Tues. March 7, 2023: Working on the Balance

image courtesy of Pexels via pixabay.com

Tuesday, March 7, 2023

Full Moon

Partly cloudy and cold

Time for our Tuesday catch up. Pull up a beverage and let’s get to it.

The bright sun on Friday meant everyone was cheerful as they ran around getting things done before the storm. I dashed down to Big Y to get coffee. Really, that was in the interest of public service, because being around me if I’m without coffee causes unnecessary pain to all. I grabbed a few other things, just in case they were right about 14 inches of snow and I couldn’t dig out by Sunday to do the early month Big Grocery Shop.

Did the social media rounds to promote the day’s episode of Angel Hunt, and to visit the blogs that are, once again, part of my regular rounds. Those of us who’ve never believed the blog is dead and steadily kept at it have built steady readership. I was amazed when a stat report came in, at how many people follow the various blogs, even if they don’t often comment. Thank you! I am grateful for the support, and I hope my mistakes save you pain, and that sharing my experiences make you feel less alone.

I struggled to settle into the page in the morning. The piece I was noodling with yesterday will work; I just have to figure out some of the points so that the structure fits its chosen genre. The piece (meaning my subconscious) chose the genre; I did not intentionally aim for it. But the structure is tight and unforgiving, and I want to make sure I hit the necessary points so I don’t just dive in and flail.

The Heist Romance script was calling me and demanding attention. I knew I had to re-read what I’ve done so far to get back into the voice, and I didn’t want to start that until I’d finished the deadlined work for the week.

I didn’t want to do script coverage in the morning, because then it would be too hard to switch my headspace back into the creative landscape, rather than the critical one. I managed to do a polish, upload, and schedule on the next couple of weeks’ worth of Process Muse posts.

I checked the plants out on the front porch, and it was so nice I sat out there reading the latest issue of THE NEW YORKER, joined by Tessa and Charlotte. There’s a great satiric piece on the pay-for-checkmarks at Twitter in the issue.

I did the necessary coverages and was done for the week, which was nice, I could relax in the evening.

Busy dreams, Friday into Saturday. Not bad, just busy.

It had started snowing late on Friday night. By Saturday morning, we had about a foot of snow, and it kept coming down until about noon. It was very pretty, and the power held, so I enjoyed watching the snow from the living room couch and reading.

I noodled with some ideas for poems. I have themes, ideas, image that I want to explore, although I’m not sure yet how. I have a notebook just for this type of noodling. Part of the notebook is similar to a commonplace book in that I write down quotes which resonate.

I finished reading POEM CRAZY, and started reading Mary Oliver’s book about the craft of poetry.

I was thrilled, on Saturday, to be offered a slot in this autumn’s Boiler House Poets Collective’s residency program at MASSMoCA. A weeklong intensive in the museum’s studios, with the other poets in the collective. It’s such an unexpected honor. I accepted, of course, and I am thrilled and slightly terrified. I will learn a lot and grow in new directions. It also gives me time to figure out what I want to work on. I think I want to write about shattered dreams around the Cape Cod experience (and Chiron will be in retrograde, so it makes sense); at the same time, it has to be more than catharsis, and stand on its own wordy feet. But I can play with themes and ideas and forms, and have something to actually bring in and work on with the Collective, while also creating new work while I’m there.

I started reading Tara Laskhowski’s ONE NIGHT GONE. Author Greg Herren had recommended it over on his blog, and it sounded interesting. It is. It’s very well done.

The Goddess Provisions box arrived, and it was lovely, as usual.

In the early afternoon, I went out to dig out the car. I was highly irritated because the guys who have the spots on either side of me – who are half my age – shoveled the snow behind their cars and dumped it behind my car instead of walking the five steps across the lot to put it where it was supposed to go. So instead of having a foot to shovel, I had three feet. Not a happy camper. They can bite me.

I don’t expect them to shovel my car clear. But it’s unacceptable to add more work to my slot because they’re lazy.

I used to always conscientiously shovel the space between the cars on both sides, but I don’t do it anymore, because I was the only one who ever did it and neither of these guys – young, strong, strapping guys – can ever be bothered.

I grabbed scripts for the week, and then was requested for a coverage, so now I have too many scripts for the beginning of the week (I’m only reading the first three days). But I’ll get it done.

Heard from the extended family up in Maine. They are all down with COVID (because they stopped being careful). They’re annoyed that we haven’t had it yet. Annoyed because we keep following protocols to remain as healthy as possible for as long as possible. No time for that. Makes me glad I started keeping a distance after the whole issue around the move, before we found this place, when they told us I’d have to put my mother in a nursing home, get rid of the cats, get rid of my books, and rent a room and work a minimum wage job. Nope. That’s not my life.

More busy dreams Saturday into Sunday. The good thing about having Tessa sleep on the bed is that she lets me sleep through the night, while Charlotte wakes me up every two hours.

I did a lot of ironing on Sunday, on various fabric that I’ve handwashed over the past few weeks and that has stacked up. It stores better when it’s ironed. I set out the board and plugged in the Rowenta and got to work. I enjoy ironing. It was part of the prep as a wardrobe person I found soothing.

Did some tidying up, broke down some boxes. Got some paperwork done.  The chop wood, carry water part of artistic life is just as important as the rest of it. It keeps one grounded.

Worked on contest entries. I’ll have to do that every day for the next two months, to make sure I give the entries their due.

I re-read what I have of the Heist Romance Script. It holds up, in spite of knowing it needs work. Back to the research on Corsica and Sardinia, so I can sneak work on the next sections in around other work.

Sunday night into Monday, I dreamed about creating art pieces out of layered tissue paper that resembled stained glass (my uncle used to work in actual stained glass). It made sense in the dream, and looked pretty darn good, but I have no idea how to pull it off on this side of the Dreamscape.

Monday was sunny. Yeah!

Did the social media rounds early, took care of administrative stuff, then it was off to the library and the grocery store. Of course, as soon as I got home, another slew of books showed up at the library; I’ll pick them up tomorrow or so.

Did the big early-in-the-month grocery shop, hauled everything home and put it away.

Turned around three coverages and started on a fourth before I ran out of steam. Got requested for another that has to be done this week, so now I’m really overscheduled. However, I’m also grateful that writers find the feedback helpful and get excited to create more, and that they want my take on it. So I will get it all done.

Soup class was fun.

Worked on contest entries after.

Cancelled my subscription to Tamed Wild. I’ve gotten some beautiful things from them the past few years. But last year, they upped the shipping cost, so it’s an extra 40% on top of the cost of the box. They claimed it was “temporary” but we all knew that was a crock. However, since then, the shipping has gotten completely erratic. They can blame the post office all they want, but the post office can’t forward what hasn’t been given to them. The box that arrived yesterday was paid for on 13 Feb and supposed to ship by the 18. It shipped last Friday, 3 March. So much for a ritual meant to be specific to February.  On top of that, the quality of the box contents has gone down and become repetitive. And, for instance, with the jewelry, now the pendants and chains aren’t put together, and when one tries to put the pendant on the chain – it doesn’t fit. Which means I have to go out and buy findings to adjust it and spend time trying to make it work. I’m not a jewelry artist. I don’t know how to do it and I shouldn’t have to for something I’ve purchased. Now they’re talking about going quarterly with a bigger box at more than double the cost with the shipping being an additional 25% on top of the cost of the box. No. Just no. So I cancelled.  I’m grateful for the good months, but the direction they’re taking isn’t working for me.

Goddess Provisions has much more consistent quality, pricing, and on-time delivery.

But a new moonstone was part of yesterday’s box. Tessa loves moonstones, and she’s kept it close.

Slept decently, although the feline shift change at 4 AM woke me. I had trouble getting back to sleep after, going down negative spirals. I kept reminding myself, that’s not reality. I can choose that not to be reality. On a couple of points I realized the irritant was either none of my business or a situation I could choose to remove myself from, so why fret?

Today I have at least three coverages to turn around, and I will try to at least get started on a fourth. I have yoga this evening, so that will help me reset.

I have some pain-in-the-ass-but-necessary admin work (again, cleaning up the mess of the inept), but I’ll get that done, and hopefully write a bit, too. I took the writing pressure off myself early in the week because I knew I was only doing client work M-T-W, so I’ll gear back up on writing Thursday and Friday, along with the other stuff planned, and get back to a more stable writing-in-the-morning-client-work-in-the-afternoon schedule next week. I’m still writing in longhand first thing in the morning, so I’m still writing every day, and that keeps me on an even keel.

I had an epiphany about another layer for the play FALL FOREVER that will be written in April, so I’ll jot those notes down in my outline. It gives deeper motivations to several of the characters, and makes it more nuanced.

I also realized I haven’t scheduled the promos for this week’s episodes of LEGERDEMAIN and ANGEL HUNT, so I’ll have to do that first thing. Hint: Episode 65 of Legerdemain drops today!

I better get going, huh? Have a good one!

Tues. Aug. 16, 2022: All About The Words

image courtesy of Nicole via pixabay.com

Tuesday, August 16, 2022

Waning Moon

Pluto, Saturn, Neptune, Chiron, Jupiter Retrograde

Sunny and pleasant

It was a busy weekend, but few-words busy. As in I don’t need a lot of words to talk about it, although the bulk of the weekend was all about words.

Friday & Saturday were almost entirely about LEGERDEMAIN. I got six episodes revised, edited, proofed, and up on Friday, along with some other stuff (which I don’t even remember). I did a library/post office/CVS run.

But almost everything was focused on LEGERDEMAIN, and, of course, it all took longer than I hoped. But things take as long as they take, and I’m doing 3-4 editing passes of each episode and then uploading/scheduling, so what would normally be a process stretched out over a period of weeks is now over a period of hours.

Different mediums require different processes.

I was also tired from Thursday night’s event, albeit a good tired, and thinking a lot about the other poets’ poems.

I meant to go to the Farmers’ Market on Saturday morning. At 7:30 in the morning, I sat down at the desk to “just do a little work” on the next 4 episodes of LEGERDEMAIN. The next time I looked up, it was 3:30. So, I missed it.

But the episodes are uploaded and scheduled through Episode 20. I did the episode-specific ads and loglines, and uploaded and scheduled all those. I started working on some more general ads.

I did some work on a residency application. I still have to take some photos of clay and textile pieces I’ve made.

I was too tired to cook on Saturday night, so I ordered in Chinese. And read.

Sunday, I had a slow start. I handwashed and ironed some of the new fabric – I’d hoped to sew this weekend, but that didn’t happen. But at least everything is washed and ironed. I managed to finish the new tablecloth for the kitchen table, and swap that out, and tidy up all of that.

The cut mugwort stems were dry enough to strip, so I stripped them and put them in glass jars for the stillroom section of the laundry room. 3 jars’ worth, which should last me awhile.

I played with some ideas for the Shakespeare horror story. So far, I have ideas and scenes, but I need the narrative drive, and I haven’t yet settled on that.

In the afternoon, I drove down to the Edith Wharton homestead again, this time to be an audience member for Word X Word. Nine poets did pieces inspired by various pieces of sculpture. It was fascinating to see how  they used the pieces as jumping off points.

Driving home, I started writing in my head two new pieces. I need to get a notebook specifically for poetry-esque work. I mean, it takes about an hour to get anywhere, so writing in my head while I drive makes sense. And then having the notebook for the specific type of work makes sense (although I always carry one of the Fragment Notebooks with me, to jot down notes).

Stopped at the Adams Market to pick up pizza and a bottle of wine, because, again, too tired to cook.

Monday morning, I was just exhausted. I think the last few weeks are catching up with me. I managed to heave myself out of the house for a run to Wild Oats for a few things, and Stop & Shop, and another store, where I went in to get Velcro dots and lightbulbs. I came out with those, and some project notebooks. Love back-to-school sales. I have to get down to Staples for more.

I got some more ironing done. I worked on an application for another residency, which had just opened up. I’d worked on all the pieces. It should have taken me 30 minutes to slot in what I’d written. But it took 2 ½ hours because the damn computer kept freezing and crashing. Windows11 sucks.

But I got it done and out, and I’m actually proud of it. We’ll see if they give me a slot next year.

Turned around a script coverage. Got my inbox down from over 900 emails to just over 170.

Roasted a chicken. It’s finally cool enough to make roast chicken again, my favorite, because there’s so much one can do with the leftovers. Had the makings of chicken stock simmering on the stove while I took Jeremy Rock Smith’s cooking class in honor of Julia Child’s birthday.

Didn’t sleep well, although I don’t have the overall sense of fatigue today that I had yesterday. I have to do some serious house cleaning this morning, because my friend the baker is coming over in the afternoon, and I’m going to teach her how to register her domain name and find a web host and maybe we’ll even apply for a grant or two. Tonight, I’m attending a virtual event with The Ripped Bodice for the release of Roselle Lim’s new book.

I have two scripts in the queue; I may do one today, or I may do both tomorrow. I will see how the afternoon goes. I intentionally kept the start of this week light.

This morning, in and around the cleaning, I’ll do some promo for Episode 7 of Legerdemain, which releases today, “There Are Rituals, and Then There Are Rituals.” The episode ad is lovely/creepy with a candle balanced on a raven’s beak.

Better get to it. Busy day, but again, it’s good busy.