Day Twenty

Jun. 28th, 2019 08:26 pm
wonderbink: The outline of a star surrounded by tiny (illegible) writing (starlight)
I drew flowers today.

This morning, Mom drove me to my place and we harvested the tomato crop and cleaned out the fridge. I figured cleaning out the fridge would entail throwing out the potentially icky bits and leaving it at that. Mom's definition involved wiping down the shelves and absconding with the perishables that were still good. While we were there, I gathered up some things like a pair of loose pants to do physical therapy in, a couple of magazines to read, and my flower supplies.

When I got home, I cleared off the table, spread out my pens and my index cards, and picked up where I'd left off. I fired up an episode of Bill Corbett's Funhouse and went through the rituals--the grass, the stems, the petals outlined, the leaves, the petals filled in, the signature on the front, the number, the date, the signature on the back, the hashtag, the sticker, the time, and the tiny dot on the grid to mark progress.

I drew as if nothing traumatic had happened. I needed no coaxing or reassurance. I simply did what must be done to progress this project of mine.

It felt good to finish. I look forward to doing more tomorrow.
wonderbink: "I'm way too busy being AWESOME right now" in black letters on a red background. (awesome)
Okay, I'll just say that John Barrow lost the runoff and I am pissed (and worried), but I've done all I can.

Meanwhile, in the rest of my life . . .

I made it through National Novel Writing Month with most of my sanity intact. I hit 50,000 before November 30, and I ended on a reasonably graceful cliffhanger at the 54,527 word mark. I probably could have gotten farther ahead had (a) my part-time job not suddenly decided that I needed full-time hours, in the form of brain-meltingly long (nine or ten hour) shifts and (b) I'd not gotten involved with a fellow I met through one of my writers' groups, who shall be hereinafter referred to as the Gentleman Caller.

The novel is still incomplete--I had a detailed outline that I worked on over the past year and I cut things off about two-thirds of the way through it. My plan is to work on it as a leisure activity over the next few months and then toss it in the same trunk that all my NaNoWriMo efforts go. I'll be shifting most of my writerly focus back to The Two Kinds of Magic, an urban fantasy novel I've been working on for more years than I want to calculate. I found a terrific writers' group that specializes in genre fiction (science fiction, fantasy and horror, specifically) and it's been great to get insight from people who can grasp where I'm coming from. It's also more thorough feedback, because people are going from written submissions instead of (as in other groups I've been in) read aloud.

I was talking to the Gentleman Caller about Mod Boy the other night, and I did the math and realized that it had been years since I'd seen Mod Boy. So I sent him an email asking how he was. Keep in mind, that emailing him is like (and I have told him as much) dropping a stone down a deep well and waiting for the splash. (He agreed with me!) Because of that, I was genuinely startled to find an email back from him the next day. He caught me up a little on what he's been up to--he's going to be a father again soon and he's working on another book. (Did I mention that he wrote a book? One that he was working on when I met him? Did I mention that this was one of the big reasons I fell for him like a thing dropped from a great height? Yeah. Anyway. Consider it mentioned.) He said he was well and wished me the same. I wrote him back to tell him about my NaNoWriMo victory and to congratulate him on his impending fatherhood. I didn't leave a single question or conversational hook to try and drag him back with, I just sent it out and let it go.

If you're new here, check out the "mod boy" tag on this journal. It will fill you in on what a big step that is.

I'm still slugging it out at the Big Green Grocery Store and I'm doing another project for Standardized Testing People. I'm working on acquiring a new workplace to give a weird name to, preferably with full-time hours, benefits and a generous salary, so I can pay my own mortgage without parental help.

The Ten Thousand Flowers Project continues steadily. I set it aside for NaNoWriMo, but now that that's over now, I plan to resume at my two-flower-a-day pace.

I think that's about it for now. See you in three months.
wonderbink: The outline of a star surrounded by tiny (illegible) writing (tminick)
One of my New Year's resolutions for this year was posting on LJ
approximately once a month. So much for that idea. But I've decided to try
working on posts a little bit at a time so I can fit it into my busy schedule.

I'm working two and a half jobs right now. One is my part time gig at the Big Green Grocery Store. Not much to say about that. The other gig is writing blog posts for a personal injury firm. It pays well for a few hours worth of work, and the research can hit the sweet spot of my methodical mind. The half gig is scoring essay questions for a standardized testing company, but the work is too intermittent to call it a full job.

I'm still working on my Ten Thousand Flowers. I've upped my output to two flowers a day, so I'll be done in around ten years instead of twenty. The first flower of the day still goes up on various social media--Twitter, Google Plus and Instagram. I've just added Tumblr to the mix, so those of you with Tumblrs hit me up with your username so I can add you to my dashboard and have something to read besides the stuff they force-feed me. Some hipster already swiped wonderbink (seriously?) so I'm 10Kflowers over there.

Today I took pleasure in water with lime juice.

Today I learned the precise meaning of 'rarified.'
wonderbink: The outline of a star surrounded by tiny (illegible) writing (Default)
(Don't freak out, folks, I'm just quoting David Bowie in the subject line.)

So. Yeah. I lost my job because of Reasons (which will not be discussed in public) but I figured there might be folks outside of my tight circle of Certain LiveJournal Friends who might want to know what I've been up to.

I've been using my freed up time to poke at various projects that were left languishing. I spent a chunk of time updating, tinkering with, breaking and eventually fixing Wonderbink.com. I've been drawing more flowers for my Ten Thousand Flowers Project and easing my way back into working on my current novel-in-progress. I've even gotten back into Second Life again (but I have a whole other LJ for that.)

I've been granted the grace of time to figure out where I truly want to go from here. I have enough cash in the bank to keep me going for a bit, so I'm spared the pressure that others might feel in the same situation.

I bought some new pens to write in my diary with. I should put them to use.

Today I took pleasure in cool rainy weather.

Today I learned that the CVS around the corner doesn't sell unlined index cards.
wonderbink: The outline of a star surrounded by tiny (illegible) writing (Wish5)
I've decided to draw ten thousand flowers and give them away to people.

If you want one, deets are here. (If you live in the ATL, just let me know and I can give you one the next time I see you.)

The farther you can spread the word the better, since I don't exactly have ten thousand people reading my blogs.

Why am I doing this? Well, as I say here, I have a couple of reasons:

One is because it sounds like a pretty nifty thing to do. Another is because I’ve felt so pinched and deprived that I really wanted a simple way to give the world something from a place of generosity, that fits with who I am and how I function. I’m too painfully shy for most volunteer work, I’m too broke to donate much in the way of money, but this is a way I can try to make ten thousand people just a little bit happier and hopefully make myself feel a little bit happier as well.

I'm not sure how long I'll be doing this before I hit ten thousand. Could be years. I'm okay with that. I just like the idea of having something that depends on my continued existence, since I seem to have drifted away from most other ties to the world.

We'll see what happens. Most of the updates about it will happen on the Wonderbink blog, but I might mention it here now and again as well.

Today I took pleasure in making more flowers.

Today I learned how to change my URLs in Wordpress to something more comprehensible.

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Sheila the Wonderbink

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