Goals 2022

This is probably the hardest goals post I've made. Last year I skipped it entirely because pandemic, but this year CoVID-19 vaccines are a thing and things are opening up a little bit. And that means more opportunities are coming back.

So. Goals.

- National Choreography Month in January (more on that here). I'd ideally like to choreograph at least two pieces this month. I've almost certainly decided on one of them.

- 14 dances in 12 months. Managed 12 in 12 almost by accident in 2021, and I'd like to do that again this year... but up the challenge just a little bit. No sense getting stagnant and predictable.

- Finally publish my Patreon page that's literally done, just sitting and waiting to be published. I've been putting this off because I would first need to research if income from a Patreon page would affect my husband's benefits and that is a very daunting task, especially given the lack of communication we get from his case worker, not to mention the insufferably condescending attitude they give us when we finally do get through to them. But I'll need to publish this page, especially if I want to get the training necessary to pull off a full-length show by the time I'm thirty.

- Take some freakin dance classes. Do them online downstairs in the apartment laundry room if I have to.

- Make at least two dance films. Preferably at least one of them with more than one dancer (or at least with a dancer who isn't me).

- Do a live performance of my choreography somehow, somewhere. Enter stuff into showcases and competitions that I can find all over the province. Stretch goal: stage a full-length (possibly recital-style) show.

- Actually (re)-learn some of my dances. Make a learning/rep-building schedule and actually stick to it this time. (The main goal here is to have a full-length show at least learned, if not completely ready to stage, by the end of the year.)

I really don't know how I'm going to do this one. I've tried this every year since 2018 and it still hasn't stuck. I get frustrated with myself so easily and when I do manage to focus and silence the self-hatred long enough to actually learn a piece, I get bored of doing the same dances over and over. It's also really hard to practice consistently enough to learn rep when you have no consistent practice space and work saps all of your energy.

- Busk at the farmer's market this year. It's extra cash, plus practice. It's perfect -- if only I didn't have this crippling self-doubt (thanks, college) that makes me think literally everybody at the market is going to think I'm just an annoying untalented poser and an embarrassing waste of skin. (Plus, this might also throw a wrench into my husband's benefits and dealing with his case worker is not a fun time... see above.)

- Do at least one theatre show. Last time I performed onstage was February 2020 -- less than three weeks before the shutdown. Auditions are starting to open up, slowly. I did one this past spring, but then Alberta locked down again so the show got cancelled.

- Continue posting more on this blog. I'm liking the pace I've been doing lately and I'd like to keep that up. Some of my struggle with that is just a mental block that anything I post will just result in more emotional abuse from extended family. I've really pushed this blog back into hiding to avoid some of those repercussions, and that's okay. I would rather write freely on here than have to censor myself and my work to make random people happy.

- Do NaNoWriMo again in November. I'll have to come up with an idea though.

- Publish a short story.

- Write a short story in German.

- The perennial favourite: actually finish a Kyrie revision.

- Be more intentional about getting back into the Bible and praying. But more than that, actually implementing things that it says, like being thankful, not complaining, doing justly, loving mercy...

- Pick up an instrument. Either bass or piano. Learn enough to enjoy noodling. Don't get caught up expecting to become famous.

- Save up a $1000 emergency fund -- and then only touch it for ACTUAL emergencies. Remember that 'chips' or 'I forgot to take hamburger out of the freezer so I don't know what to do for dinner' is not an emergency.

- Make the sweater that I've been meaning to make for myself.

- Make birthday presents for all my siblings as needed.

We're already off to kind of a rough start, as I've managed to get a concussion and have missed all but two workdays of this pay period. We're just barely treading water financially, and now this. Is it madness to start dance classes on 8 January -- both from a concussion standpoint and a financial standpoint? Is my dream dead in the water -- again? I've already missed two years of dance, and I'm tired of not having it in my life. But can I really justify signing up for dance again when we're going to be late on our rent and I'm going to be getting less than $230 on my next paycheque?

I guess it's still better than the annual lung infection I used to get every single year at this time. Thanks, masks.

National Choreography Month - Preamble

Written 10 December 2021, 7.45pm.

In addition to individual dances, I also have varying full-length dance shows in varying stages of completion. There's the solo tap show (written loosely around a theme of escaping this world, but mostly created as a way to do the recital that my college program director cheated me out of doing -- which, by the way, means the college will not release my diploma to me because I 'didn't fulfil the program requirements.' Because the literal program director who KNEW I needed those credits for doing that recital hated me because I wasn't the sweet perfect little pushover he wanted. There's a whole rant here, but that's not the point of this post), there's the 'character vignettes' show, there's the shows I've written (or at least sketched out) based on Crumbächer's Escape From The Fallen Planet and Daniel Amos' Doppelgänger, there's the video album concept that's been written out for over half a decade and exists in pages of Benesh notation but not much else.

A few months ago, I had a flash of inspiration. I'm reluctant to share too much because it's the first pure idea I've had in a very long time, and I don't want to get caught up in trying to make it marketable like I do with everything else. It's a very close and personal topic for me, and the whole point is to celebrate that specific, personal experience, not to strike a common chord with the masses. It's a show directed to a very specific person and if nobody else gets it except that one person, I will still have succeeded.

I have already set a opening date. It's nearly five years into the future, but honestly I'll probably need that long to get my act together. I will need two children and one extremely good adult male dancer and one relatively simple-yet-large set piece.

But more than that, I need choreography.

I've been going through songs in all genres (even country, which I notoriously strongly dislike) and cherry-picking the best ones for this show. I'm shooting for roughly an hour and a half show, and I have 35 minutes of music already (and literally two full pages of music suggestions from my music nerd Facebook groups to listen through). I was just listening to the first rough iteration of the playlist tonight and it brought tears to my eyes and chills down my spine. This is shaping up really well -- I wasn't quite sure what to expect or how it would go, but I'm pleased at my preliminary progress so far.

So for Nachmo, I'm hoping to start choreographing these songs. I already have an idea of who's going to dance what (character-wise), and the staging is fairly simple -- which is exactly the point. Conveying this special relationship is absolutely key, and if all goes well for this one, I want to do another show for my husband -- and I've already got a bit of a playlist going for that one as well.

My problem will, as usual, more likely be in actually staging it rather than choreographing it. There's the part where I will have to learn the choreography; there's the part where I will have to find (audition?) dancers; the part where I will have to secure the venue and sell tickets -- unless I make it a private showing (which is also still on the table); the part where I will have to actually build the set and hire lighting and sound techs...

I'm trying not to focus on all that for the time being. I can almost guarantee that my biggest problem will be learning the choreography and rehearsing the dancers. And this doesn't happen until I can clear that hurdle.

There is a selfish part of me that wants to stage a show before I'm thirty. The show described above would, assuming it goes ahead on the projected date, happen when I'm thirty-two. I'm still considering staging the aforementioned 'escape' show before my thirtieth birthday (that's such a big number, good lord). It's already mostly choreographed, and if I can manage to conjure up enough discipline to get my lazy butt in the dance studio on any kind of regular basis (and convince my husband that I'm actually not avoiding him, just working on the dream that he 100% knew about from day one), I could theoretically learn it rather quickly. I'm not sure what venue I would use or if maybe I would just busk it and livestream it or something...although it would feel more official if it was in an actual theatre. If I still lived in Saskatchewan, I'd just book the theatre/practice space in town for a couple of nights. There is a theatre about a twenty minute drive away from where I live now... I've never seen it, nor do I know how much it costs to rent it, but that might be something to look into. There's a theatre being built in the town where I live, but there's no ETA on when that will be completed, plus I suspect that one will cost more to rent.

I'm getting off track here.

So basically, I want to start developing the first show idea during Nachmo this year. It'll take far longer than a month (at least a year, if not two) to fully choreograph, but I want to get a good head start.

The second show idea is already mostly choreographed -- I just have to finish up a few loose ends and then learn the whole thing. I was starting to learn chunks of it in fall 2020, before the second lockdown, but then in the six months of existing only in our tiny apartment or behind the coffeepots at work, I lost almost all of it. My goal with this one is to get it fully choreographed and learned by the end of the year (if not completely cleaned).

I also have a dance film in suspended animation that was supposed to happen this year, but the third lockdown put it on pause. That is still slated to go ahead in fall 2022. I still have to memorise and clean this one for myself, as well as for the other performers.

It's not lack of ideas that's holding me back, it's lack of resources. But for the month of January at least, I only have to focus on the one thing I can control, and that's the choreography itself.

NaNoWriMo Wrap-Up

Never did do a wrap up post, and now that I'm wildly late, here we go.

I achieved my goals: 1. I passed 50k, and 2. I enjoyed doing it.

That's it. Those were my goals.

I hadn't enjoyed writing at all since M died, so 'fun' was just as important to me this year as the standard 50k mark. I used to love writing and wanted to recapture that wonder of seeing the story come together. I would say I did that. Enough to make it to the 50,000-word mark by Day 24, and to finish out with 52,086 words.

The story turned out rather good. I think it came out differently than I expected, but I'm happy with the result. It's definitely good enough to revise and publish, but that day is a long, long way off. First Kyrie, and honestly IF that ever happens the next one in line is probably my 2016 novel Father's Delight. Then probably this one.

I was honestly scared I would never enjoy writing again. Having realised now that I still can brings both joy and sadness. Joy because my ability to escape into my art is not lost forever, but sadness because I'm not doing it with someone, and because it's different now. My autistic brain has yet to accept that 'different' doesn't mean 'bad' (it has the double whammy of having to process this concept in relation to Christmas too, and that's going about as well as this is).

I would still like to do NaNoWriMo next year. I don't think this is the last hurrah. But now I need to convince my brain to come up with more plots (this year's plot was inspired by a post on the NaNoWriMo 'plot bunnies' forum ages ago, and yes, I will try to credit the person should this actually ever get published.)

Music Day - Desert Rose

I really only have two criteria for Music Day posts: 1. It must be legally available for purchase; and 2. It should be a song that means a lot to me at the time of writing.

This is a song that I always glossed over. White Heart has so many loud, interesting complex songs that I was very confused by this ballad's immense popularity. If you mention the name 'White Heart' (to anybody who even knows who White Heart is), this is, nine times out of ten, the first song they mention. And that boggled my mind -- what about Let The Kingdom Come? What about Raging Of The Moon? What about Heaven Of My Heart? I do primarily listen for the lyrics more than the music, but in ten years of listening, I never 'got' the lyrics to this particular song.

Until now.

I am currently living in a VERY remote 'small town' that is literally an hour and a half drive from any other civilisation. There are no arts, no theatre, no dance classes, not even a freakin Staples. We've talked of moving but small tourist towns like this have a way of hiking grocery and gas prices so high that it is literally impossible to put together any kind of savings in order to actually do it (gas prices have been $1.43 a litre here since July; meanwhile my parents three hours north are zipping around on $1.17 gas. In the same province).

I don't have dance and I don't have money. I'm just watching my dream wither and die without practice. And I've been crying out to God, asking why He gave me this dream only to take it away again; terrified that I'm going to die in this literal hole in the ground, completely forgotten. I'm terrified of proving my program director right when he said I would never amount to anything.

Is this one of those desert experiences that so many people in the Bible went through -- Moses, the Israelites, Elijah, Jesus...? Is there still some important thing I'm supposed to do forty years from now and I just have to go through the motions until then?

I still feel angry and ignored sometimes when I think about how Brittney and M and my cousin died and I'm still here. It's not survivor's guilt so much as it is jealousy. They already live in a place where mercy is unreceipted, but I'm not lucky enough to get that chance. Given the choice between life and death, I would absolutely pick death. I'm not suicidal, per se, but I wouldn't fight death if it came for me. This world is not my home, and I want to go home. I don't even really know what 'home' is, but I know this world isn't it. I'm just so weary of life here.

And it's hard not to despair completely when all you see is the desert rising up on all sides -- literally.

(Forgot I was supposed to be doing a Music Day post. Pretending those last five paragraphs never happened.)

The song opens with a mellow but very classic '80s keyboard intro that hints at some of the haunting woodwind flavours that the band would explore in more depth on their next album Tales Of Wonder. And the tender, clear, angelic voice of Rick Florian (who I still maintain in the greatest singer to walk the face of the earth, even after five years of listening to music of all eras and genres while acquiring a BA in Music) comes in, painting a picture of an ocean of featureless sand and the tiny beauty drowning in it.

And you wonder

You wonder

Can you last much longer

This cloud you live under

Will it cover you?

The chorus features White Heart at their band-harmony peak. Harmony was something that White Heart always excelled at (their best-known line-ups featured a minimum of four competent vocalists), and it shimmers here, floating along on that bed of gentle keyboard that Mark Gersmehl weaves throughout the song.

Sometimes holiness

Can seem like emptiness

When you feel the whole world's laughing eyes

This is the part that resonates with me. I feel abandoned, alone, empty, tossed to the side, unwanted, unneeded, and useless. I feel like I and my life have been wasted and I'm just a shell of all my old dreams and potential just shuffling around waiting to die.

After the second chorus, the heretofore muted harmonies go from backdrop to centre stage, filling the song with layers and that beautiful '80s 'big' production. Chris McHugh's fantastic drums go a long way here too, and the effect is so lush and rich that it was several years of listening to this album non-stop (because of the title track and Storyline) before I realised that there isn't actually a verse here, only vocalising and a bit of vamping from Florian. (They pull off the same stunt in their song Let The Kingdom Come from their previous album, but that time they did it by distracting the listener with truly epic guitars, giant drums, and energetic rock vocals.)

Title: Desert Rose

Artist: White Heart

Album: Powerhouse

Year: 1990

Label: Sparrow Records

iTunes here; YouTube here.

Heaven knows

Heaven knows

He will hold your tender heart

Oh desert rose...

Too Much

This week I had another close friend suddenly cut contact with me because I'm too much of an emotional drain on her.

I get it. I really do. It seems unimaginable that somebody could have such as long of a streak of abusers, deaths, and bad situations as I have. It's a lot for anyone to carry, including me. And that's why I turn to people for help and support.

Inevitably, though, my despair-ridden life overwhelms them and they 'step back' for their own mental health.

I do get it. And that almost what hurts the most. I trigger people's worst mental health symptoms. I am the reason my formerly happy friends are now suffering. Maybe depression really is contagious. Maybe I really am God's punching bag.

They say 'just be positive,' but as much as I want to, no amount of happiness and positivity is going to stop the abuse and the deaths and all that pain that just keeps piling up with nowhere to go. Forcing myself to pretend to be happy only distances me from myself because I know deep down that I'm just suppressing the pain and not dissolving it. And if I can't be honest with myself and with my friends, then who even am I? Why even bother? They're not my friends if I don't feel comfortable being honest with them, but they also say they're not my friends because I 'overshare' and I'm 'too negative' when I am honest. To me, friendship is when you can talk no holds barred and no punches pulled. If I can't do that, then you're an acquaintance, not a friend.

But if I try to honour them with my honesty, I get cut off. And the stupid thing is, I get why. I get that they need to protect themselves. But then who's left to help me pick up my shredded heart? Who's left to hold my hand? Who really means it when they say they're always there for me?

I feel like I'll always, only be too much for people. There is something fundamentally broken in me and who I am as a person and it will always ruin every person I touch. I am poison, and despite what some people say that isn't a choice. Do you think I chose to watch my family dissolve? Do you think I chose to be abused by a primary caregiver, the church, the director of my college program, and my voice teacher? Do you think I chose for my friends and my cousin to die horrible deaths? Do you really think I wanted all that to happen? If I could do my life over again, I wouldn't even be born. It wasn't worth it. There were good moments, but they don't outweigh all this insoluble pain. I would rather have never existed. Or at least I wish I had died in that car accident, when I still had the hope of a decent life ahead of me -- before anybody else died.

NaNoWriMo - End Of Day 21

Still struggled a lot this week a lot with the 'I know where this story needs to go, but I don't know how to get it there,' thing.

I knew who the villain was, and I even managed to plant some half-decent clues, but all the clues point to why the brother was murdered. I could not figure out how to plant a clue (or even what clue to plant) to bring the detective MC back to the kidnapping case that she was supposed to be working on. I've written kidnappings before, but this one seemed more difficult somehow. Maybe my standards are just so much higher now. I haven't even written a scene from the kidnapped kid's perspective in like 20,000 words because I just don't have any ideas. All she (detective) had was this 'sense' that they're connected, but absolutely zero proof of that, and I didn't know how to provide it.

MC was making a ton of progress on her brother's case though -- you know, the one she was not supposed to be working on.

It's turning into another church drama, which I guess was the point. Apparently I really like those -- exposing the sins of a so-called 'perfect' institution. This was a theme in my writing even before the church ever really hurt me. For this story I'm drifting from my usual Baptist one (Baptist churches are the worst for sweeping crap under the rug and spraying lethal amounts of Febreeze over it when it starts to stink) to a more word of faith-style church -- which I think is what a lot of Baptists have bought into anyway and that's why they treat people so badly and are so resistant to change or even admit that they might possibly be wrong (how many Christians on your news feed are both anti-vax and anti-mask right now?).

In addition, my formerly trusty Neo 2 word processor, Lila II (she was the second one), died on Day 17. This means that I can't write at work (I would get anywhere from 300-800 words in a single lunch break), and this has upset my momentum significantly. I went from easily making over 2k per day to struggling to make it to the minimum 1,667. I am still way ahead in my total word count though (currently at 45.7k, goal for Day 21 is 35k). Some very kind souls in the Discord forums sent me some resources, so I may be doing some Neo surgery come December. By my own diagnostics, it's either a loose wire or a broken/damaged trace, although I'm going to try replacing the button cell battery that I didn't know Neos had until said kind souls sent me said resources. I was at least able to back up all of her files to my computer, so I won't lose anything. If surgery goes well, I'll try to resurrect Lila, my original Neo 2, which died in 2019 following similar symptoms.

Also, the word tracker is SO helpful. I'm really glad I'm using different colours because it really makes the tracker easier to follow. And it's still really satisfying to colour in the progress bar every day (even though it's so long now that my hand gets tired. I guess that's a good problem to have). It's also come in handy when talking to people about the project -- all I have to do is flip to the spread and show them what the minimum goal is, and where I'm at in relation to it. It's all right there in one graph, and it's easier than trying to explain all these numbers to people who have little to no context for them (it also makes being 10k ahead far more impressive). I've actually had people ask to see it by way of an update. Definitely going to be doing the tracker thing again next year (and I would also really like to figure one out for National Choreography Month in January).

(And now, back to our feature presentation...)

Last night, my husband and I were talking about my stuck-ness and he mentioned footprints at the scene. And that was all I needed.

I planted the child's footprints at the scene (which also boosted my word count because then my detectives had to figure out/explain why they didn't see the footprints the first time they studied the scene) and also got the idea of the detectives re-interviewing the kid's best friend. He is proving to be much more informative than he realises -- he unwittingly gives them not only the name of the villain, but the motive behind the kidnapping.

I also know exactly how justice is going to come about now. I'm at the point now where I've tipped the starting domino of the climax, and my job from here on out is just to write like the cold snowless wind outside to keep up with the coming cascade of events. This part is one of the best parts of National Novel Writing Month. I still remember the Day 30 rush of writing 10k in one day back in 2012 not because I was that far behind but because there was so much coming together and it was beautiful and fascinating to watch. That's the moment I live for every year. That's the reason I put myself through writing an entire novel from scratch every year. And that was what I've been missing for the past seven years.

Music Day - Major Tom

Since I'm apparently on a 'secular oldies' kick, we're just going to lean into it.

Despite my love for '80s music and my copious oldies-radio-listening, I had not heard this song until early 2020 when I heard it on the local radio station on the way to my husband's family's winter vacation spot (literally weeks before the COVID shutdown). I was immediately captivated by it. Turns out this particular station really likes this song, so I heard it several times over the next few months.

It's the perfect marriage of Things I Like In Songs:

- space themes

- '80s keyboards

- rumbling bass

- harmonies

- melancholy/thoughtful/introspective lyrics

- singer with a good voice

- upbeat/danceable

- '80s production

- clear and well-built climax

- good emotional/aural dynamics

- cohesive storytelling

If you like all (or even some) of these things, have I got the song for you.

It starts out like just another '80s song -- a staccato keyboard line that builds on itself and adds in some fantastic sassy bass before settling into a subdued guitar that brings in the vocals.

Our narrator sketches out the story: a space launch, the final checks, the nerves of the crew both in the ship and on the ground, the countdown to liftoff...

The music is fairly basic during the actual storytelling, but what makes the song truly amazing is how, the second there are no lyrics, the music shoots into the stratosphere with layers of space-y keyboards that paint a rich, full, detailed scene of the galaxies as the ship hurtles farther into the deep. The story itself is compelling, but it's the musical arrangement that the lyric is placed in that takes the song a cut above all the other story songs in the world. This is not merely tone-painting, it is universe-painting.

Earth below us

Drifting, falling

Floating, weightless

Calling, calling home...

In the chorus, the music itself gives one a floating, weightless feel. The echo they put in the vocal emphasizes that 'alone in space' vibe. It's the musical representation of what one feels when they look up at the dark starry night sky in the country, times fifty.

In the second verse, Major Tom begins to doubt the reasons for the mission -- what will it affect; when all is done? His doubts begin to outweigh his confidence in the mission. Meanwhile, all that the ground crew knows is that Major Tom is not responding.

On that cliffhanger, the chorus swoops back in and carries us away again, in the suit of Major Tom alone in the vast fields of stars. There's a brilliant synth bit here that sounds exactly like a spaceship powering up and zooming off, further into the unknown.

The music settles into the backseat and Major Tom sends one final transmission -- give my wife my love... followed by a haunting harmony and sixteen counts of nothing but staccato keyboard to let the impact of what has just happened sink in to the listener -- an odd choice from a songwriting standpoint, but a brilliant choice from a storytelling/dramatic perspective.

The verse continues -- he is presumed dead, and he is content to let them believe it. His reasons for staying in space are ambiguous... is he an alien, returning home at last? is he escaping the world back home (and who wouldn't want to)? does he feel he doesn't fit in on Earth? has he been brainwashed by an alien king? Personally, I'm inclined to believe the second and third options, but Schilling gives no hints other than the ghostly words this is my home... I'm coming home...

Another eight counts to let the listener process, and then we are launched into the chorus again.

The chorus is repeated and here is where the magic really starts to happen -- it's subtle at first; the keyboard backing harmonies began to change very slightly in the second repeat, and then in the third repeat they're joined by voices and clearly building to something.

The word home explodes through the speakers/headphones in a firework display of musical and vocal harmonies that sounds so much like Shotgun Angel Daniel Amos that the first time I heard it I swore I picked out Jerry Chamberlain's voice. It's a beautiful marriage of music, voice, and concept. 'Home' in space, so far away from home; 'home' beyond the stars. It is the perfect song climax, tying everything up with a bow but at the same time showering the listener with the stars of the sky like confetti or fresh snow on our shoulders.

Fun fact: the song (actually the whole album) was originally written and recorded in German, which is, for all its harsh sounds, a very thoughtful and poetic language. It's actually ideal for writing songs that deal with complex emotions with enough logic to not be silly (looking at you, Italian). When I'm better at understanding German, I would love to revisit this song and focus on the German version of it.

Title: Major Tom (Coming Home)

Artist: Peter Schilling

Album: Error In The System (German version: Fehler Im System)

Year: 1983

iTunes here; YouTube here.

And I haven't even gotten to part II yet...

NaNoWriMo - End of Day 10

Really feeling the Week Two blues this year. Usually Week Two doesn't affect me much, and I'm surprised how much I'm struggling given how much I already know about where the story is going to end up.

That's turning out to be exactly the problem, actually. Because I already know who the villain is, I'm making it far too easy and far too obvious who it is. I recently introduced the main villain, and while he is good for word count (prosperity preachers repeating the word 'Lord' every five seconds when they pray kind of adds up after a bit), I think it's too obvious what his role is in the whole thing.

I also think I made my detective make the link between the kidnapping case and the case of her brother's murder too soon. Again, too obvious too quickly.

Right now I'm in the middle of my near-traditional Week Two dream sequence and it's saving my pace right now. I managed to build up a massive lead in the first week, and I'm trying very hard to at least make quota right now so I don't fall behind.

UPDATE: hit 25k -- the official halfway point of the contest. The dream sequence was literally seven pages long. The official goal for Day 10 is 16,670 so I'm still nearly 10k ahead of schedule.

Today was actually a really good writing day. I managed some 400ish words over breakfast and another 400-500 over my 20-minute lunch break. Altogether I had 1100 words on my Alphasmart Neo by the time I got home and joined the new stuff to the main document. That's pretty impressive considering I'm eating with one hand and typing with the other and am not able to fully relax into the story because I have to be punctual about going back on the floor.

I've been struggling to hold off with plot points because I'm terrified I'll pull a Triple Threat (my 2018 novel) and blow my whole plot in ten thousand words and have nothing left over. Going from 0 to 25k in the span of ten days hasn't helped either -- I'm going at such velocity that I can't comprehend that I'm at the halfway point yet and if I don't get the dominoes falling now, the plot won't be over by the time I hit 50k.

I'm not quite sure what happens next. We have the (anti) hero's backstory and motivation now, but I need a clue that cracks the case wide open for the cops. I also need the lead detective to struggle more, both with her brother's death and with the moral issues of investigating a case that she thinks is related to her brother's case without telling her superiors what she suspects. It's a tricky balance, and I'm not very good at tricky balances.

Either way, here's to the next 25k.

NaNoWriMo - Day 5

Yesterday was a difficult day (cf. yesterday's post). The fact that I was writing about a character who had just lost her brother to death made this both better and worse at the same time.

I did, however, make 13k yesterday, putting me well ahead of the official Day 4 goal (6,668). I hit 5k on Day 1, and have been trying to build on that momentum ever since. I am not going to peter out like I did last year.

I've joined a couple of NaNoWriMo Discord groups, and while they don't exactly fill the massive void left by M, they help. It's better than doing it alone, and having everything virtual again this year also helps a lot -- then I don't have to leave the house after a long workday for a write-in; I can just pop in for a sprint here and there while chatting with my husband in between.

I've also been keeping track of my progress in my bullet journal. I made a graph just like the ones they used to have on the old NaNoWriMo site back in the good old days, and I've been colouring in progress bars every day and noting both my total word count and my daily word count. All the stats I ever cared about are all in one place again.

The story is actually moving fairly slowly, which, if I remember correctly, is a good sign. I think most of my better novels felt slow to start (but read back at a good pace later). At least I should have enough plot to make 50k without having to filibuster too much. Right now the hitman is harbouring an eight-year-old girl in his shed, trying to figure out how to get her to safety, and the police detective (the one who just lost her brother) has just decided to go back to her precinct and demand to work again (they told her to take two weeks' bereavement leave but she is having none of it). I haven't even mentioned the villain yet but I've got two central conflicts in motion.

Today is a slower writing day so far though. I haven't done less than 2500 words in a day yet this month, but I was writing mostly in the mornings before work (800-900 words) and on my lunch break (300-400). This morning, my alarm didn't go off so I slept in and didn't get that writing time in so I started the day some 800 words behind and I'm still trying to catch up. I haven't even written a thousand words yet today.

I've never gotten up early to write before. This is the first time I've done NaNoWriMo with an honest-to-goodness job that didn't have a writer-friendly commute built in. I wake up about an hour before work anyway, just so I have time to dress and put my hair up (I work in food service) and eat breakfast. I figured I could write a bit while eating breakfast and man has that ever paid off. I think the reason I can manage 800 words in roughly half an hour (if that) is because my inner editor is still sleeping and therefore my imagination gets away with a lot more than usual. Also, nobody else is up and distracting me/demanding I give them attention. I'm not going to do this on my days off, but it's a good way to get your quota when you work eight hours a day at a job that is not conducive to writing at work.

I'm actually kind of enjoying myself this time around. M still permeates this event for me, and I'm glad in a way. I don't want her spirit to ever leave my mind during NaNoWriMo. As much as it hurts to write alone, and as sad as it makes me, at least I still get to kind of spend time with her ghost every November. I wish more than almost anything that my dream from yesterday would become real and that she would come back and we could write more novels together and dance together more, and I'll probably never stop hoping that, not even when I'm ninety.

But at least this time her memory and the pain of missing her is a help to noveling, and not a hinderance like it was for 2018 and 2019. I'm enjoying the process of writing this time, for the first time since I wrote Kyrie. Maybe writing half-asleep in the morning is helping me get out of my own head and to trick myself into writing without criticising it for not being the next Kyrie. This story has promise, definitely, but it needs to be able to breathe first before I can force anything on it.

UPDATE: Just did a ten-minute sprint, and now I'm at 14,079. Hoping to break 15k by bedtime.

Joy, Dashed

I dreamt of M last night.

She was subdued -- had definitely gone through hell and back, but she was starting to recover and she was choreographing a dance. She showed me part of it. It was all so real. I was so overjoyed to see her again because it had been so long. It was so real that when I woke up I had forgotten that she's dead. And I had to re-learn and re-experience her death all over again. It's been throwing me off all day -- I was so excited that she was there. We were talking about choreography again, just like before.

I would give almost literally anything for a reunion like that in real life. I thought I really did have it in real life for just a few beautiful minutes it and then it was gone again. There aren't words for how gutting that is. To have everything you've ever hoped for right in front of you, speaking to you, dancing with you, the thing that you thought would never happen actually happening in that moment -- then have that joy ripped away from you again. Only this time it's worse, because you had finally just let yourself get genuinely excited and relax into the knowledge that she wasn't actually dead... only to find out that she did actually die. And you have to mourn it all over again, just as raw and fresh as the day it happened.

I would give so, so much for that reunion to be real.

The End Of Yet Another Era...

Last week I found out 'my' dance school (that I attended full time from 2009-2013 and then again 2015-16 and part time until Pandemic) is closing at the end of this month.

It hurts.

I've gone through so much change and upheaval already -- leaving my parents' picturesque house for good, leaving everything and everyone I ever knew, marriage to a man that in all honesty I barely knew before the ceremony... but I held onto that one constant that once the pandemic was over, once we could move out of the literal pit we currently live in (the town is in the bottom of a valley), I could go take Mrs. Clark's ballet class again and I could drive to class listening to White Heart as I looked at the streetlights and drive back home listening to Daniel Amos as I looked at the big dipper in the endless Alberta sky. That hope fueled me through much of this difficult first year of marriage and the pain of being separated from my friends and family back home. And now that hope to relive those wonderful days again, when everything was possible and everything was beautiful, is gone forever. I won't even get to take one last class at that studio. I don't even get to make that drive one last time.

I didn't know my last time was the last time. It's like a sudden death, in a small way.

I essentially quit dancing in the fall of 2019, despite being at my parents' house (read: within driving distance of the studio) due to the damage that my college professors did to me. They convinced me I wasn't good enough to even bother trying, so I stopped. I was too depressed to get out of bed, let alone go to class and feel even more inadequate about my abilities and myself as a person. I remember even texting the teacher and apologising for my patchy attendance, explaining that depression was kicking my butt. True to form, she was completely compassionate and understanding -- she always is. I thought I would come back. I really did.

I did up until last Sunday, when my sister told me the news.

I met M there, among other great people. I got my first pair of pointe shoes there. The teacher graciously watched and gave feedback on multiple choreography pieces I've done -- she even let me teach one to the ladies' class and let my sisters and I perform another in one of their shows. She hired my dad and I to build what turned out to be her last studio space. For most of my teen years, that class was my only joy in life. It quite literally kept me alive more than once. It wasn't just 'dance class,' it was that specific dance class, taught in that specific place by that specific person, surrounded by those specific classmates. It is irreplaceable, and now I can't go back. That dance school was quite literally a part of who I was, and with that gone -- among so many other things I've lost in the past two years -- it feels like my soul is untethered from me, floating aimlessly through space. I have no anchor left for it. I feel lost and alone in a world I don't recognise and never wanted to be in.

There are other dance classes and other studios. But dance will never, ever be the same again.

Music Day - Ten Thousand Lightyears

After the disco/dance/pop reign of Boney M., they took a page from ABBA's book and did some rather more serious and introspective work, and in fact they stuck to it longer than ABBA did. What you hear on the typical 'greatest hits of Boney M. album' is NOT the whole story, in fact, those albums only cover the first (and more frivolous) half of their career.

Perhaps their greatest (and most unrecognised) work is the first half of the album Ten Thousand Lightyears, a song cycle about escaping planet Earth for a better world in a plot that foreshadows Halo (assuming I understand Halo correctly, which I probably don't). This song cycle culminates in the epic title track, a slow burner of an anthem that so perfectly captures the sehnsucht for a better world that only Terry Scott Taylor/Daniel Amos can match that level of intense emotional longing.

The song starts with what sounds like a real live string bass, immediately followed by a slow sparking synth melody, then some gentle, airy percussion. This builds slowly for well over a minute before Liz Mitchell's warm voice soars out over the canopy of stars that the synths have laid out before her, painting a picture of a utopian world ten thousand lightyears somewhere out in space... they practice love and they know what it takes... lightyears away, far from pain... came to a place full of grace and of peace...

And it somehow keeps building. Some lovely harmonies follow, then some soft brass in the chorus. For all the mellowness and heart-wrenching lyrics, this is still very clearly Boney M. -- the percussion still somehow recalls hits like Rasputin.

In the second verse, the dreamer is awakened back into a rude and very not-utopian reality.

Suddenly it's ringing in my ears

Why is it now; I don't want to be here

...how I wish that this dream could go on.

By the second chorus, the voices have doubled into what sounds like a small choir, and the music continues to grow richer and fuller, sprinkled with some pizzicato strings and given added richness and polish with the brooding brass section.

Liz Mitchell is capable of incredible vocal depth and emotion, and by and large Boney M. underexploited this ability (probably the only thing they didn't exploit). One sees it on the infamous Christmas album a little bit, but this song was the best opportunity she had to do it with Boney M. proper and boy, does she ever seize it.

Title: Ten Thousand Lightyears

Artist: Boney M.

Album: Ten Thousand Lightyears

Year: 1984

iTunes here; YouTube here.

Obviously this song resonates a lot with me, as I often feel the exact same way. There is a place beyond the stars where Brittney and M and my cousin all live, and I so desperately want to go, to get away from the pain and abuse of this world. I'm not even thirty yet, but I am so, so world-weary. I understand what old people mean when they say they're 'ready to go.' I get it. I am too. I want to go beyond the stars and rest for the first time in my life -- rest from the constant terror that I'm going to breathe wrong and offend somebody or that I'm going to have someone at my throat because I did the literal exact thing they had asked me to do the day before and rest from knowing every single second of my life that I will literally always be a failure and a disappointment. I want to go there so badly it often brings tears to my eyes.

I'd give all I've got if that's where I could stay...

And I would. I really, really would.

NaNoWriMo - Intro

National Novel Writing Month.

I started last year and petered out before I hit 20k. I was depressed, I was struggling both emotionally and in my marriage, the creative well was completely dry. The two years before that, I hit 50k only by pure determination and I hated every word I wrote. The year before that, I took a hiatus. The year before that, school commitments cut me off at 37k (though I did go back the next July and add enough to push the novel over 50k). The year before that was 2015 and I wrote 50k of a half-decent story in a fog of indescribable pain and grief. The year before that, I wrote Kyrie.

It's been seven years since I was able to enjoy NaNoWriMo. Seven years ago, M and Brittney were both still alive. Seven years ago, the world was pregnant with possibility and I had not yet become this broken, hardened, cynical, angry shell of the vibrant and hopeful person I used to be. Sometimes I wonder if it's even possible to write anymore. That Kate is so far removed from who I am now, and I wish that wasn't so. I miss who I used to be, and I don't know how to go back.

But we're going to try. Maybe that Kate hasn't completely died -- hope springs eternal, apparently.

So, about the story...

I got the seed of the idea from a 'plot bunnies' NaNoWriMo forum AGES ago. I think I still have the username written down somewhere, so that if I ever do publish it I can give credit where credit is due. As it stands now, the plot follows a police detective who's just lost her brother in a drive-by shooting. Said brother frequently volunteered at the youth drop-in centre run by the local megachurch, pastored by a larger-than-life man who has been a pillar in the community for several generations. Police detective is obviously not allowed to work her own brother's case and is instead redirected onto the case of a child reported missing by her foster parents. But the more she digs into the girl's case, the more names she recognises from her brother's life... She begins to suspect that if she can find the girl, she can find out who killed her brother. But of course, she can't take her suspicions to her superiors, because then she'll be taken off the girl's case and won't get another chance to bring his killer to justice.

It's a story with a few big twists. It's also very much in the same vein as my 2016 story -- a modern-day parable following a child who society would rather ignore, highlighting how backwards the world can be... the ones who should care and protect are the villains, and the 'evil' ones do the right thing.

I have a bone to pick with Christian evangelical leadership, and since I've been expressly forbidden to do so with other human beings or on social media, I'm going to do it in my own private novel that nobody will see for approximately 65 years (and that's if I do end up publishing the thing). Writing has long been my only safe place to say how I truly feel about things (that's actually how this blog started), and I guess that's going to continue. Maybe when I'm dead my best friend will send it off to a publisher and then people will understand. Or maybe it's just going to languish on my hard drive and in flashes in this year's NaNoWriMo forums and this blog. It has the potential to be a really good story, but I just don't want to face the inevitable backlash from my in-laws (my biological family has long since gotten used to my 'quirks' and have stopped trying to change me into a hyper-positive Barbie doll because they've recognised that it is literally NEVER going to happen). This story is for me, at least for right now.

I'm still scared to do this without M. I don't know how to write 50k without her (even though I've done it twice). I guess it's more that I don't know how to enjoy (or even have) the wild and crazy process without her right alongside me.

But I've noticed that my choreography after her death took on a richer emotional depth and resonance. They come fewer and farther between, but they are richer and deeper and seem to touch people more. Maybe that'll be the case for my writing too.

Do I think it's a good thing that M died? No, absolutely not. If I had to chose between writing better quality work and having her here, I would chose her. It's not fun to write good quality work all alone.

I have, however, recently joined a couple of NaNoWriMo Discord groups. I'll never, never, ever be able to replace M and her impact on my life, but maybe I can find a couple of comrades here.

I have enough plot. But do I have enough spirit?

Tune in next time...

Music Day - Kyrie

 How have I not featured this one yet?

Yeah, okay, it's more well-known than 99% of stuff I post on this blog, but that's for good reason. This song -- as the kids say -- slaps. This is the song that inspired my best novel. This is one of the most soaring songs from an entire decade defined by music that soared. How in the world have I not featured this?

If you, like me, were sheltered as a child, you may not know of this song, and that's okay. In fact, that's great, because now you're old enough to remember your first time hearing it instead of just always sort of being aware of it, and that's honestly a really special thing. Get comfortable. Relax. Take a couple deep breaths. Prepare to be enchanted.

The song starts out with Richard Page calling out the title exactly as the original Greek intended -- as a plaintive cry of the heart, soft and distant across the desert of life. God have mercy.

We get a percussive synth buildup, a guitar hit, and glorious big drums. The verse is great. Page has the perfect smooth-but-passionate voice for a harder pop song like this, especially one with more introspective lyrics. But the real magic happens once you hit the chorus.

It's big. It's bombastic. It's shimmering. It's looking up at a thousand stars at night and pondering the galaxies beyond -- an exercise that might inspire one to echo Page's heart-cry. God have mercy.

God have mercy down the road that I must travel

God have mercy through the darkness of the night

God have mercy -- where I'm going, will You follow?

God have mercy on a highway in the light...

This is not a party-pop song. This is a song written by a pensive person reflecting on their life -- both what has come and gone as well as what lies dimly ahead. The chorus is literally a prayer -- a rather upbeat and danceable one, but a prayer nonetheless. The fact that they took a lyric like this and made it into one of the biggest pop-rock anthems of the decade (as track 7 on a vinyl album to boot) is a testament to the band's skill. (It was not a fluke either -- see also Broken Wings.)

And just when you think that spine-chilling chorus literally cannot get any better, all the instruments drop out except those phenomenal drums and those soaring band harmonies, crying for mercy like the monks in the choirs who first put those Greek words to music, but even earlier than that, like the tax collector named Zacchaeus who not only repaid what he stole, but quadrupled the return payment, like the woman clothed in little more than jewellery and makeup as she dumped perfume on Jesus' feet, like the ragged scrap of skin writhing on the cross next to Jesus as he asked to taste a small morsel of the Kingdom.

It was a well-crafted pop hit, to be sure. But it came from a place of honesty that leveled it up above anything that today's carefully-curated pop songwriting teams could ever hope to attain. Skill and experience certainly helped this song -- there's no question that Page and co. have copious amounts of both -- but those alone can seem sterile when not taken into the stratosphere with a gut-level lyric like this.

Listen and be amazed, whether for the first time or the thousandth time.

Title: Kyrie

Artist: Mr. Mister

Album: Welcome To The Real World

Year: 1985

iTunes here; YouTube here.

When I was young I thought of growing old

Of what my life would mean to me

Would I have followed down my chosen road

Or only wished what I could be...?

I Jumped On The Bandwagon

Originally written on 26 September 2021, 4.08pm.

I've recently started a 'bullet journal' (I use the quotation marks because it looks NOTHING like a 'typical' bullet journal). All it is is a dollar store notebook. I made an index at the front, a basic habit-tracker, lists with goals for September and October as well as the rest of 2021 as a whole, a page for tracking all bank account activity this month, and I'm doing a daily two-page spread for to-do lists, play-by-play of everything I did and said, and general infodumping. I'm also using it to track the crochet legwarmer pattern I'm currently developing. I haven't drawn in a calendar because it's too much work and honestly, I don't have much of anything to put in it until we've finally gotten the upper hand on COVID-19 and can actually revive the performing arts again.

I had five coloured InkJoy pens lying around that someone had given us. I'm not usually one for coloured pens (my weapon of choice is usually the PaperMate FlexGrip Ultra in black, with a cap, not a clicker, although a somehow picked up a black InkJoy 100 from somewhere and it has been making a very strong case for itself), but I use them to fill in the habit tracker and I've given colours to certain things like mental health status and choreography. I have to admit, the extra bit of colour is nice. This 'journal' is also MUCH lighter than the previous notebook I'd been carting around in my purse and I'm actually using this one as opposed to the last one.

One of my (possibly autistic) obsessions is notebooks. I literally have an entire apple box of UNUSED notebooks and journals at my parents' house, and probably at least a dozen at our place. I also suspect the act of handwriting is a stim for me. I've always felt a sense of security and comfort holding a pen, or even just having one nearby. I have a dozen pens in my purse at any given time, in case one dies or gets lost -- even though I am meticulous about where they are at all times. If someone borrows a pen from me, I will literally hunt them down for it the second they're done writing. If I lend you a pen, that means I trust you a LOT, and just know that my heart is in my throat from the second that pen leaves my hand until it returns to my hand.

All this to say that the rush of adrenaline that comes from having a brand new notebook in my purse that I can (and should!) write in all the time with pretty colours to boot is absolute euphoria for the very understimulated ADHD brain and the familiarity of notebooks and writing is soothing for the autism brain. Is the journal itself actually helping my ADHD symptoms? That remains to be seen -- I haven't been doing it long enough to find out yet.

That being said, reinstating a basic habit tracker into my life (I was doing one in my last year of college to prove to my profs I was actually practicing/trying to improve my skills -- it didn't convince them, of course, but it did help me stay on track and kind of feel better about myself... and Lord knows with those clowns as my profs, I needed all the mini-mood-boosters I could get) is helping a lot with getting back into choreography, specifically. There are other things I'm tracking, but that's the one seeing the most dramatic improvement so far. I've set the bar low (two sets of eight per day) so as to not scare myself off of any seemingly-impossible goals.  If I have ideas for more than two sets of eight, then I choreograph more than two sets of eight. But if not, then I will be happy with only two sets of eight, and I will count that as progress. I need to get my brain back into choreographic shape, the way it was in the summer of 2013. I went to college to improve my choreography, not kill it. Time to bring those five years of knowledge and experience (mostly experience) to bear.

(For example, just now I've been writing this entire post to put off my two sets of eight for today. I literally had my headphones on and my iPod and page of in-progress choreography in front of me, but I didn't have any ideas and was trying desperately to procrastinate. I've done the two sets of eight now and it literally didn't even take me ten minutes -- and this was a section I was struggling with. It's so easy once I just do it... I just had to persuade myself to make this one tiny goal. And if I hadn't made this one tiny goal for myself, this page would have sat there for literally months, if not years.)

I digress. I didn't really have a point to this post, I just wanted to write something (for once) and I felt like telling all the ghosts of people who used to use Blogger that I started a bullet journal experiment. I'll try to make progress updates, but we all know how good I am at those...

Rebuilding (again... maybe...)

For my birthday this past August, my parents bought me Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. And working through that book has begun to remind me of all the things I loved about being an artist before everybody died.

I loved sitting in my bedroom in my parents' basement as the tree-dappled southern sunlight poured in, lighting the pink walls aflame with warmth and colour and kick-starting my imagination. I loved sitting at the desk, feeling the keys beneath my fingers or the pen scratching softly across the looseleaf. I loved sitting on the pink carpet, dreaming up huge, intricate dances for a dozen dancers, even though I didn't even know that many serious dancers in real life. I loved seeing the characters build the novels right before my eyes -- people often said that reading my writing felt like watching a movie, and I think that's because that's how my works often come to me. I watch the events play out like a film in my mind's eye and I just write down what happens. I choreograph the same way -- I put on the music and write down what the dancers in my head do. I do love the rush of satisfaction when I finish a project, but I also love the challenge of answering the perennial question 'what's next?'

I'm starting to make art again. I'm not choreographing whole dances or writing entire scripts in five days like I used to, but I'm still choreographing, and I'm starting to write posts for this blog again. I'm hoping that's the starting point for writing fiction again.

Despite being out of college for over two years now, I've still been feeling blocked. The first year was because I quite literally almost killed myself trying to prove to a bunch of gaslighting profs that I was actually putting in the work to get that degree, plus I did two major moves in three months and started a major romantic relationship with somebody who did not live anywhere near ANY of the cities I moved to. The second year was the year I planned a wedding during a pandemic and then moved to an entirely new town (because living with one's husband is a thing) and tried to figure out married life after exactly one (1) year of romantic-relationship experience -- total.

My goals are very small. Between the housework, my actual paying job, spending time with the man I married, sleeping, and basic personal hygiene, it often feels like I have no time for myself other than the three-minute drive home from work every day and I feel like I have no time for my artistic pursuits anymore. Nobody tells you that being a wife is a full-time job by itself. I knew motherhood was, but nobody warned me about plain old marriage. Basically if I can't accomplish my daily goals on my 30-minute work break while I'm eating a sandwich with one hand or during my bathroom breaks at home, they aren't going to happen.

So my goals went from 'make twelve full-blown dance videos this year' and 'practice for three hours every day' to 'choreograph two sets of eight every day' and 'read for fifteen minutes.' I'm telling myself that those two sets of eight every day will add up over time and eventually become a full dance piece, and that one chapter a day will result in finished books. Just like Duolingo has you learn a language ten minutes at a time, I'm actively trying to sneak in my creative pursuits in furtive five-minute bursts. I have no idea when exactly I'm going to write 50,000 words in November because 1,667 words per day does take slightly longer than a bathroom break, but I guess I'm going to have to figure it out.

And maybe having small goals because of my time and space limitations right now is the best way to reintegrate myself into the creative world, especially after all the harm that college did to my creative brain. If I had set a big goal like 'twelve dance videos in twelve months,' I wouldn't have even started. The goal would have been too big and overwhelming. But I can trick myself into two sets of eight. I can wheedle myself into fifteen minutes of reading. (It also really helps to track how many days in a row I've managed to do this -- I am VERY competitive and would hate myself for the rest of my life if I broke a long daily streak.) I've already finished two library books (and returned them on time -- no renewals. This has literally NEVER happened before in my entire life), and have put in consistent time on a couple of dances. I am telling myself consistency is enough right now.

Music Day - Arise

 I've been playing this song a lot lately.

I was first introduced to Flyleaf in 2010 at 'Rock The River' in Edmonton. My best friend was a fan of theirs and continued feeding me a steady diet of their work. I bought most of their first two albums around that time. They enjoyed semi-regular rotation on my iTunes for a couple years... and then I forgot about them entirely.

Until my husband introduced me to Breaking Benjamin.

Both bands play similar levels of hard rock (or at least Flyleaf did at the time; I haven't heard a single note they've played since 2012's New Horizons). Breaking Benjamin led me back to Flyleaf, which now has a nostalgic shimmer, so of course now their appeal has increased in my books.

I didn't take much notice of this song when I first bought the CD, but I do remember thinking it was nice. Earlier this summer, I started craving this song. So, for most of the summer, I took it like a drug. I generally don't repeat songs, but I'd play this one three or four times in a row.

It's a song of sadness, but also hope. The vocals and the thick wall of guitars rise and fall together perfectly. The song feels a little bit like a prog rock song, though it clocks in under four and a half minutes. It kicks off with a muted bass, and immediately Lacey Sturm's vocals swoop in and brood right along with it with quiet determination.

Tell the swine

We will make it out alive

There's a note in the pages of the book

So sleep tonight

We'll sleep dreamlessly this time

When we awake, we'll know that everything's all right...

Then it crunches into the pre-chorus and chorus, spinning soaring guitars rising and falling above each other as Sturm cries out with a hope that perhaps she doesn't quite believe:

Hold on

To the world we all remember fighting for

There's still strength left in us yet...

Maybe it's the cultural context. We've now been in lockdown for most of the last year and a half. And the undiluted hatred I'm seeing among people I love and care for is so draining and everything feels so hopeless. I worry that we're past the point of no return, relationally. There are friendships and families and relationships that will be permanently damaged -- a LOT of them. And looking into the future and seeing those damaged relationships destroy the rest of my generation just sucks the wind out of my sails. Even if the virus was gone tomorrow; if all restrictions and all of the COVID-19 deaths stopped tonight, there would still be so much that will never be fixed. What hope is there? Everyone is so bitter and so angry.

Hold on

To the world we all remember dying for...

In March of 2020, we all shut down and wore masks for the greater good. To protect each other. Nobody questioned it. It all seems to utopian now. We sacrificed our lives, our jobs, our hobbies, our paycheques, to keep our loved ones safe. We died to our previous lives to keep each other safe, to preserve the world.

Fast-forward just over one year.

I have seen families literally torn apart because some have and some won't get the vaccine. A year ago, we protected strangers at all costs, and now we would rather cut contact with blood family and friends we've known for decades than get the one tiny shot that would actually protect them.

We died in March 2020 for a world that, it seems, will never, ever come back.

Sing to me about the end of the world

End of these hammers and needles for you

We'll cry tonight

But in the morning we are new

Stand in the sun

We'll dry your eyes...

Often it seems better and easier to hope for the end of the world than it is to hope for the restoration of this one. This one feels beyond repair, and there is nothing left but to wait for it to be over and remind each other that we have that hope, at least.

The song slows again -- Sturm crooning Sing... sing...

A breath.

And then the cry of courage -- arise!

The end is both sad and triumphant -- the world burns in the background, guitars thrashing along with the flames, and we have survived, yet we mourn what we have lost in the fire. The anthemic final chorus, repeating until that final a cappella, is a heart-wrenching cry.

Or maybe I like this song so much because I relate to it on a personal level -- the world always burning around me and the desperate fight to find hope and survive and rebuild myself, over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, mustering up strength from nothing within myself again and again because more often than not I've got no-one to draw from.

Title: Arise

Artist: Flyleaf

Album: Memento Mori

Year: 2009

iTunes here; YouTube here.

Hold on

To the world we all remember dying for

There's still hope left in it yet...

Music Day - Somebody's Gonna Praise His Name

In light of Girder Music's announcement today that they will be reissuing Petra's PHENOMENAL On Fire! album for the first time EVER since its 1988 release, I decided to feature one of the best cuts from that album (and believe me, it is not an easy choice. The whole album is -- as the kids say -- fire). Petra had some 15 years of songwriting experience by this point, plus they were coming off their mega-hit album This Means War! the previous year. They knew exactly how to write a hard-hitting, high-energy song with well-crafted dynamics.

On Fire! was very much the musical and spiritual successor to This Means War! The theme of spiritual warfare continues as well as the guitar-heavy arena rock sound. John Schlitt was really settling into his role as lead vocalist, and songwriter Bob Hartman and the rest of the band had fully gelled with his no-holds-barred vocal style.

This song in particular seems to flown under the radar, which is where all the very best songs seem to go. It is hard arena rock at its absolute zenith. Big shining keyboards, bombastic drums, growling guitars, and thundering bass -- all were in full force on this entire album, and on this track in particular. This is probably one of the (musically) hardest worship songs you will ever hear in your entire life (a theme Petra brought to bear the very next year with their The Rock Cries Out album, whose title was probably inspired by this song), but it starts out deceptively calm. A soft, leisurely synth builds and Schlitt sings a simple praise chorus, backed by an angelic choir of '80s band harmonies (which Petra was no slouch at).

After forty seconds of Baptist-church-worthy solemnity, the drums kick open the door and you're hit with a wall of Bob Hartman's very crunchiest guitars as Petra cranks church up to eleven. The music would absolutely have gotten any church-going fifteen-year-old grounded for a month, but the lyrics come either straight from the pages of scripture (mostly the psalms, but the song does take as its refrain the words of Jesus from Luke 19), or as a direct response to said scriptures. They even take the song down a notch at the end with a gentle acoustic guitar and what almost sounds like waves on the beach (although it could just be cassette noise from my imported copy. I guess we'll all have to buy the CD to find out for sure).

Title: Somebody's Gonna Praise His Name

Artist: Petra

Album: On Fire!

Year: 1988

Pre-order the album here (special sale price for the next four days!), YouTube here, live version here.

As long as I draw breath my lips will praise You

As long as I have strength I want to praise Your name...

ADHD

Originally written 13 September 2021, 11.40pm.

Two days before our first anniversary, I was diagnosed with ADHD and officially told I am on the autism spectrum. This is not a self-diagnosis for attention; this information came from a licensed neuropsychiatrist following an hour-and-a-half assessment and screening.

I was fully prepared for an autism diagnosis. I was not prepared, however, for ADHD.

This has rocked my world -- it explains SO MUCH. I’ve been reading through the NaNoWriMo Adult ADHD thread all day (13 September) and literally crying because all of it is me. Time blindness/underestimating how much time things will take, inability to switch tasks, hyperfocus, inability to focus on anything boring (including sleeping, which is why I will 100% stay up till 4am if no-one actively stops me), inability to just sit still, constantly being busy, brain constantly going a million miles an hour (turns out this is why my brain always feels like it's being eaten by acid), self-teaching myself everything under the sun, millions of brilliant and unfinished creative projects in my wake, constantly interrupting people, executive dysfunction…

I’ve been a dancer for 22 years, I routinely overloaded myself in college and mostly managed to get almost every assignment done hours before it was due (a famous example is when I wrote four papers and two final exams in 36 hours), all while still dancing 12-20 hours a week and keeping up a theatre career on the side (I’m also usually in three shows concurrently, and the only reason I still get away with this is because I’m always on top of things – if I miss a rehearsal for another rehearsal for a different show, I study my butt off and show up next rehearsal looking like I didn’t miss a thing). Twice I wrote two 50k novels in a month for NaNoWriMo because doing only one was too easy and I had enough plot ideas to sustain it. My mother was CONSTANTLY on my case for forgetting my chores and knew that if I was reading or engrossed in a project that nothing short of an atomic bomb under my seat could get my attention (and even then, it would take me a minute to realise where I was and that something was happening). I once choreographed an entire 4.5-minute dance piece for seventeen dancers start-to-finish in one single eight-hour sitting (during which I did not eat, drink, or go to the bathroom), and also recently finished a far less complicated five-minute dance for four people that took me seven years. There’s really no in between. I notoriously learn entire dance pieces three days before I perform them and then perform them better than everyone else in the piece (none of my teachers have ever known what to do with me).

I would never have known I had ADHD until the pandemic took all of my coping mechanisms away – theatre and dance had been giving me enough controlled chaos to keep me sane, and then when it was all taken away, my symptoms (both ADHD and autism) finally presented, big-time. At first I thought it was just depression, brought on by the stress of the pandemic and my first real romantic relationship/marriage, but luckily I follow a few autistic performers on Instagram who regularly post autism/ADHD memes, and I began to see myself in a few too many of these posts. I took my autism suspicions to my therapist, who told me how to go about getting assessed. The process happened very quickly, and it was at my autism assessment that I was screened for and diagnosed with ADHD.

I am not medicated yet, pending a more detailed autism assessment, and also because they want to put me on Wellbutrin and I've shied away because I am TERRIFIED of Wellbutrin. I have not met a single person who has had a positive experience with Wellbutrin. Everyone I know who has been on it has had severe side effects that were ten times worse than the issue that they were trying to treat. Plus, it only comes in pill form, and I can't swallow pills (thanks, autism-related/hereditary texture issues).

As difficult as life is with ADHD, I'm glad to have a diagnosis. Not only does it explain things that I honestly thought meant I was just a no-good failure and a waste of skin/God's punching bag, it also saved our marriage. My husband was constantly on my case for forgetting to do things and he would get extremely frustrated and accuse me of doing it on purpose and I would get angry because I was angry at myself for forgetting (again) and angry at him for not believing me whenever I tried to explain that I didn’t mean to forget things (that's literally what 'forgetting' means...?). Since my diagnosis, we went from screaming matches every other day to I think maybe one or two in the past month. It’s helped me understand myself and make a conscious effort to be more attentive to the things I forget that annoy him the most and it’s helped him understand me and be more patient with me.

There is still a lot to learn and a very, very long way to go. I've borrowed some books from the library to try to understand myself and how to function as an adult human in a world that I never did feel I belonged in. It's a lot to catch up on, and right now I'm feeling rather overwhelmed by it all... but I'll keep trying.

Stay tuned...

I May Have Found An Answer...

Originally written in March 2021.

Lately I've started to wonder if I am autistic.

It would explain SO much... my lifelong texture issues with nearly every 'normal' food on the planet, my inability to get over stuff quickly, why everyone complains that I'm too honest and wants nothing to do with me, why I literally cannot even feign interest in something I just don't care about, why I can't tell apart characters in films (which also explains why I hate watching them)... so much.

This is something that's been brewing for a while. I happen to follow a few autistic performers on Instagram, and the more autism-life memes they posted, the more I found myself relating to them. I started to research a little. At first I thought, 'oh, most of these don't apply to me,' but then I began to remember/notice things. Like how I have legitimately bought clothing purely because I liked the texture. Like how I NEED to either bounce my leg or move my feet at all times. Like how I made a massive scene (meltdown?) in front of my in-laws in my late twenties because there was too much conflict and I just couldn't hold it together anymore. Like the fact that my sister has taken over my old bedroom at my parents' house has left me completely, entirely lost. Like how I know almost literally everything there is to know about Christian music up till the year 1995, but could not tell you one single fact about Michael Jackson or Madonna, even though they were huge artists in the same era. Like how my one and only dream has only ever been choreography, and I literally get suicidal at the mere thought that it might not happen. Like how I struggle SO MUCH to understand the vague phrases my profs and teachers would use.  Like how I shut down at the tiniest provocation. Like how, if someone says, 'just be yourself,' I have literally no idea what to do because I do not, and have never, known who I 'truly' am -- my entire life I have quite consciously taken on the characters of people around me (for better or for worse). Like the fact that I am so cold I am in physical pain 90% of the time. Like the fact that I overexplain literally EVERYTHING. Or the fact that I often will get so engrossed in something (usually reading, writing, or choreographing) that I get 'stuck' in it and literally can't get out -- not even to eat or use the washroom -- until either the task is done or some extremely strong outside force absolutely demands I shift my attention. Or the fact that almost everyone I've ever met is quick to say how smart and quick I am, yet refuses to associate with me because I'm rude/negative/mean/annoying (*cough* HONEST and willing to call out people's crap). Or the fact that I absolutely LOATHE talking to people out loud, but have no problem writing them 800-word texts.

There is autism in the family. It was a cousin who was quite a bit younger than me who I rarely interacted with. My first real experience with autism was when I befriended two fellow theatre performers on the spectrum. I got on extremely (in my case, abnormally) well with both, and it wasn't until MUCH later that I began to wonder if this was because we were more alike than I thought.

I don't know where to go from here. I don't know how to get assessed, especially since the people I've shared my concerns with have outright dismissed them.

I'm not afraid of being diagnosed autistic -- in fact, I'm excited about the possibility. For nearly 25 years I have wondered what was wrong with me, why nobody wanted me and (it seemed) nobody loved me, and maybe now I've found it. Maybe it wasn't my fault like I thought all those years. Maybe all my failings weren't because I wasn't trying hard enough. Maybe my entire lack of a social life has all been based on misunderstanding rather than hate. And because I lacked the concept, the vocabulary, to explain why I couldn't connect with anybody, I thought it was all my fault and I was a failure. I spent YEARS of my life being suicidal for this reason... and maybe I didn't have to be. I'm more worried about NOT being autistic, because if I'm not, I have to start from square one all over again.

I am afraid, however, of posting this.

I have said some pretty bold things on this blog and didn't flinch when posting them, but this one scares me. I am in my late twenties... 'too late' for an autism diagnosis in a lot of people's minds. I know it's common for people (especially women) to go undiagnosed into adulthood, but that doesn't mean the stigma isn't there. I have only shared this suspicion with a handful of people, but every. single. one of them dismissed me immediately. I think they were trying to make me feel better, but it really only made me feel more alone. I would be lying if I said I wasn't worried that the few friends I've managed to make will treat me differently if the term 'autistic' is attached to me. I'm still the same Kate -- I always was. If I'm autistic now, that means I've been autistic from the start -- we just finally have a name for it now; a reason why I have struggled so much with so many things that 'should have' come easily to me. All my life, I wondered why -- why can they make friends so easily and I can't? why do I make the exact same jokes they do and get told off for being 'rude,' when you laughed at the same joke when someone else made it? why do I still carry SO MUCH pain and such a sickening feeling of un-resolution from all those deaths going on six years ago now? why do I feel so different and so unwanted and so 'weird'? why do people get SO angry with me for not understanding the vague new age positive phrases they keep giving me when I ask for genuine, detailed help? why do people call me smart but treat me like I'm stupid? why do I feel like such a failure? why can't I understand what people are saying when they're literally speaking the same language as me and yelling to be heard?

I just don't know where to start.

Music Day - Song In My Soul

Here's another song I inherited from my dad's music library. As far as I know, this is the only not-Christmas album he had from this band.

They were an a cappella band, but without the pretentiousness of Pentatonix. These are clean, simple, refreshing songs with no unnecessary virtuosity. There's nothing in this track that doesn't directly contribute to the pure richness of the song. These guys also write their own songs, so if you love a cappella music but you're tired of Pentatonix butchering perfectly good hymns and Christmas songs with overdone, overdramatic flourishes, this is the artist for you.

My dad listened to this song all the time when I was a kid, and now all it takes is that ascending bass intro to put a smile on my face. I still have a hard time believing that this is all done with the human voice. There's even some beatboxing in other songs on this album (keep in mind, this is 1989 in CCM -- we still don't have beatboxing in mainstream Christian music in 2021). The songs are so rich and full of backing harmonies that one doesn't even miss the band.

This song in particular is a song of unabashed joy, something I don't think any of us has seen in a good long time. It's a worship song that you'll never hear in a church. Parts of the lyric hearken back to the Psalms themselves. It's a pure, simple declaration of joy in God's handiwork. It all clips along at a very danceable, grooveable pace, and they make their point and get out of the way in less than three and a half minutes. It's cheerful and energetic and fun. If you need a quick little pick-me-up, here's a song that'll keep a spring in your step for the rest of the day.

The smile on my face comes from the smile in my heart

You put a song in my soul when You made me

You put a song in my soul and I want to let it out

Your Spirit in my life, well it makes me want to shout

I'm moved to sing with every beat in my heart

You put a song in my soul when You made me

Title: Song In My Soul

Artist: AVB

Album: Song In My Soul

Year: 1989

Label: Clifty Records

iTunes here; YouTube here (live version here -- caution, mullets abound).