THIS Rhett Butler Will Never Die

 New year, new hope, new holes to dig out of too. This, this right now, this today, this month... I am face to face with the unknown because for the first time that I can remember, maybe ever, I don't have an assurance of how I'm going to get thru this month monetarily. For literally ever I have always felt a safety net around me knowing that there was going to be enough money to carry me through until the next month. But now, due to the raising costs of EVERYTHING (national inflation), that safety net has been shrinking, and well, NOW it has shrunk into a noose around my neck/wallet. Today is the 5th day of the month and I've gotten my first warning from my bank that I have insufficient funds to meet my transaction needs. I have been overdrawn before, but this is bigger and deeper. This is the raw face of God staring me down saying, "What are you going to do now, dude?" With the ongoing journey of coming to understand and bring into reality the balance of my astr...

 I had some quite enlightened thoughts and ideas flowing into my mind after I finished writing what I shared here last night. One theme that came in was the idea of how I can use this form of creative writing as a form of psychic channeling... I believe that I enter into an altered state of consciousness when I write. I begin my writing sessions by making an effort to connect with my very specific writing muses, I ask them to infect me with the energies that affected them when they were able to write their most poignant pieces of literature... but it goes beyond that too, they are not finite beings, they are gateway beings that tap into and channel the Greater Muse that inspires all creators. But when the Greater Muse flows into and through my personal muses, the energy of inspiration that reaches me is flavored with the life energies of these few humans that have greatly inspired me with the words they have commited to literature... So the bigger idea I was toying with last night ...

 blahablahahahahalblaaahbiddelyblahhhhh i don't know what to write about right now, but I'm sitting here in a cafe and it's what I do when I'm in cafes... sometimes I don't even decide to goto a cafe until I know I have a topic to explore, but today I came to a cafe becuase my best friend said she had time to a cafe, and did I want to come, and yes, of course, I wanted to meet her there... she and I used to cafe sooooo much in the early years of our friendship, aside from cemeteries, cafes were the central place that we would meet to spend time together...  I just scrubbed my memory to figure out how long we've been friends, we met pretty close to 11 years and 6 months ago... anyway... what else is going on? I did a LOT of walking last week, and using the Strava app my mileage was recorded; nearly 20 miles! A new incentive is using another phone app called RANDONAUTICA... it's a little tricky getting that app to work properly... like, it needs a data connect...

 Thirteen days since I last found the time and space to sit here and talk to you.... whyyyyyy??? I'm so dependent on routine. This is my simplest excuse. I thrive on groove. By that I mean, that by repeating a practice, I create a groove that builds up and maintains energy. By going to the same cafe (every day) at the same time and having the same drink (not necessarily needing to sit at the same table, thank goodness) I build up an energy of presence that supports my ability to feel good, and motivated to continue doing what I do. For me, this is writing... for others with similar mind constructs it could be myriad other types of practices... so I am sure that I'm not alone suffering from this proclivity. And it takes me so much time and effort to create this type of supportive groove for myself. It always has... even when I was younger so I don't think it's a factor of age. There is a lack of flexibility that I'm suffering from and an inability to adapt to changes...

 Just trying to get connected to the muse... again... I used to be able to do this quite easily, in fact, it used to be so easy to do that I think for a number of years I was plugged in and connected to the muse more than I was not. Those were the highly productive years when I was working on my Cemetery Girl photo project AND writing my Cemetery Girl novel... a good seven to ten years I was in that state of continually flowing inspiration... easily the best years of my life. I had no boss other than the muse, and she LOVED me, soo soo much. How did my marriage to her disintegrate? I think this is a question worthy of deep contemplation. But maybe I should go back to the beginning of how and when I first met her. In the mid-2000s, when I first decided to experiment with stopping taking psych meds (which took about a year to clear out of my system and to begin to feel freedom from the mind control my pdoc exerted over me)... the agoraphobia started to wane and I signed up for an ant...

 Sitting in a library, something I don't do often enough, partly because the closest library to where I live is small, claustrophobic, yet has big windows that sit on a busy noisy street (which also let in TOO much light)... all these aspects make me uncomfortable... but here I am inside a library 10 miles away from home, and it's cavernous in comparison to my city library... i can find corners to hide in where no light of day reminds me of how hot it is outside...  So I came in here just to kill an hour of time... and what do I do but browse the New Book section, not really intending to find anything of much interest... I pick up a novel by Christopher Golden (a prolific YA author in his early days - I first read a bit of Buffy-fiction that he wrote over a decade ago...) with a blurb on the cover by Stephen King, saying "...this story will take you on a trip that will scare the hell out of you... I LOVED IT...", so I picked it up and just 5 pages into it, I'm hoo...

 I've been having conversations with my former wife's younger brother recently, who is probably the most lucid communicator regarding all sorts of things that I'm interested in that I've been able to talk to in ages. Right off the bat, we are discussing film, music, and literature, topics I have NO ONE else in my life that has educated notions about at all to wander into deep thought-journeys with. Blame it on him being born and bred TRULY IRISH, for one thing... but we also have shared world experiences... the impact this woman, Aine, had upon our lives, and shared experiences we ventured into when I in fact lived in Ireland. Last night we talked about experiencing the deaths of our mothers... no one has ever opened up to discuss such intimacy with me before... (aside from Sir Thomas sharing the story of the recent passing of his beloved wife)... but with this Irish-brother-in-law, we have a foundation for a lot of deep explorative conversations that could turn on all ...

 I have not written here in 131 days?? That's just NOT right. I apologize to you, to myself, to God, and all the demons that have been yearning to express themselves thru my thoughts, words, and ideas for this hiatus that can only be blamed on laziness and lack of focused inspiration. Let's see if I can get to the root of this NOW. A lot of things have been changing in my life, and the world at large in the past 131 days. As you may know, if you are a regular reader of this blog, I write when I feel like it. Sometimes there are days where pertinent ideas or information need to be expressed. Other times I have larger ambitions and want to develop a project, either one that's already been under development (i.e. Nanowrimo novel) or some newly thought up reason to write publicly. Today I'm considering an overhaul to many aspects of my life/work activities.  So something happened in the past two weeks, in the world at large, that temporarily injected panic into my mind abou...

Update: that new theory about dowsing lotto numbers, philanthropically - kablooie. Still can't get all 4 numbers right. I can still get 3 numbers right, and have the 4th number off by just one... I'm not giving up on this, but until I gain some new, even fresher perspective, I'm taking a break. So when the pandemic began back in March, a good friend (from just a couple years back) reached out to check in on me and my family. It's sad that our friendship has lapsed because overall I saw the good in her soul. And she was readily available to me for conversation. She also attended mom's memorial service, which was really quite huge. Anyway, she gave me the name of this woman that makes regular video commentaries about the spiritual ascension process that is occurring on earth right now. I listened to her most current video that very night, and I was impressed by her insights and the compassion she expressed for her listeners. I now listen to whatever she publishes as...

I really felt like I could come here (in my blog) and write everyday, when I said that last week, but due to a job I had, which I'll speak a little bit about here, I felt incapable of focusing enough to write, anything. So I make extra money on the side doing "gig jobs". I primarily work for Door Dash, which I find highly enjoyable to do. The work feels so freeing, emotionally and structurally, I only work when I want to. For a slacker like me, it's such a perfect job. And I can literally make money instantly. I just finished working a 3 hour shift today (lunchtime) and made $50 which I instantly deposited into my bank account. The other gig job I do is pet sitting and dog walking. I did this for about a month until I became fed up with it. The pay is low, VERY low in comparison, and the stress level is VERY HIGH. The job I had this weekend, was taking care of 3 very adorable dogs in the house of an old high school friend. The community was under a severe weather wa...

Wow, nearly a year since I last wrote something here. That's really sad. I did try to write something to post here a couple months ago but there were technical difficulties in transferring the text from Google Docs to blogger, and my text would not display. Some issue with the display qualities of my blogger account that I'm to burnt out to try and fix. So now I'm typing this in by hand. What you see is what you get. So why am I writing here today? Because I miss writing. I miss writing for the sake of being able to get outside of my head and explain things to myself. Mainly. But I also miss writing creatively. And what i'm thinking is perhaps if I start writing here regularly again, maybe it'll oil my gears enough to reawaken the joy of writing for me. Not really sure about what I want to talk about today. Didn't really feel a burning need to talk about anything important. Just wanted to talk. One thing that's been on my mind recently is my health. I...

I'm not ready to break out my volumes of files and folders that contain all of my typewritten pages that make up my possibly great American novel, just yet. I'm going to need some warming up and ego building to give me confidence that I'm really ready to go back into that tempestuous struggle. So here's where my head is today. Last week I had an experience with my best friend that led me to think that what we had just gone through was good material for a short story. I've never been a good short story writer, have never really had much impetus to write short stories. and also have not read a lot of short stories... wow, the odds are so against me being good at following this lead of an idea. But it's not like I'm really writing them for anyone other than myself. I'm not writing them for a class or any contests. I just want to try writing them to get my storytelling juices flowing again. And maybe by starting to write some so-called short stories, I mig...

with just hours left in it's beating heart, September is coming to a close.  September is the fullest month of the year for me and this year was no exception. It was focused on celebrations of births and deaths in glorious splendor. For some reason right now I don't feel inspired like I usually do when I sit down to blog to go into any details about what events occurred, even though I really should. It was that spectacular of a month. Maybe this quick footnote right now will pull me back to write in fuller detail about the things that occurred before their impact fade from my memory. And maybe I'll even go beyond my normal blogging techniques and include some photos of the people and places that were seen. Why I really opened up this page to scribble thoughts upon tonight was to put some energy into the idea of reopening my "novel" and perhaps going back to work on it. When I tried to work on it last year, even though I made some truly grand progress in consider...

Relatively, I am not sad these days. It seems that as I keep up a regular practice of meditation - that is meditating for at least 15 minutes, once a day - I am able to refresh my spirit enough to cast off the creeping shadows of sadness and depression that approach my consciousness every day. There are things happening in and around about my life that could lead to a pretty strong episode of depression but the joy that clearing my energy via meditation is relatively saving my life right now. Fuuny, but I thought that I'd spend my time writing this blog energy talking about the things that are not going right that could bring on a depressive episode - but I didn't. I jumped right to the good part of the story and talked about what is working. I'm kinda proud of myself for doing that. And happy that this happened. All the same, just for the sake of clarity and record, I do want to talk about these things because they are not going to go away on their own, not very easily a...

So I've been taking this online novel writing course with one of my most favorite, living authors (Francesca Lia Block) for the past 5 weeks. She invited writers that had existing manuscripts to come and learn under her guidance how to get our stories written in a fashion that could help us sell them (for publication). It took me awhile to figure something out about what her methods and goals were, but now that I've figured this out (for my own sake at least) I feel torn about whether I want to learn how to write this way or not. I wouldn't call her method or goals formulaic, but in a way, that's how they are starting to seem to me. Here's what I'm starting to think is what's going on. Popular fiction has "a feel" to it. There are standard elements of storytelling involved that hook readers that work to keep them transfixed while reading a novel. The reader wants to be drawn into a mysterious series of events that contain tension and unexpected d...

So what does this previous statement mean? I am going to completely embrace this calling now. I am going to get back to work photographing models in cemeteries and I am going to get back to work on my novels. Only two people have taken on the task of proofreading my draft novels. There are about four that I have completed writing in first draft form so far. What I will do with them I am not sure yet. You will know, if you have read this blog over the years that I continually come back to this position where I vow to get serious about sitting down and editing my work so that I can at least make it presentable in the self publishing market. And you will also know that I have not done this yet. I have kept on writing newer sections of the novel... and that is what I am looking at now, that perhaps one BIG novel is not what I should present to the world. I should just put them out in the sections that I originally wrote them as. They'll be easier for people to read that way. I also nee...

Oh me, oh my... it's that time of year again, when i get so excited and so focused and so productive, and sit in cafes with my head down and my fingers pounding heavily. it's the time when i'm most strongly imbued with the muse of creativity. and i'm always amazed, on a daily basis at what i'm able to conjure up with my inner dialogue. it's an addiction and it is something that i abuse with wreckless abandon... sadly never ending with sitting down the next month to do a once over editing/rewriting what i conjured up... So I had two chances to write more for my story/novel earlier this year when nanowrimo had two other months of writing; April and July. and i did sit down and started writing, but i was unable to stay focused, and gave up before each month ended. the quandary i ran into was that I was freezing up with ideas and inspiration about how to continue with the log jam i had created with my character telling her story. it was creative failure, for sure....

So I want to talk a little bit about what a day in my life is like, what dayyys are like. What kind of different days I have, and how I determine whether a day was "good" or not. Now I'll say that most of my days are indeed "good" days. I rarely end the day mumbling to myself, "damn, that was a baddd day." I usually feel pretty content with the results from my efforts and activities. But that is in part because I've become as accustomed to the ways day generally go for me as I am. If someone else were to slip into my shoes and compare what a generally fine day is to me to what their days are like, there could be a lot to talk about. I don't have a lot of rules, nor do I have outlandish expectations set up for myself to achieve. This is actually admitting a lot of what is missing from my life.. I generally do not complete many things in a day because there is so little structure, or ambition. Okay, so a successful day for me, in general, wou...

i've been in need of, and in search of a writing mentor for a number of years now, and well, this week she found me. she is offering all of the support that i have hungered for. the companionship and attention i have believed would help me obtain the focus i need to get focused enough to pour out this novel, and finish writing it. how she has the time for me, i do not understand. maybe she is intrigued by my story and would like to be able to read it. i think she does this for others too, as she is a professional writer and teacher. i just feel blessed that i've slipped into her camp and that she appreciates what i have brainstormed so far, and that she shares a sense of both belief and expectation in me, that i can and will finish this project. in a way, this is evidence of me shifting into a high gear of manic activity, and i know that i should be wary of over extending myself. i am pulling back the reigns on the photo project, which i clearly have already overextended myself...

maybe moods are seasonable. and i'm not talking about SAD . because i just came through one of the most wonderfully mooded dark seasons (winter) that i can remember. this winter fed my motivations. no, i'm talking about them, moods, having their own schedules of necessity. that there needs to be a time of sadness, a time of gladness... that they balance each other. and mabye this is just something inside the experience of the bipolar. i don't know because i don't really know what moods regular people go through. if i had not started taking the seroquel again last week how much longer would my mood of positivity continued? indefinitely as far as i could tell. as i feel now, i want to put my camera away for a good long time. i think the "Cemetery Girl" project has come to an end. i know i said this in an earlier post. i'm just reaffirming it now. there have been a total of 5 models from ModelMayhem that i have cancelled working with. better than them canceli...