Should I close the doors?

Well, here we are, after years of intermittent posting and sporadic updates. I still want to keep this blog, but I think I'm moving my scribal updates to my SCA website, Matildis.art, and possibly keeping this one for other things.

What other things? I've stopped doing henna, I'm no longer a freelance editor... so much has happened in the past couple of years, which I haven't posted about. And I have Facebook and Instagram for most of my updates on my personal life. And yet I'm busier than I've ever been, with art, writing (amateur level, nothing published yet), work, parenting, music... my life and my heart are full.

Should I retire "littlefiddlybits"? I don't want to delete it, I have way too much stuff here going back too far to want to erase. Should I dual-update both here and on Matildis.art? I can't decide.

I'd poll my audience but I think only about three people follow this blog, anyway. It's more of an archive for myself than for anyone else.

Decisions, decisions. In the meantime, here is a picture of me with blue hair for my 50th birthday.

Changes a-comin'

 Hello all,

I wanted to let you all know that I have set up a small shop and commissions page over on Ko-fi.com - you may have noticed the button off to the right of my posts (only visible in web view, not mobile view). Ko-fi was originally designed to serve as a sort of "tip jar" for creators and their supporters, who might wish to show appreciation from time to time even if they couldn't afford a large donation or purchase. Ko-fi has since expanded their services to allow me to sell work through their site. With my free membership,  they take a small commission from every purchase, but it's really minor and I don't mind paying it to support them. There are no ads and they don't collect your data in any way, as far as I know.

I also wanted to get feedback from you about the possibility of moving this blog over to Wordpress. I've never used Wordpress before, but I've heard good things; most importantly, I've heard that it's really easy to subscribe to a Wordpress blog and be notified when a new post comes out. It's my hope that I could have a little bit cleaner look to the blog, with a little more ease in finding things in mobile view (on my current blog, post tags are only visible in web view, for example), and also build something of a subscriber base.

Is that something that people might be interested in?

In the meantime, we are well, the new house construction is coming along steadily, and I've been hired but not yet started at a new job. I'm writing lots and making art that makes me happy, so all in all, life is pretty good.

I hope you are well, too. Be safe, and be kind.

Big Awesome Calligraphy, Part 2

When last I posted about this, I believe I got as far as the planning stages with you; making decisions about layout, testing different text styles, and so on.  Moving on!

The happy cluttered workspace. As seen from the other side of the table.

First, there was an intermediate period where I rested my hand, 'cause ouch.  I hadn't done any major calligraphy in about three years, and while you don't forget the letters, you can lose some of the finer points of technique if you let yourself get rusty.  One of the big ones is a mistake beginners make all the time and you have to train yourself out of doing, and if you let yourself slide for awhile, it will come right back.  We usually call it The Death Grip - you're So - Focused - On - Getting - Each - Letter - Perfect - You Must - Hold - The Pen - as if it were trying to escape, as if a super-villain was trying to take it away from you as part of their plot to destroy the world, and as if you needed to prove the depth of your concentration and commitment by bruising the tips of your thumb and fingers.  Trust me, the bruises might not ever show, but things will hurt for close to a week after you do something like that.

There's an invisible part to every piece.  I know I talked in my previous post about some of it - the decisions, the measurements, the research that all go toward the final effect you're looking for.  But there are also false starts, side trails that you follow to see if they'll go anywhere, options you wish you could have used but didn't work out, and so on.  Some work doesn't have any of that, if you're feeling really confident or treading familiar territory.  But with any new challenge, anything that's stretching your abilities or represents something you haven't tried before, you'll see a lot of those.  A note of advice: having this happen does not indicate failure.  It's part of the process, just like it's part of the process to scrape your knees at least a couple of time when you're learning to ride a bicycle.  Falling off isn't failing; it's learning.  (And if I could just remember that myself, I'd be all enlightened and stuff and my life would be a lot more serene, dammit.)

For this project, the main "false start" or dead end was that I'd really, really hoped to use vellum as my ground material. It's sturdy, it's authentic to the time period, and it's one of those things that we traditionally reserve for the Really Special (tm) awards in our society. The particular piece of vellum I wanted to use had gotten damaged shortly after I got it.  Alas.  I had already found a text size I was happy with, and I'd done a lot of work with wording and so on to make sure that the entire block of text would fit into a precisely-measured space, which meant that the rest of the piece had to be a certain size overall if it was going to look good, which meant that the vellum couldn't be trimmed down far enough to completely eliminate the damaged areas.

Oh well.

Research into the Cross of Cong (again, see previous post) gave me the shapes I was going to use in my decoration as well - except I had to modify them because my open areas turned out to be about half as wide as the ones on the cross.  Here, I can show you:

Sketches from the Cross of Cong.

These sketches are of the creatures woven all through the metalwork on the Cross of Cong; the three large shapes in the middle are roughly the same shape as the corresponding areas on the cross itself.  Along the sides you see my attempts to make sense of the knotwork by breaking it down into the main elements: critters and weaving lines.  And then across the top are attempts to get the creatures to fit the shapes I'll be using in the large initial.

As a complete tangent, I never plan it this way, but these pages always delight me afterward because they remind me of stuff from da Vinci's notebooks - all sketches and notes in the margins and ideas in progress.  Frankly, if I planned a page to look like a da Vinci, it wouldn't work as well.  I know this, because I made one once as an award for someone else.

Adaptations and variations of one creature,
with explorations and development of a bird figure.



The first figure was the best for adapting to my initial shape, but since my own open areas were going to be so much narrower, in the end I decided to just use a single critter rather than two of them tangled together.  I also needed something that would fit into the end sections, which were smaller still, and ended up creating a knotwork bird.

Knotwork birds (aka twisty-bendy birds) are found all through the Book of Kells and other sacred texts from Ireland.  It turns out that peacocks represented the incorruptible flesh of Jesus, back in the day.  You wouldn't think there were very many peacocks in Ireland at the time, and in fact there weren't, but there was a bit of folklore that insisted that peacock meat would never rot.  And that is your nerdy tangent for the day.

**

I really expected writing this post to take less time today, but my mind is not at full speed for some reason, and I've had to edit, re-write, erase, and start over way too flippin' many times.   It's getting late enough that I'd be better off going to bed instead of continuing to fight with myself.  I promise the next post on this topic will get out of sketches and mockups, and into the actual project.  I do not, however, promise that the next post will be on this topic.

Good night.  If you like, tell me about some situation in which you've found yourself making side tracks and false starts, as part of your process of learning, or of growth.  I'm curious.

Something I don't understand

There's something I don't understand: How is it that a person can have the blues long enough to sing the blues, but upon hearing the blues, they no longer have the blues?  At what point in the middle of your blues singin' do the blues go away, and after that point, are you still really singin' the blues?

And if not, what do you call it?

And if you're not really singin' the blues, wouldn't that be enough to give you the blues all over again?

(guitar riff)
If you not really singin' -- if you not really singin' the blues....
I said if -- if you're not really singin' the blues...
If you not singin' the blues, won't that just  - give you the blues all over agin?
(more guitar riff)

It's like Heisenberg, man... .I'm speakin' to you here, listen now
Some kind of blues paradox goin' on, messin' wit the space-time continuum
Messin' wit mah head
Messin' wit blues, man, and that's just not right

Is it like a standin' wave of blues, or is it more like...
like...
like Schroedinger's blues?
Man, you got Schroedinger's blues, you never know if you comin' or goin'

'Cause you both.

***

Yep.  That's my brain, doing what it does best, right there... sometimes I feel like I'm just along for the ride the same as you, but it sure is a lot of fun.

Also, I'm not sure if this is more evidence for the theory that quantum physics really is about everything, or if it's just proof that blues music goes well with everything.  It is, however, an excellent demonstration of what happens when I free associate and try to get philosophical while listening to the blues.  Only silliness can result.

Jafar's Game

Today on Facebook, one of my old high school acquaintances asked why life has to be so boring.  Here is my spur-of-the-moment response:

Answer: It doesn't.
What did you learn today?
What were you grateful for today?
Who did you talk to today?
Where did you find beauty today?

Her question and my response brought my mind back around to remembering something known as "Jafar's Game."

Within the SCA, there used to be a young guy who went by the name "Jafar" when he was at events.  (Remember, we're all pretending to come from the Middle Ages, so we each adopt a "persona" with their own name and interests, whom we're supposed to behave as while we're at events.) While I only ever met him once, he was very well known well-loved, and when he died of a sudden illness at the age of 28, people around here and across the United States were devastated.

Jafar had the kind of personality that begs to have tall tales made about it, and given the things he got into, there are in fact at least a few stories still being told about him.  He was known for, among other traits, being perpetually cheerful.  The story goes that one night, he was on a long ride home from an event, in a van with a bunch of friends.  He listened to the other people gossiping and bitching for awhile - So-and-so is just such a jerk sometimes, Well they said they'd be changing it but you know that'll never happen, and so on – and then he put on his patented glow-in-the dark grin, turned to the person next to him, and said, "So – what did you learn today?"

Thus was born Jafar's Game.

The rules are pretty simple: on the way home from an event, everyone takes turns describing one cool thing that they saw, experiences, or learned over the course of the day.  When it's your turn, no one can interrupt you, although your commentary can certainly spark plenty of discussion.  When you're done, the next person goes, and so on around the car, and when it comes back around to you, you add a new cool thing that you get to describe and discuss.  This goes on for as long as possible, until you either run out of things to discuss or the car pulls into the driveway.  At no time are you allowed to have "learned" something that involves snarky, bitchy gossip; even if it turns out you had a bad day, the object is to try and pull something positive from the experience.

Jafar's Game has introduced many a newcomer to the joys of playing in our Society, given me the chance to be grateful for and share with others any number of terrific experiences, and saved a small handful of really rotten days and made them into something a little less miserable and more valuable.

Funny how I don't think I've ever taken Jafar's Game and applied it to a regular day away from any SCA events… but I guess now is as good a time to start as any.

I dunno – I just disagree that life "has to be" boring, even if I'm often guilty of inflicting boring days on myself.

So I'm asking: What did you learn today? What were you grateful for?  Who did you talk to?  Where did you find beauty?

I'm looking forward to your answers.

Facebook

For those who are curious, I've been on Facebook a lot lately.  I used to avoid it in favor of Twitter, but then this gaming thing came up and the character-creation thing and so on and so on.  I've been posting short tidbits about the calligraphy project over there, if anyone is interested.

It's Facebook.com/heather.bungardjanney if anyone who comes here is curious to know about what is over there.  Frankly, the blog just doesn't get that many visitors as far as I've been able to tell; that and I put a constraint on myself to leave my personal life out of this arena and try to keep it dedicated to creative pursuits.  I don't know that ranting about politics would get me any more henna customers, after all. So I haven't had a whole lot that I wanted to post about, in recent months.

Lately, though, I've had things I wanted to say that have nothing to do with marketing henna.  I've had rants, and musings, and whatnots (I hereby declare "whatnot" to be a category of ideas), and I've been keeping myself from posting them here.  I have this odd dilemma going on, in that I've wanted an audience to hear what I have to say, but - if this makes sense - I didn't want my friends and family to know they were mine.

It isn't that I'm ashamed of my ideas.  I'm just a: not in the mood to argue my opinions, b: not in the mood to be judged by family or disagreed with by friends, and c: maaayybe, interested in just presenting the ideas on their own without "me" attached to them.  That last is less crucial than the other two reasons, but it still holds some weight in my head - a thought coming from a random schmuck is received differently than if it came from the President, or your best friend, or someone you're fighting with, or someone you adore.  I dunno - maybe that does mean I'm ashamed of my ideas a little bit, or at least, unwilling to be seen in the same room as them.  Mostly I want to rant about Stupid Freaking Daylight Saving Time and not have to argue with people who think it's just awesome.

You ever have that happen?  You want an audience, but you don't want them to know your name? What would you talk about if you could be completely anonymous?

***

In other news, calligraphy, and oh by the way one of my uncles is dying of cancer and will probably be gone by the end of the week.  And Barbara Sher Who Is Awesome (if that isn't her full name, it ought to be), popped over and commented on my last post and told me I'm "nourishing," so now I feel like maybe I should say something more often.  Even when I don't know that I have anything to say.

Hm. Maybe I should write more for the Internet and less for "is my mom going to see this?"... but again, marketing.  Trying to get henna bookings.  Doesn't go well with my latest philosophy on porn.  Or politics.  Or whining about relationships.  Or, well, whining about much of anything, really.

Gah.  It's 11:21 and I'm rambling, because I feel like I should. Bedtime would be wiser.

Found: My camera, plus I'm a psychic now

The thing's been missing since January, and we hadn't uploaded the pictures from it since sometime in 2008.  Yeah.  It's kind of a miracle this blog gets updated at all.

However, I've got a recent photo for you that I'm really proud of, for a couple of reasons.  First, the kind lady whose hand I'm about to show you told me that she got her most recent henna (prior to visiting me) at Indiana Beach, where she paid almost double what I charged her, and was... underwhelmed by the result.  The henna never really darkened, and she wasn't too thrilled with the artist's skill either.  Not to brag too excessively, but she was a lot happier with mine.

Second, this design was a complete and total "wing-it" from the first line; neither of us was sure what we would end up with, so I was as surprised and happy as she was with how it turned out.  Yes, I know that sounds like a line of bull - how could I not know what I was drawing, right?

Well, you see.  There's this thing.

After I've been slinging the henna for awhile, I kind of tap into a deeper intuition than I usually work with - it's almost like someone is standing over my shoulder going, "no, no, you're gonna draw this".  Other times I feel less like I'm inventing a design and more like I'm tracing something that's already there; I really can nearly see the basic shape, or at least a starting outline, when I look at the client's hand or leg or whatever.  I hesitate to call it "psychic" because that just sounds way too full of myself, but I'm kind of sleepy right now and I can't come up with a better word for it right at the moment. 

How do I explain it... okay, you know what it feels like to get an idea, right?  You're asking yourself what to have for dinner or how to write that story or do that other crafty thing, and your mind says, "oh, I know, how about..." and you've got an idea.  Right?

Okay. Now, if it's never happened to you, try to imagine that you first say, "oh, I know," and you get your idea, and then you immediately follow that with, "wait, what? That? Really?"  The biggest thing for me is that sometimes the thing doesn't really feel like it's completely your idea; there's some aspect of it that feels like someone else just gave you their idea and made you say, "huh?"  It's not what you'd normally come up with.  It isn't completely you, if that makes any sense.

Anyway.

The lady was feeling a little skeptical after her most recent henna experience, and I think maybe she wanted to test me a little bit.  Certainly she was curious to see what I could do for her.

Her boyfriend's design made even less sense to me, but he loved it, so that makes it a success.

That's the hardest part - not having the idea, but trusting it and being willing to run with whatever comes into my head, even - especially - if it doesn't make sense at first glance.

So, how many of you have had similar experiences?  Do you run with them?  What kind of results do you get?  I want to hear about it.

Till next time,
cheers!

Heather

Memorials, monsoons, and Eminem

If there are any of you who came out to last Saturday's Mosey Down Main Street, and are maybe wondering if you walked past my booth without noticing it, never fear.  You'll be pleased to know that I was there for about an hour, during which time the temperature dropped from 87 degrees (heat index: 102) to 73, as the winds picked up, the rain started, and downtown proceeded to get absolutely drenched by a truly impressive thunderstorm.

Winds were reported gusting up to 70 mph, although I'm pretty sure I missed the worst of those; Beloved Husband and I were able to get everything taken down and thrown into the back of the van before the lightning front moved in.  We went to eat and I tried not to yelp too much as my hair dripped cold rain down the back of my neck.

Maybe I'm just a pansy, but there's something about being at an outdoor fair with tornado sirens going off that just – I dunno, just doesn't appeal to me.

***

On Sunday I was told I should consider a career in politics (blargh), because the world needed more honest, straight-talking people to hold office.  This was shortly after, and a direct result of, my standing at a podium and calling an entire roomful of people "lucky bastards".

At a funeral.

Earlier last week we got the news that Dan Lawrence had passed away suddenly.  Dan was an acquaintance of mine, and old friend of The Husband, so we would have attended the memorial anyway; Husband actually ended up being asked to officiate the service.

I don't know if you can ever describe a funeral as "good", but if you could then this service would have been a prime example: the building was packed with people whose lives Dan had touched over the years, a great many of whom opted to speak, impromptu, from the heart about the man they were going to miss.  There were tears, there was laughter, there were a great many references to programming, Rocky Horror, Dr. Who, and various sci-fi and gaming jokes.  This is what happens when nerds die; if you are a nerd, take comfort, and if not, well, you've been warned.)

Dan was described as someone who would do anything for a friend, no questions asked; he was regarded as a brother, mentor, uncle, and good-natured corrupter of college freshmen by probably hundreds of people for nearly three decades.   So the people who had the privilege of knowing Dan so well really are lucky bastards.

It made me wonder what kind of funeral service I'd leave behind when I'm gone, and ask myself when the last time was that I had, as I said at the service, "gotten my head out of my baggage and given so generously".  What would people say about me if I dropped dead tonight?  I'm afraid I'm not too excited about the possibilities just now.

My brain goes strange places sometimes, and it usually comes back with an opinion and the need to share it.  Let's face it, I'm a teacher and storyteller down to the bone, with a little performer thrown in. (Or maybe I'm just self-centered enough to think my opinion is worth sharing with the world, or maybe I'm so desperate for attention that I'm willing to inflict myself on a captive audience.  The jury's still out, depending on who you are and what you think of me in general.)

What I needed to share Sunday was that grief is not about our fear for the deceased's soul.  It is not about our belief that they no longer exist unless they've been "saved" by the religion of your choice. (Well, okay, I also needed to share my irritation at funeral services where the pastor uses the person's death as the basis for a sales pitch for their religion. Feh.)  Grief is about that person inside us that never outgrows the age of about five, the one that yells, "hey, no fair! I wasn't ready! You can't do that!"  I needed to tell an entire roomful of genius-level IQs, people who probably already knew this, that they don't need to feel selfish – and the definitely don't need to feel alone in their grief.

If there's a rule somewhere that says memorial services are required to include a sales pitch, I told the assembled crowd, then let it not be that you-yes-you-can-get-to-heaven-if-you-act-now-and-get-saved. Let it be that you, yes you, can be the kind of person Dan was, and that it isn't even that hard.

All you have to do is give.

***

It's possible that I told the room they were a bunch of lucky bastards because I've been listening to too much Eminem lately.  I mean if you're going to be thoroughly crass while also demonstrating tremendous emotional honesty, I guess he'd be a decent model to pattern yourself after, right?

I was online looking for footage of P!nk's performance of "Glitter In The Air" at this year's Grammy Awards; when I found it, it was immediately followed by a video for the single "Not Afraid", from Eminem's newest album, the yet-to-be-released Recovery.  Which, by the way, is pretty amazing; see above re: emotional honesty, presented in genius lyrics disguised by, well, by the kind of pottymouth I don't usually encounter in my comfy little world.

Well, because I do this, watching one cool video got me curious and I started looking for more of his stuff.  And more.  And more.  (If you recall my recent obsession with Robert Downey, Jr., this behavior might be starting to look familiar. Shush anyway.)

I learned that Eminem and I have exactly four things in common: we're white, we're left-handed, we were born in the same year, and we're raising girls (though I only have the one).  Trust me, we could not possibly be more different in every other aspect of our backgrounds.

But.

I also learned that he's had some collaborations that I wouldn't have thought of as likely – Dido, for one – and, for better or worse, this information sent my brain to its special place again.  This time I came back with the need to come up with the absolute least likely rap collaboration possible on this earth.

Because that is just the way I roll, yo.

The only rule is that this collaboration has to include Eminem.  I'd prefer that it be "Eminem feat. [Insert Artist Here]" because,  while  there are definitely some brain-achingly weird possibilities if you do it the other way around (for instance, "Willie Nelson featuring Eminem"), I think that makes it almost too easy.

Currently I'm not sure which would be more mind-boggling: a collaboration between Eminem and Loreena McKennitt, or an appearance on Sesame Street where he takes on Elmo in a freestyle battle.

I'm not sure how much responsibility I can really claim for the things my mind comes up with, when I'm usually as bewildered and entertained as the rest of you.

We won't discuss the rap I started putting together for no reason whatsoever while I was in the shower this afternoon, although I swear, for once I really wasn't operating in the Land of the Weird.  No, really, I swear – there was stuff in there about Martin Luther King and rising above, and a bunch of other things I'm trying not to remember for fear that I'll embarrass myself even more than I already have just by bringing it up.

We also won't discuss why I would get embarrassed over trying to create rap lyrics, but not over calling mourning friends and family members bastards at the memorial service.

How do you spell "gangsta", my homie?

Little of this, little of that…

The following is likely to be a little disjointed, because I'm very tired and have a lot of random… stuff… going on in my head.  You've been warned.

***

First and foremost, though, I need to let folks know that I will not be at the Farmer's Market this Wednesday.  The Daughter has been taking a kiddie-level gymnastics and ballet class, and they're giving a "performance" for all the parents.  Husband offered to take video for me, but this is not something I intend to watch second-hand if I can help it.

I'm not that great a fan of gymnastics; I am, however, a huge fan of my kid.

Be seeing you next week, weather willing.

***

I realize most of the Internet-surfing world likes to download their music, anymore, but since I'm now actually old enough to be able to talk about The Younger Generation, I've decided I have the right to be crotchety and old-fashioned at will (although I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that owning a compact disc is old-fashioned, seeing as I was around when they were invented).  I like owning CDs.  I like having a cabinet full of them.  It's anybody's guess which of us brought the larger music collection into the marriage, me or The Husband – it's hard to tell since we both brought a number of cassette tapes with us – but I daresay my personal stash is bigger now, after working for five years for an arts presenter and getting lots of free autographed CDs as thank-you gifts from well-fed musicians.

I mention this because I'm listening to Pandora Radio as I write (see, I can be hip and with-it too) and making a mental list of CDs I need to own soon.  And I don't care that I'm probably way, way outside Lady Gaga's target demographic.  I was around when Madonna was invented, after all.

Also, Hans Zimmer is a living god.  If you've never heard of him, that's okay, because you've probably heard of the movies Gladiator and Sherlock Holmes, and he composed (and performed on) the soundtracks for those among many others.

Have I mentioned my birthday is coming up in less than a week?

***

I know I've said before that being around pretty colors, if those colors are for sale in any shape or form, usually means I need a chaperone and someone else to hang onto my wallet.

Have I mentioned that I work at a greenhouse?  And at the moment, practically everything is in bloom?

I've had to make myself promise not to buy anything more until I've finished planting what I've already got… but at least I get a wicked employee discount.

***

I've got an odd schedule this week, with three days off in a row.  I've been hoping to get a little space like this where I could get some things done around the house, so guess what I did today?

Pretty much not a damn thing.

This never feels good, and I do it anyway, and I hate it when I do it, and that won't stop me from doing it again.  I mean, I hit the hardware store and bought some stuff I needed, but that's pretty much it. No laundry folded (my kid deserves a room she can actually play in and not to have to hunt for clean clothes), no dishes put away, none washed, no recycling run to the center, nothing planted… oh, although Daughter and I did water them this morning and she and I both enjoyed that.

***

Pause to try and cuddle Daughter as part of her bedtime routine – enter argument about whether or not she gets to have any kind of snack after she's brushed her teeth.  I. Freaking. Hate. This.  I'm tired, I slept for crap, haven't had much appetite today, am unhappy that I got nothing done, and now I've got a whiny argumentative overtired monkey trying to rearrange reality: "No those aren't the rules, Mommy, the rules are pretzels, I waaaaaaannnt pretzelllllllllllls…"

I'm a better mommy when I've had rest and am not irritated with myself.

***

I'm a lot less depressing to read when I've gotten some food into me, I promise.  But once I've finished eating I intend to crash, and hopefully get some real sleep tonight.  Last night, heat and the need for a midnight snack had the kiddo awake, and therefore had me awake, three separate times, none of which were the usual wake-up time around this house.  At least it was light out for the last one, but I wanted to still be in bed, not dragging on a pair of shorts and trying to work my head around deep concepts such as Feeding The Child Is Important, or No Going To Preschool Naked.

I don't know how you people do it.

So I'm working in a local greenhouse.  Given how much I adore color, this is kind of like turning a kid loose in a candy store.  With a paycheck.  The problem is, I work enough hours that I don't actually seem to have time to even weed my flower beds, much less plant anything.  (Oh, but we have plans, my precious, yes we does.)

Embroidery happens on my lunch breaks.  I leave it in the van, and then drive somewhere to pick up a quick bite, and use the remaining time to listen to music and add a few more stitches here and there.  At this rate, if I'm lucky, I'll have the piece finished in time for, oh, August or something.  Certainly by the time it's done, the portrait itself will no longer be accurate because it shows me with my hand on my teeny little daughter's head as she stands next to me.  She's already outgrown the pink dress depicted.  By the time I'm done the height won't even be close, either.

Outbound email is still not working on my regular account, although I've finally gotten my gmail.com account set up to access through my regular email.  So at some point I might be able to call tech support, again, and convince them to pass me along to someone who doesn't read from a script, and won't try to tell me that the problem is my software.   My regular email leaves my inbox just fine, hits their server, and vanishes.  My Gmail leaves my inbox just fine and actually arrives at its destination, so now I have proof that it's them and not me.

Not sure when I'm going to call them, though.  At this point I'm not quite sure when I'll have time to run a load of laundry without it going moldy before I get a chance to toss it in the dryer.

In other words, kids, I'm still adjusting to life back in the Land of the Gainfully Employed, and at the moment I have nothing like an established routine.  The rest of you may laugh as much as you like, but for now, I'm still trying to set up some kind of daily pattern that allows me to do all those things that are not-the-job.  Like put clean underwear in my dresser drawers, for instance.

Hence the title of this post – after five years out of the workforce, and never having had both a kid and job before, I don't know how the rest of you people manage.

On the other hand, I seem to be doing all right at the job itself; probably the best part, aside from all the pretty colors and windchimes, is not getting penalized for using my brain and thinking for myself.  As opposed to those jobs where you're supposed to do what you're told, and if you show initiative you are clearly a threat to someone else's job security.  Bleah.

To those of you living in cubicle hell, I don't know how you do that, either.

One thing that's different this time around?  I'm going to be thirty-eight years old at the end of this month.  I've gotten hired into what is ordinarily a seasonal/summer job, among a mob of high school and college students, and I find that I'm carrying a little bit of Attitude.  Nothing rotten or snobby, I promise; it's more… how do I put this… I'm approaching the work as if I've been hired as more than just a temp.  I think, and often behave as if I'm one of the permanent employees.  I do a little more than just stand around and wait for orders.  I expect not to be treated like one of the kids anymore, and I carry myself accordingly. 

And it works, too (although to be fair, a lot of that is that I have an excellent boss): I don't get ordered around, I get asked to do things; I volunteer to help with work outside of my official department and people thank me rather than asking if this is where I'm supposed to be; that sort of thing.  It's nothing gigantic, but it makes a world of difference to me and my willingness to show up in the morning, let me tell you.

Speaking of showing up, I need to tomorrow as well, and since I'm still figuring out this whole scheduling thing, that means I don't have time right now to tell you about the nifty art commission I've just been asked to do, by someone from the Farmer's Market staff.

Perhaps next time.

Relearning loveliness

I have a book here at home called Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness, which is something of a primer to Buddhist practice.  Unlike most of the books I've seen that try to explain Buddhism, this one focuses on the practice first, with Buddhist thought explained second.  After all, once you really grasp what Buddhism looks like in the day-to-day, the philosophy becomes much easier to understand.

The second chapter is titled "Relearning Loveliness", and begins with a poem that moves me to tears every time I read it.  I am passing it along today as my gift to you.

The bud

stands for all things,

even those things that don't flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on the brow

of the flower,

and retell it in words and in touch,

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing.

--Galway Kinnell

No, this isn't my typical blog post, but it seemed like the right time of year, or the right thing to do, or something.

Peace.

My newest project – Internet Marketing

Well, kind of, anyway.

If you found a link to this post somewhere (and if you did, PLEASE tell me where) and followed it hoping I could tell you How I Made 17 Bajillion Dollars Online In Just One Week And You Can Too No Really, then I'm sorry.  I don't really make any money online as far as I know.  I do henna for people at parties and such, and have a great time doing it.  My phone number is over there in the sidebar, which is pretty much the entirety of my "online" marketing.  My "offline" marketing being pretty much my business cards, and word of mouth.

So, no: not a marketer.  No articles here.  Certainly nothing to buy for $237 197 127 57 only $27.

No, what I've been doing is reading stuff online about how to become an internet marketer, and now that I've gone wallowing in the smelly end, I'm here to pass along my newly attained wisdom – mainly because I wouldn't want anyone I care about to go getting themselves smelly, either.

Gem O'Wisdom #1: Internet Marketing itself isn't actually dirty.

The phrase itself – Internet Marketing – has become associated with people yelling at you to Buy Their Stuff So You Yes YOU Can Become Wealthy.  But look at the words, and you just have "internet" – the online world and all its joys – and "marketing" – selling stuff.

And yes, anybody really can sell things online.  Have you ever run or been to a garage sale?  You don't have to be an entrepreneur to sort through your stuff, put price tags on the stuff you don't want anymore, put an ad in the paper, and open up your front yard to people so they can come shop.

Internet marketing – selling stuff online – is the exact same thing.  There are ways to go about it that anyone can follow.  You can sell potted plants online, and people do.  The one major difference between selling stuff online and selling it in the real world is that there is ONE product that is easier to get online than off.  That one product - the one big thing that you (yes, you) can give people online, that they can't necessarily get from you in the regular world – is your knowledge.

You can put together little articles where you tell people what you know about growing orchids, or knitting baby booties, or grilling the perfect steak, and you can put that out there for people to buy.  Or you can review other people's products and maybe earn a commission for that; or maybe you set up shop as an affiliate, which is simply selling other people's stuff for them and getting a commission from those sales.

See? That's not so hard.

The loud noise you're hearing about Internet Marketing is simply coming from people who are trying to sell you their product – and their product is information in how to go about making money online.

You can't really blame them – but you have to admit that people selling orchids are a lot quieter.

Gem O'Wisdom #2:  Good lord there are a lot of scams out there.

Since the biggest market for selling things online is actually in How To Sell Things Online, it's only natural that a: there's plenty of room for con artists to hide, and b: sooner or later someone will try to make a quick buck by promising you that you can make a quick buck – 'cause who doesn't want to make money without having to sweat over it?

Laws are changing, finally, so the ones that don't will eventually become harder to trip over, but the fact remains that there are a lot of offers out there that are worthless.  A really great place to hit in order to look up potential scams is I've Tried That where, as they say themselves, "we lose money so you don't have to".  They sign up for everything, run through the programs, look for customer support, try to clarify what the heck it is you're supposed to be doing for the various Great Opportunities out there, and then tell you which ones work and which ones don't.  Then they write their reviews with clarity, which I respect, and a sense of humor, which I really really respect.

My personal favorite is the one where you make money by selling products to other people telling them how to make money by selling products to other people telling them how to…. are you noticing a pattern here?  The advice actually sucks, but people pay you for it because they don't have any way to look inside the cover or listen to a sample track, the way you can with books or CDs in any reputable business, online or otherwise.  So you buy the garbage and then the only way to recover your loss is to turn around and try to sell the garbage yourself.  And maybe you do manage to sell some, so it's not a true scam because after all you did make money… but it's not ethical, that's for sure.

Gem O'Wisdom #3: The marketers have largely fallen victim to their own press.

If you ever watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, you've probably seen one of the ways he likes to make fun of the major news networks.  For those of you who haven't seen it, it goes like this:

Major news networks try very hard to stand out from one another and convince viewers that they are the most trustworthy source for information.  And then they turn around and all latch onto the exact same sound-bites and catch-phrases… which The Daily Show puts together into a glorious montage where you get to actually see just how thoroughly the news anchors all mimic one another.

Well.

Internet marketers do this too.  If I have to read the word "guru" or see any of the other funky acronyms like SEO, PPC, CPA, or all the rest of the vocabulary, I want to be paid for it.  Seriously.  Send me a nickel every time you make me look at one of these words in your Next Big Thing Of Internet Marketing.

Part of the reason for this is that a great many of them are hooked together in vast networks of "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours".  Let me 'splain.

Pretend I have a store.  I sell things.  I need customers to buy my things, which means I need customers to come through the door to look at my things.  In the real world I put out signs and welcome you in, show you my things, and hope that my friendliness and quality will convince you to not only buy my things, but to come back later and buy more of my things.

Online, my "store" would be a webpage, blog, or just the blurb over on EBay about the velvet Elvis paintings that I'm trying to get out of the house.  Anybody who surfs the internet could potentially walk through my door and check my things, i.e., visit my website/blog/whatever.  I'm not actually there, since it's likely that people are surfing the web at 3am, so if I'm going to interact with you at ALL, I need your email address so I can talk to you that way.  I'll offer you something free, in exchange for your address, and once I have it, I put you on my mailing list and I send you offers.

Internet marketers worship at the altar of traffic, because visitors mean potential customers, and they do everything they can to build their list of email addresses, under the logic that this means more customers they actually get to talk to.

Unless you're me, in which case you sign up for the free stuff, get the link in your email for the free stuff, download it, and then immediately get the hell off their email lists…

...because if you don't, they will send you offers.  Lots and lots of offers for things that they may or may not have anything to do with.  Offers of free stuff from their sites, offers of pay stuff from their sites, and best of all, offers of free or pay stuff from their "good friend" who just happens to also be an internet marketer.  And if you want to get the free stuff from the good friend, you will also need to sign up to join their list.  Rinse, repeat.

I have a little 5x7 notebook in front of me as I type this.  It has about seven pages of names in it, names of marketers whose lists I signed up for, so as to get their free stuff.  (I admit it, I'm poor, and I'm cheap.) Under each name I wrote down who they're connected to and making offers on behalf of – because once I got up to 300 emails over the course of a weekend, I needed to keep track of whom I was signed up with, whom they were trying to interest me in, and whether or not I had already signed up with those people.

Do you have any idea how many people are "good friends" of the same guy and are offering me the exact same package from, using the exact same wording?  My personal favorite: "I just got off the phone with my good buddy [internet marketer guy], and convinced him to let me offer this to you for free."

Funny, this guy must be really easy to convince when you realize that I got that email from five people, who have ALL just gotten off the phone with him.

Anyway.

The end result of all this is that the internet marketers are largely all offering similar products, with similar vocabulary, and similar assumptions about what is important – namely, traffic, building email lists, and getting noticed in the search engines.

I'm not saying these guys are scammers; in fact I think many of them are probably selling legitimate products that they really  believe in.  I'm only saying that it gets really, really repetitious, and boring, to see the same offers coming to my Inbox from several different lists.  I'm not completely sure these guys are aware themselves of just how intertwined their efforts have become.

Naturally, there are a few exceptions to all this, and if you can find them, they tend to be gems.  (Or scams, but those are getting easier to spot.) The gems are interested in helping you learn how to sell YOUR stuff, not convert you to the worship of traffic.  It's really, really easy to get sidetracked into focusing on all these things that the marketers tell you are important, when for the most part they're only important to the marketers themselves.

Let me put it another way.  If you want to learn how to sell your stuff, you'll make money eventually.  If you want to learn how to make money online, you'll focus on all the methods of selling without necessarily having anything to sell.  The gems will teach you the methods, but will keep the focus on you, and how to help you sell your stuff.

One of them I only just discovered today is a guy named Ian at Conversation Marketing.  His premise is the radical notion that more traffic is not necessarily better traffic, and that dressing up in a yellow jacket and red tie and hollering like Crazy Eddie The Used-Car Salesman may not be the best way for you to actually find a customer who wants to buy your stuff.

***

I've rattled on long enough about this.  If you like, I'll be happy to throw together another post where I talk about all the other things they have in common – like the wording on their sales pages, or why they all think it's necessary to price their stuff with a "7" in it.

Or, I could give you a list of who all is promoting whom; or maybe breakdown some of the basic options you have for trying to promote and sell your stuff.

Or, I could try and convince you to give me a phone call and book me, so you can buy my stuff.

Cheers!

Boy, time flies

Well, folks, if you're not following me on Twitter, you really, really ought to be; I've been posting there much more frequently than here, largely because, as they say, sharing your thoughts with the world is a lot easier in 140-character increments.

The holidays have been bearing down on us, the days have been getting shorter, and my brain has been trying to hibernate while also trying to focus and get things done.  I'll let you know how that goes.

I love winter, I truly do, but I have a real problem when I can't recharge my solar batteries outside every now and again.  The constant gloom of overcast days and long nights wears on me after awhile.  It's no wonder Norse mythology is so depressing: those people lived in this kind of thing practically year-round.

***

On the creative front, embroidery is continuing, and continuing to look good, too.  I'll even be teaching a little tomorrow at our local SCA chapter's Christmas Court, assuming anyone is interested in learning about it.  This will be my first foray into teaching any of my crafty stuff in several years; back from about April 2000 to September 2003, I was crazy busy with calligraphy and did a lot locally, both making stuff and operating a small scriptorium where people came and practiced each week, and I taught, coordinated projects, and such.

Because let's face it – if you're in a society devoted to recreating the lifestyles and art forms of the Middle Ages, and you're giving out award certificates to your members, you're not going to just print something off at the local copy shop.  You're going to look around until you find yourself some scribes in that society, and you're going to get them involved, and they will proceed to fall all over themselves creating stuff for the joy of it that would otherwise cost serious cash to commission.

(Note to self: get some of those photos up here on the blog, now that the website is defunct.)

Anyway.

In early 2004, Politics Happened, because politics eventually happen in just about any large group of people, only this time they Happened all over some friends of mine.  Between that and the burnout I was starting to accumulate, I was pretty soured on the SCA in general, and didn't have the heart to continue scribing.  My most recent calligraphy project, back in December of last year, was my first in about four years.

I had a point – oh, yeah – when I stopped doing calligraphy, I didn't have anything to teach either; so sitting around at Christmas Court tomorrow, chatting with friends about the embroidery and offering samples for them to work on, will be the first "teaching" I've done in quite awhile too.

***

Something else I'm looking forward to seeing, since it was my idea originally, is the Class Handout Library/Swap Meet.  SCA chapters host events; classes get taught on every topic you can imagine, and then some; the teachers produce handouts for their attendees to take home.  When I was at Pennsic this year, a lot of us sort of mutually agreed that if we happened to get to a class that someone else wasn't able to attend, we'd share our handouts with them once we got back to camp.

It occurred to me that it would also be a good thing to share those handouts with the folks who didn't get to come camping at all, and that's how the handout library was born.  (It's still in an early enough stage that we're not quite sure what to call it.  Is this a lending library?  Are we making photocopies to distribute?  We're definitely making our stuff available for reading, but are we letting people take them home?)

I've got handouts on everything from Queen Elizabeth's handwriting style, to period oil lamps and how to create your own.  I've got stuff from the deep inner meanings of Eastern Orthodox iconographic symbolism (and how to make your own), to the best ways to accessorize your outfit by time period, to something called stick-weaving, which is believed to date back to the Ice Age, and which was taught that day by a 7-year-old.  And that's not even getting into my whole subset of calligraphy-related handouts: the bookbinding classes, various alphabet styles, or how to craft good-looking "fakes" of English letters that resemble Arabic, Oriental kanji, or other foreign writing systems.

(Screw politics; if you're a geek who likes a little of everything, you will love the SCA and all the stuff there is to learn there.)

And that's just my own handout collection; I have no idea what other cool topics will be represented tomorrow, though I admit I'm hoping to snag a copy of the period underwear handout to look over, any maybe something on authentic dyes and safe ways to use them.

*blink* What?

I will never understand the people who think that it isn't cool to want to learn new stuff, or to admit that you enjoy learning all these weird little tidbits.  Seriously?  I was made to feel like a freak growing up, and I'm now having the time of my life diving into this great big swimming pool full of nifty topics and splashing my way through a little of everything.

I mean, wouldn't you be proud to know people who can build authentic working ballistae, and get to fire them on battlefields every weekend? 

***

Clearly, this is what happens when I don't post often enough to the blog; perfectly ordinary "going to an event tomorrow" topics build up pressure in my brain and turn into rants when I let them out (geeks rule!).

***

In other news – yes, I have other news – I got a booking call today to do some henna for a baby shower in January.  I am so stoked.  I really enjoy slinging henna, and I don't get enough bookings in the winter, so I'm thrilled every time I get a call.  I mean, I'm probably supposed to be all "well, let me see if I can fit you in" when I talk to clients, but life's too short to be snooty.  Don't get me wrong, I certainly don't want to sound pathetic and do the "you really like me!" thing either – but man, I just love getting bookings.

Which reminds me, I had a gig a couple weeks back where I got to pull out and really devote time to the North African designs for the first time, and it was terrific.  One of my clients posted her henna onto her Facebook page; once I can find the link, I'll snag it and post it here for the curious.

That's it for now, I think.  Cheers to one and all, and please, don't let holiday stress get to you.  If it starts to, give me a call and I'll come do an intervention involving chamomile tea, and/or ice cream, and/or henna for you.

Bless!
Heather

Ka-BOInnnnnngggg!

That's the sound my mind is making lately.  I got really angry a few days ago, and actually did something adult and mature with it.  I've been stepping back, taking stock of everything in my life that is ticking me off and from which I deserve better.

Important: this isn't some kind of whiny, entitled, "gimme gimme" anger, although certainly I've fallen prey to that before.  No.  This is me looking around and deciding that I'm going to make things into the kind of "better" that I've decided I deserve.

Betcha didn't know that anger and depression are related, did you?  In some cases, depression is nothing less than (and nothing more than) the exhaustion you get from holding anger back, or turning it inward on yourself (which is really draining, trust me on this). I've found that staying angry can be tiring, too, but not nearly as much as trying not to be angry when you by golly ought to be.

Depression can come from a sense of powerlessness, of time spent beating your head against a wall and somehow hoping that this time things will be different.  Of time spent trying desperately to affect things that are utterly and totally beyond your control (like, say, how other people behave, or whether they choose to respect you, or even like you).  Let me tell you, anger is really, really good at demolishing that feeling.  When you get pissed off enough, you can't help but say to yourself, and maybe your inner demons and baggage, and maybe even people around you, "Oh yeah?  Yeah??  Well, watch this, you big jerk."

[Pause.  I'm listening to Peter Gabriel on my iPod just now, and discovering once again that the iPod's speakers are way better than the ones in the minivan or on my computer. I shall be basking in the richness of sound and enjoying nuances heretofore unheard for about the next... 4 minutes and 10 seconds.]

*happysigh*

Something people probably don't know about me.  I've had, for pretty much my entire adult life, a real problem with determination, and motivation.  Determination to me has always felt way too much like anger, and I grew up thinking that anger was bad, categorically and pretty much universally.  I've struggled to find motives rooted in something else, anything else, other than anger.  Delight has worked.  Shiny new exploration has worked, until the thing stopped being shiny and new. Spiritual joy has worked, when I've been able to find it.  And, you know, looking around for other sources of inspiration has been a good thing, I think, in that I've gotten pretty good at seeking out the bliss in a given situation, and I've gotten really good at walking away from soul-draining suckitude and mediocrity.

But.

Anytime I started to feel like it was time to dig my heels in, be stubborn, say, "I'm gonna make this work, dammit, just you watch" - you know, show some determination - I'd scare myself right off of whatever I was doing.

Except now (cue the trumpets), da-da-da-DAH, I have a shrink!  Okay, yes, I'm being flip; but it's helping a lot to learn that A), yes, I'm not wrong, anger and determination are related, but B), that isn't bad.  Anger isn't evil.  Anger isn't anything different from happiness - it's an emotion.  You feel it, and you use it to accomplish things.  How you use it can be pretty unhealthy, but so can all the ways people have of running after happiness.

I don't know many people whose homework assignment from their shrink is to actually be angry for a change, but it seems to be working.  And it's why the title of this post is "ka-boing" and not "grrr".  Ideas are everywhere right now, to the extent that I'm actually at risk of losing the anger for lack of a single target to aim it at.  I've got an idea for a class to teach, the winter market proposal to complete, and a house to tear apart and reconfigure - which means everything from sorting and tossing useless crap, to doing laundry, to rearranging furniture, to painting, to tearing out and replacing light fixtures, cabinet doors, carpet, the whole thing.

Oh, and a marriage to work on - it's apparently way easier to have a marriage when both people are acting like grown-ups, can you believe it?  And a kid to parent - ditto the acting like a grown-up.

I just hope talking about it all here won't jinx it, dilute my focus, and keep me from doing anything (again).

So tell me.  Have you hugged your anger today?

Winding down

Well, here we are.

The Farmer's Market had its final day yesterday; I decided to run an end-of-season special and hung a giant "$1" sign on the front of my booth, figuring I would rather do henna for cheap than sit on my behind for three hours and be bored.  I had fun doing a couple of large, intricate designs for a couple of ladies who almost certainly would not have stopped otherwise.

What this really means is that, apart from one booking coming up in November, I have nothing going on henna-wise, and I would very much like to change that.  I have way too much fun drawing pretty designs on people, plus it gets me out of the house.  So book me!  I've added a phone number to my contact information, over there on the sidebar, to make it easier.

I believe I mentioned in an earlier post that there are plans in the works for an indoor winter market.  I've been in contact with the organizer and she has graciously decided to accept my ideas and suggestions for ways to get things off the ground and working smoothly.  It's a bit of a stretch to say that we're actually working together, though - I'm presenting ideas pretty much as a volunteer at this point, in the form of a proposal, with no way to predict which if any suggestions will actually see the light of day.

Gives me something to do, though, and I'm having fun pretending that I'm in charge... you know how sometimes, you sit back and you go, "well, if I were the president" and proceed to solve all the world's problems in twenty minutes or less?  Yeah.  Putting this proposal together is giving me a great outlet for that energy.  The trick is to keep from sounding too obviously as if I'm trying to tell this nice lady how to do what really is her job.

***

The garden is nearly put to bed for the winter; only a few more plants that are still kicking and asking for water and the occasional trim.  My friend Amy Prettybaby says that if I run out of room over here she has plenty of yard begging for attention, but I don't know.  First of all, I'm only pretending to know what I'm doing, I just happen to be very very skilled at pretending - skilled enough that sometimes even the plants believe me.  Also I have the Internet, so if I don't know what I'm doing now, chances are good that I will know in a half-hour (I could say "five minutes", but the Internet is like potato chips. You can't just dip your fingers into the bag once and be done, unless there's something wrong with you.)

Second, her yard is way different from mine.  I live in a cookie-cutter house in a division that used to be a cornfield; backyards resemble the Serengeti Plain, except when it rains and then they resemble either a mud-wrestling pit or a demolition-derby arena.  Amy, on the other hand, lives in the kind of yard I always had growing up - even through college, moving out on my own, all the way up to our previous house - an older neighborhood with actual trees and lots of shade.  Deep shade in some places.  Where my yard is the Serengeti, hers is more like the Hoosier National Forest, except with kids and a dog.  Where I have Grass That Will Not Die, she has rich dark soil underneath pine trees where nothing wants to sprout.

Uh-oh.  Writing about this has gotten me thinking about it.  Now I have ideas.

Dammit.

***

Daylight Saving Time ends this weekend.  Thank GOD.  I despise Daylight Saving Time with a passion, and refuse utterly to "let it go already".  The logic escapes me: the idea is supposed to be to shift your clock to take advantage of the extra hours of daylight you get when the sun is up for more than twelve hours.  That only happens between the first day of Spring and the first day of Fall. So could someone explain to me, please, WHY are we still using daylight saving here at the tail end of October?

I also am perpetually irritated that the experts in Washington DC (which is, of course, the center of the universe) placed our state in the Eastern time zone when geographically we belong in Central.  This means that our clocks are already shifted by one hour year-round, and by two hours whenever we have to adopt Stupid Daylight Saving Time.  We get two obnoxious results from this: First, our kids are getting up and going to school in the dark, as early as the first week of September.  A couple years ago this got a little girl killed in my area.  Second, we don't see sunset until a ridiculous 10pm in midsummer.  You try putting a preschooler to bed when it's still light out and see how well that works.

There's a third irritating result, though I admit it's pretty minor: people insist that their sundials are wrong, or that we've wasted money putting up the ones in public areas that are "inaccurate".  I'll save my educational rant for another time, though.

***

My overall point, though, is that with the garden winding down, the henna season ending, and the days getting shorter, I'm finding my energy shifting inward.  I've been re-reading lately the books Digging Deep by Fran Sorin, and Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, while also slogging through some self-help titles.  One thing these books all have in common is an examination of the creative process, and the process of discovering: whether it is discovering your likes and dislikes, or your writing style and voice, or your beliefs and values and power.  I'm finding that these books all connect to one another without intending to; and that I'm uncovering new territory, or maybe unburying old territory, that makes me uncomfortable.

Of course I'm uncomfortable.  No one likes to feel vulnerable, after all.  People might not like your choices, even if they're only the flowers you chose to plant in your bed.  They might reject your expressions of self, disagree with your beliefs, dismiss your deepest values as wrong or misguided, or worst of all, irrelevant.

I've been struggling with this vulnerability for awhile now.

I have this story I've been trying to write.  I have a setting, sort of a character, but I've been unable to come up with a plot to save my life.  And I'm reading that plot comes from characters, and that characters in some ways have to be naked before their readers.  No one in our real world gets to see inside one another's head, but in a story, you get to see the characters' thoughts, fears, dreams.  You get to see how those influence the choices a character makes and the actions they take as a result.

Author Holly Lisle, to paraphrase, says that characters who don't make choices are not characters, they are victims.  And they are boring to read.  It follows that characters who don't make choices don't take action; in other words, they don't build a plot, which means they're not contributing anything to the story itself.  They're a waste of a reader's time.

Both Lisle and Demott are telling me that characters have to really feel and choose and move; they are both saying that in order for those feelings and choices to resonate they have to come from someplace real; and that the only real place any would-be writer can pull from is inside themselves.

Yeah.  In other words, for your characters to work, you have to get naked.  Did I mention I've been struggling with this for awhile now?

It's no wonder my story is going nowhere; I can't let go and loosen up long enough to give my character any real motives, or choices, or feelings.

***

Hmm.  Should I have titled this post "winding down", or "winding in"?

End of the season

Well, henna is winding down for the season, at least for us Western folks - there are a couple of big holidays coming up yet in Islam between now and the end of December - but the farmer's market will be closing the week after this, and I don't have anything else lined up just yet.  I'm considering the indoor fall/winter market that is being proposed over in Elmwood Plaza, but I still have several questions for the organizers and they've been slow to respond.

For the record, data entry isn't nearly as fun as putting henna on people, so don't you want to help me out here?  Of course you do.

***

The prairie grass is gone, the clay masquerading as soil has been hacked into a less cratered surface, a couple bags of potting soil have been spread over the top of that - it's pretty much bulb planting time.  The challenge will be to remember to hold a few back for my daughter to plant All By Herself.

I've been up off my behind for the past few days, and it's getting to where it feels good - there's a threshold there, I'm sure other people have noticed, when you've been geting not enough exercise for way too long?  Where the inertia is telling you to go sit down and get some potato chips, and moving is the last thing on your mind, even when you're already up and moving?  Yeah. If you can just suck it up till you're over that hump, it gets way easier.

(Thus Spake The Not-Actually-Exercising Exercise Guru.)

Point being, the stiff muscles just feel like they need to be warmed up now, instead of being put back to bed, and I'm plotting my next moves in the garden eagerly, as opposed to whining that I'll have to get up and get all sweaty and stuff.  However: I went back to bed this morning after seeing the kiddo off to preschool with her daddy, and the next thing I knew it was noon.  I mean, it was good sleep, but jeez.

***

Let's see, running through my "tag" list... I was flattered to get an email asking for information and tips on putting together some mosaics that a friend wants to make for her own garden.

A few days ago, my daughter and I modified her school "scarecrow" project and made princesses (you glue paper shapes to the edge of a paper plate that has a face on it).  We used the paper I bought ages ago for origami, and every time I use the phone downstairs the book I have with so many bazillion origami patterns in it is now staring at me from its spot on the shelf.

Darling daughter's closet and dresser have a lot more room in them now that the stuff she's outgrown is out of the way...

I finished outlining the leaves in the ongoing epic embroidery project and discovered that using the dark green was a bad idea.  So I got to rip all that out and I'm now doing it over in black. Sigh.

***

And that's all I can think of for the time being.   Cheers, y'all!

Post-Octoberfest recovery

Well, the festival was an utter disappointment in many, many ways.  The weather and resulting low turnout were a part of that, but the rest will have to wait until I've gotten the opportunity to speak with the festival organizers.  I'm wondering if I'd have been more forgiving if the weather had been nicer, or if maybe I've just been spoiled by the way previous events have gone for me.

Regardless, I have a big new batch of henna waiting for people to let me use it on them, and a discount that will continue till the end of the month for anyone who brings me one of my old business cards.  That thought cheers me, and the Indigo Girls in my ears right now are helping more then they will ever know... although I could send them an email... I guess...

***

It's a very old line from a very old Steve Martin routine - back when he still did stand-up comedy, which ought to give you some idea how old - but I still hold it to my heart as a Law of the Universe:  It is impossible to be depressed around banjo music.

***

Daughter and I have made a habit of getting her a little snack right before bedtime, so she doesn't wake up hungry at 1am.  At her request, a new part of this routine is that I sit at the couch and work on the embroidery while she plays with her yogurt and eventually gets it all into her tummy.  So progress is in the "very slow, but steady" category.  Right now I'm working on the ground the figures are standing on.  That's right - I'm stitching dirt.

Definitions

I learned last week that shrinks define "want" as "willing to put forth effort to achieve". If you're not willing to put effort into gaining something, then you don't want it, you just have a desire for it.

It would appear that I desire a lot, and want very little.

I'm also learning about "values" and how they're not the same thing as goals or tasks. One of the exercises I'm working on is discovering those values that are important enough to me to work toward, even in the face of personal pain.

What are your values? What do you want? I'm curious.

New residents, new opportunities

Yeah, okay, this has nothing to do with my creative endeavors, but everything to do with beauty, so...

Our housing addition has a pond. I don't know how far I can go to call it a habitat, since they mow down to the water's edge and treat the water to counteract all the lawn chemicals that wash in and cause algae blooms, but still. Pond, fish, frogs, and drop-in visits from ducks, geese, and about every other year a family of muskrats takes up residence in one of the culverts and starts undermining the bank.

Well, we also get great blue herons, one of my favorite birds. Last year a really HUGE one got his foot caught in a muskrat trap - I know this because I was the one who noticed he'd been in the same spot all day, and got close enough to confirm how badly he was stuck.

This year it's either a different heron, or he was immature last year and has come into his full color this year, because he is spectacular. All the pictures you see with the shiny white head, black streak across the eye, kind of shaggy feathers on the throat and chest?... This particular bird looks like he has a sideline modeling for the Audobon calendar.

Yesterday and today, for the first time, I've seen a kingfisher in the area. Yesterday he was on a wire about a mile off, along the route I drive to take the kiddo to preschool. This morning he was sitting on the culvert at the pond. Yes, the same one that the muskrats like so well.

I'm going to miss the house swallows this year, though; they were living in a mailbox just across the street from the pond, and for some reason the homeowner wasn't too happy about that. Barn swallows are this really rich midnight blue with orange chest and bellies; house swallows are an equally rich deep teal-green, with white chest and bellies. I'd never seen them before last year, but in the fall the guy took down his mailbox and replaced it with something harder for birds to set up housekeeping in.

***

At the event where I taught the henna class, I also proved once again that I needed a chaperone anytime there is colored thread around. But they were five skeins for a dollar, and how can you pass up a deal like that?

Things are actually progressing with the embroidery thing. I'm outlining the lady's wimple and veil right now. You might recall a griffin I mentioned doing in Bayeux stitch; I gave it to a friend of mine whose "kingdom" emblem is a gryphon, and she said it would probably end up being part of the front panel for an early-period gown. Cool. Probably I should ask her to send me a picture of it, since I never thought to take one.

***

When you're clinically depressed, it's too easy to fall into the trap of struggling to be "happy" as the opposite of "sad." Thing is, happiness comes in moments and snippets. A guy I know describes it as the butterfly landing on your shoulder - beautiful, but impossible to try and keep around. What is better, according to my counselor and my college memories, is the idea of "peace" as the opposite of "suffering". So I've been checking in with myself yesterday and today, asking what feels peaceful to me, what brings me contentment, that kind of thing.

Or, as a great many sources of wisdom like to say, "Pain is; suffering is optional." Another way it gets phrased is, of course, "shit happens"... it's how you handle the shit that determines, oh, pretty much everything.

***

Had an email out of the blue (heh - out of the ether (I'm so clever)) from a guy who wants to host a web domain and site for me, for free, simply because he likes to assist artists and the arts. Sadly, I keep finding myself trying to examine the horse's teeth, just because it's been awhile since something like this has dropped into my lap without conscious effort on my part. All I did was leave some business cards somewhere and the guy found one.

Also, I have no freaking idea what domain name to pick. Just my name isn't very catchy, nor does it describe what I do... but like this blog, I do a lot more than just henna, even if that's the only art I'm making money with at the moment.

Hmmmm... suggestions welcome, both serious and otherwise.

***

Anyone know how to repair a stepping stone that has cracked into four pieces, just from having a three-year-old walk on it? This was the one I discovered had poorly mixed concrete, and was crumbling around the edges and all that.

I'd really rather not redo the mosaic from scratch, nor "recycle" the thing by chipping each piece of glass out of the broken sections to rebuild into another stone. Even though that probably would be both faster and the wiser course to take. That damn thing took me about a year to finally finish; I really don't want to dork with it anymore if I can help it.

***

I think I'm on an upswing emotionally; I can tell I'm improving when my brain starts providing me with song lyrics without my asking. Today it was "Beer Run" while at the cashier, paying with a $10 and getting back a $5. If you've never heard the song, try to imagine a nice hillbilly twang and someone going "yee-ha" in the background. It doesn't have a banjo, but it should.

B, double-E, double-R-U-N, Beer Run,
B, double-E, double-R-U-N, Beeeer, Ru-un,
All we need is a ten and a fiver
A car and a key and a so-ber dri-ver
B, double-E, double-R-U-N, Beer Runnnn.

Not sure who wrote it, but it plays on Bob and Tom every now and again, so I guess it qualifies as their contribution to American culture.

I will continue to agree with Steve Martin's (very old) assertion that it is impossible to remain unhappy when a banjo is playing. 'Course, at the time I'm sure he'd never heard Bela Fleck playing BACH on banjo... which would only serve to confirm, reinforce, and utterly and competely prove the point.

Happy and Sad

Happy: I got a call yesterday for a henna appointment with a young lady which, after answering all her questions, became an appointment for her and her mom. I'm cooking up a fresh batch of henna downstairs right now.

Sad: The Husband asked me what I really want to do with the henna, in terms of commitment and goals and all that, and I get the impression that there is a right and a wrong answer to that question.

Most of my messed-up-edness comes from focusing more on what I think I'm "supposed to" want or need, and less on figuring out what I actually do want or need. What matters to me, vs. what I believe other people think should matter to me instead.

(Sorry if that sentence didn't make any sense.)

I need to get downstairs, finish the henna batch, and sit down with my big new planning book (a sketch book with big enough pages for me to have lots of room for commentary) and figure out what the hell I'm doing.