Swimming for my life

If you remember (or care) when I did the "Woman Unleashed" course I signed up for aaaaaaall the free content the people offered (Except Willowing, I think, because I was already doing Lifebook and had all of that, and already somehow get her email on both my addresses). I did use an anonymous, web-based email (that was harder to get than I thought these days!) so I wouldn't have to deal with the fallout in the months, years, decades that followed. And while it's bad, to be honest, it's not as bad as I thought. Since the end of the program, that email box had only racked up about 250 emails. Between 1-3 a day, it seems. Still, glad it's in an email I don't have to deal with daily, though I do need to go back and look through those at some point, especially since one of the things was 27 days of writing prompts. They came in a day at a time and are buried in there somewhere!

Speaking of content you don't want to see, a person left a note on one of my beaunicorn post expressly telling me to stop. And that no one wants to see it, if you said you enjoyed it, you lied. Because of who this person is, my actual response was toned down (no swearing involved!) but don't worry (or, I suppose, be sad) because I'm not going to stop. I like it, I find it fun, and if you don't, well, don't follow me (that was rather the upshot of my response). Who is anyone to dictate what someone puts on their page? Do I see things I would rather not? Sure. That's what the "hide post" button is for (or, more effectively, FB Purity
s key word blockers). Or you can just unfollow someone. They probably won't notice. And you can always go to their page now and then, when you feel up to it, and leave a comment. They'll never know.

Really, that didn't make me mad, but it did give me a moment of "what's up with THAT?!" which, as cynical as I think I am, was rather an odd experience. I tend to expect the worst from people, but it still caught me a little off-guard, as in "REALLY?!" Refreshing, in a way, that people can still surprise me, sad in that it's in the negative way.

I'm really just randomly typing this right now because my task for today was to tackle some clean-up. Someone saw my craft room (it is really bad, I cleaned another room out and it bore the brunt of the shoving) and was horrified. And, honestly, I'm a little horrified by it right now. I wanted to spend today just cleaning it up, and finding a place for the stuff I have in bags in my office (the yarn for the Merphghan, and the stuff I have for "sale" in the Shop the Swap swap on Craftster - I have to keep that in one place, or when someone "buys" something I will spend forever looking for it!).

Wish me luck, and if you don't hear from me in a few days, please send in a search&rescue team, I may be trapped under a farbricalanche. ;p

"Dispatch, we have a car sitting outside the home, license plate NVH-294. It pulled up a minute ago, no one has gotten out, it appears a person inside is using a cell phone to look something up, judging by the light."

"Roger, hold on a moment while we run the plate."

A moment ticked by in the darkness, then the voice crackled back over the radio. "Blue 2012 Honda Civic, registered to a Lucy Darcy, lives in Jamestown."

"Probably a college student, might be lost. I'll check it out and get back to you."

He cautiously approached the car, which was still idling. The window was rolled down, and he could hear a girl's voice.

"Yes, I turned right... But the construction... No, no detour was marked... It was actually closed. Closed, as in can't get through at all. They said 'closed to through traffic' and they meant it, the road wasn't there... I don't know, I got back on the highway and tried the next exit..."

He rapped on the back window, and the girl jumped. "Hold on," she said into the phone.

"Yes?" She asked him hesitantly.

"You lost?" he asked, flashing her his badge. She peered at it suspiciously.

"Sort of, I'm trying to get to the corner of 93rd and Olive, but there seems to be a lot of construction here, and..." she sighed, and checked her watch. "The hotel has probably given away my room by now."

"Oh, you're trying to get to the Watts Mill Inn?" He asked.

"That's the one. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to disturb the residents, I was just trying to get some directions from my friend, and..." She bit her lip. "I didn't think they'd, well, overreact to me sitting here for a minute."

"It's not that, miss, you've rather stumbled into the middle of an investigation," he said.

"Oh my goodness, isn't that just my luck?" She shook her head and laughed. "So now you think I'm some sort of hit man or something, come to bump off the witness."

"Why would you assume that?" he asked warily. "Why not assume it's just a stakeout?"

"You wouldn't have approached me if it were a stakeout," she said. "I've watched enough cop dramas! You would have had someone follow me as I drove away."

He relaxed a bit, and let his hand fall back to his side. "Are you sure you're not a detective?"

"No, no, trust me, my interest in Mr. Hamilton isn't on that side of the law at all."

The flash in his eyes as his hand flew to his gun was all the confirmation she needed. This was most definitely the right place. He was fast, but she was faster, and she was getting out of the car as he crumpled to the ground. A minute later, she was in the house. A minute after that, Mr. Hamilton wouldn't be a problem for her clients any longer.

I'm even losing the umph to do the exercises...

Week 4, exercise one:
Carry a sketchbook and sketch. Not a bad idea, but also not an original one. Most artists encourage people to do just that.

Week 4, exercise two:
Complete this phrase 10 times...

...okay, I messed up here, because I read it as "seriously, I would love to..." and wrote down things I really did want to do. Then I read the next part "spend 15 minutes inhabiting your secret dream and write about it." Oh. Well. See, nothing I wrote was a secret. It actually read "*secretly* I would love to..." And, well, I don't have secret dreams, I... pretty much blab to everyone about them.

Week 4, exercise three:
Write a dialog between my rational, realistic self (R) and my wild and crazy dream side (W). This is supposed to find a way to balance your dreams (for instance, taking a single night class instead of quitting your job and going back to school full-time).

W - I want to quit my job and just sit at home and do crafts all day.
R - So you have a business plan to sell them?
W - I don't want to *sell* then, then it's just another job.
R - So you've won the lottery?
W - No....
R - Then you plan to eat how?
W - ...dammit.

(In truth, I think I already have an excellent work/craft balance, so...)

Week 5, exercise one:
Fill in the blanks, this time about your friends. Which ones make you happy and want to create, and who are stifling, etc. And then... you're supposed to write yourself a love letter. Being as affectionate as possible.

Dear Me:
I think you're quite spiffy.
Love,
Me.

Week 5, exercise two:
Write down five responses to the following...
If it weren't so selfish, I'd love to try ... Running away? I mean, that's about the only thing I can think of that would be too "selfish" for me to do, because I'm pretty damn selfish as a rule of thumb. But it'd only be a short run-away, because I like my life and my house. Maybe just an afternoon out. Wait, I do that all the time. Dammit.
If it weren't so expensive, I'd love to try ... not working, buying a mansion, driving a Bugatti, and having an Olympic sized swimming pool full of craft supplies. Oh, these were supposed to be reasonable? Pffff.
If it weren't so frivolous, I'd love to own ... uh, I just spent the equivalent of a house payment on Lego. I don't think I've ever let "frivolous" stop me from buying anything.
If it weren't so scary, I'd love to tell ... I... whaaaa? There are stories for other times of the things I've told people, I'm not usually "scared" to say something.
If I had five other lives, I'd love to be ... a decent question, but I have to ask, would I be me in these lives? With my fears, phobias, and physical limitations? (For example, I think NBA star is probably right out, because I don't love professional basketball, I'm female, and I'm 5'2" tall). Am I limited to this time period? I have a feeling this question is about finding more "hidden dreams" you could work towards, so wanting to be a moonshine-running flapper is probably not the kind of thing they're looking for (cool as it would be).

Week 5, exercise three:
Write a letter to yourself from your inner artist's best friend, who has been observing you, telling you what changes you should make (people you should spend less time with, things you need to do, etc).
No. Enough with the letter-writing!

...And then you put the letter in your God Jar. And talk to yourself in your "believing mirror". I've obviously missed bits by skimming. Aaaaand, honestly, I'm okay with that now.

I couldn't even make it two weeks. Yesterday, I made every excuse as to why I'd do my morning pages "later", until suddenly it was ten at night and I just said "screw it". This morning I tried again and got a few lines in before I just couldn't go on. What is the point of doing something you hate so much? I was truly beginning to dread it. And I've done journaling before, that I don't mind, but *having* to do it, especially at an inconvenient time, as opposed to doing it when you feel like it? Yeah, no good. There is absolutely no reason to keep putting myself through that. There is no way it will do me any good, and yes, very much in part because of my attitude towards it.

If you love it and it makes you happy, it works for you and good for you! You should do it. If the idea makes you feel you'd rather poke yourself repeatedly in the face with a fork, maybe you should give it a miss. There's no reason to torture yourself for thirty minutes a day because someone else says it's something you should do and swears it will help you. Because it might not.

Nothing is one size fits all. And that's my biggest problem with so many of these self-help books and programs. They guarantee it will work for everyone, if it didn't work for you it's your fault, you didn't do it right/try hard enough. And don't you dare alter their method to make it work for you (I'm looking at you and your sink, FlyLady) because that's simply not allowed.

Whatever. You do you, and I'll do me, and if we're both happier the world will be a better place. If you want to clean using a mashup of FlyLady, Konmari, and Martha Stewart, more power to you. If you want to do morning pages at night, have at it. If you want to live in a tip and never hand-write a damn thing, none of my business (unless you live next door and there are rats, that's my limit, because then it does effect me, but up until that point, go for it).

I'm still going to work through the questions and exercises in the book, but faster since I'm not waiting to do my journaling. And I need to move on to Kondo's book (if I can stomach it) and I really want to get back to Woman Unleashed, because there's doodling in that!

And my #beaunicorn project. Need a picture for today... :/

I spent far too much time last night reading about "the elevator ritual", which I heard about through YouTube apparently thinking I wanted to watch a video about a mysterious disappearance. Sometimes I wonder about the suggestions, but then, with my weird taste and the auto-play feature, who knows? I've ended up on some bizarre videos (I often leave it running while I draw or clean or play solitaire - yeah, guess which of those happens most often?).

Anyway, like most of the made-up "rituals" you find places like creepypasta, it's entirely too long and convoluted. And, being that it involves an elevator of more that ten stores (which would have to be a cable elevator, not hydraulic) *and* you have to be alone the whole time (I am too old to stay up until 2am to try to find a deserted elevator), there's really no way I'll ever try it. I don't believe elevators are portals to another dimension, but they are evil death-boxes.

I could go on about how at least one of the instructions cannot work (you push another floor button to "cancel" the previously pushed on in the return instructions, but... elevators don't work that way) except, well, portal to another dimension so all bets are off.

I *really* wish I lived in an area where a lot of people did this, I'd love to get a group of people together to wait for people to try (sadly, since I don't ride elevators, I couldn't dress up as the creepy girl, but I *could* be the one on the tenth floor that turned out the lights and whatnot). Eh, maybe that would be too cruel, I dunno.

It's not the longest one, though... In reading about it, and with my dislike of elevators, one titled "the staircase ritual" caught my eye. But seriously? Not only multiple days, but twelve hours standing on your staircase?! I think the people who make these up need to scale it back a bit. Sometimes less is more.

Though, admittedly, things are more detailed than the good old "Bloody Mary" days (people always dared me to do that one as a kid, and I did, sooooo many times. Not do much brave as logical and cynical, even back then).

So, I haven't gotten around to finishing the Woman Unleashed program, though I have it downloaded and saved and there are some interesting things about it. I need to find/get into my photo hosting, though, so I can scan in the art exercises. So that's paused while we briefly move onto something else (I may end up doing them simultaneously, since one is a weekly thing and the other is "as you go".

Brief, uninteresting history of how I got to this...

I'm part of a group on Habitica, a role-playing, to-do slaying website. It encourages good habits and accomplishments by giving your pixel-person things when you do good and killing your pixel-person if you do badly. It's great fun, and it does make me do things. Anyway, there are also challenges, and The Legendary Book Club of Habitica hosts the Popsugar (if they're the originators, I don't know) reading challenge.

All this is a roundabout way of saying I went looking for a satirical book, and found an available audiobook from the library called The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins, which sounded weird and wacky and maybe interesting. It is none of those things. It's insulting and crude and full of unlikable characters and I pretty much hate it and am only continuing to listen because, well, the same drive that makes us gawk at car wrecks, I suppose.

A few of the characters in the book mentioned "morning pages", a journaling exercise a lot of people swear by. This led me to look it up, and to find the original book, The Artist's Way. But, as I was looking into the "really, first thing in the morning?!" whine, I found a blog that had worked through her second book, Walking in This World, and it was available in the library, so I checked it out.

I fully realize that jumping into the second book might not be the best thing, but... the more I read of it, the more I'm convinced it won't matter anyway, because I also really dislike this book. Yes, I'd seen some mention of spirituality and connecting and whatnot, but I obviously didn't look closely enough because... it's very religious. "God" and "The Great Creator" are mentioned about every other sentence, it seems.

For a lack-of-religion person such as myself, this is... offputting at best. But it doesn't end there. Sine choice sentences from the first chapter:

"Commit to make something you love and you will find that the needed supplies come to hand"

"When we make art for the sake of making art, we tend to eventually make money."

"Our committed intention attracts supply."

This smacks of "The Laws of Attraction", which brighter minds than mine have railed against, so I'll just say that I think it's bunk. I would have stopped right there, but some of the other things I could agree with, so, we soldier on for now. I can do this, though it's a 12 week program and my library book is due back in 3, so we might have to cheat and at least write down the tasks ahead of time.

I was going to try to do the the pillars of the program for the 12 weeks, though. Those are:
1. Morning pages (though, realistically, these will be lunch/night pages because, seriously, fuck getting up earlier, it's not going to happen - she doesn't have a day job so she can shove that sanctimonious "set your alarm 20 minutes earlier" bullshit)
2. Weekly walks (technically, we do this daily with New Dog, but I will try to do a lunchtime solo walk/weekend solo dog walk once a week)
3. Weekly Artist's Date (go someplace by yourself that sparks creativity... hello, weekly excuse for craft shopping!)

This first week my first Artist's Date is to Target, to get a notebook to do my daily pages, and maybe some stickers and pens. Then tonight I'll do the first chapter exercises, and tomorrow will start my 3 page a day routine.

So, I signed up for a free online seminar. It was suggested by a teacher of an online art course I've been taking, and she said they'd be art, and while I knew there'd be a fair amount of woo bullshit, I thought I could deal with it and just take away the good parts. And, worse case, I'd have something to snarkily blog about. But we're only four days in, and it's not funny. I really feel like they are doing women a serious disservice, for a few specific reasons:

More than once, it's been suggested that women need to work on becoming more magnetic (literally, by laying on the floor, which makes you more... um... magnetized?) and not having to *work* so hard for things. One, this is "laws of attraction" and "the secret" bullshit, and two, you should have to fucking work for the things you want. You'll appreciate them more, and, yeah, work is good for you.

Then! Then! They say that *thinking* is masculine and we, as women, need to "get out of our heads and back into our bodies". Because, obviously, we shouldn't worry our pretty little heads about things, just... feel things? What the fuck? No, thank you, I'll stay in the "hyper-masculine" world of using my fucking brain.

I'll probably post session-by-session recaps later (I do have pictures to post, I'm at least making it somewhat about art) but I just had to vent.

I'm embarrassed to be a woman if this is the fucking shit they peddle and push on each other. We're not all fucking motions, I promise.

Why did I stop blogging? I used to like it. But I think I got more concerned with trying to say interesting things and not to bore people, and that's not what I liked about it. I prefer venting my spleen and bitching and moaning. You were warned.

Also, I always seem to want to rant while I'm at work, and while Swyping on my phone keyboard is good for short comments and texts, it kinda sucks for longer entries. Plus my phone logged me out, and I had to figure out my password.

And I've been spending more time on Craftster, and trying to avoid Facebook. I find my threshold for the level of bullshit I see has dropped significantly. And what do you do? Arguing with people on the internet accomplishes exactly nothing.

Today I did read an excellent comment thread (never read the comments! Except when they're awesome) on an article about the bullshit claims about some alternative medicine (can some ancient medical practices work? Yes. Are any of them a panacea? Hell no) and felt a little better about humanity, then had a conversation with a co-worker that stripped away all my warm fuzzies.

She was basically talking about all the horrible health effects of fat (omg death fat!) and how even gaining 5 pound effects her breathing and she can't stand gaining weight because it's awful and makes her feel awful. Well, two things. One, I'm sorry that obviously being like me is the worst thing you can imagine. Two, if your breathing is a concern, maybe you should fucking give up smoking. Health trolling: you're doing it wrong.

See, I'm not against skinny people, or people who want to make themselves healthier. But "losing weight" is actually never the answer. It may well indeed be a side effect! But the things people do to themselves to lose weight are often the very opposite of healthy. If you want to be healthier, by all means eat better food, exercise more, meditate, whatever it takes for you. Focus on that.

In the mean time, I'm going to stuff a cookie in my fat face and go on being okay (most of the time) with me just the way I am.

I have things to post, honest I do, but they all require more than just my phone, and that's all I have right now. So I'll post about the things I want to post about, I suppose...

In not at all fun news, I have a sinus infection. Yay! I'm on drugs now, because we are suppose to have a performance on Saturday, though now the weather forecast is looking iffy (this particular event was cancelled last year due to snow). So we'll see. I am furiously trying to get some things done to sell at the workshop, but the intermittent stabbing headache and general feeling of blaaaah are making it difficult.

In better news, I do have more writing to post! I've continued, here and there, working on my music meme writing. It's getting me back in the spirit, and that makes me happy.

In further things-to-post news, I have more cleaning/organizing/hoarding books to review. No armoires this time, but still not helpful to me. I don't have the problems they attribute to "chronically disorganized" people, other than being, well, chronically disorganized. I'm not a perfectionist, I don't have emotional attachment to everything, I don't even really have any lack of energy (if I can start a new craft project, I could clean). I'm just lazy. And no self-help book is helping me. Only company motivates me. So... why don't y'all come over? ;)

I also watched a slew of bad SyFy movies that you will be hearing about...

I have more writing, but it's downstairs on a jump drive, and I am feeling really, really lazy (and I don't need a refill on my drink yet).

I made another goal book for this year, and while I'm too lazy to upload a picture somewhere to put in this post, there are tons of pictures over in the Craftster post. And it explains why I went with 20/15 goals this year (besides being a not-so-subtle play on the year). I just can't let go of things I didn't finish before!

Also, I *finally* found my 101 things list I started back in January of 2014... I have not made great progress on it.

Ones I've completed:
#6- Release 20 Bookcrossing books
My account says 19, but I swear I did 20. Maybe it doesn't count the one I found?
#7 - Participate in a Craftster Challenge
I have done several, though never come close to winning
#9 - Blue Gummy Bear Bellydance outfit
Completed in time for Shimmy for the Cure last year
#35 - Watch 10 of IMDB's bottom 100 movies
Thanks to MST3K, easily done.
#65 - 10 Operation Beautiful cards
More than done! I did a lot...
#74 - Visit IKEA
And never again.
#97 - Pi costume
Made for the picnic in the summer of 2014

Ones I've made some progress on:

#1 - Finish Bathroom
It's close, I'm just not motivated to work on it. :(
#2 - A-Z Movies
I'm missing 4: N, U, X, Y (the last three I understand, but how did I miss out on N?!)
#27 - Take pictures of things that spell out the alphabet
I have about a dozen, I think.
#28 - Read my height in books
Ongoing, I don't actually know where I am with that! Sadly, I mostly do audiobooks...
#50 - Watch all seasons from 5 different shows
I keep getting most of the way through shows and losing steam...
#61 - Watch 5 foreign language films
I've done three! But you can't craft and just listen to them... you have to read!
#66 - 10 new teas
I think I may have done this, but wasn't really keeping track?

But now that I've found it, I can add that goal list to my goal book and keep better track! Hopefully...