Handy Polymath

Embracing the Shitty First Draft as a Lifestyle

Liberty — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 17:58:52 +0000

The skinned knees and thousands of stitches are implied, but totally beside the point.

“Nothing is always absolutely so.” Theodore Sturgeon

Sturgeon is more often quoted as saying that 90% of everything is crud, but I find the above concept more useful when trying to cobble together the framework of a project. Nothing is always absolutely so. For a disenchanted ex-lover of stability, who’s decided that terrifying freedom is preferable to staid certainty, it’s good to have a reminder that making it up as you go along doesn’t mean recreating the cage you’ve left behind, be it a life or a plot line.

Writing comes down to words on a page: buttons, ink, peck and scrawl. The utter simplicity of the act serves to hang a hat on the maelstrom of emotion and ego a writer must swim through and wrestle with in order to tell a story through such a narrow channel. It’s the closest we have to telepathy, sharing our thoughts soundlessly across miles, millennia and languages. It requires having something interesting to say, being able to distill it into mental pictures that feel true (which has nothing to do with photorealism), and then presenting them to the reader like a well-edited film for their mind’s eye. The fact that you’re using tools that were put into your hands around age six is either a small mercy, or the cherry on top of a cruel joke.

Writing is hard! Whine, whine! This was easier when I didn’t have time to even think about writing, when the sheer time commitment of sitting down quietly for a hour, or pacing around talking to myself uninterrupted was painfully hilariously impossible.

Now, not so much. Cue existential terror. Or something.

I still get caught in the groove that I need to know how a story ends before I can begin it, even though this has never worked for me with any story, ever, whether it came out in the order of telling or not. Even stories where I had an idea of the destination beforehand have taken me somewhere else in the end. Maybe I’m just out of practice, rolling wobbly-ankled before the muscle memory kicks in and I get back to gliding on these wheels.

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Harried Superheroes and Hapless Schmoes

Liberty — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 16:31:35 +0000

Some days you're in Close Encounters; other days you're in Jaws.

Wish You Were Here

This place started as a gardening journal of sorts, as I approached my life the way an urban farmer looks at an abandoned lot. Then two things happened; I got into a mental snarl regarding the depth of my pseudonymity which torpedoed many half-written posts, and life exploded in a manner thoroughly encompassing the good, bad and ugly.

I filled out a life stress scale for shits and giggles, and anything over 300 indicates a major crisis with great risk for subsequent health effects. I scored 734, and would have gone higher if you could check items multiple times. I racked up 581 of those points in the last two months.

Though I must say, I hope the current scale has been updated not to speak solely to married het men–there’s no way in hell pregnancy is less stressful than a personal injury or illness. A comfy pregnancy is far better than chronic pain or a debilitating condition, but in my experience an average pregnancy is more to handle than, say, the average bone break.

A New Machine (Part 1)

Three months ago:

Today:

A New Machine (Part 2)

Meanwhile I’ve been trying to salvage this term after spending half of it checked out academically, focusing instead on dismantling my life and cobbling together a series of temporary solutions. For the first time in my various careers as a student, I went to a prof’s office hours and threw myself on her mercy. I felt like a jackass, but I did it, and it seemed to have helped–I know where I stand and what I need to do, instead of flailing in a pit of loathing and self-recrimination.

I got the feeling very few students who come to her like this also sobbingly proclaim, “but I really like chemistry!” It’s this disconnect between interest and achievement that makes struggling harder, even though I know I’m only struggling because I’m making up all that study time I didn’t have earlier in the term. And my life exploded. Objectively I should give myself major credit for actually asking for help–this is a huge uncomfortable step for me even if I need to repeat these classes later. Old habits don’t simply die hard, they die messily with ruptured buboes.

Outside the Wall

This weekend features chemistry, laundry, a trip to the Ohio woodlands to scatter ashes, and–with the accompanying hotel stay–the chance to sleep on a real mattress.

In a little over a month I’ve got a 12 hour road trip to my spouse, my ancient cat, my new home and this new life we’re making out on the east coast.

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The magic trick of staring into their eyes without blinking.

Liberty — Tue, 25 May 2010 18:01:52 +0000

Laying the ground rules is vital, even if a bit messy.

While exploring the psychic badlands between a mentat-level focus on algebra and drifting into a cube farm coma, I check out blogs. In some respects this is like prospecting for gold, in that occasionally you find a shiny nugget of wisdom, but mainly it’s hanging around in the hills shooting the shit with a bunch of cranks.

Here’s a shiny thing I’ve been pondering for a little bit now:

Finally, men get cut a lot of unwarranted slack. By us. I don’t know if it’s a generational thing, (I suspect not), but women don’t demand enough. We eschew our power, actively divesting it and handing it over, mostly, I think, because power is full of primacy and risk.

This line in particular has resonated with me since Mrs.set.element first posted it in April. Because she’s right, agency is not simply about freedom for oneself, it’s also coming to terms with one’s own authority to impose on the outside world (including people). In my experience, many women my age (Gen X) weren’t taught to expect to mold the world to our desires, but to hammer ourselves into arbitrary parameters that came from outside. If we could only shift our shape into the right key, the lock would open.

It takes a brass pair to turn that expectation around, to get the bolt cutters and kick the door open.

It also means coming to terms with the fact that the door in question isn’t on the set of The Price Is Right, there is no fabulous prize for you to drive home to happily ever after. The door leads to where the wild things are, and you will need to tame them somehow to survive, to live, to thrive. Primacy, risk. You need to wear your wolf suit, kiddo.

Choose and enforce standards.

This means learning how to set and defend boundaries as sacrosanct, not as opening bids for negotiation. This means dealing with the initial discomfort of enforcing consequences for trespassing. This means embracing a certain sense of entitlement as a person. Just contemplating this can send some women into itchy fits of imposter syndrome, but it’s the foundation of the wolf suit and, itchy or no, it’s worth the struggle to get into it.

Choosing a standard means that you value your own judgment above those who would challenge that standard. Defending a standard means pissing people off. To tell a secret, it’s like salting slugs: the foam tells you it’s working.

This is how you offer protection as well, as your leadership evolves to include other people, but it’s a safe zone that must expand out from yourself first. Primacy. No one can meet your needs or develop your dreams as well as you can. When you’re the one setting the standards for a group, enforcement protects the members and goals of the group by keeping those standards from being just so many farts in the wind.

Of course, leadership means you’re now in a position to hurt someone, to fuck up, to have only yourself to blame if things go to shit. Risk. But you know what, it’s not like you’re rocking the full pater familias suite of privileges from the get-go—start small, learn from mistakes, practice self-reflexivity, refrain from executing willy-nilly and you’ll be okay.

Interact with social peers who feel free to say ‘no’, and be free to say ‘no’ oneself.

This means that both parties are able to keep themselves from being taken advantage of, will be open about their needs, and will communicate when things aren’t going well. In short, it assumes everyone onboard has a wolf suit.

This is huge. Socialization for most women runs completely opposite to this standard, and women all know this, and act accordingly with each other. The social dance of extending an invitation several times –> polite demurral –> insistence –> offering all kinds of explanation on how it’s no trouble at all –> the other party could almost feel guilty for not accepting, but must decline with a rationale of how they wish they could accept but are prevented from it…this dance not solely the province of BBC costume dramas. It crops up wherever the people involved have no way to directly defend their boundaries or know if they are encroaching on others’.

It works when everyone does this and all players are socially equal, if you don’t mind wasting time and constantly reading subtext. It’s a recipe for being taken advantage of when there is a social power imbalance and/or only half the parties play by these rules.

I’ve found in all of my real friendships with women there’s a point when we have the conversation about how we’ll stop bullshitting each other and be frank about our actual feelings and needs–at the point you can easily say no, the yeses become real. It’s the female-friendship equivalent to dating seriously. This happens rarely, in my experience, but it’s a vital form of reality testing in learning how to identify and become serious about boundaries.

Refrain from taking unfair advantage of those who cannot say ‘no’.

I think this is where a lot of women flail, where imposter syndrome catches like a grease fire. Women my age were often taught to compromise their needs, to make everyone happy at their own expense, to carry every responsibility personally, and to handle all of this from the perspective of never imposing themselves on anyone else, even to the point of denying that any of this emotional scutwork is actual labor. Super-vigilant about not imposing on anyone else, they default to chronically imposing on themselves.

There’s martyrdom in that, a sense of resigned superiority in being the rock all these delicate souls rely on, but it accomplishes nothing and denies the humanity of oneself and others. This is a social-emotional pyramid scheme masquerading as a “from each according to ability, to each according to need”.

But that’s crap. We’re all humans, and we each of us have hard fucking lessons to learn about how to get along, what our work here is, and how to accomplish it. This involves being true to ourselves and calling each other on our shit. This involves growing the fuck up and learning how to wield our own power– compassionately, boldly.

The magic trick is that the wolf suit helps keeps you from blinking.

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Winding up a Crank could Change her Life

Liberty — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:20:40 +0000

Bitching & moaning your way to happiness

About 16 months ago I had A Moment.

Stuck in a meeting in the cube farm, listening to a painful power-point based on the theme of “you should be grateful I’m condescending to teach you lazy slackers how to suck eggs“, I caught a wave of dissociation that differed from the usual brand triggered by too much coffee, Sudafed, and cubicle-based sensory deprivation.

At the time, as I flipped to a fresh page and began listing the things I’d rather be doing, it seemed like yet another stab at distracting myself. Anytime a person occupies a role that doesn’t occupy their mind, that extra capacity has to be channeled elsewhere.

A scrawled list of “things I should be doing instead” hardly merits daydream status, much less distraction or hobby.

Deciding not to be a cog

In retrospect, the panicky burning in my gut should have been a big clue that this wasn’t another hit of anesthesia. Just writing down the things I’d rather be doing and creating felt dangerous. Transgressive. It felt like a last futile gesture against failure.

For some of us, fitting into a box for a paycheck is signing on for Stockholm syndrome; we will absorb the role given to us because that’s the only way to function in it. Having been relegated to being an Office Wife, I found it hard to remember that I had far more to offer. The ambition and drive that had propelled me from early adolescence felt insolent and reckless in this context.

I’d chosen a job based on what I could get, not what I wanted to do or what I needed from work. Desperate to stay in the wrong box, I’d become a whipped cur. Yeah, that stung.

‘Put up or shut up’ means if you take action, you can keep bitching as you work

Most of the time, though, you find you don’t need to carp and moan because it’s a waste of fuel.

The material accomplishments are simply one front of the struggle that I began that day. On the mental front the re-wiring has been deep and ugly, and I’ve pushed through several bad habits of thought and action, some of them with dandelion taproots down into childhood.

My spur to action was being told I was worthless, and listening to the voice inside that shot back, “Oh hell, no.” Against that backdrop, it’s been hard to take most of my standard excuses seriously anymore.

Self-sabotage is so GenX, Heather. Knock it off.

Leaders don’t piss in your cereal. This includes the leadership involved in getting your monkey brain and your lizard brain on-board with the brilliant schemes your fevered human brain cooks up.

I’m learning to be kinder to myself even as I hone and apply my ambition. I’m learning how to accomplish things with help, and in support of others. Both the sovereignty and the openness I’m learning how to inhabit would have scared the bejeebus out of me two years ago.

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Liberty — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:20:06 +0000

At the base of my problems with my job and getting a new one is this: hiring is a networker’s game, and I’m about a social as an Abbess–I do very well in small cloistered groups and cheerfully negotiating in the market, but do. not. take me to the royal court.

This does not square with the need to “put myself out there” in order to market myself and what I can do, which is how people have always landed good jobs, but now is the only way to get *any* job whatsoever in this state.

This is not an introvert’s world, and I have to say, that inconvenient fact will probably always piss me off. Just like “business hours” shoe-horning me into a schedule 2-3 hours ahead of my internal clock will always piss me off.

And so, I’m faced with the threat of some very awkward and odious work, in order to secure a new position that I won’t stay in very long, in a business environment I find stressful simply because I just. don’t. care. This is a bad idea, which is why I haven’t pursued it yet despite the terrible fit with my current position.

Then again, if I want to run a business down the road (and I can see in ten years tops I may need to for the same reason I started writing fiction–no one was doing what I wanted done as well as I could envision it being done), this is a skill set I really need to start building.

And so, I’m wondering how I could begin working on this in a way that doesn’t totally repulse me. I simply cannot fake interest, the result is even more offensive to others than my naked boredom. So I wonder what a geek can do with a writing portfolio, a desire to work in health care, a bit of artistic talent and the strict parameters of “I need to be passionate enough about this that I can be outgoingly social in its pursuit.”

In short, I need to create a project that will rev my engine, and pull together a group of people who share my interests.

“We shall awaken from our dullness and rise vigorously toward justice. If we fall in love with creation deeper and deeper we will respond to its endangerment with passion.”
Hildegard von Bingen

I need to embrace my Abbess nature.

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The Quotidian Blues

Liberty — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:51:36 +0000

Life is built from sedimentary rock

Effectively, there is no moment of truth. In retrospect there are brief interactions, minute details, and subtle decisions that have an exponential effect on everything that follows–but we move through our days oblivious to these forks and by-ways.

A person can be maudlin about it, and dwell on the fact that any little conversation could also be a goodbye. While true, there’s nothing a person can really do with that knowledge except be present and embrace gratitude as often as possible.

The flip side, though, is that profound changes can begin with a subtle alteration to the daily grind. A difference in perspective, reaction, daily routine or even struggling against an entrenched habit can shake things up enough that the whole system opens wide. What had been worn smooth now has a catch, and it snags something else and the next thing you know dogs and cats aren’t just living together, they’re gentrifying your neighborhood.

Oh, the center holds. You’ve just moved your center is all.

A year ago I loved my family, loathed my job, was fat, in middle-class debt slavery, struggling with post-weaning adjustment and despaired of ever getting back to school. My novel was stuck, I spent 40 hours a week in a fluorescent-lit cube, and 8 hours a week driving back and forth.

As I don’t have an ebook or six-week email course to sell you on, I openly admit that most of this is the same. This is an open lab journal, and I am, have been, and always will be a work in progress. I’m simply pleasantly surprised at how much progress I have to report.

My pants are bigger than is healthy, and the financial situation is similar. The novel is in better shape, though neglected for now. The job takes up the same time but the lighting and the emotional atmosphere are better.

The positive differences are few, but profound. I no longer look at my kid and have to hide desperation and frustration. I’m no longer pent up like veal trying to shut off my brain 24/7. Each day I’m materially closer to what I want, I’m on the right track, and I can relax and enjoy things despite not having time to breathe some days.

I’m anxious about the future, worried about scheduling next term in with work, concerned about being the sole paycheck right now and whether we’ll have a house next year, and I really need to catch up with this term’s math.

The thing is, I am happy.

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Serenity now, insanity later

Liberty — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 21:16:58 +0000

Employees are required to power down brain before clocking in.

What’s becoming readily apparent is that running in high gear is not nearly as difficult as constantly shifting from high to low. In fact, the time spent running in low gear is the principle cause of frustration. It’s exhausting to spend eight hours a weekday in a role that not only doesn’t fit, but like a glass slipper made for someone else, requires one to sever a few toes to wear.

Thing is, I could easily complete my work duties in half the time if I could simply then move on to my homework until the phone rings again. Or leave and hit a coffee shop to crank out a few chapters of math before heading home at the usual hour. If I were actually held accountable for results and given the authority to produce them. But in my current role the appearance of work is far more important than results, because honestly there are very few metrics in the cube farm to begin with, and I’m not even close to a level that would require them. There’s little else to judge performance on than whether I look cheerfully busy until 5pm.

What if Bruce Wayne really worked in the secretarial pool of Wayne (no relation) Enterprises?

School has been a tremendous boon in this respect, because I now have marks to hit, a reason to work hard, material that engages my brain, and goals to meet that I give more than a passing damn about. Intrinsic motivation, baby, it’s what makes the world spin. The downside is that I can no longer deny the hours and weeks of wasted time waiting for each shift to end, saving each mindless task until its very deadline because once it’s complete I’ll have absolutely nothing to do.

Work expands to fit the time given to complete it. Currently I’m shoving 8.5 hours of college work into the niches and cracks of a 40 hour workweek that has, at most, 5-10 full hours of busywork in it. Without being able to do any schoolwork during business hours (save for a half hour lunch). The constant adjustment of time dilation is surreal.

I do not get paid nearly enough to waste time that could be spent getting closer to where I want to be. This has always been true, I admit. But now that I’ve cleared through the mental baggage and know that this goal is real, this is the path I need to take, and success needs only my hard work to make happen, the absurd reality of where I’m stuck is painful. It’s like volunteering for a lobotomy each morning and trying to shake it off on the drive home. It’s like working in a crawlspace all day and then trying to run. I’ve got to figure out better methods of self-care.

Endure, Grasshopper. Then snatch the pebble and run like hell.

I’ve got at least a year of this, probably two. A different job might help but between the economy and the fact that I’m not technically qualified for any job of sufficient complexity to engage me, have no interest in most of the types of work I am qualified for, and only in the last handful of years have I even thought myself capable of year-round sustained effort in any field–honestly even if I didn’t have this vocation burning a hole in my chest I’d be a great candidate for total career re-boot.

In other words, figure out some good self-care so I don’t burn out, check out or flake out. This is the new normal and the reason it hurts is that the anesthesia is wearing off and the stretching and exercise must begin. Work it, let it hone your purpose, and don’t let the cognitive dissonance define who you are or what you do.

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Flailing with the Captain

Liberty — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 01:58:31 +0000

Wonderful friends, my dear hearts, came to visit this weekend. Alas, Captain Trips also came to call. And so Labor Day weekend featured friends, food, drink, staying up til dawn, soul-baring conversations in the night, and stomach flu rampaging through 6 adults and one preschooler.

I lost a week, there. Fortunately everyone is recovering from the Captain, with myself bringing up the rear in falling ill the last and feeling human only since this morning. After starting the laundry and airing out the house, our home is no longer appalling.

I’ve caught up on chemistry this afternoon, and have algebra lined up for conquer this weekend. I’m now officially a post-bachelor at Wayne. It’s strange getting into the groove of school when I’ve only had a couple labs so far. Online classes are flexible, piecemeal things, and run only on internal momentum. You can fit them into the cracks of your day, but they have less weight in reality and can be shoved aside too easily when distractions mount.

In other news, I finished that damned painting I started in April, which turned out surprisingly well. As I’ve funneled my drive toward detailed organization into pursuing a vocation, I’m able to see how the same precision and control were doing me no favors in the arts. Now that I’m regularly practicing Aggregate Futzing, the next step in the journey is to become adept at the Shitty First Draft.

I’m not good at first drafts because they aren’t defined enough, they aren’t right, they mean doing more work to get them right, and so I end up paralyzed at the beginning for lack of knowing the end. For lack of reassurance that I’m on the right track. This is why artists embrace mind-altering substances. They offer mental lube to slip ideas out into the world half-formed, and a little plausible deniability for any judged lack of merit. It’s a two-fer.

Considering that the ideas I’m wrestling with are novel-sized, and that my own definition of a novel is that it’s a fractal/harmonizing story you can’t keep in your head all at once, that must be unwound onto the page before you can finally grasp it whole, this becomes a problem. These two ideas about the how of writing cancel each other out and leave a sucking riptide of unexpressed stuff in my head without a working vent to reach the outside.

And I know most writing problems are solved by writing, but this is also a matter of rebooting. I’ve finally sacked up to the necessity of culling many thousands of words that I know don’t fit the story and archiving them in a specimen jar somewhere. So today I’ve started a clean new file for all the parts of the story as it is right now in my brain, whether they fit together or not, and let them fight it out in a Shitty First Draft.

I promised someone I love a first chapter by the end of term.

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Swayve and Debonwahr

Liberty — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:11:56 +0000

Things are gonna start happening to me now.

I’ve fed new batteries to my 16 year old TI-82 calculator and have headed back to school. Alas, the very nature of the Science Upgrade means that even an ancient graphing calculator would be cheating, so I’m spending another ten bucks for a basic scientific calculator that won’t do the algebra for me.

In the dark nadir of my Cube Farm days, I used to picture going back to school as a charmed and relaxing lifestyle. When you think going back to school requires having extra money, it adds accessories to the daydream. My kit would be as sparkling and new as my grand endeavor. Instead my kit is as quirky, unstable and re-purposed as the Dirty Dozen.

Like Lee Marvin with the condemned, I’ve taken bent spoons and made them into whip-smart shivs.

My laptop is relatively new, though that’s almost luck of the draw as I’d driven several computers into the ground. We just knew this was probably going to go to school, and so chose against another tower. It currently travels in a 13 year old computer bag.

I need a slipcover for the laptop, since I snagged a free sturdy canvas portfolio bag I’ll probably use for school, but I may end up making a neoprene envelope for it myself if I can find the raw materials cheap. This is the mobile HQ.

The thumbdrive is the advance force, with a Portable Apps platform and vast amounts of space. This 30G USB drive was a nice Amazon.com score, and makes Handy Polymath possible.

Next is the Soviet iPod: a 5 year old iRiver H320 .mp3 player running Rockbox firmware. This thing is only 20G, but with the open source firmware plays nearly everything (including video), has a new battery with three times the staying power, and records sound very well with a button mic. With a radio-adapter plugged into my car stereo (and permission of instructors), I have an alternate way to review lectures while driving.

Kevin Kelly thinks that in the future software will be so good that folks will be able to run artificial intelligences on the hardware we made in the 90′s. I think he’s totally right, so why wait?

Last is the PDA, which is 7 years old, but bless it, has Adobe Reader, WiFi and Google Mobile apps. And yes, MahJongg Solitaire, because all work and no play make anyone a dull boy. It’s even got a little spectrographic analysis app, because people made a few nifty things for Windows Mobile 5 back in the day. One day, I may see if it will upgrade to WM 6, but it’s in a happy place so I’m not pushing it this year. Along with the ability to review any online class docs from a pocket sized hand-held, this gives me even more access to the software component of the team.

Google owns you, but (so far) it means well.

I’ve uploaded my course schedules into a Google calendar, and anything with a due date is now a task. Online classes have their trade-offs, which is that you only have to be on time in your seat for tests and lab, but without someone droning every few days about deadlines, you must have your shit together solo.

Between weekly packets, practice problems, homework, quizzes, discussion boards and textbooks with company-based web components (not to mention navigating the online quirks of two different schools), I’ve been front-loading time this week just collating info.

*sketches diagram differentiating ass from elbow*

Bookmarks (both Firefox and good old binder clips), Google calendar and Google tasks will save me, I think. Being able to check it on the PDA, the thumbdrive, or the laptop means that anywhere I have ten minutes I can check in and complete something.

Aggregate Futzing. It’s a beautiful thing.

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The Key: Pop back up like a weasel.

Liberty — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 20:18:40 +0000

“When Alexis Arguello gave Boom Boom a beating
Seven weeks later he was back in the ring
Some have the speed and the right combinations
If you can’t take the punches, it don’t mean a thing”
–Warren Zevon, “Boom Boom Mancini”

There’s a short list of traits I can point to that have served me extremely well. Some of them are native to my personality, like stubborn perseverance and a logical bent. Others are the result of conscious study, like not taking failure as a final answer. Fragile new skills like applying the power of aggregate futzing, are far from instinctual traits, and therefore they take a moment to kick in. Considering the work and aggravation involved in changing a habit, a trait, or an ingrained response, only a conscious appreciation of what’s at stake will keep a person on track.

It’s easier to scramble back onto the wagon when you know that your rest in the mud will soon be interrupted by the next wagon bearing down on you. Going fetal with your arms around your head is not an option. What do you do then? Roll onto your feet and try another tack.

So it’s been a while since the last update but I’ve been busy. Unlike your average apologetic blogger I won’t wax hysteric about how crazy it’s been and how I’ve had no time to write. I won’t ever waste your time with that, or with filler posts when I’m low on content.

I’m back to catch you up on the results since my last post.

Learning to Fight Hamster-style

I’ve gone from swimming 100 meters with clicking shoulders and feeling like I’m dying, to swimming a full kilometer without clicks and feeling spent but good afterward. My new driver’s license documents the vast improvement I’ve achieved in my shoulders in the last three years, which no longer slope up and forward to my chin, but spread out lateral and level and even with each other. I’ve started shedding some of the padding I’d acquired since breaking my foot last November. And for the first time since I sprouted this stupendous rack at age thirteen, my midback is no longer the bane of my posture.

Trudging up the Mountains to the Temple

I’ve applied as a post-bachelor to Wayne State, much earlier than I had planned in the Science Upgrade It turns out I may qualify for loan aid, and if I can eliminate the headache of transfer equivalencies then hell yeah. This doesn’t change the fall semester of math and chem at two other community colleges, paid for and starting in two weeks–but those are cheap, mainly online, and simply ramp me up to college level anyway. Partner is also considering school of some stripe, a mental retooling for the new economy we’re all expecting to come off backorder one day.

Right now we’re like Roadrunner, walking across air because we’re too focused to look down.

It Takes Years to Become Batman, yo

In other news, we got the beater car back. It now starts with a bottle opener (partner’s key) and the Leatherman large screwdriver tool (my key). Grandmother is having more lucid intervals, which totally rocks. Mom is dyspeptic and will likely have her gallbladder yanked soon, but our muddling through is infamous and so we keep on truckin’.

So there’s the update. Currently on the docket:

I hope to finish her present by this weekend, which is technically late. But after 43 weeks of pregnancy and 48 hours of labor, I think taking a few extra days to make something for her is simply par for the course.

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Handy Polymath

Embracing the Shitty First Draft as a Lifestyle

“Nothing is always absolutely so.” Theodore Sturgeon

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Harried Superheroes and Hapless Schmoes

Wish You Were Here

A New Machine (Part 1)

A New Machine (Part 2)

Outside the Wall

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The magic trick of staring into their eyes without blinking.

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Winding up a Crank could Change her Life

Bitching & moaning your way to happiness

Deciding not to be a cog

‘Put up or shut up’ means if you take action, you can keep bitching as you work

Self-sabotage is so GenX, Heather. Knock it off.

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The Quotidian Blues

Life is built from sedimentary rock

Oh, the center holds. You’ve just moved your center is all.

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Serenity now, insanity later

Employees are required to power down brain before clocking in.

What if Bruce Wayne really worked in the secretarial pool of Wayne (no relation) Enterprises?

Endure, Grasshopper. Then snatch the pebble and run like hell.

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Flailing with the Captain

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Swayve and Debonwahr

Things are gonna start happening to me now.

Like Lee Marvin with the condemned, I’ve taken bent spoons and made them into whip-smart shivs.

Google owns you, but (so far) it means well.

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The Key: Pop back up like a weasel.

Learning to Fight Hamster-style

Trudging up the Mountains to the Temple

It Takes Years to Become Batman, yo

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