personal – Page 4 – Turtleduck Press

Posts tagged "personal" (Page 4)

The Anti-Blog Post

It’s finally happened, friends. It’s been so long since I’ve written any fiction, or even poetry, that I’ve also forgotten how to blog. Not that there’s nothing in my brain. Oh no, it’s full of all sorts of things — my ever-growing to-do list at the day job, whether my broken sandal can be fixed, when it will feel safe to fly cross-country to visit my family again, how to rescue my tomato plants from the various ailments they’re suffering from this year, the various comfort viewing and comfort reading I’m doing, whether my bathroom ceiling fan is on the verge of breaking down or just needs a good cleaning, various appointments I’m putting off making because they’re not urgent, just how perfect the weather has to be before I’ll go for a long walk, whether any of my fall/winter clothes still fit and how much I should buy to replace them if my size is still changing, what we should name KD’s upcoming spooky book. The problem is that there’s no narrative. No cohesive whole. Just a set of ping-pong balls ricocheting around and failing to get into phase. Maybe it’s because of the elephant in the room that we’re all trying not to think about too hard: nothing will ever be quite the same as it was before, but when will normal things feel safe again? Will they ever? Maybe it’s because existential anxiety on top of everyday busyness is not conducive to creativity, even though we’re all…

I’m not writing this at 12:30a.m., noooo

We’ll just pretend it’s 12 noon because it is technically 12 noon somewhere, right? Le sigh. I didn’t forget this time, honest. Today just…grew legs and walked away from me. Let’s see. I had a dentist appointment at 11a.m. But see, I’d gotten to bed late (truthfully speaking, super late) the night before because work is madness right now (and so is my sleep disorder) so I ended up sleeping in a bit but still getting to the appointment on time. Yay me! Usual stuff there — no cavities, thank God, and I was back home. Worked a bit, then had to take our cat Hailey to the vet for fluids at 3p.m. A bit of a wait there. Not our usual time, since we usually go at 12 noon, but the dentist appointment required an adjustment. So got home, very quickly messaged a client about a few things that needed doing, put together a newsletter for her that needed to go out today, hubby came home, had dinner (leftover tacos, yummy), gave the cat her medication, worked a bit more, found out I didn’t have Esperanto today as my study partner had a power outage… Settled in to work on an editing job, a fun one, actually and…soon it was late. Very late. Oops. So here we are. Sometimes my days are like that. Rushing around, doing this, doing that. Sometimes I’m doing newsletter swaps, a type of free promotion, and because I do them in batches, usually I…

Writing Again!

So a few days ago, I started writing again for the first time in SIX MONTHS. Yes, my friends, six months. It’s the longest time I ever went without writing since 2003, I estimate, because that’s when I started writing every day. I’ve had pockets of time where I stopped, or had to stop, like when I finished the revision of Fey Touched in 2012 and was brain dead for two months, or when the trigeminal neuralgia flared for the first time in my left eye and I quit the computer for three months, thinking it was my heavy computer usage (spoiler alert: it wasn’t). But never, ever have I went six months without a word of fiction. I have written poems here and there, so words were written — just not fiction words. Why on earth would I do such a thing, you ask? Why put myself through such torture? And yes, it was absolute torture. I don’t recommend it at all. There were a few things going on. One, I simply didn’t have the time. Sounds lame, because who doesn’t have time to write, but it’s absolutely true. With my health being sucky and my energy being low, and every minute I felt okay devoted to work, there just wasn’t any leftover spoons for writing — except poetry. I was battling a sleep disorder and head pain as well, so those things just made it worse. I was still stressed from the pandemic. Things are getting better overall,…

Clothes Make the Woman…Maybe

Style is a way to say who you are without having to speak. —Rachel Zoe Clothing has been one of the banes of my existence. As a teen and young adult, I had no sense of fashion and didn’t know how to acquire one. It doesn’t help that this was the ’90s, or that I didn’t have the money to do a lot of experimenting (or the inclination for thrifting). So I spent a lot of time feeling awkward and out of the loop. Not just because of my clothes, of course; I just had the general sense that I’d missed an instruction manual somewhere. Despite all that, I managed to start a professional career in a real office (after being chastised by my temp agency for taking a backpack to an interview…and here we pause to acknowledge that white-collar dress codes are deliberately classist, racist, and exclusionary). I realized I had to learn how to “look the part,” so I bought style magazines and signed up for an online style guide subscription, which helped a lot in demystifying the world of personal style and how to put an outfit together. I went through a phase of trying to wear blazers, dress pants, and pencil skirts, and trying to figure out how to find office-appropriate shoes that would stay on and also not kill my feet. (I finally settled on flat mary janes.) (Insert rant about women’s shoes, office-appropriate women’s bags, women’s fashion in general, pockets, and so on.) As…

Life…One Year After Lockdown

So today is the one-year anniversary of our lockdown in Michigan. My husband was laid off from his job for two months. I was still able to work, as I work from home and in publishing, and publishing keeps going on, which is a good thing. I had a unique perspective on this entire thing because there was literally no break for me. I’ve worked this entire time, and there was no worry about when I’m going back, what would happen when I did, if my co-workers would be sick, if there’d be new protocols in place, etc. That stress did not happen for me, thankfully. It did happen for hubby, and it was pretty rough. Everything was rough. Him being home, while nice, was a bit different and required some adjustment to my routine. Having to do the unemployment thing — he couldn’t even register for weeks and weeks because too many people were filing in Michigan. Did your state have this issue, too? Once he did, he had to do the online certification thing, which was new to him. Thankfully, I knew how, being that I’d been laid off just three years prior. So I was able to guide him. And of course there were the changes to life in general. No more going out to eat. No takeout either in those early days. He couldn’t fish, which was one of his favorite things to do. It was too dangerous to be out there. We got all of…

Looking Ahead and Behind

So, it’s 2020. A new year. A new decade. Let’s see what I was doing in 2010: ~I launched Turtleduck Press with Siri Paulson, KD Sarge, and Kit Campbell. With that launch, I published my first poetry chapbook, Life as a Moving Target. It was my first publication, apart from poetry in literary magazines, ever. ~I had entered into my nth draft of Pirouette (now titled Death Dancer), hoping that this time it will be ready for a literary agent. This is before self publishing took over, and I ended up setting it aside on the advice of my writer friends who felt I was too wrapped up in revisions. I ended up writing Fey Touched instead (and published that in 2012).~I started writing an odd, supernatural thriller thing that to this day is still waiting to be finished. I’m close. It is important because of how the idea came to me, and how the story has warped and changed over time. It is also a new genre that’s a bit out of my comfort zone, but that’s a good thing.~I had been married for one year, yay! And we’re still going strong. ~I had three foot surgeries, the most recent this past March. I am hoping that’s the end of ALL surgeries for awhile. So, pretty major stuff going on. In the decade, I’d release another poetry chapbook, four novels, a novelette, a flash fiction collection, and a nonfiction book. Unfortunately, none of it is Pirouette or the supernatural…

I am a horrible boss

This year has been crazy for me. I had surgery on my right foot in March and then had months of rehab. I started having severely painful headaches and discovered that I had a pinched nerve in my neck, and by the way, I have several herniated discs in my neck as well. I’ve expanded my freelance business again. I’ve been trying to stay organized and efficient through all of this, and I think I might have succeeded except…my writing had to be put aside. I didn’t take this decision lightly. Anyone who’s known me for awhile knows that I usually write every day. I am always trying to reach a goal — a completed novel draft, complete a revision of a novel, or maybe an edit — and I work like hell to make it. I’ve always been this way. One of my main goals for the future was to publish at least one book a year, maybe even two if I could manage it. This was before my health got dicey again and I had a lot less time and energy to devote to it. I did start transitioning to dictation again, mostly to speed up the process, and I’m still working out the kinks. I had a deadline for Reaper Girl #3, The Vanishing. January 1st. Which would have been doable…had I had time to finish the draft and revise. I need at least three weeks minimum and that’s pushing it. My drafts change significantly in revision,…

Thankfulness

Every year around Thanksgiving, I write my post on thankfulness. I’ve been doing this for years: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014 I skipped, 2013, and 2012. You’d think I’d run out of things to be thankful for. Not so. On the thirteenth anniversary of the day my husband and I met, he was in a head-on collision. He was at work, making deliveries in Ohio when a driver fell asleep at the wheel and hit him. The airbags deployed, and I’m positive that they saved his life. Much how my sister’s did when she was involved in an accident several years ago. He called me around the usual time he checked with me — lunchtime — and I had every reason to believe that it was business as usual. When he told me he’d had an accident, I was stunned. He was talking to me on the phone, yet shaken up, so it couldn’t have been that bad. But still — the writer/researcher/worrier in me freaked out. Head injuries. Whiplash. Messed up knees (which actually happened to me two weeks after I started going to college. I had tendonitis in both knees for a very long time). Anything could be wrong and not obvious. But he was talking to me, which meant his brain was okay. He didn’t break any bones. No whiplash. You have no idea how relieved I was. We were supposed to go out to dinner for our anniversary. First, we made a trip to urgent care per…

Still Mostly Brainless

So, the observant people will probably notice that this blog post is up on a Wednesday, not Tuesday like usual. There’s a story in that. So it was one task after another all day Tuesday and into the evening. Six clients’ work. I also posted my own blog post for A Round of Words in 80 Days (ROW80) which I always participate in because it keeps me accountable. I hadn’t posted check-ins except for two, and thought it would be good to at least post the final one for the round. Why this didn’t send up a flag in my head about this blog I’ll never know. It was around 10:30pm and because I need help to use the bathroom, my help wanted me to start so she could go to bed. Fair enough. As I am shutting down for the night, it finally freaking dawned on me. I’d forgotten this blog! But wait, there’s more. Between this and two other incidents, I am convinced that surgery can screw with your mind three weeks later. Please note that I feel fine with the exception of pain. I am also more tired because it’s physically wearing on me to haul this body around on essentially one foot on a scooter. And I have fibro fatigue added to that. I started working four days after my surgery. Say what? I had a lot to do. My clients were great about it, but I’m apparently insane. So I have a vivid memory of…

Random Stuff in My Head

Usually I can come up with a subject to blog about fairly easily, but today I feel like everything I came up with was repetitive or boring. So I give you this, a random mishmash of sh$% inside my head. You’re welcome. 🙂 Random thought #1: Last night, I dreamed I was in a room and there was an earthquake. The entire room shook (and maybe the whole city?). In the dream I screamed, and in real life, I screamed too. I woke my husband up and he held me for a bit. Say it with me: “Awwwwww.” Random thought #2: I made a very odd yet intriguing discovery last night around 12:30. I had a horrific TN pain attack and needed a painkiller, and I wondered idly if it was tied to my hormonal cycle. I remembered reading something about that before. So because I’m a bad ass and have an app and a log of all my pain for the past two years, the information was literally at my fingertips. I did a quick cursory glance so I don’t know about all of it, but from what I read so far, there is definitely a correlation. I’d like to eventually put it into a spreadsheet or graph or something so I can see it all together (one day, she says. One day when she’s not slammed with work). Random Thought #3: I just landed two new clients, yay! Both are amazing and awesome and I am so happy.…

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30

Tag: personal