Rise! (Again.)

If you look closely, you can see my energy level.

Let me start by saying this isn't a "Poor Me" post. But sometimes a little whining is therapeutic.

I was knocked out for a week with laboratory confirmed Flu A. One of the clinicians I work with told me that people who've said they've had the flu and miss work for a couple of days really haven't had the flu. I'm starting to think that's true because as I think back, it seems to me that I haven't been sick like that in a long, long time. I'm pretty sure I was delirious the first night.

Anyway, I got better but damn if it wasn't the exact wrong week to miss work. It was a week of project deliverables, most of which made it in. But some didn't, and still haven't. So the week I came back (last week) was catch-up week, and I don't mind telling you it was a harder fight than surviving the flu. I'm still chipping away at it, even as I'm processing this week's work.

Thing is, all this happened about a week after Boskone, at a time when I just felt I'd recaptured a sense of urgency about my writing. I'm not talking "inspiration to write." I'm talking about a feeling of something I could harness, aside from my own willpower, to leverage myself out of the writing slump I've been in for a couple of years. (Yes, I'm in a slump, despite an upcoming publication.)

But it's hard having to constantly climb out of a pit, and that's kind of where I am right now. Not ready to give up or anything, not by a damn sight. Not even as I still feel some lingering effects of something-or-other (shortness of breath, a cough that still hasn't gone away, near constant malaise and fatigue). My boss (who's a registered nurse by training) finally chided me enough to give my doctor a call tomorrow.

And, so begins yet another climb back up.

Post-Con Blues, Impostor Syndrome Self-Assessment, Reader's Block

Here's what's on my mind lately...

POST-CON BLUES. I love going to cons, but they often put me off of my normal writing routines. And when I come back, they tend to keep me off my writing routines because of follow-up, exhaustion due to people overload, and obsessive but fruitless worrying about how to leverage my last appearance while trying to force my way BACK into a writing routine--which is arguably the best way to leverage my last appearance, at this stage of my career.  Well, one step at a time...

IMPOSTOR SYNDROME SELF-ASSESSMENT. From 0 ("I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me?") to 5 ("I'm like Aquaman and Brown Hornet / I'm like Imhotep but don't flaunt it."), I feel about a 3, post-con.  I've had stuff out last year even though it was few and far between. I had some con panelist experience before Snokone Boskone (2 WFC panels, that's not nothing), and now moderator experience. Next Boskone I get to participate in, I'll probably feel right at home.

via

READER'S BLOCK. Because OMG is my backlog out of control. I just cannot make up my mind, strategically, about what to read next. And no, "Read what you're in the mood to read" is of no help, because strategery!

To Absent Friends, Etgar Keret, My Misspent Mallrat Youth, and More Jodo

It's been a lot of quickie reviews of things I've been reading and watching lately. So let's do something different today, yeah?

1
RIP Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall, and also actress Arlene Martel, who I met at the Rod Serling Conference last year, still trying to keep herself out there in typical L.A.-style.  This isn't one of those, "How dare they forget such-and-such?" notes.  Just a nod to the one I had a brief connection with...

2

Etgar Keret says a lot of things perfectly.  This bit from his interview in Granta is no exception...

I once met this very good writer. She told me that sometimes she comes upon a metaphor or a description and she writes it down on a notecard and keeps it in a box. Then when she writes a story and her character is taking a walk, she thinks OK, I’ll take a walking image from my box of notes. And I said to her, ‘Why? The guy is already walking.’ I don’t think a text should be beautiful. We’re trying to say something, to help something. It’s like sticking a feather on a guy’s back. You know he either grows wings for evolutionary reasons or he doesn’t have feathers. That’s my attitude to writing – although there are writers whom I love who I can see obviously don’t write this way.

3
Who wants to see where I spent my preteen mallrat years in a state of urban decay?

These photos break my fucking heart.  The building is still walking distance from the house I grew up in.  I haven't been inside it in at least 15 years.  Those lounge pits you see are exactly as I remember from the '80s, except the vinyl covering the seat cushions was a red violet instead of blue, if memory serves.  And there are a lot of memories.  Buying 45s, then, as technology progressed, cassette singles at the record store.  The Burger King that came, went, and came back where I got many a lunch after swimming lessons and learned the joys of the bacon double cheeseburger.  The Waldenbooks where I'd buy the Target novelizations of classic Doctor Who episodes, and perusing other books that no 10 year old had any business going through, but I got away with it as long as I wasn't anywhere near the Playboy section of the magazine rack.  I was never ever asked to stay away from the "personal massagers" section of the Spencer Gifts, for that matter.  All the classic Star Wars action figures and other collectible toys that sell for hundreds of dollars now that my parents paid the '80s equivalent of hundreds of dollars to Kay Bee Toys back then... ah well, the past is past.

4
Next up in my movie queue: Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain.

On Track to Shoot Chi or Lightning Bolts From My Hands

So I made it through my second yoga class the other day without stopping (or dying!), and I was warmed up enough that when I walked home, I barely noticed that the temperature had dropped to a balmy 7 degrees.

This time around, I was a touch less focused on just surviving the class, and could pay attention to things like exactly what my limits are right now (more than there used to be), and exactly how my body was having trouble moving (ways that never used to trouble me before).  I did do every pose though!  The quality sucked near the end, but I pushed myself as far as was reasonable I think.  That's what matters.

And yet...

See, what I'm feeling with my return to yoga is almost exactly what I've been feeling like with my writing lately.  I can't seem to bring myself to feel good about the rebuilding I'm doing.  Oh, I do it.  I take a step forward and I'm determined to show up and take the next one; lots of people would pat me on the back for that.  Yet, I know how far I've fallen.  I don't go, "Yay, me! Let's keep moving forward!"  I think, "One step down, 9,995 to go until I'm back to where I was."

It's motivation by self-loathing.  It's letting fear and anger fuel me.

It's the Dark Side of the Force.

Probably not a good thing.  But what to do about it...?

My Everyday Horror Story

From "An Everyday Horror Story"
by Harvey Pekar.
Art by Gerry Shamray.

Whatever lung pox I had that led to two weeks of paroxysms of coughing has messed up my voice.  To clarify, it's messed it up for an additional week after the coughing is now more or less under control.  I'm starting to wonder if it's one of the two(!) inhalers I'm on.  I'm this close to having to having to use one of my Field Notes notebooks to write things out instead of speaking them.

Anyway, it reminded me of a story in Harvey Pekar's American Splendor (issue 5), "An Everyday Horror Story," in which our man has a long bout with laryngitis and it starts to do things to his head.

I'll tell you, I'm starting to relate.  It's not just the voice loss, but these weird muscle spasms I've been getting lately.

I try to avoid soliciting curbside consultations from the medical professionals I work with, but a lot of them are just generally helpful by nature.  So the other day, some of them dropped some knowledge on me.  Now, I knew the muscles that were spasming (my intercostals) are the ones I use to cough but what I didn't realize is that the reason they can take a long time to heal is because they can never truly rest, seeing as they're the same muscles I use to breathe.

That's what's messing with my head.  My voice I can rest, but I can't stop breathing.  Talk about feeling like a supernatural force is messing with you.  It's bad enough fighting my own procrastination, which I do every day.  It's even harder when you can't talk and have trouble moving, or even sitting.  But I don't want to make a mountain out of a molehill, really.  Harvey got his voice back.  I'll likely get my voice back (gonna call the doctor again, though).  My intercostal muscles will get better.  Maybe I'll get my groove back, too.

Maybe.

"I'll be here when you are ready / To roll with the changes..."

Getting a jump on 2014 by planning how to revitalize this space.

Stay tuned.

Chapter LX

From Heavy Metal

We're still 18 years away from 2031 when, if I'm still around, I'll be 58 but still look the way I do now depending on what sort of genetic and/or cybernetic modifications I'll be able to afford.  But that doesn't stop me from feeling like an ancient relic now.

But believe it or not, I'm in a better space than I was this time last year. Just.

"Are you gatherin' up the tears? Have you had enough of mine?"

My goals for the past Memorial Day weekend are clearly stated in the first two verses of this song.  And got'dammit I needed it because the pace of my life has been breakneck.  Two days back at work, and it almost doesn't feel like I've had a break. 

"Jumpin' up, fallin' down / Don't misunderstand me..."

I knew this week was going to be bad.  It's started off even worse.  But I'm getting by. My coping mechanism of the day has been playing this video on a loop.  It's Joe Walsh playing "Funk #49" with Daryl Hall.

Yes, you read that right.  And your brain is short-circuiting at the cognitive dissonance, isn't it?  It's that short-circuit that keeps me from falling into a black hole of depression, because who can not get fired up hearing that guitar riff?

"...we'll muddle through, one day at a time"

I'm actively juggling plates.  That, and fighting off whatever Andromeda Strain I might've picked up at work, hence the extended absence.  But these are plates that put me more and more in a position of having to (temporarily, at least) set aside the things that threaten to derail my momentum if any of the seeds I've sown are to bear any fruit.

I've been doing my best giving those things the Dikembe Mutombo treatment when necessary...

...and just taking things one day at a time.

"I'm just looking for clues at the scene of the crime..."

This is a "Proof of life" post.

I do have stuff I could be talking about.  Just don't quite have the wherewithal yet.  Mostly because it requires a level of organizational thought which I'm not currently capable, since I'm still recovering from whatever Andromeda Strain kept me away from the dayjob last week.

In the meantime, here's the stuff I've been marinating my brain in for the past couple of weeks...

"That's just the way it is. Some things will never change..."

Seems like a lot of PBS documentary films set in the Philippines are coming out of the woodwork lately.  A few months ago, I saw Left By the Ship on Independent Lens , and last week on POV, Give Up Tomorrow. That's awesome!!  Okay, I might be a little biased. 

Give Up Tomorrow was more relatable to me.  Not because anything in my life resembles the predicament of the film's primary subject, Paco Larrañaga... well, come to think of it, no one's life could.  Back in the late 90s, well before the social media and just before the 24-hour news cycle, I remember catching the occasional word about the Philippines' version of "The Trial of the Century."  I never took the time to learn much about it, thinking it was just some Filipino hyperbole.

"But behind the chalet, my holiday's complete..."

Popping my head out of the woodwork (read: out of my ass) again, because it's been too long.

Stuff going on that's too personal to report, but what I'd like to do is at least get to the backlog of stuff that isn't too personal.

Because, you all missed me, right?  Right?

"Funny how things come undone..."

As is typical, it's been weeks since Readercon and I've yet to post anything on it.  I have those posts in the works--it's just been an hard couple of weeks with Life, the Universe, and Everything.  I'll be honest, I've been in my own personal funk.  Given that, posting my con wrapup has been the last thing on my mind. But I find myself so appalled and disgusted with the whole Readercon harassment debacle -- I'm still a little too disgusted to rehash it, so here, just read it -- that I realized that I'd never get my con posts up unless I talked about this first.

Chapter XXXIX

It's my hope that by the time I hit Chapter XL, I'll be able to look back on the time between now and then, and have at least as many good things to say as there was about the year 2261 in the Babylon 5 universe...

And because it's a holiday weekend as well as my birthday, the peanut gallery is closed. :)

"Psych one, psych two. What do you know? All your life is channel 13..."

I saw and read and watched on TV a lot of things as a kid that certainly my parents wouldn't have wanted me to see.  On the down-low, of course.  Nowadays though, the 'rents would be considered downright negligent.  Still, I relate to this, from Michael Sarko on Popdose...

I admit I’m nostalgic for the days of TV’s unbidden bizarreness, but I know each generation has its own thing. Indie theaters, cavernous book stores, random pamphlets, underground newspapers– They’re all sources of weird throughout the history of pop culture. One way or another, a kid needs to have that strange fruit to fuel creativity and open-mindedness.

"I've been one poor correspondent..." (Again)

I was tempted to call this post "Don't Call it a Comeback" and put up the video for the classic "Mama Said Knock You Out."  But that's not my style.  I do feel like I'm sort of coming home again.  That is to say, back to something closer to my normal self.

And besides that, you all know The Menahan Street Band is more my style anyway.  And, this is a bit of a homecoming, after all.

So, this is the portion of the entry where I make vague, cryptic statements about what's kept me away for so long.  How I've been, what's been going on, what unspeakable Lovecraftian horrors I've stared into which drove me temporarily insane, &c. In time, in time.  Maybe. 

Actually... probably not.  Not here, anyway. 

But the important part is, I've finally, after a few months, regained the ability to "fake it 'til I make it." Until then, I'll occasionally open up the peep hole, mutter a few things occasionally (lots going on to talk about soon!), and then close it.  Thus, comments are closed for now.

Oh, and I took the dynamic view off and put the old template back up, at least until I find something better.

"But here you are in the ninth, two men out and three men on..."

Photo from here, via here.

The rumors of my death have only been a teeny bit exaggerated.  My face has cycled through each of the faces of the eggs up there about five or six times.  Even the one in the pan.  If the past few weeks of my life had a theme song, it's been Billy Joel's "Pressure."

What, Me Worry?

So, I found that one of my blog posts may have played a tiny part in a small kerfuffle.  It might've had to do with my statement that...

I need to read more fiction by men. There, I said it.

I know how it sounds, what with all the stuff going on at DC Comics these days, to say nothing about the general He-Man-Woman-Hater's club vibe that some parts of genre-dom still have (even in writing circles).  Hell, anyone who doesn't know me and sees The Playboy Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy in my goodreads "currently reading" list might well roll their eyes and write me off as a toolbag....

Now, I suppose it does beg the question, "Okay, Don, where does your fear of that reaction come from?"

"Something tells me I'm into something good..."

I'm not complaining, but I'm just stating the fact that 2011 hasn't been a very productive year.  Oh, I've produced things.  I pulled off my first academic presentation and am still awaiting word of what could be a huge publication score.  I have things coming down the pike in the next couple of months.  But you know, I think part of my damage is that for a couple of years now, I've been writing "made-to-order" stuff.  I think I need to write something for me.  But what?

I don't know a lot about the Brill Building.  I have a sense about its place in musical history.  I have a vague notion of what they talk about when they talk about the "Brill Building Sound" (and of the controversy behind that term).  I kinda know some of the big names involved.

But here's the thing: I know is that it's the place where I want to set my next short story.