Day #3 – Starting Late in the Day

Daily Story Project

I did not get up early and do my 500 words this morning before work. Only day 3 and I’ve already fallen off the pattern. But I’m still going to write my 500 damn words today. As long as the day isn’t over, I’m still doing what I need to do, what I want to do. I’m still making it happen. I’m still exhibiting an internal locus of control.

I went to bed last night before 8 PM, and remained in bed, with one exception to get up and piss, until about 10 or 15 minutes past my normal “You have to get up now or be late to work” alarm at 6:15 AM. More than 10 hours in bed. I was tired from having had a very stressful day at work, a day when two major systems at work broke at the same time, affecting nearly everyone. It required help from two other techs, actually. And I didn’t do much but watch them troubleshoot and apply the fix. I helped a bit, but it was demoralizing how little help I was able to offer. And all that stress and demoralization combined to make me really tired at the end of the day, so I went straight to bed and stayed there until well past time to get up.

I dreamed about travel and connection like I always do. That’s all I dream about these days.

When I finally made it into work this morning I felt the emptiness inside even more than usual. And I knew I had to do something about it. I wanted, I have been wanting, to see a therapist or counselor to talk about my sadness and emptiness. Honestly, I’ve been needing some talk therapy for a long time now, but since getting health insurance two months ago on my new job, it’s been even more pressing. Just couldn’t get the energy to actually make the calls, though. It was only a couple of weeks ago that I called my insurance hotline to get a list of in-network counselors, and then just the idea of starting to call down the list and make appointments would literally make me sleepy. My brain did not want to cooperate in this whole “fix my thinking” project.

On my lunch break, I walked out to my car; I wanted to call in private and there wasn’t any conference room I could use at work and I don’t have my own office. I called the first two names on the list. Because it was lunchtime, I got voice mail. I left a brief message. Then I complained about not getting a person or an appointment to my friends via text, because, hey, I wanted to let them know I’m taking steps but I also wanted them to know I was struggling. One of my friends offerred to give me the name of their therapist, but when I agreed, he said he’d get it to me later, which felt a little too raw to me. I’m sure he was just busy but did he not understand I was feeling blocked?

While I was writing this, though, one of the therapists has called me back. I didn’t recognize the number so it went to voicemail. Turnabout is fair play, I guess? I will call them back now. And I’ve written my 500 words (actually 553).

Day #2 – Dreams and More Dreams

Daily Story Project

So I just need to force the words out, huh? Brilliant. I’m sitting here in my office (second bedroom, where the computer is) with a half-eaten bowl of oatmeal and some coffee. I’ve got about a half-hour until I have to leave for work. Is this enough time to write 500 words? I would hope so. Maybe.

My job is salary so it’s not 100% required for me to be there right on time, but I took a mental health day yesterday and managed to leave a mistake for someone else at work to fix so I’m both eager to go in (to show that I regret my mistake) and reluctant to go in (to show my face after having made that mistake). I mean, it wasn’t a big technical mistake but it was a political one, involving someone with a high level of authority and a reputation for being very detail-oriented, so my anxiety brain is trying very hard to make it a big deal.

Last night I had two very odd dreams. Well, one dream that flowed together. In the first one, a friend talked me into arranging a threesome with a mid-level celebrity. When I approached the celebrity, it turned out she was more attracted to me (it was a dream, just go with it). But when my friend showed up, with the expectation that we would all, y’know, be on the same page as it were, I worried that he would talk about the prior arrangement he and I made and that that would piss off the woman.

I have no idea what that all says about me.

In the second dream, I got an email from an attractive woman I am an acquaintance with an odd attachment. I was on my Mac so I didn’t think twice about trying to open it, but of course, it turned out to be a virus and began deleting my files. In the dream I wasn’t that worried; more annoyed than worried as I have (in real life) redundant backups. I wasn’t going to lose anything, just some time in getting everything cleaned up and back in working order. I should’ve knowed.

361 words.

OK, this is humbling. What else can I say? I’m just writing my confusion and inability to write now. And I’m super conscious of every word I write. This is going to take forever.

This plan, to get me writing again, is actually Step 1 of building a new life, actually. I almost don’t want to put it out there, but if I can write regularly, then the next step is to try to sell what I write, to get some extra income and build up that business until I can make writing my full-time job. Now is a terrible time in the economy to try this – ideally, I’d have done this years ago. But better late than never, I suppose.

There. It’s out there. Nobody is going to see this, though, so it hardly matters at this point. I’m primarily admitting it to myself.

506 words. Done for now.

500 Words a Day for a Month #1

Daily Story Project

I’m out of the practice of writing. I have been for a long while now. Although in my head I’m still a “writer” (though never a paid one (OK, I’ve sold some work for hire for pennies but that hardly counts, does it?)) I haven’t really written anything substantial for far too many years.

Oh, I’ve tried. I’ve forced some words out of myself here and there. I’ve worked on My Novel™ off and on. I’ve started other projects; I’ve got a nifty idea for a post-apocalypse story that I have maybe 8,000 words on, for example. But it always peters out.

I’ve started NaNoWriMo many times and never finished, never “won”. You’d think the excitement of being one of a group, of being part of something larger, and the routine and deadline would all combine to carry me across the finish line. Sadly, no, it has never done that for me.

It’s been said that habit can carry one past where motivation wanes. OK, maybe I made that up, but I did not invent the core idea: motivation is fleeting and hard to maintain, but if you have built a solid habit of something, that repetition will help you keep going until motivation returns. I know I’ve read this somewhere.

I’m going to try it. I’m going to set a goal, just as an experiment, to force myself to write 500 words a day for 30 days. Starting with this post (239 words to this point). Let’s see how far I get.

What am I going to write about? I can’t worry about that. I can tell stories about my day. I can write down my dreams (ugh, I know, right?) I can write how-tos about computer stuff since that’s my day job. I can talk about politics because that’s a central obsession of my life these days (things are terrible right now, y’all).

But the important thing is to just get words down, regularly, daily, over a long-but-also-manageable period of time because hopefully, I can get back in the saddle, as it were (have I ever talked about the first and last time I ever rode a horse? I was very young and I have never even wanted to try it again since then because, yes, I fell on my ass and got laughed at). What was I saying? Oh, right, I want to write again. I have things to say but there’s an internal, mental block when it comes to actually write them all down. (411 words – just keep going, man).

I do not promise that these will be amazing, or even artistic or clever or, frankly, coherent. This is an experiment, and the audience is primarily me. To that end, I’m not going to promote these posts in general. If you’re reading this, I’m sorry, but also, thank you, and please keep this in mind: if you want to encourage me, just keep it simple. I’m not looking for suggestions on what to write, and I’m not looking for feedback on what I’ve written. Just notice what I’m doing; that’s all I need. Thanks.

513 words. Day one is in the bag.

That Big Gap in the Middle

fear

That old novel idea has been bubbling around in my brain again. The idea has been with me for a long time, years now. I’ve made at least two attempts at it but I’ve never been able to write it all down, start to finish, so I hesitate to call my previous attempts “drafts”. I have spent a lot of effort on it, though, and I have tons of notes and character ideas and themes… but when I try to think of the actual plot, as in the series of events that happen over the course of the story, my brain just kind of fuzzes out.

I spent some time in the last couple of weeks stuffing clever people’s ideas about premise vs. plot into my head, and I came to the decision that I will write down everything I think needs to happen, and then see if that will tell me what I need to work on still.

So I did.

That big gap in the middle… that’s the problem.

Each color represents a different main character, although I have a couple of other characters I still need to add. But seeing it all laid out like that… you see that big gap in the middle-ish? That’s the part I’m struggling with. I don’t really know what happens there.

Turns out it was helpful to write it all down. I can spend some time thinking about that gap and figuring out what needs to happen to connect the beginning and end.

And, honestly… maybe it’s OK for the protagonist (in blue) to be simply reactive to what the antagonist is doing in the early part of the story. Maybe that leads to a breaking point where they have to push through their weakness, the one that keeps holding them back, and be more proactive.

I really identify with them right now. Time to be more proactive…

Learning to Be Bored Again

Tech

Discovered this article, and it made me want to… write about it:

Do Not Disturb: How I Ditched My Phone and Unbroke My Brain – by Kevin Roose.

I, like the author, don’t want to give up my phone entirely; I just want to use my phone but get back all the habits I had before I got one, like reading books, watching movies, and talking to my friends without interrupting myself by poking at the digital tit (that’s a bad metaphor, I know, don’t @ me).

This quote, in particular, stands out to me: “If I was going to repair my brain, I needed to practice doing nothing.” And that cuts right to the core: if I feel even a momentary, tiny amount of boredom, I reach for the phone, because it offers so many distractions from boredom.

But when I used to get bored, that’s when I would think about my life, my friends, story ideas, or just whatever was going on around me. So I guess my next step is to start identifying those urges to relieve boredom and see if I can deprioritize the phone and try something else instead.

I’ve done this before, or at least taken a step or two in this direction when I would practice reading with no internet time; an internet-free zone, if you will. I kept it up for a while but then the excuses for not doing it piled up to the point where I was back on my bullshit.

Like any habit or any skill, it’ll take time to get better at it. The first step is noticing, and then putting it into practice. Here I go again.

Yes, This Was a Real Dream

General
Just woke up from a dream
where I was telling my mom about
the time I decided to take the bus
downtown,
and got asked by a woman on a run
for a stick of gum
(which I didn’t have)
so I offered to buy her some
at the convenience store down the street
so I ran back into my apartment
to get some change from my change jar
and discovered my front room was a bar
with people wandering around
because the bar was having an open mic
but not until later (the bar opened at 4 PM)
so I shooed them out
and locked the door
and had to crawl out the window
to walk to the store
jingling the coins in my hand
and counting them over and over
to meet the woman
and buy her some gum.

Interactions of the Slow Decay of Physical Objects and Stress-induced Depression

fear

Months ago, during the cold rainy late winter/early spring, my driver’s side window stopped going up just after I had gotten to work and shown the guard my badge. Having no time to deal with it on a cold rainy morning, I covered the window with a handy piece of cardboard and went to work.

That evening after work I drove my car over to my dad’s house, where he helped me with the initial diagnosis: the window switch for the power windows. I bolted the window closed, left the inside door panel off because I figured I’d put it all back once I had the part, and drove it that way for a couple of days.

But when the switch arrived, it turned out to not be the faulty part. Nope, it was the motor and regulator. Once more to search online for a cheap replacement, and another few days driving my car with the guts of the door exposed until the motor showed up.

But at the time I was going through a wearying game of not being able to pay my rent, and fighting with my landlord about it, and all my mental energy went towards two things: trying to keep my job so I’d at least have some money, and hoping I could land a better paying job so I could keep the apartment I had lived in for 19 years. I had no more energy for fixing a functional but decaying car.

I limped by with the window still bolted in place for another couple of weeks. The car’s state matched my mental state: just holding on but clearly falling apart. I couldn’t roll down the window, and with the inside door panel still not replaced, I had to pull a lever to open the door. But it was OK for now. And I thought I was OK for the moment, too.

Weeks later I did get the motor installed, and for now, the window went up and down. I was dismayed to find out, however, that the window still got stuck sometimes about halfway closed. I had to pull at it, or push it up from underneath, to get it to close completely sometimes. Not always, but often enough that I just stopped rolling down my window unless I absolutely had to.

I stopped rolling down the window when it was nice out; I’d just run the a/c. I didn’t roll it down for the security guards at work; just pressed my badge against the window. At gas stations, I’d open the door to give my credit card to the attendant unless I felt really lucky. I noticed that the window got jammed less frequently on warmer days, more on colder or wetter days.

But my stress and depression kept increasing, which led to me taking at least a day off every week, which meant I didn’t get paid (I’d long since used up my paid sick time), which meant it was harder and harder to pay my rent. A classic downward spiral.

Letters from lawyers began to arrive, and I had to do something, so I admitted defeat, packed up most of my stuff, and found a room with family I could stay in temporarily until I could find cheaper living quarters.

One day, I was getting out of my car, and the metal rod that opened the door got caught on a pocket of my pants. It tore my pants and snapped the rod out of place. I tried to see how it went back in but was too frustrated to really try.

Again, rather than fixing the mechanical problem, I just adapted to the new normal. I’d roll my window down to reach outside and unlatch the door that way. But I wouldn’t roll it all the way down; just to the point where it wouldn’t jam. And even then, sometimes the window needed a little push or pull to go all the way back up.

There I was, driving around with the guts of my door in my peripheral vision. It reminded me every time I drove that I was failing. Was my mental state causing me to give up? Or was I giving up and causing things to fail? I knew that the window jamming in the channels was causing strain on the motor, and it would all eventually fail. But for now…

It all worked… just barely. I could live with it. I had to work on finding a more permanent place to live. I had to keep my job. I had to focus on other things.

This past week, the window stopped going up and down again.  It made nasty grinding sounds. It happened when I was on my way to a drug test I had to pass to get a potential raise at work (long story made short: I would still be a contractor but there would be one less middleman taking a cut of my pay). I climbed over the center console and out the passenger door and realized I had let things slide too far.

I told no one about this until Saturday morning. I knew I had to repair this car. And I had the mental energy to do it because I had gotten the raise. I was fixing my financial life. I could fix my transportation, too.

I texted my friend Ken to ask him if he had any time soon to help me fix the window and the door latch and put it all back together. I needed help.

His reply:

Bring it over.

No questions asked. Just bring it over. I knew he had his kids this weekend and he loves his kids very much. I felt a bit of panic. Right now?! I asked him if I was interrupting any plans he had.

Meh. It’s fine. I miss my friend and need some normal interaction time.

I drove it over there and we disassembled the window again and found the broken part. A drive out to the U-Pull-It junkyard on a pleasant summer day, a hunt for the part, and then back to his garage. When we got it assembled, I pointed out it still was slow or sluggish at the same point and felt resigned to defeat.

Ken messed with the window a bit and pointed out that there was a way to adjust how the regulator was angled, and just like that, the window went up and down as smooth as butter.

Then he dug around in the door and got the metal rod back in place to open the door from the inside. All I had to do was replace the inside door panel, and it would be back to the normal level of old car, and not Millennium Falcon level of open panels and exposed wiring. I didn’t do that there, at Ken’s house, because the parts were all back at my house. But I instantly felt better.

Tonight, I got the door panel back on and took the car for a little spin before bedtime. I actually enjoyed driving it, instead of the dread and regret I felt for having neglected it for so long. It’s working now just as designed.

Did I fix my car because I am fixing my life? Or is fixing my life helping me get the things around me fixed, too? I had to ask Ken for help, something that has been very difficult for me, and I assumed he wouldn’t be able to. He, however, like most of my friends and family, was immediately ready to assist.

I didn’t have the capacity to ask for help these last several months; in fact, none of my friends even knew my car wasn’t working right. But now, knowing I’m getting paid more for the same work, I could ask.

Which part is cause, and which, effect?

Skyrim Memories – Coda

Gaming

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As of today, about an hour ago, I collected my last achievement in Skyrim. Not even the Special Edition. Oldrim, the original.

Paid a guy online to transfer my saves to PC, bought a second copy of the game, and kept going. I’ve played stealth archer builds, magic-only builds. I’ve played it vanilla, I’ve modded it. I thought I’d done it all. I always assumed I was in it for the story and the immersion and that I didn’t care about being a completist. Figured I just had some Hearthfire achievements to get and didn’t care.

When the Special Edition came out, I started another whole playthrough, too, so there are another 150+ hours on a brand-new character.

When the Special Edition came out, I started another whole playthrough, too, so there are another 150+ hours on a brand-new character.

But… a couple of weeks ago I decided to see what achievements I still had left to get. There were 12: two of the College of Winterhold quests (despite me having done that whole quest chain at least three times; not sure why those were in there); a couple of crime-related ones like having a 1000 septim bounty in every hold or escaping from jail; fighting a legendary dragon, which, again, I am almost certain I have done several times on my highest-level ‘toon (level 81); craft something from stalhrim; and the aforementioned house-building achievements.

I’m done. But that doesn’t mean I’ve spent my last hour in Skyrim. I will return.

I love this game.

No Ghosts but What We Imagine

General
Went out to get some dinner, stopped at the library to pick up a hold, then didn’t want to go straight home. Saw the full moon in the deep indigo sky, yellow and unfocused by the high thin clouds, and just drove around and sang along with a favorite playlist.
 
And everything around me had a memory attached to it. I’ve lived in this patch of the world for so long now.
 
That song reminded me of a similar dark night in a different car a long time ago.
 
Drove through downtown Milwaukie and remembered seeing a movie with an old friend at the theater there on a similar cold night.
 
That back street? In high school, my friend with the car would drive up and down it, very fast, too fast. How did we never crash?
 
There’s the street corner I would wait for the bus when coming home from my girlfriend’s house.
 
I’ve lived here, in this little corner of Portland, in this 3 square mile patch of Oregon and America and the world, for so long now. I’m surrounded by ghosts, except I’m an atheist, so I call them memories.
 
I’m feeling sad and lost, and eager. Ready for change, and yet tired of changing. Rootless but grounded.
 
Goodbye old year. So long, farewell, see you never again.
 
Hello new year, hi, welcome, ready or not here I come.

A Simple Trick: Disabling a Specific Key

Tech

Most of the time, I learn something new because I have a problem to solve. I’ll tolerate some annoyances as long as they’re minor but if they go on for a while or start becoming worse, I go looking for a solution.

I’ve been playing Fallout 4 a bit lately. I know I’m not the most dextrous gamer around. I am, however, far more comfortable with mouse and keyboard than I am with any controller. So when I get into a combat situation and I start flailing around on the keyboard trying to shoot the super mutants, I have found myself hitting the Windows key, which pauses the game and drops me back to the desktop.

Supermutants are simple. Here, Strong tells us its entire character arc.
Super mutants are simple. Here, Strong tells us its entire character arc.

The first few times I just groaned, alt-tabbed back to the game, hit ESC and carried on. But it kept happening. I knew there must be a way to just turn off the Windows key entirely, at least while I was playing. Trouble is, I use that key regularly when I’m not playing. What about a more elegant solution?

Enter AutoHotkey (AHK). It’s a scripting program that runs in the background, waits for keyboard input, and then uses that to trigger actions. I use it as a text expander already: when I type “sphn”, for instance, AHK will expand that to my phone number. Super handy!

And as it turns out, there’s a way to get to have specific key combinations tied to specific programs. So I could have it just ignore the Windows key, but only when Fallout 4 had the focus.

I went looking, and found that I only had to add the following lines to an AHK script I’m already using:

#IfWinActive, ahk_class Fallout4
~LWin Up:: return

The first line tells AHK to only run the next line if the window that’s named “Fallout4” is the active window. And the next line is what I want to happen: do nothing at all when the Windows key is released.

Now, no matter what flailing I do when feral ghouls attack, I won’t take myself out of the game by tapping the wrong key, letting me stay in the moment. Much better!

There’s probably plenty more uses for this trick, like re-mapping all the controls (or just the annoying ones) in a stubborn program. Thankfully, AHK is well-documented. For now, though, I’m happy I went looking for the answer to this question.