float_on_alright | Entries tagged with adventures in kate land

I didn’t write a damn thing yesterday. I thought about it a couple of times, even went to write a couple of times and still, nothing happened. I’m not too bad about it. I was exhausted after yesterday. I had three hours on the desk, a good chunk of time standing up for the staff in a meeting against a manager who likes to railroad other people and had an hour-long teen program. Then after work, I went to the Harry Potter Book Club that Hayley does. I love going, it’s loads of fun, but I was worn out before I got there. Then I played Pokemon Go for a bit. Arguably, if I hadn’t been playing that game I would’ve gotten home earlier, but I’m not sure I would’ve been any more of a mood to write. Especially because I was feeling overly tired and sensitive anyway. Last night was rough because I didn’t sleep properly. I wasn’t having nightmares, per se, rather I’d call them “stress dreams.” It’s the kind of dream where things feel like real life issues and they’re all piling on top of you. It’s so frustrating. I can never properly explain how they make feel or why they make me feel that way. Then I woke off and just felt wrong. Everything felt off. I went to pee and realized I’d started my period which actually explains a lot. I should’ve realized it was that time, but I’d totally forgotten I was due again. Ugh. It’s been rough today too. I almost cried on a number of occasions for no reason. The worst. I hate crying in general, but I hate it even worse when it's in front of other people and I find it infuriating with it's for a reason outside of the death of a loved one.

We were slammed at work today. I went in late and it was nice. I had a nice, good sleep in and of course that’s making me feel like I’m invincible--like I don’t have to be up at 7 am to get ready for work. I’m debating between showering tonight or showering in the morning. I also have to get my clothes out of the wash. Ugh. I forgot until just now that I’d thrown a bunch of stuff in the wash. Shit and piss. Ugh.

I risked my life for Pokemon Go today. Kind of. Not in a “I entered a dangerous area” or “Got close to moving cars” kind of way. But I met up with strangers after dark to raid for a Legendary Pokemon I’d been trying to win for weeks.

I stopped at the library on my way home and noticed while I was there that one of the Pokestops nearby that I often go to had a “lure” on it. Now, if you’re a player of the game, you know that lures only last for thirty minutes and since you only have a limited number of them, you tend not to leave before they’ve ended. And the one that it was put on is super close to a Pokemon Gym which also happened to have a raid with about fifteen minutes left in it. That’s pretty much the best possible world for a fan of the game. I figured that if I got over there before the lure ended, I had a chance of joining them for a raid battle.

That… was not the questionable choice I made.

So I went over there--it’s a well-lit area. The Pokestop is in the Post Office beside like five fast food joints, all which were hoping. The gym is in the Smoothie King parking lot--again well lit and hoping. It’s in a small, safe town. The majority of crime that happens out here all have to do with bored teens. Okay, maybe not all of it, but the vast majority of it really is just bored teens who need something to do. I live in a pretty safe area. Not that a “safe area” is a guarantee for safety, but there’s nothing in the world that’s really a guarantee for safety. When I got there, there were two guys in a massive pick up truck mostly definitely playing Pokemon Go and wondering if I was there for the raid. It was a father and son--a grown dude, not a kid. We talked a bit and decided that we couldn’t defeat the raid with just the three of us. But the same Legendary Pokemon was at another gym too and would be there for longer than the one we were considering at that moment.

I did text my friends where I was going and what I was doing. I did it in a joking way, but I made a point to mention to them that I had texted my friends to tell them what was up. They didn’t act like I was being a dick, which made me feel a little better. It’s usually the guys who get all wound up about how dare I not believe they’re a nice guy that I’m concerned about.

But yeah, I met up with three strange dudes in a dark park with my foot still in a walking boot.

My instincts have been sharpened over the years to be pretty good about people, and I was relatively certain that they were decent guys. I stand by that. They’re definitely good ol’ southern boys who love their mamma and Jesus, etc. etc. The brother is getting his Master’s Degree in Religious Studies from UNC Charlotte and their mom is in remission from cancer. The first son I met used Pokemon Go to help him stay sober when he quit drinking and partying.

The more I tell stories like this, the more I realize I’m definitely not an introvert the way I always thought I was. Sure, I need downtime and alone time, but I enjoyed my time with those random guys. I always thought I was an introvert because of how much I love to read, how much I enjoy time to myself, how much I prefer really digging into people’s lives and hearing their stories rather than just engaging in the general small talk type stuff, and how much of a homebody I’ve always been. I’m not big on crowds of people or big parties. But I realize now that the markers people are using for extroverts and introverts are off. Like a lot off. And that I’m very much an extrovert.

Anyway, I’m glad it worked out.

And I got the Legendary Pokemon that had been alluding me for weeks!

Current Mood: amused

So 800 years ago... okay, it was May of 2012. So five and half years ago I posted that I was going to take on the Big Damn Table for the Avengers. I did post a few stories—six I believe—but I had a lot more to go when I fell off writing. I can’t remember if I fell off writing completely for a while or if I just fell off the Avengers for a bit. It could have been either. Life is crazy all the time and it is easy to get lost in the madness and not make time to write (sometimes it comes down to sleeping for a few hours a night or not sleeping at all and writing and there are times you have to choose those few hours of sleep or the time to shower or you fall into a depression that consumes all your engery to survive). Sometimes you just get tired of writing in a particular world. I’d written a hell of a lot of Avengers fanfic at that point so it could very well have been that I just burned out for a bit. I don’t suppose it matters why I quit.

You know what? We’re not going to call it quitting, we’re going to call it “temporarily suspended progress.” Yeah. But I just wrote a terrible story for Rebby (it needs at least a little editing before I post it but I likely won’t do that until tomorrow) and it mad me feel like getting back into the Avengers FanFic writing mood and it’s pretty much the perfect time since the we’ve had so many epic movies in the last year and we have both Black Panther and Infinity War coming up in the next—what, six months? When better to start writing? I know a lot of my initial stories were written right before the first movie came out. I mean some of them came later, but I think most of them came pre-the first ensemble movie.

I still want to see more of Darcy so I have a feeling that she is going to feature in quite a few. I don’t know how, exactly, I’m going to work that yet since Jane and Thor broke up, but dammit I’m sure I’ll think of something. I probably will need to rewatch some of the other movies again to work out some things—the horror.

Well, I’d better get some sleep but I’ve posted the table below and tomorrow I’ll work on making the table into a list as well so I can mark off the ones I’ve done so far.

Big Damn Table

stars	understanding	arguments/fighting	conversation	darkness
again	warm	breathing	cold	hurt
lost	rain	unexpected	sunshine	abrupt
pictures	letters	hard	soft	reminder
relaxation	dreams	hospital	in the past	in the future
kitchen	late night	on the run	early morning	taking charge
coats	leadership	sharing	hiding	help
risk	blood	power	Avenger/s	nightmares
time	control	fairness	trust	do-over
regrets	transportation	empty	washing	mission

P.S. Yes I said I was going to nap... oops.

Current Mood: energetic

For someone who couldn’t hold their eyes open for their whole lunch break and had to lay their head on the table for a few minutes to recover enough to make it through the rest of the day I sure am wound up at 1am. This is the sort of thing that tends to happen to me when I get the chance to nerd out with people I like. I went to see Star Wars: The Last Jedi again tonight and I just really enjoyed it again. I went to see it with my friend Megan who is awesome and dorky and wonderful and comes to my Graphic Novel Book Club and may have someone else to bring with her next time which would be AMAZING.

I think, often times for me anyway, the best part of a seeing a movie in the theater is meeting up with people who love the same kinds of things as you so that when you have finished watching the movie, you can then stand just outside the theater for an hour and talk about the movie you just saw, any related works, and any exciting trailers from before the movie. There are some movies that I have gone to see for no other reason than that I thought it was important to see the special effects on the big screen. I saw the final Lord of the Rings movie by myself in the theater 11am on the morning it came out. I wasn’t allowed to go to the midnight showing the night before so all my friends had already seen it and were either, not able or not interested in going to see it again the very next morning. I understood, honestly, it came out during final exam week for the semester so for some people, coming really wasn’t an option if they wanted to pass their classes. This was high school, not college, where kids are more likely to be following parental guidance and still have to abide by the “my house, my rules” almost every parent on the face of the planet employs to get their kids to do what they want them to do

Wow, suddenly I’m crashing. I wish I wasn’t just yet. I wanted to write a little more. About the Charlotte production of The Nutcracker and the trailer for the Disney live action version of the ballet coming to theaters next year. I wanted to talk about the sweet things some of my friends and coworkers have done for me. Like how Reb got me a Jack Skelliington keychain that is cute AS FUCK. But I’ve typed some of this with my eyes drifting shut (and staying shut) which usually makes for pretty incomprehensible posts. Since I don’t think I’m going to be coherent much longer, I’m going to call it a night and hope that I do better tomorrow.

Current Mood: exhausted

I found an email from a group email convo from late last year that said my goal for the year, including fan fic estimated pages, was going to be 50,000. Which is helpful because at least I know I won’t have fallen down on my page goal for the year. Although I did stop keeping track of my fanfic pages read about 9 months ago which is aggravating because maybe I’d be able to make the 60,000 if I had kept up with them. But I didn’t and as much as I would like to believe I will next year, I can say with some confidence that I probably won’t because it’s way more annoying than in might seem. It’s not so bad if it’s from AO3 but I spend a lot of time reading little ficlets on tumblr that are between 500-1,200 words and I usually binge a few of them at once. To stop and attempt to copy them into a word doc to get their word count to use to estimate their page count in a spreadsheet is just really not fun at all. Maybe I’ll track some of the big ones if I read them on my Kindle, but there will still be a whole lot that go unrecorded. I’m going to allow myself to count any of them that I do bother to record though, for sure. I did keep track of a few things from this year and they add up to 197 more pages, but I don’t think that makes a big enough difference in trying to reach for 60,000. *Sigh.* Well, I’ll definitely get to 55,000

The other thing I should probably mention is that I always start the challenge for the next year on December 28th. I have to have whatever challenge I’ve given myself completed by December 27th. Every year I’ve managed it which has left me too antsy to start the challenge for the next year to wait any longer. I know. Total weirdo.

Well, I guess what I could do is decide that I would give myself until the end of December 31st to reach 60,000 pages. It’s not a big difference days wise but it’s the difference between have to read 300 pages a day and reading like 265 pages a day. I mean, I know that probably doesn’t sound like a big difference but I can read a graphic novel in an hour maybe an hour and a half and that’s like 170 pages right there. If I spend a little of my car ride listening to an audiobook, I should be able to make that. It would be a stretch. I might not quite make it. But I think that might be worth it to try...

Current Mood: cheerful

The of the books I’ve been SO FLIPPING excited for comes out tomorrow. I didn’t pre-order it even though I was tempted because as I mentioned, I’m working on doing better with money. So now I’m only going to get it when I have written enough words. It’s $3.99 (which means $4.28 with tax for me) so that’s about 3,900 words I have to go. I am, of course, deeply regretting my decision to only by books based on writing a 1,000 words per dollar, but I think it was the absolutely best choice. Writing 100 words is too easy to earn me a $1 and I have yet to find anything else that is pushing me to write properly. It’s interesting to hold yourself in such a way, I think.

There is literally nothing stopping me from logging into Amazon and buying a book except my own promise to myself. I would never have to tell anyone if I bought it. Don’t think that there isn’t part of me that tells me that should go ahead and buy it and then promise that I would get to the word count by the end of the month. And that there isn’t a part of me that just wants to blow off the promise all together. Both of those parts of me exist and they are noisy as hell. But while they are both whine-y and loud, they are not moving the part of me that made the deal with myself. The part that made the deal is far more solid than I would’ve thought. I’m pretty excited about that.

Well, there are parts of me that are not excited. They would very much like to spend the entirety of tomorrow (or right now since it this point it is the 5th and pretty much the “tomorrow” I was referring to when I started writing this) reading that book I’ve been itching to read for ages. Gail Carriger announced this book months ago.

Gail is one of those wonderful writers who have gay characters in all their works and while they’ve been side characters in the “big” works, she’s started writing lots of side novellas and short novels with queer characters at the center which just makes me so very, very happy. She’s a fantastic writer in general and she’s one of those authors that blends a ton of humor into her exciting adventures. I feel like that’s a hard thing to do. She’s got such an elaborate world for the majority of her published works—they’re Victorian-era paranormal steampunk stories with seriously kickass female characters. There is this whole thing about manners and society-rules and her books are often a whole dance of following and breaking said rules that I absolutely love. She comes up with great twists and I love how funny she makes it.

So anyway, this book is more a novella but it’s one about gay werewolves who are going to get to live happily ever after in Victorian-era steampunk paranormal world and I just cannot wait.

Well, okay, I CAN wait and I WILL wait until I’ve written my words to earn the money to “buy” the book but I am absurdly excited to read it.

It’s not that I don’t have 800 other books to read. Actually… I think I have something like 3,200 other books to read and access to THREE libraries and Kindle Unlimited. Which is to say, there is no shortage of shit for me to read. Not only is there absolutely no shortage of stuff for me to read (or listen to in my Audible account), but it’s stuff I’d be excited to get to read if I sat down and read it. Hell, I’m overwhelmed for choices of things to read. It’s absurd for me to buy any new books for something like the next three decades, honestly. But still, the shiny calls to me.

I did have a really good day today though. It’s interesting to me that I’m feeling as energized and happy as I am right now. I’ve been working to get back into the Artist’s Way again. I know I talked about that earlier this week because of how the chapter I’m on is about healing after an “artist wound” but I know it’s been awhile since I mentioned some of the things involved in her program. This is the same program that had an assignment of not reading for a week. I wonder if I should’ve started the book over after taking about two months off from working on the “course” but I don’t think I could go through a week of not reading again. I didn’t make it a whole week the first go ‘round. The four days I took off were good for me though, I know that. Reading is something I take great joy in but I also know that at that time I was pretty much abandoning everything to read including things that really needed to be done. I was out of balance and I needed a reset.

I’ve been out of balance again, but it hasn’t been reading that’s been my vice lately, it’s been TV. I know I’m all over the place tonight, so I’m sorry for anyone who is trying to make it through all of this. I’ve been watching far too much TV. I want to finish Orphan Black and the second season of Stranger Things (I somehow talked my mother who hates horror into watching the first episode of Stranger Things with me when I wanted to rewatch the first season in preparation for the second season and lo and behold she watched every bit of the first season and I’m not allowed to watch any of the new episodes without her). I’m definitely going to keep up with Lucifer because that’s one of the “current” shows I really love. I’ll keep up with The Shannara Chronicles though I don’t know if that will make it much longer. I mean, they’re going to start playing two episodes a week and I don’t think that has ever bode well for a show in the history of cable television (the Netflix whole series instant available thing is different). There are a few other things I’ll watch with the family of course.

I like to think I’m going to back down on my TV watching soon, but I’m addicted to Hallmark Christmas movies so that’s unlikely. There are like 33 new ones this year and I still have a ton from past years that I haven’t gotten to see yet. Considering how much time I’ve devoted to the Hallmark Christmas movies it is a little surprising that I haven’t made it through every single one I’ve wanted to see, but I do have a habit of rewatching my favorites several times over the course of the “viewing season” or whatever you want to call it. I think I ended up watching “Trading Christmases” five times between Halloween and New Year’s. I finally broke down and bought that one. And then I had to make sure that there weren’t any issues with the DVD so I watched it again. I’m sure you’re judging me but I just don’t know what to tell you about my obsession with the holiday movies.

I watch some of their other movies too. There was a super cute Valentine’s Day one I watched over the summer, for example. But there’s nothing quite like the holiday ones. No idea why. Maybe it’s because I love Thanksgiving and Christmas in general.

Speaking of Thanksgiving and the reason I was talking about “The Artist’s Way” a bit ago, I went on an “Artist Date” today and it was amazing! I had just enjoyed myself so much and it felt incredible to walk out with a piece of art I’d made. I had signed up for a “Chalk and Talk” art session a few weeks ago and I was supposed to go on Monday the 23rd, but shit happened (my dad’s birthday stuff, him being home more than week because of an infected cyst thing he had to have drained on his neck (uh… sorry, that was probably tmi), my car needing to have the catalytic converter replaced, etc.) that I completely forgot about the chalk thing until it was a day or two passed. I was so disappointed but they said I could come to the thing today instead. This was a wood board thing instead of a chalk board but it was really neat. We had a wooden board that we stained and sanded and then we had stencils of leaves and some different “thankful” type word phrases. It’s a “chalk paint” which I found really interesting. There were incredible colors and people’s chalk art makes a lot more sense now.

I want to look into some stencils and chalk paints to see if that’s a hobby I could feasibly take up at some point in my life because today was SO FUN. And while I’m not a very artistically inclined person when it comes to painting or sculpture or what have you, I did feel like I did a good job overall on my board today. It isn’t perfect, but It think it came out pretty damn well for a first go. I decided to give it to my mom because I thought she’d like it and she absolutely loved it. My dad really likes it too which is sort of cute. Not that my dad isn’t supportive, because he is. It’s just… Yeah, I have no idea how to describe that so I’m just going to let it go.

But anyway, doing that today gave me a sense of being an artist and it was soothing and fun and sort of invigorating to the soul and that’s the sort of thing I know “The Artist’s Way” book is looking for when it talks about “Artist Dates” and I feel the way the book is looking for you to feel after you’ve had one—a little more confident, a little more satisfied, a little more creative, a little more hopeful, and a little more willing to try the art. All those things are the kinds of things I definitely want to re-create for myself more regularly.

I have to say, I really hope I get to do chalk art again and I would highly recommend it to anyone who thinks they’ve found a way to try it out. Mine didn’t come out perfect, or any where near it, but for once I felt like I’d done something good, something that made me happy to look at and that’s a rare, precious gift.

Well, it’s right around 1am for the second time tonight so I think it’s probably time for bed. Hopefully, I’ll be writing again tomorrow, but in the meantime at least I’m a little closer to my book (Romancing the Werewolf, in case you want to look it up; and you really should because the cover is… just amazing).

Current Mood: tired

I was doing so well with my goals over all until this past week. Looking for motivation was like hitting a brick wall or something. I just kept bouncing off something in my mind when I went to be productive. I did eventually get a good bit done but it was tooth and nails fighting. Part of it, I’m sure, was that personal stuff going on (tire, etcetera), and part of it was likely all the rain. I don’t do well with days on end of clouds and rain. I could’ve been a little burned out - there’s been a lot of pressure at work and a lot of feeling like the effort I’m putting into my job right now isn't really going anywhere (not necessarily true, but definitely how I’m feeling) and I know that will put a damper on putting work into “extra stuff” - aka the stuff I’m not currently being paid to do.

But I think I may have also set the wrong goals or at least set my goals in the wrong way.

When I first started writing again this February my goals were something like:

Write 500 words

Spend 30 minutes doing productive things that are not reading or writing a day and some days that should be exercise.

And that worked really, really well. I added and morphed as I went along but I’m still basically in that same kind of mode I think.

The good thing about that structure was it let me work on whatever project was what I either most needed or most wanted to work on that day. I wasn’t, for lack of a better word, trying to micromanage myself. I didn’t realize you could do such a thing - micromanage yourself - but as it turns out, you can and I did my very best. Unfortunately, I don’t do well with micromanagement so does that mean I’m back to the drawing board on my new goals?

Well, yes, I think so. Maybe reverting back to previous standards might be a good way to put it. But I do want to also keep in mind that there are two things happening right now… maybe three? Maybe a trillion? Anyway…

First, I am giving up the copywriting thing and seeing if I can get my money back. That was part of deal within a year if I decided it wasn’t for me that I could get my money back so I am working on that now. It sounded like a great idea but the more I get into it the more I feel like it’s pulling me away from my actual goal which is to write fiction and get paid for it. While advertisements and sales letters take smarts, creativity, and work, it’s not my ultimate goal and if I learned anything from spending time learning American Sign Language, it’s that if I dedicate my spare time away from my job on something other than my main goals, I tend to end up either frustrated, bored, sad, overwhelmed, stressed, generally unhappy, or some combination thereof. It would be a really cool thing to do and learn and make money off of but the more I split my time and attention the less I’ll move forward on any particular thing. Then I’ll feel scattered and useless. Then I’ll get depressed. And I’ll be exhausted from the scattered effort and then I’ll get anxious about not being good enough and then I’ll get tired and more depressed. So, sorry copywriting. Maybe we’ll reevaluate at a later date.

Second, I applied for a mentor program. Rebby has always been such a wonderful person but I’ve asked her to be friend, beta, and mentor and she’s always tried to help but I know she has massive goals of her own right now and while I hope and will endeavor to make sure that we continue to be these things to each other, I hope that finding another mentor will help make our writing relationship better. Plus, I think another perspective is a great idea. There are only so many slots available for this free program so I’m not guaranteed to get it.

Third, I’ve signed up for a course call Lit Mag Love about submitting to literary magazines. It includes finding good fit magazines, how to write cover letters, and information that editors are looking for all which I think will be tremendously helpful. It will also involve six weeks of accountability and peer feedback. As I’ve been such a coward about going for trying to get published etcetera I think it would be so good for me. There’s also part of the program for working on setting up a submission system and I’ve read so so so much about how success is based more on good systems than literally anything else so I can’t help but be drawn to this. Plus I think I kind of love systems - at least in personal cases. I didn’t realize that this was a thing with me until recently, but there you go.

So new weekly goals will revolve around completing course assignments and meeting with peer groups, course leaders, and any mentors that I get. Then each day I’ll need to decide what the priorities are. I still need to make sure that I’m writing or doing work for writing every day and I still want to exercise every day. But I am going to let my energy levels and focus do a little more guiding again in what I accomplish each day.

And also, if there is anything that I am saving for the last minute, I’m going to really dig into why I’m putting it off. Is it because I’m scared of failure and success like I am with establishing my website or is it because I really just don’t have real interest in the project and it’s taking away from the things I am genuinely giddy over like copywriting? Because those two things need to be handled very differently.

Thanks for being on this journey with me.

Current Mood: happy

Profile

Kate

Navigation

June 2021

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30

Syndicate

Page Summary

PMS is a Mean Bitch and a Sensitive Little Snowflake
The Questionable Choice I made worked out okay
(no subject)
Star Wars the Last Jedi and other nerdoms
Update
Gail Carriger, Gay Romances, and Other Addictions I Have
Re-evaluating Goals and Other Writing Adventures

Style Credit

Base style: Heads Up by momijizuakmori
Theme: A Brighter View by zaluzianskya and skylark_photos

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Jun. 22nd, 2025 09:04 pm

Confessions of Fangirl

Fangirl all the time

Entries tagged with adventures in kate land

PMS is a Mean Bitch and a Sensitive Little Snowflake

The Questionable Choice I made worked out okay

(no subject)

Star Wars the Last Jedi and other nerdoms

Update

Gail Carriger, Gay Romances, and Other Addictions I Have

Re-evaluating Goals and Other Writing Adventures