Tag: Friday 500 (page 3 of 10)

500 Words on Grunge

Courtesy Easybranches

When I was growing up, and going through some bullying and shunning in junior high, grunge was on the rise. Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden… these names were surging through the airwaves, videos playing on MTV, the sound was all around. For my part, I listened, but I found it difficult to really interface with the content of the songs. I was much more engaged by faster-paced acts like Green Day and the Offspring. I wasn’t quite ready to fully examine the meaning and thrust of grunge; the more obvious punkish sounds underscored my unexpressed frustrations and anger. It felt, at the time, more cathartic. I didn’t know what I was missing.

Since moving to Seattle, and especially in the last year, many of these bands and their music have come back into my life, and I find myself having a newfound appreciation for their messages and meanings.

Chris Cornell’s sudden and inexplicable death struck a melancholy chord deep within me. I feel that I missed some great opportunities. The more I listen to Soundgarden, Audioslave, and his side projects and solo work, the more I can see parts of myself and my inner struggles in what Chris conveyed in his words and his singular voice. I find myself in another situation where I feel I didn’t appreciate the influence and power of someone enough until they were gone from my life; now, I can’t deny a desire to say and do so much more, to this person and on their behalf, because they made the world, and my life, better for their presence; both are now the poorer for their absence.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I’ve handled my head weasels and the ways in which I’ve been pushed around by my errant thoughts and rampant emotions. While it’s good to know I’m not alone in this, it also breaks my heart at times — why would a thinking, feeling human being wish these things upon another? When I listen to grunge with the ears I have now, I find myself understanding the music and its motivations so much more, and wishing peace for those who feel the same, from the artists to their fans.

Mental illness is not something to be taken lightly. Even when things seem ‘okay’, the victim may simply be projecting an illusion of normality. Worse, something may appear out of nowhere to tip the scales into disaster — one unanticipated phone call, one bit of bad news, one pill too many. When these are conveyed to us, in speech or in song, we cannot take it lightly; we owe it to those we love too imagine them complexly, and offer love and support whenever we can.

We have the music of the artists who’ve left us; we have the good memories of the loved ones we’ve lost. There have been so many casualties — Kurt, Layne Staley, Andrew Wood, Ian Curtis, and now Chris — but we can hear them, and we can remember.

On Fridays I write 500 words.

500 Words From Heinlein

Courtesy floating robes
Courtesy Floating Robes

I lie. Not all 500 of these words come to you from the pen of Robert A. Heinlein. But most of them will. Mostly because, after several years, I once again picked up (or, in this case, began listening to) The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, a seminal book of my early teen years and the one that pushed me towards this writing business in which I engage.

… I have this one nasty habit. Makes me hard to live with. I write …

At the moment, writing is not my primary profession. But it’s always there. In the back of my mind, a prodding need persists. I’m a storyteller. I have to tell stories. It’s a basic imperative, like my need to eat and breathe and gallivant as urbanely, responsibly, and respectfully as possible. Those things cost, and writing, at least in the stage I linger at, does not pay.

… writing is a legal way of avoiding work without actually stealing and one that doesn’t take any talent or training.

I’m in a perpetual state of “I’m working on it,” with a few projects. I am, hopefully, in a place where I can carve out more time to do it. And none too soon, because it’s really started to bug me.

… writing is antisocial. It’s as solitary as masturbation. Disturb a writer when he is in the throes of creation and he is likely to turn and bite right to the bone … and not even know that he’s doing it. As writers’ wives and husbands often learn to their horror …

I of course am not so ignorant as to blame my writing for the skeletons hanging in my closet. My mental illness and prior emotional instability were the impetus for several bad decisions, but as any storyteller would tell you, a good character becomes aware of their shortcomings, and seeks to overcome them. So it is with me. And yet, if writing is a shortcoming, I do not seek to overcome it.

In a household with more than one person, of which one is a writer, the only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room, where he can endure the acute stages in private, and where food can be poked in to him with a stick. Because, if you disturb the patient at such times, he may break into tears …

If nothing else, writing is a way for me to express my emotions in a safe environment. The lines of journals become a padded room. And as plotlines and characters take shape and grow over the course of my writing, parts of myself and my experiences and emotions flow into them. I have professional therapists — and a battery of medications and vitamins — but my pen, perhaps, is the best tool for how I continue to get better.

Besides…

There is no way to stop. Writers go on writing long after it becomes financially unnecessary … because it hurts less to write than it does not to write.

Indeed.

On Fridays I write 500 words.

500 Words on Isolationism

I read the news today, oh boy

The balance between work and life has yet to be fully struck. I’m still only a few weeks into the gig, and though I’m more comfortable being where I am and working alongside a dedicated, energetic, generous, and honest gentleman, the commute still drains me and the work presents new challenges to my logical skills and memory retention every day. If I can succeed more than I fail, even in small ways, at a rate over 50%, I’ll be okay. It’s hard to gauge, at times.

When I’m not at work, I try to take care of myself, and sometimes, that means tuning out the world.

I haven’t always been good at being comfortable in the space I occupy. When I was crashing on couches and bouncing between hosts, I always felt out of place. It was hard to feel like I belonged anywhere. I had very little space to be myself, work on myself, put my best self forward. And I suffered for it.

Now, things are better. I have space that’s mine (mostly). I can have true seclusion, shut everything out, disappear for a while. It’s lovely.

At times in this current world, though, it feels selfish.

I know that we can’t afford to isolate ourselves, to exist merely within our own echo chambers. We must reach out, be connected, stand together. That’s what it means to be a part of the Resistance. We are stronger together, when we cross lines of race and gender and identity and background, when we give one another the benefit of the doubt, when we imagine one another complexly. That means staying current. That means exposing myself to the onslaught of flagrant stupidity and arrogant presumption of those trying to control our world. That means looking at smug faces of the Patriarchy’s cronies, and resisting the urge to punch the screen.

And all the while, my lovely head weasels push back on my forward progress.

I’m working as hard and as well as I can. And that’s valued and appreciated, at home as well as at work. I’m doing more, feeling more, saying more, and slowly, hurting less. I do think about people and parts of my heart I’ve lost every day, but I can work past it in ways that are forward progress, not dwelling in the past or muddling up the moment. This is all good. This is all better than I was. And yet, I struggle to recognize it in myself. My learned behaviors of talking myself down for fear of buying my own hype keep me from building myself up.

Getting past that means being out in the world. Being my best self in the world. And not hiding myself away where none can see my light.

I have to take care of myself, be gentle with myself, keep getting better. The people who love me, who actually care, want that.

But I also have to be a part of this world, because I can help keep it together.

On Fridays I write 500 words.

500 Words on Normal

Original Image courtesy Getty Images

“This is not normal” has become something of a rallying call for the resistance against the rising regime on a local, national, and international level. It’s not a bad place to begin. It’s true, after all — none of the confusing and detrimental decisions being made by this rising regime we’re dealing with is normal. And yet, people are trying to make this situation in which we’re now living normal.

“Stop protesting,” they say. “Accept your new president. Get a job.”

They try to silence voices of dissent while their demagogue leaders silence voices of fact-seeking and science.

This is not normal.

Then again, neither am I.

I’ve never been ‘normal.’ Even before my diagnoses began to emerge, I didn’t fit in very well. Teachers told my parents that I would “always march to the beat of [my] own drummer.” In a way, for a long time, I’ve been afraid to truly stand out, or assert my own goals or personality. I felt more comfortable trying to weave it into the patterns of others, in their individual lives or the life of a community. I never really took care of or connected with myself; I made the needs and wants of others more of a concern. When my own desires would emerge, I’d be impulsive or even reckless in pursuing them, and then berate or flagellate myself (or worse) in the aftermath. I understand now how typical that is of those with bipolar disorder, even my less severe flavor of Type II.

That impulsiveness or recklessness was never normal, nor is it, nor will it ever be.

Some chose to subscribe to the interpretation that they were, and are, and always will be.

Those toxic, short-sighted, and regressive perceptions of me are not normal.

Just like this new regime and its toxic, short-sighted, and regressive decisions are not normal.

I think that’s an underlying reason why people trying to normalize such things pisses me off. It’s the same sort of normalization people tried to ascribe to my aberrant behavior.

I don’t know where this infection of imagination came from. I don’t know why so many people, some of whom I used to believe were incredibly adept at imagining others complexly and engaging in progressive, independent thought, fell so easily into group-think tendencies and mob mentalities. Correcting erroneous thinking and toxic behavior is never a simple, once-and-done affair; it takes sustained, thoughtful, compassionate effort.

Some people, I guess, just don’t care enough to do that.

That should not be, nor should it ever be, normal.

We are on this planet together. We are in this fight for survival together. And we will not survive if we continue to tear ourselves apart just to get one over on our neighbor.

We need to fight back against ignorance and mindless mob mentalities. We need to demand more comprehensive and compassionate allowance for the rights of individual human beings. We need to put a stop to the toxicity and fascism.

Because it is not normal.

500 Words on Time Management

Gears

There was an invasion in our apartment earlier this week. It happened without warning, and before any of us knew it, we were all in varying states of incapacitation. We felt powerless to move much, let alone be productive or get much accomplished.

I’m not sure what the bug was, but it killed my brain by way of my sinuses on around Tuesday evening.

Caught in a miasma of enzymes, pain, face drainage, and general blargitude, I struggled to hold onto what I felt was a renewed sense of productivity. Unfortunately, my body did not agree with this intention. My immune system was throwing haymakers at whatever had invaded my body, and that required copious amounts of spoons. I rode it out until around this morning, mostly gaming through it.

Incidentally, I have no idea why it took me so long to get around to finishing the Witcher games, and I haven’t even touched the Wild Hunt yet. Which is odd, considering I made it into the Gwent beta — a pretty solid game, so far.

Still, in spite of the best efforts of the bugs (remember, kids, the only good bug is a dead bugdo your part!), I was able to crank out the words. Only a few hundred a day, but considering I was huddled in my bathrobe reaching shakily for coffee treated with special chocolate syrup and frothy hemp milk, I still consider that a triumph. I made good use of my time.

Time management can be extremely problematic for creative types. A lot of my time over the past year has been taken up by the Work, especially since Starbucks and I parted ways. Getting to a place where I’ve felt comfortable carving out the space to invest myself in the words that need to be written seemed less important than unearthing and celebrating my truest Self, investing in the best alchemist I can be, on a daily basis. It was my niece’s input on the novel in progress that rekindled the fire in me to get it done, to entertain as well as inspire, to give people like my niece a protagonist who neither falls into old tropes nor bores the reader. It’s important, now more than ever.

Time management is undoubtedly an ‘adult’ skill, and by their nature, creative folks may not have the best grasp of ‘adult’ skills. There’s a reason for that: we haven’t lost our whimsy. We still want to play. We still prefer the worlds in our heads. The key is to utilize that energy, focus it into what we’ll manifest, and help others see what we see, wonder at what we wonder.

It can be difficult to feel empowerment. To let others in like that. To believe we’re worthy of the accolades and success.

It’s risky to manage your time to make that happen, rather than playing.

But the things we play with were created by people who faced the same struggle.

And we should repay them in kind.

On Fridays I write 500 words.

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