a little with poetry and memoir, and those are satisfying. I\’m re-reading Deena Metzger\’s Writing For Your Life, and it\’s been a good thing to revisit the silence of my own mind and thoughts. I like her ideas about writing and life, self expression, and psychology.

    Community

    One of the local writing organizations here has put out a call for Writer In Residence and I\’ve decided to apply. I think it sounds like a lot of fun and a great way to give back to the writing community while having a more structured place and time to specifically write.

    This weekend, we have our first Soulwoman Circles of the Salish Sea event and I\’m excited. The SoulArt Pocket Vision Journal session still has spaces open and we\’d love to see you there on Saturday, January 18th. More info is on the link.

    We\’re overhauling the Writer Zen Garden website and have a new forum and chat function available, which I\’m stoked about because I want to move off of Facebook. I don\’t like their practices or interference in our elections here in the States, and want to have an alternative for our members when we offer workshops and other events.

    Day Job

    I think working writers don\’t talk enough about working and writing, and it leads to the persistent myth that a) writers can easily make a full-time living by writing and that b) if one isn\’t doing so, one\’s writing isn\’t successful. Most of my colleagues who write full time have spouses who support them and pay the mortgage and other bills. It\’s rare that a writer can make a full time living. The Author\’s Guild just did their annual earnings survey and earnings have sharply fallen due to the consolidation of publishers, rise of independent publishing, and many other factors.

    I work a day job in the insurance industry and have found it useful from several standpoints, one of the most important is that it grounds me on the left side of my brain. I can go to work and when I leave, I can leave my work at the office and not drag it home with me.  That allows me to focus, without pressure, on my writing and other creative pursuits, knowing my bills are taken care of. I like to write in the mornings before work, and I used to write extensively during my commute on transit. I no longer commute that way and am trying to figure out where to fit that writing time in my current daily round.

    Art

    I\’m knitting like a fiend. I\’ve got a blanket going as well as two sweaters and a shawl. I find that deeply satisfying and meditative.

    What about you, Dear Reader? What do you like to do to fill your creative well? What\’s new in your world? Tell me in the comments; I\’d love to know.

  • Saturday Summary | Samhain Week One

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    NaNoWriMo* is in full swing and it\’s a chilly, rainy day in the Seattle area. I\’d say peaceful, but they\’re replacing the roof on my building and the roofers started at 08:30. That\’s in the ay-em. On a fucking Saturday.

    And I didn\’t kill \’em. Not even once.

    Happy Celtic New Year! I\’m so grateful that it\’s a new year and new beginnings, because it was past time to put the old year in the ground. Man, what a couple years it\’s been, huh? We live in a brave, new reality that bears very little resemblance to the one we were living in a few years ago. The world is waking, and it\’s a good thing, but chaotic, nu?

    As I\’m doing over on my Knoontime Knitting blog, I thought I\’d check in on the week and share a progress report. For one thing, I realized I REALLY miss blogging. I happened to look back at some posts that I wrote for a group blog \”back in the day,\” and realized there\’s some good stuff there! (Which, for those of you wondering, I will post here as throwback posts just as soon as I can get my fingers to type up the post links and things. Never fear, Dear Reader, I\’ve gotchoo.)

    But fallow periods are necessary. As Dr. Mia Rose points out, nothing blooms all the time. And so for us, we need to remember, and by \”we\” I mean \”I,\” that sometimes rest periods, fallow periods, dry spells happen. I am also learning that I need to celebrate the small steps I take in the direction of my goals/dreams/inspirations/squirrels. And as for squirrels, sometimes I just need to chase them because doing so brings me deep and abiding joy.

    Take this post, for instance. It\’s a bit of a squirrel. How I got there was, I met with my accountability partner this morning, had a fantastic meeting with her. Then I met with my web designer and technology advisor, and WE had a great discussion. As part of that discussion, I was trying to find a post written by a colleague on a group blog and poof – I found some posts I\’d written, one of which is still relevant today as it was five years ago. And poof, I said to my designer, I miss blogging, and she, very reasonably, pointed out, \”Well, you can blog now.\”

    Hmph. Way to puncture a really good pity party there, chica.

    Ergo, I\’m blogging. But about what?

    Ah. THAT, Dear Reader, is my inner critic, come out to play with me and interfere with me getting in a sentence edgewise. So I decided, I did, to come here and do a blog post for Saturday, a check-in of sorts, and voila. I\’m blogging again. Just like that.

    And sometimes, it really is just that meta.

    What about you, Dear Reader? What was your week like this week? What are you planning for the week to come?

    *NaNoWriMo – What Izzit?

    National Novel Writing Month is every year in the month of November, and participants endeavor to write the draft of a novel, which is defined as 50,000 or more words written entirely during the month. I volunteered for several years to help out with the Chicago Region, which includes the third largest city in the country and over 5,000 participants every year. This is my first year not volunteering in a while and I confess to being a little bereft. The Seattle region is quite large but, though a logistical brain fart, I neglected to get tickets to today\’s train write in and by the time I realized I should do so, they were sold out. So THAT is a cautionary tale if I ever heard one – strike while the iron is hot, Dear Reader, and don\’t be left behind.

    But now, it\’s brunch time. Do tell me, though, in the comments what your week is like; I\’d love to know!

  • Buh-Bye May, Hallo June!

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    So, May sort of came, beat up everybody, and left. It feels like it should still be April 17th.

    But it\’s not. It\’s the first of June.

    In 2019.

    How\’d that happen?

    I didn\’t get as much done this year as I\’d hoped by now, certainly not bookwise – I know, I know, the books still aren\’t up. Good gravy, that\’s been a learning process. The two biggest things I learned are: stress interferes with our creative processes, and social media steals time.

    So rather than wax eloquent about writing, I figured I\’d write an update post to you, Dear Reader, and see where we go from here.

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    Our dog, Coyote, died on the Tuesday after Memorial Day. Man, that\’s been hard. We had to take her to the vet to be put to sleep, because she was sick all weekend. I don\’t really want to talk about it, but I figured it\’s important news so I should share.

    My coauthor and partner Rachel came in for a visit earlier in May, but Murphy\’s Law prevailed and pretty much everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. That was the Vacation That Wasn\’t, and again, I don\’t really want to talk about it.

    But as it turns out, stress has an effect on creativity. In preparing some pictures for today, I noticed that I never finished the A to Z Challenge in April, and I still have pictures that I took for it. I\’m not sure if I have any wisdom to share about not posting them, other than to say, sometimes, life gets in the way of our creative plans and we need to honor that. The only way I\’ve found to get back on the page is to, well, get back on the page. Hence today\’s post.

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    Another thing I\’ve observed and talked about in the past is using other creative outlets when one is blocked in a particular one. For me, that\’s typically been knitting. Over the last few months of job upheaval, and particularly at the end of last year when I was in the thick of it, I wasn\’t able to even knit. I just didn\’t have the heart for it. In January and February, I was able to play with my pin loom and learn some pin loom weaving, but it wasn\’t \”real\” creative work. It was solely creative play. I finally got back to the semi-circular shawl I\’d started designing in January, and am now about half done.

    I think that\’s a critical distinction, this difference between creative work and creative play. I don\’t know that I have any answers yet, but I\’m learning there is definitely a difference for me. Creative work is goal oriented: \”get Burning Bright up on Draft2Digital and upload it to retailers and my website,\” which requires me to learn Draft2Digital, Amazon ebook and Amazon paper book uploads, Draft2Digital interface for the other retailers (non-Amazon), and learn MyBookTable, which is a WordPress widget that lets me build a bookstore on the website (I use WordPress to run this and my other sites). Creative play is also critical, to me being happy and contented as an artist. And in order to feel like working on any kind of play, I\’ve found I need to feel grounded, which is why the work-related bullshit was so disruptive to my life.

    On the other hand, my husband and I have had some true breakthroughs this last two or three months. We finally opened a local bank account (which is something on our task list since we moved here last year) at a local credit union, got our taxes sorted out (which is huge since we owe an arm and a leg to Uncle Sam from financing the move with premature retirement distributions). We\’ve been culling our stuff, still, which is honestly a little surprising because I thought we\’d done all that when we moved. Nope. We culled about 15 or 20 paper grocery bags of books, a portable heater, two bookcases, and a copper fire pit last weekend. We completely reconfigured our home office, which really opened up the space. It\’s startling how much of a difference that makes.

    My new employer allows me the privilege of working from home two days a week, and that\’s been a real adjustment. It took a while for me to settle into that new routine, but I\’m finding I really like it. I\’m an extrovert, and I thought I\’d hate it to pieces because it\’s just me and the animals at home. But in fact, I\’m really liking the peace and quiet, and it really lets me hear myself think in relation to my work and that\’s allowed me to be more strategic and intentional. And that\’s surprisingly fun.

    So like I said, May was a pretty intense month. I\’m looking forward to June. The weather is brightening up and we have some hiking planned and a weekend vacation to the Oregon coast later in the month. And yes, I promise, I\’m working on uploading the books. And finishing the knitting. And doing the weaving.

    In short, I\’m practicing being in the moment and following my bliss. And that is surprisingly easy and hard, all at the same time.

    I hope you have a lovely weekend, Dear Reader. And if you\’d like, I\’d love to hear about your Spring in the comments, and what excites you about Summer – or, if you\’re in the Southern Hemisphere, your Autumn and Winter.

    Big love,

    Noony

  • H Is For Horticulture, the Science of Plants

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    This is a long view, just down from the Tateuchi Viewing Pavilion, toward the Ravine Experience. The piece in the distance looks like a high-backed faerie throne. The water goes under the walkway; I stood on a pathway bridge to take this shot.

    Which got me thinking: what is horticulture? How is it different from gardening?

    My husband and I, as geeks often do, talked about it yesterday and ruminated on the Latin origins of the word, \”horticulture.\” It\’s composed of two Latinate words, \”horto,\” for garden, and \”culture,\” for… something. Probably culture, one would assume; but we already know from other studies that sound-based etymology is bad linguistics. We also know that the motto of the city of Chicago is \”Urbs in horto,\” or \”City in a garden.\” So we know horto and garden are connected. But where does \”culture\” fit in? Does it refer to the culture of gardening? Probably not, since vermiculture is the cultivation and care of worms, and agriculture is the cultivation and science of agri-stuffs, or crops. Which are growing things, just like hortos.

    Aside from the pleasant mental gymnastics of our conversation, we decided that alas, to Auntie Google we must go. \”Google, what is horticulture?\”

    \”The word horticulture comes from two Latin words which mean \’garden\’ and \’culture.\’ Horticulture is the art and science of growing and handling fruits, nuts, vegetables, herbs, flowers, foliage plants, woody ornamentals, and turf.\” From Extension: Issues, Innovation, Impact; \”What Is Horticulture?\” accessed from the following link, here.

    What\’s the difference between horticulture and gardening? Ian Graham, self-identified \”Craft Gardener,\” has this to say on Quora: \”Horticulture is the production of plants for a purpose – food, ornamental, forestry, medicines, fuel etc. Horticulture is a science, using scientific research and the scientific method to produce \’better\’ and more productive plants. Gardening is a personal or community pursuit to produce environments (personal or public) of beauty and functionality, using plants (ornamental and food), water, and \’stone\’. Gardening also includes personal food production, ie veggie patches.\” Accessed from the following link, here.

    I like Mr. Graham\’s distinction, \”production of plants for a purpose:\” aside from the pleasing alliteration, which, less face it, I\’m all for that, I think it defines the science a little more. But \”science,\” in the old days, simply meant applying the scientific method: create a hypothesis, try it, record the results, try again. In gardening, that could be \”I\’ll try planting tomatoes in this pot.\” Then record the results. \”Well, that worked, but they need more sun so I\’ll try that spot over there in Spring.\” Lather, rinse, repeat.

    So in some ways, I think horticulture is just a fancy way of saying gardening, a way to legitimize and sciencify something we humans have been doing for generations. But I\’ll note this: they\’re called Botanical Gardens, not Horticultural Exhibits. Though now that I say that, I suspect there probably are horticultural exhibits. This is one of the things that makes English so difficult, is its propensity for stealing from other languages and calling it English. 🙂 I think, on balance, that shall remain, as did Galadriel, myself; a gardener.

    Next up is the Letter I like Iowa. But there aren\’t any plants like Iowa, are there?

    You\’ll have to check back, Dear Reader; you\’ll have to check back. Cheers!

  • G Is For Gators, Gardeners\’ Friends; and G Is For Glens, Full of Rhododendrons; and G Is For Goldfish, Swimming in Ponds – Yes, It\’s An A to Z Challenge Post! Welcome, Good Friend!

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    As I wandered onto the Botanical Garden grounds today, I mulled over my choices for \”G.\” I mean, Garden seemed too easy. Right?

    I came around a corner in the path and seriously, THIS was sitting there.

    Waiting for me.

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    Dear Reader, it was hard.

    But I didn\’t get in and drive it around.

    Though I was tempted, Dear Reader; sorely tempted.

    Besides. Dude was around there somewhere, with a loud machine, blowing botanical materials around.

    Now, I confess, I don\’t really grok the meaning behind using a leaf blower in a botanical garden. I mean, what are you planning to do, blow the leaves all the way out of the gardens? And then what? Your neighbors will get tired of a dirty great pile of blown leaves in front of the gardens.

    But oddly, there weren\’t any piles of leaves.

    Maybe he was just dusting?

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    Gosh, this garden, for the letter G or not, sure is gorgeous, isn\’t it?

    But that brings me to my favorite discovery since moving to the PNW, or to those of us who aren\’t yet in on the native lingo, \”The Pacific Northwest:\” rhododendrons! The place is lousy with them! Locals are, get this, even tired of them! (???)

    Not me. This, then, without further gilding the lily (another G word, lookatthat!), is the Rhododendron Glen:

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    These are just the early bloomers, too! They bloom from early, early Spring (one of the ones in my apartment complex bloomed mid-March!) clear through June.

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    I know it\’s not the same thing, but you know how when a cat is showing you their foot pads and you say, \”What cute toe beans!\”? Well, I had that exact same instinct when I saw these flowers!

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    Not actually a hundred percent sure this is a rhodi, but it\’s in the glen, so I snapped its picture.

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    Same here. I must have walked around this one four times before I satisfied myself I was actually IN the rhododendron glen. So I guess this is a rhodi too? It\’s sure pretty – the leaf ends are colored, AND there are flowers. LOFF!

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    I call this one \”Potential.\”

    (Does this mean I\’m a \’budding photographer\’? ~hides~)

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    Sadly, the lighting was even worse this morning than the last time I went, and it makes photographing the fish next to impossible – which is a shame, as I adore koi. Or, as they\’re known today, Goldfish.

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    They\’re all congregating together. If they were mammals, I\’d say it was to stay warm on an overcast, rainy day. But they\’re fish. So I\’m not sure. Maybe just gabbing together? Gathering? Garnering support? ~grin~

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    All right, Dear Reader, all right; enough of G. Next up is H – which will be less about the pictures and more about the philosophy and science of gardening.

    If you\’re participating in the challenge, please leave me a link to your blog in the comments so I can come visit you! And if you\’ve already commented but I\’ve been absent, please forgive me, I\’m a bit behind in my visiting but I will catch up between now and the weekend. Real Life has a way of getting in the way.

    But hey – we can always visit a garden to relax, yes?