stories from another place

musings. considerations. thoughts. whatevers.

[annabwrites]

Huevember day 8

This guy. If you aren’t familiar with the mantis shrimp, get to know it. Its story and abilities are straight out of some sci-fi horror story. Only it’s real. The ocean is a scary place.

I’m trying a few new things with these sketches now: color and creature name.

It puts me in mind of Richard Nixon’s iconic pose and declaring “I am not a crook!” This rainbow of death is definitely offering up a power pose here. Would you join his cult?

[annabwrites]

Huevember day 7 is by special request for a friend. This is his lovely Persian cat, Fuzzie Mercury. You can find Fuzzie on Instagram @fuzzie.mercury

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Huevember day 6

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Huevember day 5

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Huevember day 4

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Jumping into Huevember late here on day 3. Expect more throughout this month!

The posts will be short and sweet with focus really being on the images. I’m trying my damnedest to get through NaNoWriMo too (WORDS!). Why do I do this to myself?!

[annabwrites]

This last month has been hella hard. Work is a dumpster fire with changes--some really great, positive ones that have been cloaked in a ridiculous amount of drama and that I worked really damn hard for. My family also had a major loss and I had to take an unexpected trip home to be with everyone. Creative work has been a struggle. Actually most things have been a struggle. Couple all of this with trying to meet some deadlines for writing and summer teaching and I have just been so tired.

And really, really hard on myself.

That ugly little voice has been so loud and so very difficult to escape. And I have needed to make some changes to help me deal with it.

I started going to the gym again during lunch hours to help burn off the stress and drama of the office. It helps. I started kickboxing back up--and good grief I feel those long months I took off. And I’m not really that great again, so I have to be patient there. But it helps. Running, and kicking and punching, and sweating are really good for me.

And...I saw someone--a professional someone--(after a bit of coercion from a coworker) to help me sort through things and to tell me that what I hear and feel is really okay. This was a big, scary step. Like BIG step.

And it was...not terrible. The anxious vibrations were less and my self-loathing calmed down. I had perspective. It was helpful.

Self-care is the first thing to go when I start to head this direction. A rut. My tires get stuck and nothing I can do helps get me out of the thing holding me in place. I eat my feelings, and I gain the weight, and I am tired, and I have no motivation for creativity, and I am sharp and pokey and mean. I am hard on myself and hard on others and generally unpleasant. And the worst is when it’s all just too much and I find myself sobbing at the bottom of my shower while that little voice is no longer little and it is the only thing I hear and understand.

It is a dark, deep place. And it is ugly and terrible. I don’t like to get there. It isn’t healthy.

A lot of 2018 has been this place. It has been damn hard. Stupidly hard.

We all deserve a little light, a little dance in our step. So love yourselves, kids. Love those around you. This shit is hard right now. For everyone.

Take care of yourselves.

[annabwrites]

I decided to take up casual witchery a while back and bought some tarot cards.

The purpose: research, information, maybe some guidance, and intense curiosity. Seriously, the curiosity is going to kill me some day.

These cards are gorgeous. The aesthetic of them is a big reason I got this deck. Some of the cards make me go “ohhh” and some make me cringe when I flip them over and then I just admire them even as they tell me things I don’t want to hear. Give me bad news in a pretty package, please and thank you.

I’ve been learning to read the cards and it is really sloooowwww going. But the themes that emerge are on point. Girl, you are in a season of transition after some really hard, long months. The end of lots of waiting is nearing its end. Be patient. Breathe.

And several big things came down the pike this week, some that are going to propel me in new directions and some that adjusted my timelines and some that opened up new doors. Yes, yes, it’s all very exciting and there was some disappointment, but nothing that took me to my knees.

Just kidding. My body got pretty sick and that took me to my knees at the crux of this transition season. The point where I wanted to stand on the precipice and scream into the wind. But we are past that and I drink a lot of water now.

The disappointment, though. Let’s talk about that little beast, okay?

I am in a world where disappointment and rejection are a natural part of the cycle. I submitted my work to a thing where I received the kindest rejections this week. I received feedback that is kicking me into gear with a clear trajectory of where I need to be at the end of it. There is always more work, the journey is never done.

So I got the news. I sat with it. I growled at a coworker. I felt some self-pity for half a heartbeat.

And then I dragged my carcass to the gym and ran a couple of miles. I sweated. I let my feet pound it out. By the time I was done and a few texts later, I was back on my feet and ready to hit the next phase.

I feel like I leveled up some during this season of casual witchery. I have some new beginnings. Some new insight into a current place. Some guidance on how to get to the next phase and be even better. I have some new people on the journey with me who are in a similar place. And I can breathe some.

[annabwrites]

alpaca pack

The miniaturized alpacas are part of a small movement I began with the T-Rex in a jar. There is something about taking an animal that is quite large in size and condensing it down into a tiny, desktop sized creature. The hours that could be spent just watching these tiny animals move about, feeding them...tiny hay? Would they destroy the terrarium moss ecosystem? I don’t know what large alpacas eat, so I can’t really guess what tiny ones would.

This idea began as a goofy office conversation that ended with “I’d love a piece with alpacas in a backpack. Alpaca backpacka.” The backpack idea didn’t pan out, but this one did. It has spawned a few other ideas, and I could keep myself quite busy just creating desktop backgrounds for coworkers if I didn’t have that other tedious day-to-day work to do.  I mean, who wouldn’t prefer an aquarium with mini whales over a training about electronic pharmacies or the horrifying things that happen if you don’t insert an IV correctly or a cringeworthy training on soft skills. Apparently my clients, that’s who. Thank goodness for my coworkers who would also prefer not to create their own things and instead look at pretty or interesting pictures of imaginary things.

So this has started me thinking about these posts a bit, and I am quite taken with the idea of posts with art. Not necessarily about the art because, really, the art is a means of procrastination of the writing I am supposed to be doing. No, the “art” would be a companion to the posts, a la: Here is a post about writing but LOOK AT THIS IMAGE OMG!

I’m not above a bit of smoke and mirrors here, kids, because this writing, well, it’s okay.

And the images are probably just okay.

But maybe together they are just a shade above okay. 

If nothing else, they keep me entertained. Any I hope they keep you entertained a tiny (<-- haha, see what I did there?) bit too.

Expect more things. And more posts about writing, or not writing.

Here’s a picture of some little alpacas in a terrarium anyway.

[annabwrites]

not so perfect pet

I have a small obsession with dinosaurs.

I have since I was a kid. It has been something that sinks into the background for a while and then resurfaces in funny ways. Though, if you ask those around me, it may not sink so far as I think it does.

Take for example a recent conversation that occurred:

Scene setting:  I am sitting in a meeting working on a very serious, heavy topic with subject matter experts. I have on a pair of navy blue pants with small green stegosauruses on them. I love these pants. They are my favorites. My rather large thermos filled with coffee has a cozy on it that has a t-rex riding a bicycle. His name is Lance Tiny-arm-strong. Sadly, I did not make that up; some other brilliant person did.

The woman I am working with, who has this amazing silver hair that I am so jealous of, takes in my cozy and then my pants: Are those dinosaurs on your pants?

Me: Yes.

Her: You have quite a thing for dinosaurs, don’t you? Are you a dinosaur girl?

Me: Oh, well, I mean, not really. No more than anybody else, I guess. I really loved them when I was a kid.

She gives me a pointed look: Hmm. Okayyyy.

Scene setting: Later that night at home, recounting the events to my person.

Me: So she asked ‘Are you a dinosaur girl’ and I just laughed. I don’t think of myself that way. Right?

Him, laughing: Know thyself. You are most certainly a dinosaur girl.

When I was given the assignment to create the illusion of something behind glass as a way to explore transparency, I fell in love with the idea of creating something like I would have as a kid--obviously clear things need creatures in them so I can study them. And when you have the power to really create anything, why not put a dinosaur in a jar with twigs and grass (because nothing says natural habit like dead wood and dying grass)?

So here is an inspired piece that has since inspired more.

[annabwrites]

fall from grace

I started taking classes again because I really wanted to learn Adobe software. I said it was for my job, and this was true, but I also really loved the gorgeous work that I see others doing on Instagram. It is so inspiring, and I love finding new artists on there. And I wanted to do what I saw them doing. I wanted to create in a different way than with my words.

So I started with Illustrator. This image is not Illustrator.

And it pushed me and challenged me and frustrated me. And then something would click into place. The image came together or that path did what I thought I wanted it to. I threw my arms up in victory, yelled in triumph and sat back satisfied that one piece of the puzzle had been conquered.

Within this, I found that I really like crawling around in the program, so I signed up for another class, this one on 2D Design. This is where this image comes in. I spent another term making art in really terrifically terrible ways.

The first piece I did in Photoshop is positively cringeworthy, but in a strangely beautiful way. Like, I don’t completely hate it, but I also don’t really love it, though there is something compelling in it. But it really is quite awful.

So I committed to getting better. Within a few weeks, I went from that quite awful thing to something that actually resembled a person. I figured out some things that worked, got a better feel for the pens in the program, and I spent hours doing stuff, making stuff.

I posted it to Instagram because I had made a big leap, and I was proud of this. People did not hate it. Or at least they were polite enough not to tell me they hated it. So I kept at it.

And then we got to composite images. I fell completely and madly in love. This--THIS!--is what I really love. I love the collaging, the smashing different things together, tweaking them, and making something completely new.

And each thing speaks to another thing. I designed our holiday card this year. I did a commission/collaboration for a friend’s holiday card. Each of these used other parts of images that I was able to reimagine, give them different context.

There is a liberation in creating. There is also a deep well that comes with creating in this age. So much pressure, so much inspiration. It can become easy to get lost in it all. But for those few hours, I get to really sink into deep work, get lost in the inspiration, get lost in the meditation of creation.

#annabwrites #graphicdesign #photoshop #adobephotoshop #manipulationclan #digitalart #digitaldesign #digitalartwork #digitalmanipulation #adobe #imagemanipulation #photomanipulation #art #artwork @unsplash #compositephotography #composite #creative #creativecloud #visualtraveller

[annabwrites]

chaos

I generally don’t like chaos. I like a bit of structure, or at least to know the structure of a thing so I know how best to escape from it, but pure chaos, oh hells no.

Part of this is because of the very nature of chaos: it is unpredictable. And for someone who loves a good pattern, chaos disrupts this.

I like some spontaneity, I like some unexpected. I hate being blindsided.

Even in my writing, I need to leave space for some pantsing. I tend to favor a blend of plotting/pantsing, and this has really formed over the years. For a long time, I just pantsed: all in! We’ll figure it out as we go!

As a writing instructor, I cringed so much over my own practices because it is anathema to what I tell my students: outline, have an idea of your map and where you are going! And yet I would not heed my own advice.

It took years to write the first manuscript because of this.

“I’ll know when I get there!” is not really a solid mantra. 1. Because it means I am always searching for “there”. 2. It’s an excuse to not put in the hard work of prework for me.

Turns out, my day job is a whole lot of pantsers. Surprise, I am not. I need to have the map so I know the general direction.

When asked about the new project I am working on and whether I know how it ends, my response was, “Yeah. He dies at the end.”

That said, I didn’t know how we got to the point where he dies (pun intended because he dies by sword). That is the journey, as horrible and beautiful as it is.

It’s like a road trip or sailing around...somewhere. I don’t want to say around the world because I don’t want to be on the water that long. So, a road trip it is (just go with the metaphor, guys).

We’re going to get in the car and start driving, probably in the middle of the night so we avoid traffic. And we’re going to see some weird midnight quinceañera at a truck stop at 3AM. We’re going to set off the truck stop lights, and we’re going to have some flat tires. There are going to be some days we have to sit in place and eat terrible bar-b-que at a terrifying honky-tonk when you are vegetarian. Some days you travel through rainstorms to see rainbows on the vermilion cliffs. Sometimes the snows are so bad they close the highway behind you and you have to creep 200 miles at 35 mph. There are eagles that soar over the car, and antelope that jump across the road in front of you. Bison wallow and bears cross where you just camped.

It’s a scary, amazing, incredible trip. And you get to the destination eventually, mile by mile, bit by bit.

And that’s writing: word by word, letter by letter. We eventually get there because we know where we are going.

[annabwrites]

can’t

I said a thing tonight in kickboxing that I didn’t mean, and even as I was saying it, the words tumbling out of my mouth, I knew it wasn’t right.

The scene and some context: Coach walks over as my partner and I are watching everyone else. We are a rather analytical pair, so watching first then acting is kind of our modus operandi.

Note: My partner and I are not afraid to look dumb or get it wrong; we just like to observe and then apply. Some of those moves get crazy. A lot of the guys in class, including Coach, make the moves look graceful, lovely, even as they fly in and deliver a punch. It’s art; it’s a brutal ballet. And they are so good at it.

I am not.

Coach: Two, three, knee, lead leg. Then Superman and high knee.

Me: Ugh. Really? I can’t do Superman. I’m terrible at it.

Partner: C’mon! You can do this! You’ve got this.

And it was the can’t that got me. I said “I can’t”.

It was a lie. I have done this move--that involves a small hop on my left leg while extending my right leg back at the same time I throw a punch with my right arm. It’s superawkward. It takes some strange brain power and body coordination to make it work. But I’ve done it before.

The truth is: I can do a Superman. And I have.

It’s just been a while since I did it last, and I’m not very good at it, but I can do it.

So I threw myself into it, and the more reps I did, the better it was. I felt less like I was flailing around and more like I was doing a coordinated move. It was not graceful. It was not beautiful.

But when I sank into the fighting stance, and I moved through the combo, it was there: the fluidity, the flow, the click--the can.

I can metaphor the life out of this story, but I won’t. I guess all I am saying here is that even as can’t rolled out of my mouth, it tasted wrong, and I felt a bit ashamed that it was that word I reached for. It’s such an easy out. It requires no effort.

Truth would serve me better.

I don’t know how to do that.

I am not very good at it, but I’ll give it more time and attention.

I don’t want to.

Can’t gives up. It ends the line. We’re done here, bye.

Can’t stops growth. It stops potential. It stops possibility. It ends creativity and opportunity.

I want to quit reaching so quickly for can’t. I will, I’ll try, I’ll give it a go: all better options. All better truths.

I can. It’s going to be ugly, it’s going to be terrible and awkward and uncomfortable. I’m going to laugh at myself; others are probably going to have a laugh at me. And I’m pretty sure I’m going to surprise myself with what I can do in the end.

[annabwrites]

names matter

Names are a hard thing, and trying to figure out names for characters, names for books, names for chapters, characters, even a profile is hard stuff. I can’t imagine choosing a name for a real human (hats off, parents!) because names have meaning, they carry weight, and they shape a life or an existence. They say a lot about who you are, where you are from, what hopes (or unhopes) there were when that name was chosen.

I have written characters who remained nameless for a while, those whose names changed because they turned out to not be who I thought they were when I started out. And I suppose this happens with people, too: the names we were given just don’t fit sometimes, and so we find or choose the name that we feel best fits us. I had to change a character name recently because when I said it aloud, holy gods, that would never have worked.

A friend (now a reader!) was shifting through the worlds of Tumblr, trying to set up her account, and Tumblr had a lovely list of potential names for her, of which LovingMilkshakeWerewolf, the name of this post, was one. I dedicate this post to her, though it turns out she had a long, lost Tumblr account out there, so alas, LMW was not necessary. Hopefully someone, somewhere, becomes LovingMilkshakeWerewolf. It would make a banging DJ name. Or a band name, right up there with The Flaming Lips or The String Cheese Incident. Hold on a minute: I am going to go look up some others....

No, there are some really poorly thought out band names out there, you guys, so LMW would really just join the ranks. Check out Cracked.com’s list. Some of these, though, are more around the story of the naming than the actual name (or maybe I just normalized the names...)

One of the names on here was the topic of a reallllyyyy uncomfortable conversation I had with my mom years ago (context: my upbringing was rather conservative in the middle-America flat states...)

[driving down the road with my mom in her minivan at the height of the 90s ska era, singing along to “Zoot Suit Riot” (because it was what was on the radio--the car had a tape deck, not a CD player...)]

Mom: Oh, this song. I hear it a lot. It’s catchy. Who sings it?

Me: Cherry Poppin’ Daddies. [continues to sing having gifted my mother with my pop culture knowledge]

Mom: !!!!

Me, side eyeing her: What.

Mom: Do you know what that names means?

Me [feeling the slow burn of blush and awareness creep in]: Yeah. Do you? [because you should always challenge information that, in your mother’s opinion, you should not know or have context for with ill advised questions]

Me: Maybe we should just change the station [promptly changes to the safer church station before the convo becomes even more awkward]

So, yeah. Naming intentionally is good because you just never know what will happen when you say it out loud.

[annabwrites]

literary dates

miapia907-blog  asked:

Picture yourself on the worst blind date ever. Like, awful-bad. Terrible-bad. Cringeworthy-bad. Which literary character is sitting across from you, where did he/she/It take you, and what are you doing?

 Oh man, it’s like blind dating PTSD with this one. Do you have the awful date who pulls the old “broken car” scheme so he can make out with you only for you to yank your stupid high heels off your feet and begin walking home down that dusty road (only for the asshole to drive up a few minutes later while you were cussing at him, his car, the cows, and the stupid road)? Or the one where your date keeps calling you the wrong name and then seems so needy (and handsy!) that you have to excuse yourself to the restroom and then sneak out the bathroom window (actually there was no window in the bathroom so you just had to hightail it out of the bar with him watching you–you ducked your head!–as you pinwheel your arms when you hit that tricky patch of ice on the sidewalk)?

You know who would be the worst, though? A poor clergyman who just wants a wife. Talk about needy and just kind of sad in that pity-date kind of way you went on when you felt that everyone else was moving on in life and you were sitting with your arrested development on the couch shoving your feelings in your face. This is cringeworthy. At this point, I’m trying to think of someone else who would be a good fit for him (it’s not me).

And then my mind goes to a certain father-killer, mother-lover. This is worse than poor, pitiful clergyman. God, what a wreck.  That’s a whole lotta no there. So much baggage. This isn’t even worth trying to redeem. Totally running out of the bar away from this, ice slick or no.

A man who keeps his ex-wife in the attic…well, he and the mother-lover can hang out. Nothing says “love you forever in reallllyyyy unhealthy ways” than a crazy wife in the attic. I’m leaving him at Red Lobster, but I’ll take a cheese biscuit for the road.

Some vampires–and sometimes their nemesis? That includes you, werewolf. Seriously, the weird broody thing, the odd insistence on virtue, the habit of repeating high school over and over again rather than just moving on. I mean, I’m okay with the teeth thing. It’s everything else, including the sparkles. I’d probably brush the wolf’s fur once, though.

So let’s see your list now–

[annabwrites]

on commitment

I am not a disciplined person.

I will start some new thing, and say, “This time! I will commit to the thing this time!”

I launch myself wholeheartedly at that thing. And then time passes, and I haven’t done much with the thing, and then I feel guilty and a bit of a failure, and ugh, what an ugly spiral that is.

That thing is a lurker, too. It sits back there, hiding around corners, hidden in questions, just waiting. I come to dread the thing as a result.

In a recent conversation with a friend, also a hopeful writer, we explored this topic--that both of us want to be writers, and we are, if that looks like sporadic bursts of being writers. I don’t know the number of times we’ve gotten excited:

YAY! Two of us! We can do this thing together!

And then we wander off on our merry ways and forget, and then there is guilt because we aren’t writing and we feel we have failed each other. It’s an ugly spiral, doubly so.

So last month, among other things, we asked ourselves together: How do we make it happen? And we talked about what holds us back (busyness, exhaustion, the every day thing, unreasonable goals). And then we applied an easier goal: three times a week, we write a minimum of 50 words.

We set up Slack to track us and communicate, we have a spreadsheet to see the numbers add up, and we have text convos about different writerly things (how do we feel about cussing in a thing family might read? here is a scene I wrote! things like that). And we are honest about it, which is a relief when I sometimes feel my words don’t matter or they are crap or why would the world want these words, or when I need to share that I did a thing with someone who gets it.

And here is the crazy part: We are doing it. We have hit the goal every week now. Sometimes we squeak it in under the wire. Sometimes the words are few or grueling to get down so it feels like each word pulls a part of your soul out of you, or we just putter along.

But!

The words are there. And it’s 50 more words than there were. Maybe it’s three days a week, maybe it is more.

But the words are there and they are being counted, one by one.

[annabwrites]

on being brave

Once upon a time (January 2017, so not that far upon a time) a girl (ok, it’s really me) decided that was going to do a thing (it started with one thing) that made her really uncomfortable. And so, she embarked upon a journey to Las Vegas, a town she swore she had no desire to go to, to visit, to be any part of. And she still feels that way in October, many months after she went, but that is beside the point of this story.

Anyway, so this girl (me) did this thing (went to Vegas) for work and she learned some stuff and she met some really lovely people. There was a conversation that stands out from this trip, though, that is worth exploring. The premise: this group of people discusses various personality assessments–5Dynamics, Meyers-Briggs, DiSC, some color one (sorry color company, I’m just not familiar enough), and others. One of the lovely people turns to our protagonist (me) and says, “I bet you are a [insert arbitrary color].”

Girl/me: “Oh, thank you? I don’t know what that means.”

Lovely person: “You are sociable and outgoing.”

Girl/me: “AHAHAHAHA. No.”

Because the truth was, this girl very much wished she was in her hotel room at Caesar’s Palace alone, but she was doing the things within the thing that made her really uncomfortable, and a small part of her felt a bit triumphant that she did so well at navigating the uncomfortable thing that people thought she was more than she actually was.

Flash forward, and here we are in October. The trip to Vegas was unexpected and quite sudden, and it launched what I have called a year of living bravely, of doing things that for me are reallllllllyyyyyy uncomfortable. The term “bravely” though has always sat a bit wrong. I don’t feel that what I am doing is brave. Perhaps what it is is fearless? But this feels wrong, too, because I have a lot of fear and still I launch myself into the situations that make me uncomfortable, that push at the limits of my comforts.

Here is a list of those things:

Started asking for the things I want and need at work

Note: This sometimes bites me in the ass

Note: I have gotten to learn some really cool tools as a result of this

I applied for a grant to help support my writing.  

Note: I did not get the grant, so my year of whatever-this-is isn’t all triumphs (the focus is not on winning but on doing)

I started kickboxing--like the real Muay Thai stuff, not the weird dancey stuff

Note:  I was really bad at this, and sometimes the only girl there. I got      punched by children, I punched children (and men twice my size)

Note: I am not so bad at this now, though there is still a ton to learn

Applied to a writers workshop that I discovered from research for the grant

Note: Got accepted to the writing workshop! So add solo travel to the workshop to the list for this year, too

Really started to expand my skills in my side gig I do

Note: These went so well with some helpful guidance (because I often don’t get things right the first time…or in edits…) And I gained some incredible new skills.

Note: Also, my words showed up on the internet for a client

I went on vacation to a complete new destination and I did not do any planning (other than lining up pet care)

Note: This is rare for me to be able to kick back and let someone else do it all

I started taking digital art and tools classes

Note: This means sharing some really crappy art

I still have to write a lot and still travel to the writer’s workshop, so I’ll update as I need to this list. BUT! These are things that I would have talked myself out of before, and a lot of these I still had to talk myself into all the way up to actually putting my butt into a seat. And I did it. And I am incredibly proud of myself for doing these things. It’s been a very uncomfortable year, and still I am glad I have done these things.