Happy Birthday Me

I don’t feel 58

Today I commemorate 58 years on earth. I don’t feel almost sixty; sIxty sounds — well, old. So does 58, for that matter. I don’t feel that old. if you had to ask me my age I’d say 45 (except for my knees, and then I’d say 80.) I’m old enough to be my students’ grandmother now (if they had two generations of young mothers). I still think I’m old enough to be their mother, and the reality hasn’t sunk in.

I feel like forty-five, only with a lot of memories. I don’t just remember mixtapes, I remember reel-to-reel tapes. I remember a sofa fountain in the drugstore. I remember princess phones in pink and the old bakelite black phones. I remember mainframe computers and DOS and the early days of NCSA Mosaic web browser at the University of Illinois (think the precursor of Netscape Navigator and Firefox.) I remember instamatic cameras and disposable cameras and the first digital cameras. I remember crying when the Beatles broke up. I remember unsafe playground equipment and Tonka trucks and Super Elastic Bubble Plastic. I remember going to the Woolworth’s lunch counter with my grandma and to the Ben Franklin 5 and 10 with my allowance to buy candy. I remember life before Applebee’s.

I don’t miss the past, really. It wasn’t that much simpler, and I like my technological toys.

How I plan to celebrate

It’s simple, really. I plan to play on my computer at the cafe and maybe have an ice cream soda from Kris and Kate’s for lunch. I plan to read my happy birthday greetings on Facebook and have dinner and a rare drink for my birthday.

It’s really not bad being 58.

Procrastination Again

Things to do

I have things to do today. School work, promoting my upcoming work, finding some ARC readers, doing my newsletter, etc, etc.

I don’t feel like doing a bit of it.

Motivation

I’m just going to do one task at a time, a few minutes at a time. After the work I do for my career, I’ll start with the hardest thing to motivate for, which is the newsletter because it has a lot of fiddly tasks. Then, fueled by more coffee, the tasks I fear because I have to put myself forward, like finding ARC readers next. And then writing.

Photo by Igor Haritanovich on Pexels.com

But first, coffee.

This looks like a job for coffee

I haven’t had my cup of coffee yet. Maybe I’ll have two just to be sure. If I have three half-caffs, I’ll have a cup and a half worth of real coffee. At any rate, coffee.

Too Many Things To Do At Once

Scattered in a million directions

I’ve got work. And I’ve got a book to write. And I have this blog. And I have to promote the novel coming out in October. And I’ve got to plan a book launch party online.And I need to get my materials together for Missouri Hope (where I do casualty simulation). And … I really want to take a nap.

I need to get organized

I think I have ADHD. I have never asked for a diagnosis because what’s the use of getting diagnosed in one’s 50’s? Organization would really help, but I’m used to remembering what I need to do and doing it fast. I seem to have a skill set that does good and fast at the same time. Maybe not great and fast, but at least good and fast.

I need to organize, though. I’m told it’s the right thing to do, except that I get overloaded in the organizing part and want to go color-coded with my tasks, or I forget to look at the checklist. I guess I don’t really understand how people do it.

One thing at a time

That’s how I do the best. When I have a moment of free time, I will do one of the things above. The blog in the mornings. Maybe some advertising at lunch. Maybe some writing this afternoon …

It will all get done. And if it doesn’t, I guess I’ll live.

Bits and Pieces

Yesssssss!

I finally got some writing done yesterday! It was about 2k words, which is my typical daily goal. I feel a lot better about my slump and think I might be on the way out of it. Let’s see if I can maintain it.

Just a reminder

The second book in the Kringle series, Kringle in the Night, will be coming out October 1. OMG less than half a month away! Just a little ad:

I’m proud of the cover

This is the book cover. I put it together myself. The picture came from a royalty-free site.

I can’t believe how close it is to opening day. I have to advertise it. Bye!

I Haven’t Been Writing

Life got in the way

I’m sorry I haven’t written in the past couple days, but life got in the way of my writing. I’ve been enjoying my three-day weekend by seeing The Hu in concert, eating breakfast at Eggtc, and watching Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings. All in all, a good weekend.

The problem is, life is getting too much in the way of any writing. Between going places, teaching, and stocking up for casualty simulation, I get distracted from writing. I get distracted from everything by everything else.

I wonder if I’m going manic again. Probably not because I’m sleeping more than usual, which isn’t manic.

Maybe I’ll start writing to distract myself from something else.

Another PitMad

Every three months

Every three months, I submit my books in what is known as PitMad, hoping to get an agent interested in them. PitMad is a “pitching” event, where authors tweet a blurb on Twitter hoping for agents to “like” it. A like means a request for at least a few chapters.

I don’t have luck with PitMad. I think it’s because of my writing philosophy. I write for geek girls of all ages who want their fantasies romantic and their romances fantastic. Which doesn’t sit as well as I would like to the common market. Still, I persevere, because at heart I am an optimist. Otherwise, why would I do the same thing over and over again, hoping for different results?

Not a lot of trouble with TweetDeck

It’s not a lot of trouble to do PitMad. You don’t even have to manually submit your blurbs once every three hours or so, as long as you have the website Tweetdeck, which allows you to automate tweets. It’s also free! You write them up ahead of time, program them for the right time of day, and the program takes care of tweeting them at the designated time. You can even do them days in advance (I had mine ready a week ago).

Time to sit and wait.

I have three tweets from each of my three novels that I haven’t self-published (oh, I misspoke. I have another novel that I tend to discount when these events come around.) That pretty much involves me all day. Although in reality, all I will be doing is checking every now and then in the middle of my other work.

Wish me luck!

Canva and Photoshop: What can I do with them?

Both the ad (Canva) and the cover (Canva and Photoshop) were made by me from a purchased picture (not made by me, but I have the rights).

Looking Toward Sixty

Nothing to see here, move along

I don’t know if I have anything new to say. I’m teaching classes and they’re going pretty well. I’m avoiding my next novel in favor of some advertising stuff I need to do. I’m hopefully losing weight (SLOWLY). I turn 58 in two weeks —

That’s it, isn’t it? A year closer to sixty.

Close to Sixty

Do I feel close to 60?

My body — well, that feels old. I’m out of shape and my right knee is oh, so messed up.

My mind? I feel 40, only with a lot more memories than I should have. In fact, it’s only when I think of my memories that I feel old in my mind. Like when I think of old technologies — dial phones, vinyl records, 8-track tapes. Or when I think of pasting Plaid Stamps from the A&P into a booklet to redeem, or going to a real ice cream parlor at the little pharmacy right in town. Was it a better time? No, it definitely wasn’t. It was a time of enforced conformity, one I didn’t fit into. I guess I’m not so old that I see my childhood in sweet sepia tones.

What about myself as a sexual being? That’s not a problem, except that I still find myself attracted to younger men (about 30 years old at this point) and any fantasies in that direction seem ludicrous.

From the outside

I get mixed information from the outside, somewhere between “You’re not almost sixty!” and “When are you going to retire?” The latter comes from my colleagues, because the MOSERS retirement plan I’m in would pay for retirement already. (The reason I don’t is because the University no longer funds health insurance for retirees during the medicare gap.)

Retirement dreams

I know what I’d do if I retired now — I’d go full-steam into my retirement career. And nap a lot. I’d sit in the coffeehouse and write. I’d relax. I wouldn’t miss work at all. If I could retire now, I would, and it wouldn’t make me feel any older.

But for now, I’ll work, and remember what it was like to be younger, and make little fuss about the passage of time.

About External Validation

“Where’s my cookies?”

For most of my life, I have self-medicated by external validation. When I’ve been in bad moods (and for someone with bipolar, those bad moods were long and intense), I would say, “I’ve been good, God. Where’s my cookies?” Just as when I was a child, a cookie would shut me up, but I exchanged chocolate ship to external validation.

Why external validation? I grew up in a household where I wasn’t recognized much, probably because I was so accomplished for a child and they didn’t want my sister to feel bad. This perhaps went too far, to the point where if I accomplished something, my mother would tell me that my sister was better at it. On the other hand, at school, I got a lot of recognition and validation, from my poem the third-grade teacher posted on the classroom door to becoming a National Merit Scholar my senior year.

But it seemed like I hit a peak my senior year of high school. Certainly, I went to a Big 10 university and stayed in until I got a Ph.D., but I seldom got external validation from high school on. Unfortunately I was addicted it, as if it were the sugar bomb cookie I wanted when I was younger.

Older and mostly wiser

Fast forward to a happily medicated 57 years old. I’ve gotten into the mindset that God does not award external validation, nor does She present anti-depressant happy events to me. Furthermore, I have developed the (possibly cynical) viewpoint that If one has the power to grant external validation, they grant it to someone who exemplifies their values; in other words, someone like themselves. For organizations, this is doubly so.

I no longer shine; I manage like everyone else. My passions, including writing, do not give me any great external rewards. And, although I know rationally that I don’t need external validation, I still do. I need it as motivation, as the guiding light that keeps me going on a venture.

Writing without cookies

I have not been getting cookies when it comes to writing. I haven’t gotten many sales, or much recognition, or other external measures to validate my choice to write. In other words, I don’t shine; I manage.

I need to find a way to motivate myself to write without cookies. Internal validation would be ideal; yet I struggle. Perhaps because I’ve already met my Big Audacious Goal of getting a book, in writing, in paperback form. I don’t have a Bigger Audacious Goal except for traditional publication, which — get this — requires external validation.

So I need some internal validation. I need to have a specific goal and meet it. And for me, that needs to be a Big Audacious Goal.

Any ideas?

Stuck in My Head

Songs that get stuck in my head

I hate it when I get songs stuck in my head. Today it was “She’ll be Coming ‘Round the Mountain ” — the burlesque version that Daniel Radcliffe tweaks his way through in the show “Miracle Workers”, complete with honky-tonk piano. I loved the scene, but I don’t know that I want the song in my head ad nauseum.

Usually the songs that get stuck in my head are catchy, popular songs. Pop music. For example, “Baby Shark”. That was in my head for weeks like a parasite, and I was contemplating Ivermectin to get that earworm out. (It is not recommended to use Ivermectin for earworms or COVID-19, as its only use in humans is for tropical roundworms). I guess this is why they’re called earworms.

Getting the song out of my head

I have a system for getting earworms out of my brain, and it’s pretty foolproof, at least temporarily. I blast a song which isn’t inane, which isn’t pop, which isn’t going to stick in my head for very long because it’s not easy to the ears. My favorites:

Photo by Miguel u00c1. Padriu00f1u00e1n on Pexels.com

Nine Inch Nails, “Head Like a Hole”
Mike Oldfield, “Tubular Bells” (Exorcist edition)
The Hu, pretty much anything
Yes, “Starship Trooper”
Anything classical

The purpose of these songs is to first, get me grooving. Second, drive out the earworm. Third, dissipate instead of getting stuck in my head like an alternative earworm. Because they’re so complex, they don’t get stuck like pop songs do. And then I have my brain back.

Until the next earworm…