The Things I Love and the Things I Do Well

Sorry I haven’t written the past couple of days, but I was setting up for Missouri Hope, our big disaster training exercise. Then I was doing moulage for Missouri Hope, which means making up 185 volunteers in two-hour stretches (with two other moulage artists). Then I was recovering from Missouri Hope. It’s the most intense weekend of my year.

So, it’s Tuesday, and I have a spare few minutes to write my blog in-between grading and an online meeting that shouldn’t go too long. I have time to think. Today, I’m thinking of the things I love and the things I do well, which are not necessarily the same things.

I enjoy doing moulage, and I do it well. I know I do it well because I get a lot of compliments and attention for it. Doing moulage gives me a boost. I get high from the attention.

Trigger warning: Below is a simulation of a crushed hand:

Back to writing:

I enjoy writing, too. I’d like to believe I do it well, but I get little feedback from publishing my writing. Few people have read my three Kringle novels, my fantasy romance novel, or my Vella serial. I’m not sure this has to do as much with my writing as the whole struggle to get the word out about my writing. I’m not good at putting myself out there because I feel insecure about my writing in a way I do not about my moulage. A vicious cycle, apparently — no praise means insecurity; insecurity means I don’t push myself forward; not pushing myself forward means no readers; no readers means no praise.

I need to find a way out of the vicious cycle, because I want to have the relationship I have with my moulage with my writing, something that I both enjoy and which feeds my need for recognition (which is a small thing, actually). I’m willing to entertain ideas …

Missouri Hope Arrives

When I’m not a professor or a writer, I’m a moulage artist.

I do this work 2-3 times a year, making up volunteers to look like accident victims sporting injuries from broken legs to burns to drowning to long lacerations. It’s illusion, done with wax and grease paint and fake blood (there are good fake blood recipes at the link).

The big event of the year is Missouri Hope, three days of training in the rough for undergraduates, nurses, and emergency personnel. As the moulage coordinator, this takes a lot of preparation — inventory, ordering, prepping materials, and taking a deep breath and hoping I’ll have enough volunteers to help (recruiting is not part of my duties).

It starts this evening. I will have dinner with my fellow staff, from team and lane controller/evaluators to logistics and operations staff to our catering crew. I know many of these people from the university and from previous exercises. One of them is a current student of mine; another a former student. One is my husband. I feel at home in this crowd, which is part of the reason I’ve been doing moulage for 12 years.

This is me doing moulage. It’s my least gory picture.

I’ve gotten to where doing moulage is second nature, and I can do it pretty quickly. I can’t do it too quickly; injuries like lacerations and breaks require a layer of wax followed by a layer of latex followed by a layer of castor oil followed by a layer of makeup.

I have all my supplies (except the castor oil I’m hunting for) ready to go. The fun starts tomorrow.

It’s Time for my Midlife Crisis

In my family, we have our midlife crises late in life. I’m 59 years old, and it’s past time for me to have a midlife crisis.

I know I was supposed to have one in my forties. But I was a late bloomer. I got married for real at 43, and I had just gotten tenure and promotion a couple of years before. In my fifties, I fulfilled a lifetime dream of writing and even getting published.

Photo by Garvin St. Villier on Pexels.com

Now I’m looking back at my last fifty-something years and asking myself if I should have pushed myself further. I’m looking forward and realizing that I’m too old to be a cougar (mostly kidding here; I’ve had my share of crushes on younger men).

What does it mean to be in one’s sixties? For a woman, I think it means not being taken as seriously. I don’t have to worry about that; I don’t know if anyone’s taken me too seriously, and I don’t miss it. It means not being considered beautiful, and I don’t have to worry about that either. Maybe it’s the beginning of being old, although I don’t feel old.

I’m going to have to figure out some way of having a midlife crisis, though. Buy a red car? Too late. Become a crazy cat lady? Definitely too late. Revamp my wardrobe? It definitely could use one, but I like the fuss-free style I’ve adopted.

I’m taking suggestions for my midlife crisis.

A Development I Couldn’t Have Predicted

Well, here’s a development I couldn’t have predicted — my husband is coauthoring my latest Kringle romance.

It’s an annual tradition (i.e. something I’ve done more than twice) for me to use NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) to write a novel in the Kringle Chronicles, a set of light, quirky Christmas romances with the Spirit of Christmas in the forefront. You can read about this year’s in my latest posts.

Yesterday, my husband was presenting ideas for the coming novel, and I told him that if he wasn’t careful, I was going to have to give him a writing credit. He said “Ok.” After twenty minutes of interrogation, I discovered he wasn’t joking, that he wanted to co-author a romance novel with me.

If I don’t seem like the typical romance novel writer, he seems even less so. A bookish-looking guy, greying at the temples, stocky, librarian. But he wants second billing on this romance novel I’m writing.

He spent a little while this morning blocking out the first five chapters — not so much an outline as chapter synopses — and helping refine characters. He didn’t do too badly. I think this is going to work.

A Hole in the Clouds

Out the window, the clouds move away after spilling the gentlest of rain on us. In the clouds, blue-purple and grey, the slightest glimpse of light spills through. This is my mood, perfectly. My life has been grey lately, neither full of exuberant life nor beset by torrents. One day follows another and I do the same thing day after day, more or less. This is not a bad thing.

I worry more about the exuberant than the torrential. I weather storms well and have done all my life. Bright sunshine has its own violence, smashing calm just as much as lightning does. Great happiness tempts its opposite more than great depression does.

I want a little light peeking through my clouds, a bubble of joy, not the torrent that tells me that life is out of control. Because the latter is mania, and it scares me more than depression.

Here’s for a calm day.

I’m plotting!

I’m doing more plotting on November’s Kringle book (now tentatively called Kringle on Fire) than I have done on any book up till now. This is evidence that it hasn’t truly grabbed me yet, so it concerns me. The process is usually easier than this, with my characters and plots developing organically during discussions with my husband.

There are benefits to plotting a book, especially if one uses a framework like Save the Cat! or Romancing the Beat. You can find information on these online. One can also find derivatives of Save the Cat! and Romancing the Beat as Scrivener templates. The templates have significant advantages for writers and readers. Writers use someone else’s research to develop the story in a way that makes sense and the structure takes away a big concern when editing. Future readers can find the peaks and troughs of the plot where they expect.

Because I want to write this book for NaNoWriMo this November, and be part of a worldwide group of writers, I’m going to have to write however I can. That, in this case, means plotting.

Ever Vigilant

I’m irritable. I have a crush on someone again^*. It’s a change in season. An ordinary person would think nothing of this, but I have bipolar disorder (bipolar 2), and this makes me worry. Am I becoming manic (hypomanic)? Do I need to check in with my pdoc? (Actually, checking in with my pdoc would be a good idea, as our last appointment got canceled.)

I’m probably overreacting; I often do. It’s easy to overreact when one has bipolar disorder, because the mood swings wreak havoc on one’s life. Even hypomania puts strains on relationships and budgets, and the full-fledged depression can make wanting to live difficult.

The states of bipolar mania/depression are hard to explain. It’s hard to explain that my judgment is great unless I’m in one of my extremes, and then I need a trusted voice to walk me through things. Even then, my judgment is not impaired but influenced by intense moods. I do not act on my moods as much as I suffer frustration.

As I wrote this, I got a call in to my pdoc and made an appointment, which will be in two weeks. If I’m still feeling like this then, I’ll bring it up to him.

^*I know I’m married; I still get crushes. I have a crush on Jason Momoa; nothing’s going to happen there either.

Ruminating

My day has periods of silence. Silence in my office hours, silence when I walk to the Student Union for lunch, lots of silence when I work at home on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

In the silence, I ruminate about my faults, about whether I am a good person. I think this is not necessarily a bad thing, because I remind myself that I don’t want to have those failings, and I decide to think a different way. In fact, I decide I’m a pretty normal person in the good/bad continuum. I come out of this feeling pretty okay.

Perhaps my reflections are excessive, because they impede my progress revising the first third of a novel. (They don’t keep me from doing my day job, of course. Nothing keeps me from doing my day job.) There are things I would rather do in the silence, such as plot this darned book better. Why can’t I ruminate about Leah’s decision to act upon her visions?

My ruminations might simply be a procrastination tactic, preventing me from tackling some pretty hard work. I know I have to move parts of the novel and rewrite other parts eventually, and I don’t want to. I haven’t figured out what the book is yet. Reflecting on my pettiness is easier work.

I need to do something new to move my mind to the doing work rather than ruminating. Maybe working with pen and paper for a while. Maybe red fountain pen. Perhaps going out to coffee. Anything but this ruminating.

My Big Audacious Goal

Choosing my Big Audacious Goal was difficult. I can define BAGs as much by what they aren’t as by what they are. I couldn’t choose little management goals as “getting better on my publicity game” (I will anyhow) or goals that don’t require a big learning curve such as “write another book”. “Write a vampire novel” would be a goal with a big learning curve, but it’s an example of the third thing to avoid, which are goals you really don’t feel moved to adopt.

I spent a couple days with my husband bouncing ideas off each other, which meant I usually rejected his ideas. This is a good thing, because it helped me define and constrain the Big Audacious Goal further. I almost chose his suggestion of writing a screenplay based on It Takes Two to Kringle, but I don’t think my talent in screenwriting will trump my utter frustration with the formatting.

Then, finally, my Big Audacious Goal came into sight, and it had nothing to do with writing. It concerns my other hobby, moulage, which is otherwise known as casualty simulation. Yes, I make people look like victims for training. I have created convincing (simulated) victims for mass casualty simulations, car wreck docudramas, hospital evacuation simulations, and more. I have gotten the nickname “Goddess of Gore” for my efforts.

One way to sculpt wounds is by using wax to create depth. The problem with that is that it can melt in warm weather, which is always. I can get around that by using airbrushing and a greater amount of shading.

That’s what I want to learn to do for my Big Audacious Goal.

I may fail. I may give it up. But at this moment, this is my Big Audacious Goal for the year.

Considering Big Audacious Goals again

It’s my birthday eve-eve-eve

It’s three days before my birthday. I’m almost 59, or almost-almost 60, so I don’t have a “birth month” any longer. I have an extended celebration, bits and pieces here and there.

This last weekend my husband and I traveled to Kansas City, in part for a writing retreat and in part for my birthday. I got to see a Studio Ghibli double-feature and spend quality time in coffeehouses. We postponed the visit to the classic, elegant steakhouse until the future when we could get reservations in on time, but we ate Middle Eastern and Indian food.

My actual birthday is on Sunday. I’m expecting more coffeehouse time and maybe dinner at the local steakhouse (which is not as fancy as The Golden Ox in KC). Maybe a Kris and Kates’ Birthday Cake twister, although I’m off sweets right now.

Making Big Audacious Goals

What I really want for my birthday is a good day, a calm day with a little joy. A day with a little surprise, hopefully pleasant. Hugs and kittens. I don’t ask for much. Besides, Sunday is not a day for Big Audacious Goals to be met.

I will make the Big Audacious Goals for the next year on my birthday, because it seems to be the right time, avoiding the treachery of the New Year and the spookiness of Halloween. (There’s also Asian New Year and Rosh Hashanah to select from for New Year, if we want to get more complicated.) But instead of correcting bad things (resolutions) I’ll make Big Audacious Goals.

What are Big Audacious Goals? The name spells it out — they’re gutsy and magnificent and perhaps harder than we expect them to be. The idea is to use them to push ourselves beyond our notion of ourselves.

A Big Audacious Goal is best when it specifies the action you’ll make rather than the result you will get, because we have less power over what results from our actions. For example, writing this blog twice a week (which I have only done consistently lately) is a better BAG than getting 100 followers, which is something I have no control over. Coincidentally, I have over 100 followers. I didn’t get to my goal exactly, but close enough to celebrate.

Choosing Big Audacious Goals makes us feel more powerful, as if we have chosen something heroic to perform. I read somewhere that dogs define themselves by what they do: “Hank, fetch!” Now the dog’s name is Hank, fetch! I argue dogs become heroes in their own minds by what they do. We do too by adopting Big Audacious Goals.

What if you don’t succeed? It was a Big Audacious Goal; attempting it in the first place puts you a great deal better than before you adopted it. One of my BAGs was to indie-publish Gaia’s Hands, which I did. Not too many people have read it, though, which was the other half of the BAG (I should have known better). But look at the BAG of indie publishing it. Gaia’s Hands is a highly personal novel, and the one which I found hardest to write, so publishing it is a grand step. Putting it in front of readers, even if they don’t read it, is a grand step.

I don’t know what I’m going to adopt as Big Audacious Goals this year; I’m going to talk about that with my husband. Writing something I’d already planned for writing is not a BAG; the goal should be above the ‘do’ level and into the ‘dream, then do’ level. If it’s another book, it has to be something I think is beyond me. Maybe it’s doing something dramatic in marketing like better TikTok or a podcast (if only I had something to talk about!) A few cups of coffee and I’m sure it will come to me.