the final words of this post will only be funny to one of my readers.
So, it's 2013.
First Pico's LJ entry of the year (although I do have an update to my current story up on szavasvar, but i think that doesn't count as re: rl entries)! Yes, I've sort of fallen off the face of the LJ last year/this year, and for that I don't really know what to say. I have many things I should probably talk about, forex
- books read in 2012
- + n movies watched in 2012
- books read in 2013
- + there are already three and a couple fractions...
- various life things recently
- tha future
- some other whatever I don't even know
but
what I have come to you to talk about today is this:
My words. I have no idea what's happening to them.
See, when it comes to talking aloud, Chinese syntax, structure, word choice, grammar, and slang has/have been eclipsing my English. I never thought this would be possible. Dammit, I'm a writer, I write stories, stories are made of words! I can't forget my own language! And yet here I am doing that on a daily basis in speech - it takes me several seconds or several tries to think of the proper word for a certain verbal vacancy, and by then the conversation's already moved on. The only people I can get away with speaking to with a decent level is closest friends and family, since they're willing to wait for me to access the words - people I don't know, I either filler or fall into smilence, since I have ideas but X ain't going to wait for me to shape them.
(Funnily enough this isn't happening in my written words? Thank fuck for that - I would probably have some sort of mental D: if I couldn't write/type my thoughts. (knock wood))
In writing, I guess this manifests itself in my just kind of shutting up when it comes to typographically verbalizing my thinkies - that is to say, when it comes to making LJ entries. Whenever I come to make one, this process happens:
1) I open the Update Journal page
2) I think what I should write
3) I doodle off onto the internet
4) I procrastinate
5) "I don't have time to write an LJ entry right now plus I have too many tabs open"
6) close tab.
and that.
See, my thoughts, these past months, have been like a combination of water and wolves. When they're like water, they flow about, around ideas that pop up, but never coalescing, though I try to get them to - on a superficial level they might, but there's never a deep freeze. OTOH, some thoughts (ideas, mental patterns, and suchlike) have been hounding me, at my heels at every turn even though I don't want them there, sinking their teeth into my free time and my before-sleep time. (See also: uncalled hormones and uninvited emotional patterns are stupid and need to learn how to leave me the fuck alone when I want them to.) These are the ones that have the rest of my thoughts in a muddy, unsettled roil, and when you mix those two metaphors together you end up with something like the La Brea Tar Pits. In my brain.
All in all, I've been really, really glad to come home.
Not that I haven't been liking it in Harbin. But I'll protest too much about that later. What matters is: by judicious applications of Wonderful People, At Home, Good Books, and My Own Space, I've been lego-bricking my thoughts back together. And not just my thoughts - I'm getting back into good personal habits, like having decent wake/sleep hours, brushing teeth regularly, washing dishes, and making a clean of my room instead of a mess of it.
Now the work is just to keep me on track. I am tired, so fucking tired of not being able to get my thoughts straight, unmuddled, unbothered, and focused on what I want them doing.
So that's my New Year's plan: to just be better.
First Pico's LJ entry of the year (although I do have an update to my current story up on szavasvar, but i think that doesn't count as re: rl entries)! Yes, I've sort of fallen off the face of the LJ last year/this year, and for that I don't really know what to say. I have many things I should probably talk about, forex
- books read in 2012
- + n movies watched in 2012
- books read in 2013
- + there are already three and a couple fractions...
- various life things recently
- tha future
- some other whatever I don't even know
but
what I have come to you to talk about today is this:
My words. I have no idea what's happening to them.
See, when it comes to talking aloud, Chinese syntax, structure, word choice, grammar, and slang has/have been eclipsing my English. I never thought this would be possible. Dammit, I'm a writer, I write stories, stories are made of words! I can't forget my own language! And yet here I am doing that on a daily basis in speech - it takes me several seconds or several tries to think of the proper word for a certain verbal vacancy, and by then the conversation's already moved on. The only people I can get away with speaking to with a decent level is closest friends and family, since they're willing to wait for me to access the words - people I don't know, I either filler or fall into smilence, since I have ideas but X ain't going to wait for me to shape them.
(Funnily enough this isn't happening in my written words? Thank fuck for that - I would probably have some sort of mental D: if I couldn't write/type my thoughts. (knock wood))
In writing, I guess this manifests itself in my just kind of shutting up when it comes to typographically verbalizing my thinkies - that is to say, when it comes to making LJ entries. Whenever I come to make one, this process happens:
1) I open the Update Journal page
2) I think what I should write
3) I doodle off onto the internet
4) I procrastinate
5) "I don't have time to write an LJ entry right now plus I have too many tabs open"
6) close tab.
and that.
See, my thoughts, these past months, have been like a combination of water and wolves. When they're like water, they flow about, around ideas that pop up, but never coalescing, though I try to get them to - on a superficial level they might, but there's never a deep freeze. OTOH, some thoughts (ideas, mental patterns, and suchlike) have been hounding me, at my heels at every turn even though I don't want them there, sinking their teeth into my free time and my before-sleep time. (See also: uncalled hormones and uninvited emotional patterns are stupid and need to learn how to leave me the fuck alone when I want them to.) These are the ones that have the rest of my thoughts in a muddy, unsettled roil, and when you mix those two metaphors together you end up with something like the La Brea Tar Pits. In my brain.
All in all, I've been really, really glad to come home.
Not that I haven't been liking it in Harbin. But I'll protest too much about that later. What matters is: by judicious applications of Wonderful People, At Home, Good Books, and My Own Space, I've been lego-bricking my thoughts back together. And not just my thoughts - I'm getting back into good personal habits, like having decent wake/sleep hours, brushing teeth regularly, washing dishes, and making a clean of my room instead of a mess of it.
Now the work is just to keep me on track. I am tired, so fucking tired of not being able to get my thoughts straight, unmuddled, unbothered, and focused on what I want them doing.
So that's my New Year's plan: to just be better.