Wednesday, March 30, 2022

Where It's At Wednesday: A Balanced Approach


Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

In this week's Fat Friday post (which I wrote on Tuesday) I talk about my struggles with convincing myself to work out. My solution to this dilemma comes in the form of framing the workout as physical therapy to improve my abilities rather than an attempt to become some idealized model of what a woman is supposed to be, and guess what, I believe I emerged triumphantly! 

Like many people, I was raised with the "no pain no gain" model of exercise. If your workout doesn't make you practically an Olympic athlete, what are you even doing? If your workout doesn't give you an ass and abs so toned that you can bounce quarters off them, it isn't a "real" workout. And if your workout isn't making you lose weight, well, you aren't working out hard enough and you suck.

Messages like this cause people to hate exercise. So I threw them all out the window. I actually like to exercise, but in the past, I did it to extremes. This approach is both unrealistic and unenjoyable, so boom, it's gone. One nice thing about being old and therefore invisible to the male gaze (although not invisible enough, unfortunately) is joyfully abandoning the idea that my exercise program needs to focus on "sexiness" for even one second of my time. If anyone were ever to describe me as "sexy," it would be because:

1) They're taking the piss. This makes them a twat and not worth my time or energy.

2) They've been hit on the head. They need to be in the emergency room. 

3) They're off their rocker and need mental help. 

4) Some jokester pasted pictures of the Sex Symbol Du jour to their glasses.

Any way you slice this pie, I am not and do not care about being sexy.

So, since I'm not trying to be a GYWB (Granny You Wanna Bang), I'm not training for the Paralympics, and I'm no longer trying to hate myself thin, what the hell am I doing?

I'm focusing on improving my areas of compromise by doing workouts that are both enjoyable and in my wheelhouse.

I had a nasty asthma attack complete with hacking up copious disgusting mucus yesterday evening, so today I decided to focus on exercises that improve pulmonary capacity and condition the muscle groups that support optimal breathing. I found a selection of ten yoga poses for this purpose and tailored them to suit my abilities.


I started with an easy warmup, just moving and stretching. I can't do high-octane exercise and didn't want to be wheezing before I even got into the workout itself. Then I did some stretches and got down to business.

One thing I'd do differently than I did today is put the Eagle pose closer to the front of the workout. It's listed at the end and by the time I got to it I just couldn't hang. I lay flat and raised the foot of my adjustable bed to the highest position, just letting my back stretch for a few minutes. 

I felt like this routine was effective and I'd be happy to do it again. I'd like to be working out every day like I used to. 

I fell down the rabbit hole of seeking abdominal workouts for my next session. One thing I'd advise people to stop saying is "anybody can do (insert name of exercise)." 

No, everybody cannot do every exercise. Stop saying that.

Another variation is "if I can do X, anybody can."

Also not true, and discouraging to hear for those people who can't do whatever thing you find simple to do. 

We all have different abilities and challenges. 

If you have been avoiding exercise because like me you feel intimidated by not being able to work out strenuously or your form isn't perfect or you're just plain sick and tired of people assuming that exercise is all about TEH WATE LOOZE, I hope that I may have inspired you to try again. Make your workout about what you need, not about what other people think you need. 

I welcome you to share your thoughts and experiences with a reminder that this is a diet talk and weight loss talk-free space. You may share thoughts on how these issues affect your relationship with physical exercise. What I don't welcome is conversations such as "but the All Bean, Cauliflower, and Cabbage Diet is the last diet you'll ever need and you'll totally blast off those unsightly pounds" or "I lost 2500 pounds doing the Car Lift Challenge just three days a week and if I can do it anyone can do it." Not interested.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~


Free use image from Open Clipart Vectors
Still fat. Still ornery. But a little more flexible.


Free use image from Pixabay
Hangry is ready to stick a fork in this post.
Which reminds me, it's time to start dinner.

Here are the only diet books vetted and endorsed by Ornery Owl and Hangry Wyrm.

The Fuck It Diet

Health At Every Size

The Deep House mix I listened to while doing my yoga exercises today.  
Here's the link in case you can't see the player. 


 The Deep House mix I listened to while penning this post.

Here's the link in case you can't see the player.


The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)



Creative Commons License


This work is the intellectual property of Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp and Naughty Netherworld Press.

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. Odysee’s reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the repost function on Odysee. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

Sharing a link to the post is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

Come check out Readers Roost, the online book store featuring works by indie and small press authors. Discover your next great read at the Roost! It's the link you need when you wanna read.

Buy me a coffee

Or buy me a coffee here

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Sunday, March 27, 2022

Charity Sunday March 2022: American Art Therapy Association

 


For this month's Charity Sunday I will donate $1 for every comment received to the American Art Therapy Association. https://arttherapy.org/ 

The American Art Therapy Association (AATA) is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit, non-partisan, professional, and educational organization dedicated to the growth and development of the art therapy profession. Founded in 1969, the American Art Therapy Association is one of the world’s leading art therapy membership organizations.

If that's all you want to know, then feel free to skip my forthcoming blather and leave your "I Was Here" in the comments. On the other hand, if you are bored or otherwise interested in what spews forth from my cross-wired, scrambled, and otherwise askew brain, stick around. You either won't regret it or you will.

You can consider the forthcoming brain spew to be part of a WIP. It has been my goal for many years now to unleash a helpful (or not entirely helpful) autobiography/book of suggestions for developing the confidence not only to create but to unleash your creations on an unsuspecting world of people who don't understand you, don't like you, and don't care about you or your work while hoping to reach that select few who will appreciate it. 

I have started and stopped this project many times. I think I'm about ready to pull the trigger on the starting gun and let it run wild. You can read one of the potential chapters below. Or not. It's up to you.


Here is a link to the other posts. I didn't end up on the list because I'm a stupid asshole and forgot to put myself on there.


In my younger days, I enjoyed mind-altering drugs quite a lot. Anything that allowed me to forget my despised self and my shitty reality was a welcome companion. My party pals thought I was a bit nuts when I said that I'd rather sit in the corner drinking a six-pack by myself than hook up with a random dude for meaningless sex, but I didn't really give a rat's ass what they thought. I liked my substances, and it felt like my substances liked me. 

There are things that I'm starting to understand now that so many decades have passed between me and those days of smoke and drink and the occasional pill or hit of acid. I really hated myself and I was dying to escape the garbage reality that was my life. I wouldn't have minded if I'd literally died. 

I was self-harming, and I made a half-assed suicide attempt that landed me on the psych ward for a weekend. While on the psych ward, I received lots of compassionate help, learned that I was a wonderfully worthwhile young lady, and never touched alcohol or drugs again.

Psych! I'm just messing with you.

The truth is the staff on the psych ward psychologically abused me and I learned I couldn't trust fuckers in the mental health profession. They were more screwed-up than me while thinking they were better than me, plus they were assholes. I was right back to partying as soon as I could get out of the house and I still hated myself. 

There was a bitch of a nurse who told me I was a freak and a freak like me could never be normal.

The clown of a shrink diagnosed me as a "hysterical neurotic."

I was later diagnosed with "borderline personality disorder." Allow me to tell you what I think of the "borderline personality disorder" diagnosis. It is overwhelmingly applied to women and girls. It is the modern "hysterical neurotic." Every girl or woman branded with the "borderline personality disorder" label is struggling with unresolved trauma. 

I doubt that I would be diagnosed with "borderline personality disorder" these days, but it isn't because I've been "cured" of "borderline personality disorder." You can't be "cured" of an ailment that doesn't exist.

So, if I didn't have "borderline personality disorder" and I wasn't a "hysterical neurotic," what was going on?

I had unresolved complex PTSD. I had been misunderstood by my family from birth and abused by my schoolmates from the first day I set foot in a classroom. My mother always told me what an awful baby I was because I never slept more than two hours at a time. When I was a year and a half old, my clown of a pediatrician prescribed phenobarbital. My mother told me I was awake for three days straight after taking it. 

Granted, it was the 1960s so giving a hard drug to a toddler wasn't unheard of, but I don't care. What kind of ass clown gives phenobarbital to a toddler?

My parents came from the school of thought that if you hold a child too much or respond to them too quickly when they cry, you'll spoil them. They never beat me but were quick to whack me on the backside for the kind of mistakes that every kid makes, such as dropping a glass of water. 

From my earliest memories, I was always extremely high-strung, petrified of making a mistake. I was so anxious that I sometimes had painful muscle spasms in my neck. I vomited in secret almost every day because my anxiety made me sick to my stomach. I felt like I was bad, wrong, and a mistake.

When I was in my late thirties, a compassionate counselor diagnosed me as having type 2 bipolar disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. She was incorrect and in retrospect had a case of seeing type 2 bipolar everywhere because her adopted son had the condition. However, the diagnosis seemed to make sense. 

I was on a constant emotional rollercoaster. I had a history of impulsive behavior. I had (and still have) difficulty with housekeeping. I could keep a job if I landed one that worked with my idiosyncrasies but otherwise, my work history was spotty. I enjoyed a job for a while and then got bored with it and started calling in. I would fall into severe periods of depression because I was so ashamed of my inability to be normal.

I developed type 2 diabetes at age 49, which didn't surprise me because the rest of my endocrine system is pretty much a trash fire. When I was in my early 50s, my endocrine problems plus my many years of working physically demanding jobs started catching up to me. 

By the time I was 52 years old, I could no longer work in the healthcare field. I delivered groceries for a while until I severely injured the median nerve in my left arm. For a little over a year, I delivered food for a cool little delivery-only kitchen in LoDo (Denver). Then my son and I had the opportunity to move to a house in a literal ghost town on the northeastern plains of Colorado and we took it. I applied for disability.

I had been taking a low dose of Lithium Orotate for years. I didn't want to take Lithium Carbonate because of the side effects and because the therapeutic dosage is extremely close to toxic levels of Lithium. I learned the hard way that SSRIs and I do not get along. They cause me to have psychotic reactions. So I don't take psych meds despite presenting with a major mental health condition. 

While going through the process to qualify for disability, I could not afford Lithium Orotate. I realized I don't have bipolar disorder when I experienced no mood swings without the supplement. 

In the past, my anxiety about work consumed me. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to get enough sleep, worried that I'd oversleep, worried that I'd be late, worried that I'd fuck up on the job, worried that I'd fall asleep during my shift, worried about money, and worried about everything else I was doing wrong. It was exhausting. When I no longer had to worry about punching a time clock or working a job I could finally examine certain events in my life.

I knew now that I never had bipolar disorder and the more I read about borderline personality disorder, the more I realized that it was a bullshit sexist diagnosis. I also started questioning the obsessive-compulsive disorder diagnosis. I started learning about ADHD in adults and realized that all along my family, my peers, and my teachers had scolded and shamed me for behaviors consistent with ADHD.

I never considered that I could have ADHD because my behaviors didn't fit the stereotypical disruptive boy who can't sit still model. Obviously, I wasn't a boy. I was a well-behaved girl. I was shy and quiet. I sat at the back of the class. I doodled a lot totally took notes during the teacher's lecture. I was a B student who turned in my assignments on time and totally never waited until the last minute to do them--nope, not me! 

Part of this statement is true. I turned in my assignments on time. I was a great bullshitter and could determine what teachers wanted in a paper, so I did well in classes like English and social sciences. I did well enough in biology but chemistry and physics confounded me. I had trouble with math beyond basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and I still do. If the world depended on my being able to complete a simple Sudoku puzzle, we'd all be fucked.

As an adult, I had difficulty paying attention during meetings. Office jobs weren't a good fit for me. I did better with jobs that had a physical or technological component. Since women weren't encouraged to go into fields like IT, I ended up doing a series of low-paying jobs such as bundling papers at the local newspaper for dispatch to the mountain towns, working in the cafeteria at CU Boulder, or working at an Orange Julius clone in the nearby mall. 

Eventually, I got sucked into working as a nurse's aide at the long-term care center where my mother worked, and I hated it. Working in this hell hole while pregnant led to my 119th nervous breakdown. I was an extremely troubled young woman, but I got no help. I got scolded for being a fuckup and threatened with the loss of my job.

I am now learning by trial and error how to navigate life with ADHD without taking medication. I don't do well with medications that affect my mind. I long ago got into the habit of always putting my keys in the same place. Prior to doing this, I was always misplacing my keys. Using techniques like this makes life with ADHD more manageable.

Being scolded and berated for having difficulty with focusing and time management does not help people with ADHD, and I don't think that medication is necessary in most cases. Some people swear by medication, and if you are one of those people, by all means, keep taking it. I'm not a doctor. I just know that for me, medications that mess with my brain and nervous system are a no-go. 

I don't respond well to medications or to standard methods of therapy. I don't like feeling like I'm being judged. The few times that I've engaged in what one might deem "art therapy," I've found it very helpful. On one occasion, I painted a self-portrait using only primary colors and basic shapes. I loved the Picasso-esque outcome. Like me, this portrait has a resting bitch face that never rests. After painting this picture I felt relaxed, hopeful, and, dare I say it, I felt happy. 

This is part of the reason I can't only write for submission to publications. If I'm constantly being judged I start to wither. Above all else, my writing must be right for me. Writing is the one thing that I'm consistent with. I don't really know how to do anything else; it's write or die. I'm sure that some people who read my writing wish I'd die. They'll get their wish someday, but for the moment, I'm still here, and since only the good die young, I may be around for a while.

It's time to change the way we approach mental health therapy. Most psychological conditions are maladaptive coping mechanisms rather than organic brain disorders. Conditions such as ADHD result from brains wired differently than the expected norm. These aren't "bad brains" but result in different learning styles than those of a person with a "neurotypical" brain. 

It's time to recognize and work with our differences rather than expecting everyone to conform to the same standards. Trying to fit into a mold that doesn't suit you never ends well. In the end, something has to give. Either you break the mold (please, break the mold!) or trying to conform to the mold destroys you.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~


Free use image from Open Clipart Vectors

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)



Creative Commons License


This work is the intellectual property of Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp and Naughty Netherworld Press.

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. Odysee’s reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the repost function on Odysee. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

Sharing a link to the post is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

Come check out Readers Roost, the online book store featuring works by indie and small press authors. Discover your next great read at the Roost! It's the link you need when you wanna read.

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My Misunderstood Monkey Mind #8Sunday #MFRWHooks #SnipSun #CharitySunday

 


My Charity Sunday post this month features a potential chapter from the autobiography/motivational book that I've intended to publish for years. Here are a few sentences to give you an idea of what you're getting into.

In my younger days, I enjoyed mind-altering drugs quite a lot. Anything that allowed me to forget my despised self and my shitty reality was a welcome companion. My party pals thought I was a bit nuts when I said that I'd rather sit in the corner drinking a six-pack by myself than hook up with a random dude for meaningless sex, but I didn't really give a rat's ass what they thought. I liked my substances, and it felt like my substances liked me. 

There are things that I'm starting to understand now that so many decades have passed between me and those days of smoke and drink and the occasional pill or hit of acid. I really hated myself and I was dying to escape the garbage reality that was my life. I wouldn't have minded if I'd literally died. 

I was self-harming, and I made a half-assed suicide attempt that landed me on the psych ward for a weekend. While on the psych ward, I received lots of compassionate help, learned that I was a wonderfully worthwhile young lady, and never touched alcohol or drugs again.

Psych! I'm just messing with you.

If you liked that crap, continue reading the rest of the post by following the link below. 


Every comment I receive on the linked post translates to a buck for the American Art Therapy Association. Support independent weirdness and a great cause too!

Don't feel like you have to leave a comment on both this post and the Charity Sunday post. One or the other is fine.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~



Free use image from Open Clipart Vectors
Ornery Owl's mind is filled with the seeds of ideas. 
Sometimes they all blossom at once.


Hop to It








Wednesday, March 23, 2022

Tackle It Tuesday: For Reasons They Don't Understand

 

Image by Fab Lentz on Unsplash

Dear Campers,
This post was inspired by the Tuesday Writing Prompt from Go Dog Go Cafe and the above image for Three Line Tales. The Three Line Tale is the Senryu at the end of the decidedly nonstandard Haibun. 

If any of the prompt hosts feel that the post totally flouts their rules, they are welcome to remove my link, no hard feelings. 

And now, today's Haibun of Encouragement.

Greetings Dear Fiends,

Welcome to my Haibun of Encouragement.

This is not the best Haibun I ever wrote.

It is not the best anything I ever wrote.

But unless you are far more self-assured than I am, it may be what you need to hear.

Perhaps you are surrounded by people who tell you that The Thing You Do is nothing more than self-indulgent vanity. These people are quick to point out that only a vanishingly small number of Very Special Anomalies ever make a living from the arts, let alone achieve any sort of renown. They will then list the many reasons why you are Not Very Special.

I can’t count the number of times that I’ve heard that I’m Not Pretty Enough or that I’m Too Fat.

Yes, for writing.

I can’t imagine why I’d need to be thin or pretty to write, but that’s what I’ve been told.

There are others who focus on the writing, telling me everything that’s wrong with it.

I have too many subplots.

My work is too dark.

It’s too depressing.

It’s too weird.

It addresses too many uncomfortable subjects.

It’s too raw.

It’s too me, and nobody wants me.

You may know where this is going next.

The naysayers tell you that you need to give up this Artsy-Fartsy Nonsense and focus on having a Real Career that will make you oodles of money.

Learning a trade is a good plan. But choose something that you’ll enjoy. Don’t select something that you think will make other people happy, because it will make you unhappy.

Then continue pursuing your artistic or literary dreams.

“But everything I write gets rejected,” you lament.

Back in January of this year, I submitted a selection of ten poems and a short story for consideration in an anthology. Eight of the poems were rejected in quick succession. Then just today, the short story and one of the poems was accepted! One poem is still under consideration.

I also had a poem that I submitted to another publication rejected today.

More of your work will be rejected than accepted. That’s just how it is.

Improving the quality of your writing, art, or whatever your chosen form of expression should be a lifelong goal. However, most of the time publishers are looking for pieces that check off certain boxes. They are looking for work that has a high probability of being commercially viable. I don’t like to check boxes, and I can’t write according to a formula.

My work will never be accepted by the mainstream. I’m hoping for a cult following.

My advice is to keep creating and keep looking for ways to gain exposure. Realize that you will never be able to explain your love of your craft to the Naysayers. You are called to do That Thing You Do for reasons they don’t understand.

You don’t need their approval.

Keep on doing That Thing You Do for you.

granted a reprieve

now, go up and never stop

strive no matter what

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~


Free-use image from Open Clipart Vectors
Fat, Ornery, and Writing What The Hell I Want to Write--Always.

Prompted and Hoppin'

https://godoggocafe.com/2022/03/22/tuesday-writing-prompt-challenge-tuesday-march-22-2022/
Today’s prompt—use the words for reasons they don’t understand in a piece of poetry

The prompt is the image at the top of the post


The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)



Creative Commons License


This work is the intellectual property of Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp and Naughty Netherworld Press.

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. Odysee’s reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the repost function on Odysee. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

Sharing a link to the post is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

Come check out Readers Roost, the online book store featuring works by indie and small press authors. Discover your next great read at the Roost! It's the link you need when you wanna read.

Buy me a coffee

Or buy me a coffee here

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Subscribe for as little as $1 per month.

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Saturday, March 19, 2022

Blow Your Stack Saturday: I Found Myself Again

 

Image by Jan Alexander from Pixabay

It's stack-blowing time again, always a great time to take stock and try to figure out what's working and what isn't. Fortunately, I seem to be working again, at least for the moment, so let's do this.

I submitted an eight-poem collection tentatively entitled Survival to The Temz Review today and recorded my submission in the Submission Grinder.



Submitting my poetry manuscript today felt good, but I think that's partly because I let up on myself a bit so it didn't feel like horrible homework. 

Moving forward this month, I plan to submit a selection of five poems and a story to The Subliminal Journal. 


They are okay with work that was previously published on a blog or social media only, so I am going to roll with that. During April I will use the NaPoWriMo prompts and April PAD Challenge prompts to create a chapbook for the Temz Review's annual chapbook submissions.

This seems like a pretty manageable goal for the poetry side of things. I'm still working the fiction side of things out. I had a good long writing session for the Cosmically Bonded series yesterday and decided that I'm going to break the longer volume into a series of novelettes/short stories. 

I'll probably include the first chapter of Cosmically Bonded in my April newsletter. One person from the Marketing for Romance Writers group (https://mfrw.blogspot.com/) said that they have a subscribers-only serial that they include in their newsletter. 

While this sounds like a great idea, I decided I don't need one more project to commit to. Subscribers to my newsletter will get the Pot Luck Grab Bag Raffle Prize, aka, whatever I happen to be working on that I decide to share. Sometimes it will be poetry, sometimes a complete short story, and sometimes a chapter from a WIP. My newsletter is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you're going to get. Sometimes it's a nice caramel, sometimes it's fresh and fruity, sometimes it's full of nuts. 

Okay, granted, it's my newsletter, so it's probably full of nuts. If you're lucky, it won't be Crunchy Frog or the Spring Bolt Surprise.

I suppose that now would be a good time to drop a link to subscribe to my newsletter. Don't worry, I've never included a Spring Bolt Surprise for my readers...yet!


People like getting gifts, so maybe I should consider doing a quarterly grab bag giveaway box. It could include something like an autographed copy of one of my manuscripts because you know you want that. Maybe I could also include some candy and a pen and a fun surprise. I'll have to figure out how I'm going to select a winner. Since I only have five subscribers as of this writing, I'll probably just number them from one to five and select a winner using the Random.org method.

This is starting to run on a bit and I need to get a shower in. It's Food Bank Day and I like to look slightly presentable when I stagger forth from my tomb into the sunlight. Bluh!

This is probably the least ranty Blow Your Stack Saturday on record. Don't expect this to become a trend. I can always find things to be pissed off about.

Spirit of the Universe, thank you for helping me find my way out of yet another Approval Seeking Trap. Please keep me on the path to true success and happiness rather than clamoring for validation. Help me to remember that when I help myself I am better able to help others. Amen.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~


The weather is warmer so Ornery is wearing a festive crown of spring flowers.
Free use image from Open Clipart Vectors




Resource Books:
52 Weeks of Writing

Self-Help Sucks

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)



Creative Commons License


This work is the intellectual property of Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp and Naughty Netherworld Press.

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. Odysee’s reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the repost function on Odysee. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

Sharing a link to the post is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

Come check out Readers Roost, the online book store featuring works by indie and small press authors. Discover your next great read at the Roost! It's the link you need when you wanna read.

Buy me a coffee

Or buy me a coffee here

Join me on Patreon!
Subscribe for as little as $1 per month.

Get the latest literary happenings and slices of life in your inbox! Now with a poem or chapter from an unpublished WIP every month. You may find yourself in possession of a fabulous rarity that would otherwise be relegated to history!



Thursday, March 17, 2022

Make it Happen Thursday: The Hobyahs

 


These nasty little bugaboos are called Hobyahs. They appear in the English fairy tale "The Hobyahs," which you can read by following the link.


Be forewarned that this story will leave you wondering what is wrong with English people. 

In the story, the Hobyahs loudly announce their intent to tear down the hemp stalk farmhouse, eat the farmer and his wife, and carry off the little girl. The farmer's dog barks to warn the farmer about the Hobyahs, but rather than pay heed, the farmer punishes the dog for barking by lopping off its appendages. Eventually, the farmer lops off the unfortunate dog's head, and the Hobyahs eat him and his wife because he refused to pay heed to the dog's warning.

I told you it was a messed-up story. But it isn't just a messed-up story, it's a metaphor for being stubborn and not paying heed to warning signs.

I have been ignoring my inner Little Dog Turpie, who has been warning me that focusing on gaining outside approval for my work rather than focusing on telling the stories I enjoy was going to come to no good end. After writing Monday's post, I had a long, hard think about what I really wish to do with my writing. Oh, and by the way, I may have initially told my inner Little Dog Turpie to shut up, but I didn't lop off any of his appendages. 

Here's the link to Monday's miserable post.


I didn't want to keep feeling like this. So I asked myself what I'd be doing if I didn't care about making money or growing an audience.

I'd be telling the stories that gnaw away at me if I don't tell them. I wouldn't worry about marketability or popularity or trends or any of that swizz. I'd spin my fix-up novel yarns into patchwork webs and invite anyone who dared to give them a read.

(What is this "give him a read" nonsense, ProWritingAid? My stories are neither male nor female and they are many.)

Anyway...

I started working on Cosmically Bonded again and it was like a weight lifted off me. This story is very niche and probably will never have much of an audience. Even if the only people who read it are the three people I dedicated it to, that's okay.

I realized that while most of the time my attitude towards rejection from publishers is like my attitude about taking tests, seeing the metric butt-ton of rejections in my Submittable account did a number on me. Writing was feeling like working a job and that is one thing I can never allow it to become. The stuff I create when I must rather than because I want to is stale, lifeless, and two-dimensional. When I feel like I'm selling my soul to gain approval, it's time to take a step back.

Again I ask myself, what are the things I really love to write.

My serials/fix-up novels (non-erotica).
My erotica series. You may wonder why someone with a libido like a car with four flat tires and a cracked engine block enjoys writing erotica. I think I appreciate the hyperbolic aspect of the genre. 
Poetry.
Recipes. Yes, really. I love sharing recipes with the Good Stuff from Grover blog.


Mental health and guidance posts like this one. 

I absolutely prefer self-publishing to the traditional route, but I do like to write stories for anthologies sometimes. My son suggests I need to be very selective about the anthologies I'm writing for so the writing remains fun rather than becoming horrible homework.

The reason I began pursuing the path of submitting my work elsewhere is that I really, really, really, really, suck at promotion. A lot. I mean I really suck at promotion. Truly. Not making this up.

To boil it down to the Condensed Soup for the Soul version, if I succeed at something that makes me miserable, I haven't really succeeded. I needed to get myself back on track and I need to apologize to Little Dog Turpie for ignoring him. At least the hunter came along and rescued me from the Hobyahs.

This week's shout-out goes to Lisabet Sarai, who hosts the monthly Charity Sunday blog hop.


Spirit of the Universe, please help me to stay true to my vision. Help me to remember that if it feels wrong, I'm not doing it right. Amen.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~



Free Use Image from Open Clipart Vectors


Resource Books:
52 Weeks of Writing

Self-Help Sucks

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)



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