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The Many Worlds Interpretation (Photo credit: EJP Photo)
Today would normally be Book Review Monday. I’m behind in my writing. Sorry. Life has been a bit more “interesting” of late than I expected it to be….in a good way.
So this is instead a little news post.
I’m going back to college. After years (literally) of considering the pros and cons of going back to school for something that I feel quite passionate about but felt unready for, I decided I will be going back to school for Psychology. It’s all part of the joy I gather in learning about people, trying to help people, and just learning in general.
Next, be prepared for a change in both design and format of this blog as it becomes my primary and I work to slowly retire Many Worlds. You may see posts here that seem to have little to do with this blog’s general theme as I port all my older posts over. They aren’t that alien in truth. Writing, creativity, passion… Here or there, I have always strove to experience and share them.
And I will be sharing all of these things here….
For the moment though, let me share with you an image of a little guy (not him exactly, since his brief time with me was spent being held and nursed, not with cameras flashing at him) who shared my morning with me today. Not of his choice exactly. I’m sure he thought he had more time than he did as he tried to swoop in front of our car.
Did you know that it’s believed that tree swallows were once considered a sign of good fortune for seamen?
Inanity seems to be spreading. I keep trying to sort through all the twaddle and detritus that had taken over my daily affairs, but the more I clear, the more I find. Quicksand of the mind….
I just finished an amusing jaunt through Dustin Curtis‘s Blogzine–a fun place to spend some time and consider design issues. I also have been spending far too much of my energy studying NYS vaccine law and what the requirements are for possibly getting an exemption.
Ah, yes… I hear it now. She’s one of THOSE people. Well, not really. I’m not categorically against vaccines; I just have watched my son have reactions two times now that increased in severity each time, and I would like to avoid a worse reaction. The problem? Well, my son goes to preschool, he LOVES preschool, and without a medical exemption (his reaction wasn’t labeled as “severe enough” to warrant not giving him the full spectrum of vaccines at his next appointment), it’s pretty much an all or nothing situation. All vaccines and admission in school…or no vaccines and possibly no admission in school. And as I said, I’m not against vaccines in general.
To top it all off, I don’t like the “one size WILL fit all” mentality that is part of vaccination. The CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics likes to play the benefits outweigh the risks, but as a friend of mine could tell you, being the 1 out of the 1 in a 1 million still sucks. And I’m selfish enough (and, according to some, immoral enough) to think I want my son to not suffer, even if it might mean someone else might someday suffer for it. But then, this is the not-quite 4year old who just came up to tell me he is an “ent-to-mologist: that means I study insects, Mommy”, taught me the 4 extra letters in the Spanish alphabet versus the English one, can do his multiplication tables up to 12×14, and likes to tell us what fraction of pizza or pie he has gotten…
And throughout all this, I’m still working on my various character sections of Courting the Swan Song. Lately I’ve been trying to merge Atyr and ‘Listii’s stories. The weaving of these two characters is both pivotal and intense, as well as a bit hard to picture, since they spend so much of their lives being controlled (directly) by others. Yet whenever I try to imagine a break from their stories by writing about Alanii, the story gets harder to visualize. I see Alanii as the man he’s become, not the youth he was (-is- in CTSS), as Kieri’s counter in Release, a man already weary and jaded by all he’s seen and done. His POV should be easier than the other two, yet he’s the one I can’t get close to anymore.
Ah, well… Pen to paper time.
National Novel Writing Month
Last night at midnight, National Novel Writing Month ended. I was asleep. I missed the Writing Dangerously Write-A-Thon and all of the weekly meetings that had been posted. Life was weird this month.
I also didn’t come close to the actual 1667 words a day for my novel, and I’m not really upset. If I counted all the stuff I did write regarding my story, the journal entries that revolved around future character actions and possible uses for things I’d seen in my wanderings, I easily passed the minimum goal.
The biggest bummer is that I didn’t log in yesterday to the site and post my actual word count, and when I checked today, I found I’d missed the chance to actually validate what I’d written. Heck, I still need to type it in… I’d have had to ask someone to do my validation for me, then throw stuff into the Lorem Ipsum Generator to get it validated on the site. This year I wasn’t organized enough for that.
But NaMo loss or not, I found the month a delight. It got me back into my story world in a way I hadn’t thought of. Maybe I’ll take a few snapshots of some of the notebook pages just for the joy of it. They are quite the sight given how much chicken scratching I put in the margins. The old response folders Dee and I used to write were neater in their genesis. At least Atyr stood up for herself and became a person who did what she wanted, not what I was trying to get her to do. And while it made a lot of problems for me in the short term, I am finding I like her stronger character. I haven’t even started working on Alanii or Valistii’s sections. I’ve done some musing on them and already know that Alanii is going to be as pigheaded as his wife. Valistii? If I don’t try to kill him with my pen, I think we’ll be doing well.
It’s delightful!
Well, since this proved to b the case, I decided that I’d go for something a bit different. The way this year’s NaMo helped my state of my mind and my ability to deal with life, I know now that I am a truly better person when I am writing. And looking at Inky Girl’s page, I found exactly what I needed. Why I hadn’t seen it before, I can’t say. But this is exactly what I need, though not just for 6 weeks. She has a link for 1000 words, and I’m sure sometimes I will achieve that. I did here and there during NaMo. I just know that there were enough days that I barely wrote anything that it is best if I balance my efforts over the week and rely, at least at the moment, on an average per day rather than demand a set daily quota. It’ll be enough to pick up the pen and write every day, perhaps on CTSS or my journal, or even letters to my son’s teachers or my family.
After all, the goal of NaMo and all such courses is to instill a writing habit more than anything. And that is what I’m aiming for.
Hoarding
On a side note: My darling husband sent me this link from MSNBC.com. Given our recent visit to my grandparent’s house, I know why he did it. It bothers me too, since it highlights how little even the so called experts of this issue. The gist of this and its companion article suggest that hoarders are seemingly unaware of their problem, but having seen it all my life, I know this isn’t always the case. Maybe it’s never the case… Statements like “I don’t want anyone coming over anyway” or “Don’t move anything, I’ll never find it again” are just symptoms of the same loss of control and dismay that is symptomatic of the whole disorder.
The information on the brain development of such people was fascinating. Though, as with everything else, I wonder if the development issues are a development of genetics, trauma, or experience (the brain prioritizing what it needed through the time the person matured). How much can be changed? How much should? All behaviors have a reason for coming into existence. What directed this evolutionary path?
I don’t claim to have any answers to this. It is an issue I myself fight with daily. I have to remind myself to throw something–anything–no matter how small away everyday. It helps that I’m obsessive about dirt in many ways. At least I do tend to go through my clutter regularly looking for stuff that is just too disgusting to keep. Issues upon issues… My issues with germs and infestations have saved me from being overrun–that and an amazingly patient husband. But it hasn’t cleaned the books off the floor.
