I am a creature of habit, and I tend to not do so well with changes, even positive ones.  But I am also a firm believer in making your own destiny, so sometimes those two ideas collide. Like right now.  I’m embarking on a huge life change.  It’s scary, it’s crazy, it’s the unknown.  But the basis of this is wanting to change my life, wanting to better myself.  Not being a victim of circumstance.  Unfortunately, that’s what my life has turned into — things keep happening and I react as best I can…but I’ve been feeling emotionally drained by it all.  And I have to put the blame where it belongs — on myself for making the choices I’ve made. None of these choices were bad choices per se.  I’d been in some difficult situations and at the time, the choice I made was the best one.  But now that I’m older and wiser, I’m starting to realize that things don’t have to stay the same.  I can change my life, change my destiny.

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I’m a bit late with this blog, and I have a really good reason: my beloved younger sister, who I’ll call J, nearly died in a car accident this past Tuesday. It was not her fault.  In fact, it was a freak thing.  But if you’d seen her car, you’d wonder how she made it out alive.  The entire driver’s side was crushed.  It had flipped over.  She’d been trapped inside and had to be cut out. All that’s wrong with her is some cuts and bruises.  No broken bones, no serious injuries. Honestly?  It was a friggin miracle and I am so, so happy.

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Back when I was in college studying fine art photography, my teacher, Linda, impressed upon me some important concepts.  As the art scene was new to me, I was eager to learn anything and everything I could.  I loved that class.  To this day, I still use what I learned there in my photography…and in life. Linda used to tell us to find a concept and “push it.”  That is, push it to the limits of what’s expected, what’s comfortable.  Go further.  And keep on going. This stuck with me, and I was intrigued by the idea of self-portraiture.  Not because I was vain, but because with each new shoot, I learned something new about myself, about art, about the world around me.  I was pretty well-known for my self-portraits by the time I’d finished college and regretfully had to get out into the world again.

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Sylvia Plath is one of my favorite poets.  For a long time, I had a section of my website devoted to her life and poetry. She’s pretty well-known.  Mostly for her tragic suicide at age 30, leaving her two children without a mother.  One of those children ended up taking his own life as well.  From what I understand, Sylvia Plath suffered from depression.  She had ECT (electroshock therapy) and apparently, it didn’t help.  She had everything to live for, but apparently the darkness was too much to bear.

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It’s no secret that I’m a music lover.  I was raised by parents who fed me different kinds of music for most of my life.  When I hit age sixteen, however, I discovered heavy metal…and didn’t look back.  Although I still love the music from my youth: The Monkees, The Doors, The Who…The Rolling Stones, Bob Seger, Rod Stewart…..I could go on and on.  But there is just something about heavy metal that feeds my soul, makes me happy, and sometimes, even soothes me. About three years ago, a friend of mine introduced me to the Finnish band Nightwish.  And I was completely wowed by them, so much that I went out and bought every album they’ve ever made.  For those not familiar with them, their music is symphonic metal, a kind of fusion between heavy metal and symphony style.  Typically, these types of bands have female singers, although that’s not always the case.  They use keyboards and have lyrics that explore more fantasy-like things.  They’re much more epic.  Some symphonic metal bands have dark and creepy music, which is something my muse really, really likes (this is not a surpise, knowing her). 

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Imagine, for a moment, a world where science and technology prevail.  Then, imagine what would happen if magic found its way there.  What would change?  What would stay the same?  What kind of impact would it have on daily life? This is what I’ve been pondering for a long time.  Since November 2009, to be exact.  Back then (feels longer than it is), I imagined a dystopic world devoid of any creativity.  It was called Soulfire, and it was to be my novel for National Novel Writing Month (NanoWriMo).  Long story short: life happened, and I never got a chance to write it.  I put it into my To Be Written Within the Next Decade file, promising myself I’d explore this in the near future. So fast forward to October last year.  I got hit — no, hammered — with another idea that would fuse sci-fi and fantasy. That is the novel I’m writing right now, Fey Touched.  

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I’ve had some pretty crappy things happen in the past few months, things that have tested my strength and the strength of my marriage.  However, I have much to be grateful for. I have an amazing family.  Not only are they generous and wonderful, but they’ve all helped my husband and I when we needed it, especially during this time.  They gave us things they didn’t have to give.  They’ve tried to keep our spirits up.  My in-laws even dropped everything and came over just to talk.  To give us love and support, something we really needed. In the wake of what happened (and I’m intentionally being vague for privacy reasons), I was very, very angry.  Mostly at the other people involved, at our circumstances, and at myself.  While it wasn’t my fault or my husband’s, I felt responsible for our financial well-being and got down on myself for not making enough money to carry us. Typical me, though.  I’ve always had the highest expectations of myself. 

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The women in my family are very psychic.  Whether you believe in it or not, something is definitely going on.  Perhaps we’re just really intuitive.  Or maybe our brains work slightly differently.  Whatever the case, I’m continuously amazed by our abilities to predict things. The one that has hit home for me is very recent.  Something huge happened this past Thursday, which ironically was October 13th (I’m very superstitous about dates but that’s another post for another day).  It was bad.  Life-altering, crisis bad.  When my husband called me to tell me what had happened, I was initially shocked.  But then I remembered: I’d predicted this very thing six months ago.  I’d given my husband advice based on a strong feeling that something — this very thing — was going to happen.

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Before I start in with my post, I’d like to make an announcement.  We at Turtleduck Press will be releasing a winter-themed anthology on December 1st.  It’s called Winter’s Night, and it has some awesome stories by our members and some awesome poetry that I wrote.  It’s the perfect thing to curl up with on a cold winter day.  Stay tuned for more information.  We’ll be having giveaways as we get closer to release.   I’ll be honest.  Something huge and life-altering has happened with my husband.  Don’t worry, we’re not divorcing and he isn’t dying.  But it’s pretty huge and is going to impact our life for the foreseeable future.  I’m scared, but I’m coping.   However, I’m still in a very wacked-out headspace, so I decided to give you a peek into a normal weekend day for me (or, what passes for normal) and my muse. Here we go.

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I recently started writing poetry again, and after a two-year hiatus, it was tough.  It was as if I had never written any poetry in my life, that I was starting fresh.  In some ways, that can be a good thing, but in this case, it wasn’t. My normal process is to freewrite madly, tossing as many ideas and images as I can at myself (generally on computer or sometimes by hand) and seeing what sticks.  Many of the poems in Life as a Moving Target and Without Wings started out as freewrites.  It’s always worked for me in the past, so I figured I’d start there.

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