Deliciously Kooky, Disturbingly Spooky

You know that thing where you’re in your car and you drive by an accident site? Like, glass and twisted metal, possibly some mystery fluids all over the place, the flash of ambulance lights and all that… and you sloooooow down as much as possible without stopping so you can scope out the site? Have you ever done that while you’re walking?! Is that one of the dumbest looking things we can do as human beings? You know, walking with brisk, determined steps to a set destination and seeing something strange or out of place but not having the time to stop and stare like an idiot so you just kinda rubberneck and take an odd step or two slower? Like… be serious, did anyone see me do that this morning?

I did this thing last week where I was trying to get a group of kids to settle down so we could walk in line to recess and they weren’t listening to my shushing, so I just put out a finger and since they’re ignoring me anyway I just kinda stare at my finger and make sprinkler noises… you know, like “tch tch tch tch… tssshhhhh… tsssh tch tch tch… ttttcccchhhh” while I move my finger back and forth like a sprinkler… I legit did that for like 10 straight seconds and when I looked up they were all DEAD SILENT. I like that, I like to keep that whimsical balance between “My teacher is kinda cool and kooky” and “This bitch is gonna peel off her skin one day and dangle us by our ankles off the third story window with her sixteen slimy alien tentacles”.

Tobogganing into Hades

Do you have pent up rage? How do you deal with it? Here’s a fun story, I used to be an INFP. I was a walking sobfest. I empathized so strongly with others I literally carried their weight . It made me sick. That was also not figurative; I got sick from worry, stress, pain that did not belong to me. People liked to tell me their stories and lay their burdens on me because they said I was a “good listener”. Being a good listener is mostly a passive gig, and I’m pretty good at doing passive, even now. But back then I cared sooooo much about what others were going through I made myself ill, I thought about their problems at odd hours, I really wanted to be a person who could make them feel better. I wasn’t. At most what I could be to these people was a doormat, and I ended up on the wrong end of many a failed friendship and relationship because I was all give and no take. No demands, ultimate low maintenance. I guess it got boring after a while.

Then I started to change a bit, and I started to make demands. Although to be fair my demands were more like expectations. What I would be willing to offer to others I took it as a given that they would do for me as well. That also landed me on the tail end of many interpersonal conflicts, because people thought I was using THEM for my own selfish amusement. That did not fall too well with me. At some point (possibly after reading Steppenwolf) you decide you’re not gonna take any crap anymore. I couldn’t really pinpoint where the moving joint that turned me away from my previous temperament lies exactly, but I think it has to do with reason over feelings. I still care deeply about people, but now I’m HELLA selective about who’s gonna get my honest give-a-damns. I still give and expect (although demand is still a bit of a problem, and it’s needed sometimes), but whenever I know things are going to get intense my mind switches over to reason automatically. There are now markers in place, markers that help me decide whether advice is in order, whether or not there is even anything useful I can do or if I should just offer a willing ear and a sincere show of support, as well as offer to do anything in my scope of knowledge and resources to help. I don’t get bent out of shape about most things though, just the ones that insist and persist and dig a hole in my defenses like a drop of water.

I do tend to be reactive though, and I need to work on that. I antagonize when I feel cornered, and I have to work on that too. Sometimes I antagonize as a freakin’ sport, as someone recently pointed out, and I haven’t even been able to process that. I like a brisk discussion, but I guess sometimes I can grasp my point a little too hard and swing my arguments a little too fast.

Sometimes I don’t feel relatable. I feel like people pretend to understand but don’t; not really.

Anyway…

I managed to lucid dream for the first time since I started training about a month ago. I thought all the reality checks were not amounting to anything, but I finally saw them pay off.

I downloaded an app that makes me do random reality checks during the day. It tells me to do things like count my fingers, pinch my nose and try to breathe, read text twice and so on; and it was actually the breathing through the pinched nose that helped me gain awareness in my dream. The funny thing is that the dream felt real UNTIL I gained awareness, I always thought it would be the other way around. I was at WORK, ffs, I was checking in and something about the fingerprint scanner seemed off. Then I turned to the floor and it had these weird water puddles; and that’s when I knew it was a dream. I pinched my nose and breathed, then walked right up to the third floor to my classroom… except just now I’m realizing it WASN’T my classroom! It was another teacher’s. So then I notice that parents are waiting to flock into the room for a meeting… and I decide to exert power over them… mentally.

That is all I feel safe to disclose atm… it was just starting to get good when my daughter woke me up L. But this is good! I’m gonna keep working on this because it’ll help a lot with my plot direction. So stay tuned, folks! You might witness the real-time creative process of a true masterpiece, or my downward spiral into the abyss of ignominy and mental deterioration. Fun!

Punch my Gut and Call me Pretty

I just don’t know anymore…

My novel is set in the 90s. I understand and realize now how cruel and unfair we were to our parents when they waxed nostalgic about their “good old days”. I never thought I’d find myself at the ass end of my 30s, pining like an idiot for the simplicity and transparency I experienced in the 90s.

Even though my novel is set in the 90s, it is not explicitly so. I understand I may catch some crap for being vague about my setting but I seriously can’t give less of a rat’s ass about it. It’s also set in my home town of Hermosillo, Mexico. Also not explicitly. Being read by anyone in this day and age without these facts being stated directly is going to make it seem like the whole thing is taking place in another dimension, I now regretfully appreciate. Or maybe not. Maybe the lack of mention for any modern technology will make the thing awaken some aching sense of need for actual human communication in readers (all four of them).

I fell in love with the concept of captatio benevolentiae when I studied Don Quixote in college. What that means is basically stating you’re gonna be horrible at something and you apologize in advance to your audience for the audacity, and then usually proceed to hit it out of the park. It’s what Casey would have expressed with his first two strikes if he’d actually managed to pull a run at the end of the game. In the case of Don Quixote, Cervantes kinda just went on and on about how his attempts at writing were limp-wristed and possibly uninteresting, then HE WROTE DON QUIXOTE; I mean, it’s the equivalent of a magician bowing to the crowd, sheepishly stating he’s new at this and then turning around and pulling the Titanic out of his ass.

 I evolved into a so-called adult with that sort of self-deprecating tint to the way I presented myself. I participated in eight karaoke contests, and before each performance I always did a whole gladiator salute to my audience of Caesars. I never won. This is pretty deeply ingrained into my personality now, and I have to wonder if I’ve benefitted more than I’ve held myself back because of it. It’s certainly kept me humble in a way, but only to myself. I can only imagine others roll their eyes when I say I’m gonna suck at something and then kill it. Or manage not to suck, at least. The downside is that I can no longer determine with any certainty the extent of my talents. I’m working on it, I promise… by blogging instead of working on my novel :D

Sell it to the birds

I hate selling stuff.

My deep-rooted aversion to selling shit started early in my life, I can recall instances of this proclivity dating as far back as middle school, where I was unfortunate enough to become the beneficiary (?) of a scholarship in a quasi-prestigious school in my city (this is all very vividly drawn from in my novel). As direct collateral of this honor (?) I was expected to sell twice as much more of any fund-raising crap the school administrators smoked up than my full-ticket price contemporaries. My parents (my mom in particular) sent everything we couldn’t manage to position back to the administration with a straight face and an upturned finger. By the time I was in high school I was fully trained in the discreet art of volleying back fund-raiser shit spiked my way. You may say I missed out on acquiring a necessary skill in today’s world, to which I would respond by taking your hand, walking you to my dining room, offering you a seat, and serving you a nice, big, piping hot plate of eff-u. I’m an EXCELLENT sales woman, I’ve sold piles of secondhand crap from my garage, my kids have outgrown a small warehouse’s worth of clothes and I’ve sold the majority of that and donated the rest to charity. I effectively put presents under the tree TWICE this way already, but the thing is when I sell my shit *I* decide what goes and how, and if I want to give something away for pennies on the peso because some sweet dad dude had his little kid sit on my son’s practically brand-new stroller and smile, then that’s my thing. Having someone else give me unnecessary overpriced tickets for some needless crap is NOT my jive. Telling me I MUST sell them or else, just makes my tolerance for bull reach critical mass.

I tanked selling door-to-door stuff once because I thought the product was ridiculous. I went supernova as an OPC in Vallarta because the thought of sending someone to a resort to effectively MISS OUT on a whole day of their vacation to sit through a stressful time-share sales pitch seemed CRIMINAL to me.

And now… I am a teacher. I have two kids enrolled in the private school where I work. Both of them are on scholarships. Sssshhh… do you hear that? That’s foreshadowing.

I’ve had to suffer the torment of selling whole boxes of chocolate because if I don’t my kids lose their scholarship. It's never on time, oh Lord, never on time... This year I have soccer moms breathing down my neck to pay for the fund raising tickets so their precious kins can win a pizza party. Most of these people pay for the tickets out of pocket. I admire that kind of commitment almost as much as I admire their blasé attitude about what constitutes a negligible expense, but it’s just not something I am able to do at the moment. I hope one day to be in a position where they try to give me a stack of tickets and I can just go “oh, ffs, this again? What do you need this time? Swimming pool? Here, lemme write you a check so you can get off my case.”

Luke is all up in my face again. Stand in line, Luke.

Extreme Flow of Consciousness

Well, here I am, a couple of days into NaNoWriMo (or is it a week already? Damn…) and I’ve effectively put on a couple thou more words into the novel, although it’s still packing a pretty slim punch at 29,000+ words. I think I’ve only written about… 3000-ish more since I started? I don’t know, it’s not going as well as it could be, but for now I just need to keep reminding myself it needs to be finished, not perfect.

I’m attempting to train myself to lucid dream, as you may remember if you’re now a follower of my dribble, and while I still haven’t managed to make myself do a reality check in a dream, I think I am becoming a little more aware of what I dream when I wake up each morning. Last night I had some pretty damn boring dreams, but I realize that I had a couple of chances to reality check because they were all taking place in realistic settings. One was in a movie theater, another was… crap, I forgot.

I just read an article on becoming a cynical adult that really shook my nook down to the core of my existential apparatus. Imagine this, mentioning Stockholm syndrome twice in a day on twitter, then running into an article on the Stockholm syndrome of the mind… which is basically “oh, you criticize yourself too much? You’ve basically become your own slave, you’ll never get anything done because you’re relying on your inner critic beating you to shit before you get anything done, then justifying it by saying you dodged a critical hit from the cosmos because the thing was gonna suck anyway. Good job, Bertha.” AAAAHHHH!!! This is JUST the thing I needed to NOT NEED right now, or ever. So… so… just do the thing and tell yourself you need a multitude of interpretations before you can be sure it’s no good? Until then just keep telling yourself you CAN’T POSSIBLY KNOW IF IT’S ANY GOOD? Who has the time or mental stamina for that kind of uncertainty??!?

I guess I do, or I need to…

I think I’m going blind.

No, see, I’ve had these floaters coasting in my right cornea (I guess?) for about what? 5-6 months now? And I’d made TWO appointments to go and get it checked out but I had to cancel both times because we didn’t have a car (got read ended two months ago, second bout of whiplash for me which left me with chronic pains), then I sort of parted ways with the money I’d set aside to get it checked, so now I’m just kinda… dealing with it? one of the floaters is pretty big, I’m gonna have to give it a name. Anyway that’s just another incentive for me to finish the book, I might go blind unless I get this treated el oh el.

I desire the pleasure of knowing I’ve made at least one of my dreams come true.

Because, see, dreams are not the same as plans. Getting married, having kids, working, owning a home, those are things you plan for, not dreams. Dreams involve an element of the unexpected, magic, luck, a dream is a coin spinning in the air, it can land either way. You expect a dream to turn out a certain way, but the outcome depends on so many things you just kinda have to give it up to the higher power. Setting the fulfillment of a dream in motion is an act of faith in so many ways. It’s like another thing that article may or may not have said (it’s open to interpretation) you have to trust yourself to create the real you, your own moral compass and your own sense of self. This is something I struggle with enormously.

As you may or may not remember, I am a teacher.

I am a teacher and I have been for almost twenty years. The role of an educator is such that you have to model propriety and values in all areas of your life. To a certain extent the role of educator is burdensome to the creative flow, to the chiseling of a proudly effervescent individual who revels in the nuances of human nature. We are expected to model the proper way to function in society, and while this very much SAVED me at first (from latent addictions mainly), it has become a prison to my natural exuberance in more ways than one. I might die in this prison. And none would be the wiser. I must act.

Luke… I’m gonna call my floater Luke.

The Inner Workings of the Highly Unlikely

I should be writing. I think I need this right now, I’ve noticed a teeny spike in my visits and it’s kinda comforting to think of people reading my thoughts and perhaps empathizing in silence with my plights and tribulations. I am continuing my novel, I did start today. I am happy to say at a quick second glance my writing does not appear to suck as bad as I had thought when I set it down a couple of months ago. Problem now is, I’m at that point in the story where you have to cringe for the character, the part where you kinda wanna change channels to avoid secondhand embarrassment (if you’re like me). Writing that kind of complication is proving to be a hurdle, but I’ll trudge through it eventually, I’m sure. I think. I hope.

So a few days ago I tweeted about being Claire Temple and I think I should get that idea out of the way now. For those of you who are like me and probably hold the idea of knowing the name but needing a gentle nudge in the right direction, Claire is the kickass nurse from the new Marvel Defenders universe. She’s the only character (I think) who’s crossed over into three separate heroes’ storylines. In all three cases she comes off a teensy bit ex-machina…ish, but man, this is just THE kind of character I resonate with on an atomic level. Let’s look at the whys… she’s on the sidelines a bit, she’s needed and saves the day for the ones who save the world… er… city, neighborhood, whatever. You see, THIS is the kinda stuff I was talking about a few posts ago; you don’t have to be a HERO to be a hero to someone. I wouldn’t mind staying in the shadows if it meant doing some good for the ones who do the greater good. I am a thinker; I am an idea person, not so much a spotlight seeker, nor a martyr, and DEFINITELY not a leader.

I’ve often fantasized about a job where I wouldn’t have to be up front. I actually kinda dream about a job where I don’t have to deal directly with people at all, or just with a select few. My go-to fave characters in every action/fantasy/scifi movie are the techno geeks or the silent strategists or the ridiculously talented, albeit incredibly limited-scope problem-solvers. Out of these sometimes stem a few reluctant heroes with moral dilemmas (my absolute favorites, ask me about Carol Peletier and a certain Himura, please), and some savvy underdogs (the fact that the Lannisters have Tyrion is the only reason I still buy their merch over Targaryen’s).

This is funny because as much as I would love to be able to create a character like this I don’t think I could if I wanted to. Or maybe I am and I haven’t noticed yet, you’ll have to be the judge of that. In any case, since my character is dealing in dreams, lucid dreams, dream awareness and the like, I am now for the purposes of research delving into the world of lucid dreaming. So far it’s afforded me jack shit, but it’s been interesting questioning reality at random intervals during the day. Problem is, I am usually so dog tired at night when I go to sleep and wake up so early and jacked up on the need to beat the clock in the morning I don’t have the time to recollect my dreams. Until last night, that is.

So yeah, I finally collected a damn dream last night, hip hooray. It was the dumbest dream… where I met one of my current… I don’t want to say celebrity obsession because we’re talking obscure, questionable level of fame, and not so much an obsession as it is a sincere interest and itching desire to get to KNOW, not meet… KNOW. Not in the biblical sense, though. I don’t think. But anyway it was as typical and cringey as one would expect from this type of dream, where it was mostly just the two of us gawking at each other in silent fascination throughout what was by every perceivable aspect just a regular outing with faceless friends. The only spoken part I remember was a friend taking me aside and muttering in the most fed-up tone you can imagine “Geez, you think you could tone it down a bit?” That’s it. That’s the dream. I can’t recall a single other exchange, just snippets of events and scenery.

I’m thinking I can use this. Won’t it be a fun twist if this blog turns into my dream journal… I apologize in advance if it does, that just sounds trite as hell.

Well I hope this entry doesn’t turn out to be part of another dream, because it took up valuable book-writing time. Wouldn’t be surprised if this ended up becoming my book after all the work I’ve already put into the other one. Hey, maybe I end up with two books. Huzzah!