Tag: blogging

About Me

11 Years

Autumn

For some strange reason, WordPress thinks that I registered on June 5th, 2011. The first post I made with this account is actually dated November 14th, 2010, so I haven’t the slightest clue where this “anniversary” came from.

In June 2011, my husband and I were living in San Diego. We had been together for about a year and a half, shit had officially hit the fan, and all of my prior friends and family were eagerly letting me know how much of an epic failure I was … Just in case you were wondering where my cynicism came from.

I have nothing good to say about 2011.

We were so far down on the nobody list, random strangers confessed their deepest, darkest secrets to us — I’m pretty certain they told us things that they wouldn’t even tell their therapists. This became a huge influence on the direction I ended up going with my life, and shaped many of my inner philosophies.

Southern California was hideously expensive, so we left at the end of July. We haven’t visited since, or even considered the possibility of vacationing there. I’m sorry, but the price of milk was absurd back then, and it’s only gotten worse.

I’m not even going to mention gas prices.

About Me

June 2021

Autumn

19 :: 20 :: 21 :: 22 :: 23 :: 24 :: 25

Short Fiction

Lartmann and Hambert Are Dead (humor) (Don’t worry if you don’t think it’s funny, I was just being absurdist)

Quotes

The Scion Suit Multiverse
TSS – Not Worth Helping

About Writing

Whining
Carol
Carol, again
Exploring What ifs

Photos

Spider Bro
Sometimes…
Bumblebee
Dragonfly
Glitter
The Predicament
Clouds
Sunset

Misc

Things about being creative…
Introvert mom vs Extrovert mom
10 Years Ago
Low Immersion Dye
Homespun Yarn
The Broken View – Something Better
…
A Rant About Adult Conversation
Tamagotchi
Chickens
Dub Tee Eff
Exercise
Nextdoor

About Me

10 Years Ago

Autumn

WordPress has informed me that today is my ten year anniversary.

I distinctly remember something different, but who knows. The whole 2011-12 era was an alternate world.

In June 2011 my husband and I were living in southern California, and hating every minute of it, lol.

I guess some people like cities, but I thought that the cost of living was ridiculously high, I couldn’t open any windows in the apartment because the smell of pot would instantly stink up everything, and there was absolutely nothing to do.

Not kidding on that last one, too. I asked one of the locals in my age group what they did for fun, and they answered, “Drinking at bars.” Wow. So stimulating. I think I’ll pass.

Other than that, everyone was a massive workaholic because the cost of living was so high. The only people we met who did anything remotely interesting were homeless hippies.

I just ain’t a city girl.

Heck, yesterday I took the kids on another mile-long bike ride, and the only person we saw during the whole time was a UPS driver. I waved, and he waved back. That’s how I like it.

About Me

May 2021 in Review

Autumn

I figure that if I’m going to be more haphazard in general, then doing a monthly wrap up is probably a good idea. So here we are, everything neatly organized just for you.

Fiction

10 :: 11 :: 12 :: 13 :: 14 :: 15 :: 16 :: 17 :: 18

Quotes

Souls Can Fragment
Lucky
Enormity
Alternatively

Writing Project Updates

White Space
In the Zone
Adding Romance to TSS
Random Thoughts About Writing
MSG Hartmann
Dishes
In the Wild…

Personal Life

Blogger Recognition Award
Animal Crossing 5/7
Animal Crossing 5/14
Gray vs Grey
New Pokemon Snap
The Internet ‘n Stuff
Baby Summer Dress
Life
The Program

What’s Going on Behind the Scenes?

Currently Reading

The Quarter Percent by Lily Nicole

The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

The Non-Designer’s Design Book by Robin Williams

Also, having tons of fun playing Tamagotchi ON with my 9-year-old.

About Me

The internet ‘n stuff

Autumn

Lately I’ve been wondering how much blogging matters.

You see, I’m old enough to remember Neopets, Gaia Online, and LiveJournal, and the internet sure as heck ain’t what it used to be.

I’m pretty convinced that certain monoliths suppress literally everyone, then select which individuals they want to become popular, and there’s nothing organic about any of it for anyone.

‘N stuff.

But don’t worry, this isn’t my “farewell forever” post. If my calculations are correct, I’ve got about 11 real live actual people who come here to read, and I’m not going to up and abandon you just because of something as silly as stats.

Actually, I’m getting tired of trying to be structured.

And if I get the impulse to post a random pun at 10:43pm, I might as well do it without explaining anything.

I’m also tired of pretending like I’m not as cynical as I am. After a certain amount of bullying and ostracism throughout my childhood, I made the conscious choice that fictional friends were considerably better than real ones — 90% of everyone will go out of their way to hurt you purely because they can.

Hell, five years ago I tried to get out and be more social with the assumption that adulthood changes how people interact with each other, and it ended up mentally fucking me up pretty badly. Conclusion: adulthood has made the bullying even worse.

And let’s face it, modern fashion trends are purely an experiment in how far people are willing to debase and humiliate themselves for the sake of fitting in. Yes I said it. If you don’t look at yourself in the morning and immediately feel good about yourself, then you should trust me when I say that *you* aren’t the problem, it’s your fucking ugly clothes. Change your style. Just do it already.

Aaaaaanyway.

I’m gonna do what I want for awhile.

Alice and the Warden

Random notes about AatW

Autumn
  • I feel like I’m writing the baby too much like a prop. I’m always mindful to make sure that she’s present and accounted for (instead of simply not being there for some unexplained reason), and newborns really do spend most of their time sleeping, but I want to throw in more descriptions of her to make her feel more like a character.
  • I want to flesh out the friendship between Kate and Gertie. I know how they’d interact, but I can’t quite figure out how to slip it into the story. My brain is being totally blah about this.
  • Because I originally intended this to be a novelette, I’ve been typing it on the laptop. Right now, I’m really missing the ability to scribble notes in the margins. I have no clue if LibreOffice has a similar feature, because I never bothered to learn anything beyond the bare basics.
  • I’m also really terrified of my laptop crashing and losing everything.
  • I wrote a really sexy scene, and now I don’t know what to do with it. What’s this story rated anyway?
  • I need to describe pretty much everything better, and figure out what the heck that English thing is. You have no idea how mortifying it is to publicly post a first draft.
  • Nobody’s reading it anyway (except for you, of course).
  • I’m starting to worry that the pacing is too slow, and I need to get on with it already. But, given the speed of the rest of the story, doing that might make the ending feel unpleasantly rushed.

About Me

Personal Note

Autumn

I got a million things to do.

At the end of the day, I consider myself to be an author and not a blogger. So when something’s gotta take a hit, it’s going to be my blogging instead of my fiction writing. I like to fantasize that all of my visitors are here to enjoy the fruits of my imagination rather than my incoherent babbling, and would prefer that I maintain my fiction updates.

Side note: I didn’t sleep last night.

Anyway, the gist is that I’m tired and busy and I don’t feel like blogging — I’d much rather spend my free time working on Alice and the Warden. And napping. I’m also having anxiety about Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, but we don’t need to get into that.

So, Alice and the Warden will continue to be updated every Monday.

But I’ll only check in when I feel like it.

Observations

Observations

Autumn

It’s one of those hot and sticky days.

The advertisements in my inbox assure me that this is the last weekend of summer, but the weather feels like it has other plans. I’m sitting outside with a floppy crocheted sunhat, freshly washed hair spilling everywhere, and a bunch of kids completely ignoring their new splash pad.

Smells like cats.

Crows are cawing in the distance, cutting over the music I have playing on a bluetooth speaker. The neighbor’s door slams as they let their dog out. A semi truck rattles by. The baby starts to fuss as she achieves a death grip on my hair, and the two-year-old informs me that she needs a new diaper.

…

The air conditioning inside feels nice and cool. The baby is settling down to nap as the kids beg for ice cream.

Sounds like a great idea.

About Writing

Basil Hackett

Autumn

WordPress finally forced me over to the block editor, and now I know why everyone complains about it. It strikes me as something that a bunch of tech geeks thought would be AWESOME, and they completely forgot that a lot of us users have skills that are more in line with typing up articles in Word.

But le sigh, I will have to learn it anyway.

Or I’ll start copy-n-pasting, and bypass this change all together. Everything keeps popping around and disappearing too much for my tastes.

Back to our originally scheduled program…

Basil Hackett.

For those who don’t know, he’s my fictional character from Alice and the Warden

It’s taken quite some time for me to get a clear mental picture of him, so thus far he hasn’t been properly described. This is the sort of thing that I usually add in while working on the second draft, but that will be awhile. My current goal is to write about 1000 words a week, which is comfortably steady and works well with where I’m at in real life right now, but it’s definitely not fast.

So we’ll go ahead and describe him now.

Physically, he lifts weights a few times a week (lunch break in the prison gym sort of thing), but he also has some extra padding from never saying ‘no’ to dessert. He’s bulky, but not “beefcake.”

His hair is short, combed back, mid-brown with a few gray strands at the sides. He’s always clean-shaven.

His eyes are the one thing that I do describe, a striking hazel-green that can make you forget what you were saying if you look too closely at them.

The impression he gives is being like a boulder, impassive and unmovable. The part that Alice never sees is that, as the warden, he likes to run a tight ship to ensure the safety of everyone in the prison (guards and inmates alike). He takes his job very seriously, doles out discipline when necessary, utilizes psychological methods to promote good behavior, and provides lots of training and resources to help inmates transition to the “outside” world.

Of course, the story mostly portrays Hackett behind the scenes in his private life.

Those are most of my non-spoiler thoughts about him. Honestly, it’s a little weird to be openly writing about characterization with an unfinished story, but hey, first time for everything.