There's life underground ...
...And we're feeling a bit CHUD-like lately. If only spring would hurry up.
I was going to do a big post about RadCon, but I was rather an underwhelming presence at RadCon this year, so you should probably go read about it from others. I hid in the hotel room to edit some. I hung out with Lori and Amanda, as is my wont, and acquired some sparklies (also my wont - thanks Lori and Mr. Sweetie!). But I was too tired for the parties, and the dance wasn’t any good, (you know it's no good when the 20 year old says "I'm too old for this crap") and someone pulled the fire alarm anyway, so Lori and Amanda and I left instead of looking for more people to hang out with. We mostly just talked with and entertained each other - which was fun, but perhaps a little clannish of us. We did talk with Jonathan Tweet and had dinner with him, and that was fun. And we celebrated Scott's book launch, and I went to his reading, and he did really well. The books sound great! Go pre-order 'Blood and Ashes' right now! But honestly, I was feeling far too overwhelmed in general to feel comfortable in panels or at parties. Partly it’s the time of the year, and partly it’s the anticipation of things ahead, and partly there’s some other stuff I’m coping with. I’m busy artistically, and I’m trying to be social, and apparently I'm a bear in human clothes who wants to hibernate the winter away.
February is typically depicted as a difficult month for folks: it’s still winter, but winter seems really long by this point, and it’s dark and cold and wet - in this hemisphere, anyway - and spring seems a long way off. Perhaps the southern hemisphere feels the same way about August. In any case, many people in the northern hemisphere find February emotionally and physically daunting, and take it out on the arbitrary ordering we’ve put to our days. Poor February; it’s not the very beginning of the year anymore, so it’s easy to already find oneself behind on all your promised projects and goals, even though it feels like you should have some leeway with it, because jeez, the year just started, right? But we’re all only human, and we are, in this society, prone to over-scheduling and perhaps over-optimism on our ability to handle said over-scheduling. And if you’re like me, you’re an introvert who keeps thinking like an extrovert, and is always surprised at an innate inability to handle the amount of things that seem to need doing, along with all the things you (I) want to do.
In other words, our house is a shambles, and it’s driving me crazy, but just the thought of doing the *work* of organizing and cleaning and fixing and getting my shit together makes me curl up under a blanket and pretend I have house elves, but they’re on vacation. Also life elves. Maybe I can pay bears to do this stuff. They couldn't be worse at it.
I could say it’s the edits that are keeping me from getting crap done, but it’s really my own overwhelmed and overtired self. I keep being mildly social, you see, and then I keep needing naps. Maybe it’s not fair to blame my introversion plus winter for my deep and abiding laziness, but I’m going to do it anyway. I like being mildly social - I like having people over, or going to see people, going to cons and hanging out with writers and talking about writing. I don't like chores. Who does? I get grumpy without enough sunshine. Who doesn't? But it feels like going out at all diminishes my ability to manage daily life. But not going out makes me crabby.
Of course there’s dance class. Dance class is entirely necessary for me. It’s not even what I would consider really a 'going out' thing - I am friends, or at least friendly, with the majority of the people at my studio, and I don’t feel unease like I do when I enter a room where I don’t know anyone. I feel supported and mostly liked and understood to be who I am (weird, a little awkward, usually nice, learns choreography sort of quickly, if with uneven ability) and felt kindly toward. So it’s not like I worry about being a dork every single second, like I do in some other social situations.
But it does mean I’m not at home for those hours, which means when I get home, I want to decompress and deflate and melt and widen, you know? Like you can unbutton buttons and take off bras and slouch more slouchily and not have to smile if you aren’t up to smiling. Because home is where you do that, where family (i.e. Mr. Sweetie) lets you be you in your most relaxed state, already knowing that your hair looks inane in the morning and that your favorite robe has food stains on it and you have a tendency to snarl when someone wakes you up out of a sound sleep, and loves you anyway. (I really might be a bear.) I feel the need to decompress when I get home, even after dance has decompressed me in a different way. but decompressing isn’t about getting anything done, it’s about slouching and widening and letting the noisy brain quiet down, and so I’m getting to bed later than I should, and still the chores aren’t getting done, on dance days. And on non-dance days, I’m editing, or I'm avoiding editing due to freak outs, and I’m getting a chore or two done if I’m lucky, and saving the rest for the weekend. And then the weekend comes, and if I’m not being social, then I’m recovering from being social the previous weekend, and freaking out over edits, so I sleep late and then sit around and read to quiet the chittering brain some more, and the house is still a shambles. (The voice in my head tells me I should quit whining and get the house clean, also just do the taxes already, and putting things off doesn’t make them better. That voice is not really helping as much as it thinks it is.)
So the thought of doing the projects and chores that are piling up makes me overwhelmed, and even less likely to do them. Take them one at a time, I hear that voice saying in my head, just pick up one thing and do it, shut up and get it done. That is how I get anything done at all - thanks disparaging voice - but it makes me feel guilty and tired. February, poor thing, makes me tired. The only light at the end of the tunnel, is that there is now light at the end of the tunnel - the daylight is getting noticeably longer, and it’s amazing how just the thought of a lighter sky at 530 is cheering. It doesn’t organize a closet or do my taxes, but it does make me feel slightly less like hiding in said closet at the thought of doing my taxes. Not enough to get them done yet, apparently, but I’m not sitting at the back of my closet, reading with a flashlight, so there must be some hope.
I am working my way through this round of edits, and after each freakout over not being able to fix something or other, I tend to think of a way to fix that something or other, and then move on to the next freakout. I might - might - be done by March 2nd, which is about when I promised to get them back to my Very Patient Editor ™. I consider that a minor miracle, considering the depth and frequency of my inability to cope recently. There are a few things to blame my inability to cope on - real, not-good things - but mostly I think we can blame February. Blame winter. Blame it on the rain (yeah, yeah). Blame introversion coupled with a crazy desire to be an extrovert. Blame time lavished on extra-curricular activities - such as dance. Although dance may be one of the few things keeping me at all sane.
And of course, now dance will be taking up more of my time, because rehearsals are starting for the show in a few months. The big annual show - I’ll be in 4 pieces for sure this year. A modern, a jazz, and a ballet-vs-jazz a la ‘West Side Story’ that should be fantastic. And then there’s my piece - my not-so-secret dance project. I choreographed a modern dance for my friend Jay Lake, and (with a lot of help from my dancers and other dance friends) had a video made for him. Marlo has agreed to let us dance it in the show. So a dance that I choreographed will be performed in front of an audience, on a stage, with lighting and such. When it comes closer to it, I’m going to be so very, very nervous.
It’s a big artistic year for me. A dance, then a book. And I’ll start (and maybe with luck) finish the sequel to the first book. Dancing and writing are huge joys for me, as well, of course, as all the work that goes into them. Hard work can be a joy, and I’m trying to focus on that to drag me out of the crabby beary February of the heart. Luckily the fact that actual February - poor, hardworking month - is almost over, is a bit of a help. Rawr.
I was going to do a big post about RadCon, but I was rather an underwhelming presence at RadCon this year, so you should probably go read about it from others. I hid in the hotel room to edit some. I hung out with Lori and Amanda, as is my wont, and acquired some sparklies (also my wont - thanks Lori and Mr. Sweetie!). But I was too tired for the parties, and the dance wasn’t any good, (you know it's no good when the 20 year old says "I'm too old for this crap") and someone pulled the fire alarm anyway, so Lori and Amanda and I left instead of looking for more people to hang out with. We mostly just talked with and entertained each other - which was fun, but perhaps a little clannish of us. We did talk with Jonathan Tweet and had dinner with him, and that was fun. And we celebrated Scott's book launch, and I went to his reading, and he did really well. The books sound great! Go pre-order 'Blood and Ashes' right now! But honestly, I was feeling far too overwhelmed in general to feel comfortable in panels or at parties. Partly it’s the time of the year, and partly it’s the anticipation of things ahead, and partly there’s some other stuff I’m coping with. I’m busy artistically, and I’m trying to be social, and apparently I'm a bear in human clothes who wants to hibernate the winter away.
February is typically depicted as a difficult month for folks: it’s still winter, but winter seems really long by this point, and it’s dark and cold and wet - in this hemisphere, anyway - and spring seems a long way off. Perhaps the southern hemisphere feels the same way about August. In any case, many people in the northern hemisphere find February emotionally and physically daunting, and take it out on the arbitrary ordering we’ve put to our days. Poor February; it’s not the very beginning of the year anymore, so it’s easy to already find oneself behind on all your promised projects and goals, even though it feels like you should have some leeway with it, because jeez, the year just started, right? But we’re all only human, and we are, in this society, prone to over-scheduling and perhaps over-optimism on our ability to handle said over-scheduling. And if you’re like me, you’re an introvert who keeps thinking like an extrovert, and is always surprised at an innate inability to handle the amount of things that seem to need doing, along with all the things you (I) want to do.
In other words, our house is a shambles, and it’s driving me crazy, but just the thought of doing the *work* of organizing and cleaning and fixing and getting my shit together makes me curl up under a blanket and pretend I have house elves, but they’re on vacation. Also life elves. Maybe I can pay bears to do this stuff. They couldn't be worse at it.
I could say it’s the edits that are keeping me from getting crap done, but it’s really my own overwhelmed and overtired self. I keep being mildly social, you see, and then I keep needing naps. Maybe it’s not fair to blame my introversion plus winter for my deep and abiding laziness, but I’m going to do it anyway. I like being mildly social - I like having people over, or going to see people, going to cons and hanging out with writers and talking about writing. I don't like chores. Who does? I get grumpy without enough sunshine. Who doesn't? But it feels like going out at all diminishes my ability to manage daily life. But not going out makes me crabby.
Of course there’s dance class. Dance class is entirely necessary for me. It’s not even what I would consider really a 'going out' thing - I am friends, or at least friendly, with the majority of the people at my studio, and I don’t feel unease like I do when I enter a room where I don’t know anyone. I feel supported and mostly liked and understood to be who I am (weird, a little awkward, usually nice, learns choreography sort of quickly, if with uneven ability) and felt kindly toward. So it’s not like I worry about being a dork every single second, like I do in some other social situations.
But it does mean I’m not at home for those hours, which means when I get home, I want to decompress and deflate and melt and widen, you know? Like you can unbutton buttons and take off bras and slouch more slouchily and not have to smile if you aren’t up to smiling. Because home is where you do that, where family (i.e. Mr. Sweetie) lets you be you in your most relaxed state, already knowing that your hair looks inane in the morning and that your favorite robe has food stains on it and you have a tendency to snarl when someone wakes you up out of a sound sleep, and loves you anyway. (I really might be a bear.) I feel the need to decompress when I get home, even after dance has decompressed me in a different way. but decompressing isn’t about getting anything done, it’s about slouching and widening and letting the noisy brain quiet down, and so I’m getting to bed later than I should, and still the chores aren’t getting done, on dance days. And on non-dance days, I’m editing, or I'm avoiding editing due to freak outs, and I’m getting a chore or two done if I’m lucky, and saving the rest for the weekend. And then the weekend comes, and if I’m not being social, then I’m recovering from being social the previous weekend, and freaking out over edits, so I sleep late and then sit around and read to quiet the chittering brain some more, and the house is still a shambles. (The voice in my head tells me I should quit whining and get the house clean, also just do the taxes already, and putting things off doesn’t make them better. That voice is not really helping as much as it thinks it is.)
So the thought of doing the projects and chores that are piling up makes me overwhelmed, and even less likely to do them. Take them one at a time, I hear that voice saying in my head, just pick up one thing and do it, shut up and get it done. That is how I get anything done at all - thanks disparaging voice - but it makes me feel guilty and tired. February, poor thing, makes me tired. The only light at the end of the tunnel, is that there is now light at the end of the tunnel - the daylight is getting noticeably longer, and it’s amazing how just the thought of a lighter sky at 530 is cheering. It doesn’t organize a closet or do my taxes, but it does make me feel slightly less like hiding in said closet at the thought of doing my taxes. Not enough to get them done yet, apparently, but I’m not sitting at the back of my closet, reading with a flashlight, so there must be some hope.
I am working my way through this round of edits, and after each freakout over not being able to fix something or other, I tend to think of a way to fix that something or other, and then move on to the next freakout. I might - might - be done by March 2nd, which is about when I promised to get them back to my Very Patient Editor ™. I consider that a minor miracle, considering the depth and frequency of my inability to cope recently. There are a few things to blame my inability to cope on - real, not-good things - but mostly I think we can blame February. Blame winter. Blame it on the rain (yeah, yeah). Blame introversion coupled with a crazy desire to be an extrovert. Blame time lavished on extra-curricular activities - such as dance. Although dance may be one of the few things keeping me at all sane.
And of course, now dance will be taking up more of my time, because rehearsals are starting for the show in a few months. The big annual show - I’ll be in 4 pieces for sure this year. A modern, a jazz, and a ballet-vs-jazz a la ‘West Side Story’ that should be fantastic. And then there’s my piece - my not-so-secret dance project. I choreographed a modern dance for my friend Jay Lake, and (with a lot of help from my dancers and other dance friends) had a video made for him. Marlo has agreed to let us dance it in the show. So a dance that I choreographed will be performed in front of an audience, on a stage, with lighting and such. When it comes closer to it, I’m going to be so very, very nervous.
It’s a big artistic year for me. A dance, then a book. And I’ll start (and maybe with luck) finish the sequel to the first book. Dancing and writing are huge joys for me, as well, of course, as all the work that goes into them. Hard work can be a joy, and I’m trying to focus on that to drag me out of the crabby beary February of the heart. Luckily the fact that actual February - poor, hardworking month - is almost over, is a bit of a help. Rawr.