Painting with the Soul

I haven't been sleeping well the last few nights, and what sleep I do get, it is riddled with half remembered nightmares that are terrifying when I wake up but for reasons I can't remember.

So, of course, tonight I find myself elbow deep, metaphorical hand blindly feeling around down the rabbit hole that is creepypasta.  Surprisingly, I just discovered that this is a thing.  And of course, I can't stop myself.  I can't stop myself from reading on and on, despite how it's making me nearly cry with how unsettled I am with it.

Don't judge me.  I know what slender man is.  I understand what kind of fucked up stuff the internet is capable of.  I can't help it that I also love horror movies and scary stories, even when they mess me up.

Creepypasta has messed with me in a way that horror stuff has not in a very, very long time, and I'm not sure I like it anymore.  Congratulations, internet and creepypasta, you win.  The worst thing, I can't stop myself from going back and reading more, reading comments and links to other articles and little snippets on reddit until I fall deeper into the worse, more backwater, basement dwelling corners of the internet.

The one that is currently fucking me up the most is Mr. Bear 1999.  Fuck that shit.  I'm not even gonna link that.  You can look it up yourself.  That rabbit hole will suck me right in again, and then DudeWhoSleepsNextToMe will be mad at me because I promised not to read anymore...tonight.

I guess the reason that shit creeps us out, especially urban legends, is that they are fucked up in all the right ways to make it seem like they could legitimately happen.  I live in the greater Cleveland area.  We have had some pretty fucked up shit happen around here, like the psycho who kept those poor women locked in his basement for 18 fucking years, and the Torso killer.  So, when shit like that happens in real life, it is very easy to see how Mr. Bear could totally have been a real thing.  Add to it the fact that Canadians are stereotypically super awesome people in general, and it makes the whole Mr. Bear story seem even more fucked up.  And yet, there is something that is close enough to the truth to make it believable that Mr. Bear was a real person and that he was never caught.

And that, is why it fucks up my christmas.  I have kids.  When you have kids, every single little thing is a terrible and horrible threat to your children and the world can hurt/maim/kill them in so many ways it's nearly uncountable.  And that is before you add things to the equation that mess with our general understandings and perceptions of how the world works.

When everyone in your life is predictable, life is good.  Hey, George is an asshole, but you knew that.  He is just George.  If he isn't an asshole, you worry about him.  Oh, hey, George was super nice today.  I wonder if he's feeling well.  Maybe something bad happened at home.  Poor George.

Now, when you are forced to watch videos of George dismembering children and wearing their still pulsating entrails as a boa while he prepares to do the same to you, well, that has probably shaken your whole perception of reality.  You won't have to worry about it for too much longer, though, not in that scenario.

See, I'm in a dark place tonight.

It doesn't help that I was nearly kidnapped when I was either six or seven, from right in front of my own house.  It was the whole, Hey little girl, your dad told me to pick you up.  Get in the car kinda attempted kidnapping.  Obviously, I was not kidnapped, but it still terrifies me.  I had nightmares about it for a long time.  It terrifies me now because I have children of my own, and I know how close I had been to potentially being a random set of unidentified mangled and mutilated child bones in the middle of an old rubber factory's rubble.

It makes me never want to leave my kids by themselves ever in their whole existences.  To think of someone intentionally hurting my children, I can't stand it.  But they must grow into well rounded, good people one day, and I must teach them how to survive on their own.

You know, sometimes I wonder how any of us survive into adulthood.

Anyway, the thing about horror, good horror, is that it is crazy and shakes your faith in the way things are.  The way this is done is by changing something normal just enough that you can't stand it.  That it makes it so wrong, but believably wrong, that you can totally wrap your head around it, just not all the way.  It brings tears to your eyes and images in your head that haunt you when the lights go out. Too much crazy or overthetop-ed-ness and you've lost that surrealness which had made it terrifying.  Now it's just campy.

I was telling my seven year old son tonight about almost being kidnapped and he didn't get why anyone would want to take a kid they didn't know.  I know it was a joke, that he was implying that the kids you do know are annoying enough, which is true.  It wasn't real to him.  He has never met anyone who was just kinda off in that way that makes you uncomfortable to be around them.  He doesn't know yet how horrible and broken people can be.  I love his innocence.

I told him that some people are just broken.  They just are.  Not a lot of people, but some are, and some can't be understood, they are so broken.  And sometimes, those people who are broken, whether they were born like that or whether they were broken by others, sometimes those people want to break others.  They want to break other people in the same ways that they are broken, or worse.  They want to break people because they can't fix themselves, so they want to break others so that they are even worse.  And some people, they don't think like people, not even in that way.  Those ones are the scariest and most alien of all.

Don't leave, I know we are dreaming

So, some statistics because Dude who sleeps next to me was asking for them.

Since September of last year I have written:
292,447 words (estimated from averaged word count per random page sampling)
640 pages (standard word document sized)
53 chapters
2 1/3 books

So, I internet-ed a bit and found that if it were to go into print format (5.5x8.5 format) that my books would be:

Book 1 Anri and Seth: Bloodbound 408 pages
Book 2 Anri and Seth: Demonbound 583 pages
Book 3 Anri and Seth: Feywilds  179 pages (so far at chapter 9)

Now...what to do...what to do. I am seriously considering trying to publish, even if no one buys it.  I wonder how many books are written every year that are in exactly the same place as mine...authors with no confidence wondering if they should or shouldn't just put out into the world what they have created.  I would hate to publish something if it was horrible, but I don't think mine is.  But it's mine, so I wouldn't right?  Wait, I know my self esteem.  I always think my stuff is horrible.  So if I actually think my stuff is good...

I think my head just exploded.  I will tell you this.  I'm no Brandon Sanderson or Neil Gaiman, so don't think I'm getting a big head.  But...maybe it's not so bad, right?  And, I totally recognize that I have a very limited audience.  But if even a few people like my story, well, then that's all good, right?

Now...editing.  Not for me, I just keep on writing.  I'm hoping to finish up this series by the end of the third book.

I'm a little afraid to end it, I love writing and I don't want to lapse.  I'm afraid I'd fall out of it if I went too long, you know?

My hands are shaky and I don't feel right, again, my friend. I'm just waiting on a wild sun.

So....

At some point, if a lot of people seem to think that the problem lies with you...what point do you have to concede to that, even if you only partially believe it.  I mean, sometimes I totally agree.  Most things are somehow my fault, just for being around.  My being there influences things or something.  Like, things are better if I'm not there.  But sometimes, well, I think that it's not me but everyone else that is crazy.

Is it that hard to be around me?  My boss made a joke about how I seem to be not on speaking terms with a lot of people around work lately.

I find it hard to be around me, but I can't change that.  I can limit my exposure to others, I suppose.

Man, this post is a bummer.  It's good no one really reads this, I'd hate to be the person to bring you down.  Because I have it on good authority that I am indeed that person.

I don't know how to change the me that bothers others.  I don't know how to be a person to make everyone happy.  I try hard, but it doesn't happen.  I know I can't make everyone happy, but I try still.
*Edit...How selfish of me, to think I can make people happy*

Something that bothered me the other day, Mexico was shaming one of its Olympians, a gymnast who doesn't look like a twig.  Fuck Mexico.  But, you know, Fuck America, too, because we are just as much horrible, hateful humans.

We also have nice people.  Like these firemen who saved a bunch of ducklings from dying a horrible death inside a storm drain on a highway.  Or the guy who does nice things for people for no reason, and people are left confused and worried about something bad happening because no one is nice anymore.

It's all mine, and your woman, too...probably NSFW or anywhere else, either.

So...I wrote my first m/f scene the other day, and I think it came out really well.  It was harder to do, I think, because I was really worried about messing it up.

One of the things I noticed in writing it...there are a ton of words for male genitalia that are sexy or hot or whatever.  There are a million that are gross or degrading, too, don't get me wrong.  But there are a lot of ways to say 'penis' without repeating yourself. Cock, member, manhood, hard on, shaft, rod, even dick if used correctly.  Boner...not so much.  No one wants to read about your main character's raging boner when you call it that.  They definitely want to read about your main character's boner, though.

Not so much variety with female parts.  Let's start with the top part.  Breasts.  That's fine.  Boobs?  That sounds puerile.  Tits? Even more so.  Mammories?  Too technical?  Chesticals...you get my drift. Sweater puppies?  Gah.

Lower parts are even worse.  Using the correct terminology was the easiest.  Vagina, vulva, clitoris, labia.  Or, what about pussy, cunt, ham wallet, cum dumpster, it just gets worse.  Pussy isn't so bad but it seems to imply something dirty, which if you aren't writing a 'dirty' piece, seems a bit harsh.

Better yet, what a lot of erotica writers seem to do is refer to the shape, color and location, insinuating that you are talking about lady parts without saying those clinical terms or using the 'vulgar' ones either.  Core, folds, pink intimacy, soft opening, yadda yadda with words that flirt.  Maybe I just don't have the vocabulary for it, but I have read a whole lot of smut in my time.

I'm open to suggestions.

She asked me how we got here, I told her I don't know,

And if you keep on asking I'll just keep saying so, this isn't what I wanted, it isn't what I mean, just let them keep on talking, don't you pay them any mind.

That's the full title of this blog.
Back to work.  I got to go canoeing yesterday, and I will get to go again tomorrow.  So far, so good on algae, too.

I should be writing, you know, real stuff like the novels I will never release, not a blog post.  I am about 2/3 done with my second one, and have plans for a third already because too much stuff happened in the second one to try to wrap up in a rush.  It's not like I'm gonna do anything with these anyway, so who cares, right?  I understand how these turn into crazy several part novels now.  It's weird, I'll thinking about what I want to write, and then when i sit down to write it, somehow the characters are like, 'nah, we don't like that idea, how about we do this instead, and you need to figure out how to get us out of this later, k? thanks!'.  Sometimes I feel like I plan events and then they go all askew without my permission.  I'm not even sure what that's all about but it happens a lot.

Anyway, life is kind of back to normal, which is nice.  Somehow there is never enough time in the day and that's nothing new to anyone ever anywhere.

This whole thing with the gorilla in Cincinnati, well, I met that gorilla kinda sorta a few weeks ago during the May major water circuit.  We were on an environmental sustainability tour of Cincy Zoo and he was super aggressive at the time.  We stayed too long by his enclosure and he started running back and forth, then splashed water at us across the moat.   The whole thing saddens me, and I'm really really tired of all of the shame-blame culture that we have around events like this.  You know, sometimes shit happens.  Sometimes people do dumb things.  Sometimes kids slip away in a blink of an eye and then bad things happen.  And sometimes people are just lucky it wasn't them, you know?

Also, as much as I like taking my kids to the zoo, zoos are horrible places.

So much distraction from real issues, from things that matter.  We should all prepare for our new American CEO, Mr. Trump.

We will see how the Republican National Convention goes next month.  I wanted to go see Ministry and Helmet but it's during the RNC and I worry that the city will be impossible to traverse.  They are having an anarchist national convention, you know, because.

But it's half as much as it was before

There is something to be said about just being responsible for yourself.  I just escaped for two days, just me and the old man, no kids, no work, just us and island time.  And bicycles.

Did I mention Island time?

Kelley's Island.  It was wonderful for two days.  We biked the whole island more than once.  Made us wish that we could bike our neighborhood to get places.  Made us real sad that our neighborhood is not bike friendly for living.

Things we did:  had no kids.  So...anything we wanted, pretty much. Which consisted mostly of riding bikes around the island and eating food.  No complaints.  And feel like real people.

I love my kids, but it is just nice to love my husband and love myself every now and again.  It didn't even matter that it was overcast, cold and sometimes rainy.  It was wonderful.  This may be a 'duh' statement but my element is water.  Obviously, I hear you snicker, of course it is, we all knew that.  But, I truly feel so much calmer when I'm surrounded by water.  It's a good fun fact to know.

I had more I wanted to write.  But...I just got off of the water conference circuit, and back from a major mental reset.  I'm pretty blank. And I have one more day of vacation left, part of the back home stay-cation. I'll leave you with a half-ass written blog and some pretty pictures.

We never checked the price tag, when the cost comes in it's gonna be high

There's a song by Matt and Kim where they wonder what they might have been.  What they could have become.

I wonder that a lot lately.  I don't regret where I am in my life.  But I wonder, what if...what if I went to Japan when I wanted to, to teach english?  What if I stayed in education and taught high school biology?  What if i had stayed in college and gotten my PhD and became a professor.  What if I had joined the army and not backed out last minute? What if ....

Somehow, I still thing I might have ended up where I am.  Sometimes I think that is the truth of the matter.  But I don't know that I believe in a force more than just me.  Lots of music influencing me tonight apparently but I am who you say I am.  Yeah, I know I used Eminem in the last blog, too.  I'm apparently lazy.  I mean, there are already three different song references, Sleater-kinney , Matt and Kim and Eminem.  What more do you want from me?

I feel old. I know I have time and I'm young enough to still do stuff, change my life and all that, it just seems so hard.  It's not supposed to be easy. that's why it feels fucking so good.  (See, now we are up to four song references, awolnation, you're welcome).  Or that's what I'm told.  Does anyone ever really know what they want to be when they grow up?

Apparently I want to write smutty m/m vampire novels when I grow up.

The computer screen is bright and I'm sitting in the dark in my bedroom.  I keep seeing shit out of the corner of my eyes and it distracts me.  Enough so that I just wrote it.  And you read it.  Who's worse?

Sometimes I wish I would just shut up.  I hear myself talking and internally I'm just like, jesus christ, why doesn't anyone just tell me to shut up?  I feel like I am almost completely the most annoying person on the planet.  Sometimes.  I need to work on being fluent in another language.  At least if I'm unable to stop talking, as happens occasionally, you wouldn't know what stupid shit I was unable to stop myself from saying.

Once, in high school, i took a bet from a teacher of mine, that I couldn't go a week without talking.  I'm so annoying.  That annoying.  I won that bet but it wasn't worth it in the long run.  I got grounded because my mom was so annoyed with me at home, and I got in trouble in school when I used a small hand held chalk board for 'class participation'.  Some people just can't win.  And I just can't shut up.