A to Z Challenge 2024: Day 17: Quite Quick and Quirky

 

Image by Alana Jordan from Pixabay

Quick and Quirky

Quickly create a quirky drabble with plentiful quantities of items starting with q.

Sometimes focusing on creating quite a quantity quickly ends up making me go off the rails.

My tendency is to shame myself when I can’t tow--er--toe the line.

I honestly haven’t quite recovered from last year’s NaNoWriMo.

I started out quite strong, but by the end, I just wanted to quit.

I’ve been struggling with my writing this year.

I’ve been trying to bring back the joy of creation rather than relegating myself to being a quickly typing monkey hoping something will quell my anxiety.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~

Image by Amy Art-Dreams from Pixabay

A to Z Challenge 2024: Day 15: Obsession

Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay

When I was misdiagnosed as having type 2 bipolar disorder, I was also diagnosed as having obsessive-compulsive disorder. I do have obsessive features to my personality, but I think these stem from ADHD and anxiety.

I count things, but this is a mechanism to break myself out of indecision rather than feeling like something bad is going to happen if I don’t do it. I have a system so I don’t become indecisive about what number I’m going to use. For instance, this year my number is 18, which can be further condensed down to 9. I arrived at this number by adding up this year’s digits.

2+10+2+4=18

Therefore, if I have multiple items to choose from, I’ll select either the ninth or the eighteenth one.

I might also choose to select the fourth item (April is the fourth month) or the 14^th item because today is the fourteenth day of the month. Since it’s one PM, I could also just select the first item.

Again, I do this to short-circuit my sometimes crippling indecisiveness, yet another glitch born from anxiety. I don’t think I have OCD.  

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~

Image by Mystic Art Design from Pixabay

"Honestly, Galadriel, I don't think you're going to have much luck reading any of these books. They're floating in the water, there are trees growing out of them, and there's a small, angry guy with a sword on the bottom one."

A to Z Challenge 2024: Day 14: Neurotic Neverland

 

Image by Angelo Giordano from Pixabay

Let’s get this out of the way first.

I believe Michael Jackson was innocent of the crimes he was accused of.

I have no desire to engage in arguments on this subject.

That being said, I will proceed with what I want to discuss in this post.

When I was in my late teens, you couldn’t turn on the radio without hearing Michael Jackson. He was really taking off as a solo performer. Although I enjoyed his catchy tunes, I also envied his popularity and his seemingly effortless confidence. He had an incredible star power that a fuckup like me could never hope to possess.

Years later, when I learned about the anguish Michael hid from the public, I found myself empathizing with him.

Neverland Ranch, in all its over-the-top ostentatiousness and Jackson’s befriending of boys, was his way of trying to give himself the childhood he never had.

Down inside, the superstar I envied was an anxious mess tortured by his own feelings of inadequacy.

Michael Jackson was a lot like me after all.

A to Z Challenge 2024: Killers!

 

I’ve gone through much of my life feeling like there was a noose around my neck.

This sensation is caused by laryngospasms, which, in my case, are primarily caused by anxiety.

Because my throat was tensed up so often due to stress, I developed vocal cord dysfunction.

I went through two months of physical therapy to unlearn the erroneous lessons that stress and anxiety taught my body.

Even now, I have to make a conscious effort to focus on exhalation because my larynx defaults to closing on inhalation.

Stress: it’s a killer, and it will fuck you up. No joke.

Enjoy some relaxing music.

https://odysee.com/@DetenteMeditation:b/detente-meditation-music-2-hours-deep-2:b?r=GTwnGJ4fFBQfzuJgpHVpfKBKaC9b8B16

A to Z Challenge 2024: Day 5: Editing

 

Image by Chen from Pixabay

I won't bother counting the words in this post until I paste them into my rebellious catch-all Camp NaNoWriMo document. I already know this one will surpass the hundred-word limit.

So, what does editing have to do with anxiety, you may be asking. Does editing make you anxious?

Quite the opposite. My feelings on editing range from neutral to positive. However, I very recently made the decision to let editing do the heavy lifting when it comes to earning income from literary pursuits so my writing can become therapeutic again. In attempting to generate social currency through submitting stories to anthologies on a monthly basis, I was starting to feel like a content mill. 

I wasn't enjoying writing anymore. Since writing is an addiction that won't kill me as quickly as booze and drugs, falling out of love with it is catastrophic. I no longer had any place to channel my anxiety, and the fragile peace I'd formed with myself was falling apart fast. 

Editing is a skill I've become adept at rather than a craft that holds profound personal importance for me. The fact that editing does not have the same significance has allowed writing to return to being a healing force rather than a source of misery. 

And now for something completely different!

No, not a man with three buttocks. 

It's an act of shameless self-promotion.

If you're looking for a line and copy editor plus a very nitpicky (but never harsh) proofreader, check out the details here. 

https://ornerybookemporium.blogspot.com/p/ornery-literary-services.html

Mention that you saw the link here and take advantage of a fifty percent discount. 

I never thought that editing would be helpful in combating anxiety, but it is, at least for me.

Some people might find the reverse to be true.

~Ornery Owl Has Speaken Spoken~

Image by Çiğdem Onur from Pixabay

"Sorry to hear that He Who Must Not Be Named stole your broom, Harry, but I can keep you company on the way to the Mystical Library. Say, did I ever tell you about the time I reviewed this book that contained almost nothing but really bad dialogue? I joke you not! There were barely any setting or action descriptions. Just bad dialogue, terrible dialogue, and worse dialogue. Did I mention the dialogue was bad? It was really awful. The absolute worst!"

"Sort of like this conversation, then?"

"Yes, exactly! My brain hurt so much when I finally finished with that mess!"

https://odysee.com/@RetroSynthMusic:d/synthwave-retrosynth-kswv-radio-20:2?r=GTwnGJ4fFBQfzuJgpHVpfKBKaC9b8B16

If He Who Must Not Be Named hadn't also stolen Harry's earbuds and super wizardy phone, he'd surely be listening to the Wacky Submission Wednesday Synthwave mix!

A to Z Challenge 2024: Day 4: Drugs

 

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

I wanna be sedated, but for me, the cure is worse than the problem. The kinds of drugs that most people take for anxiety and depression fuck me up even worse than I already am.

Benzodiazepines have a severe rebound effect. Valium works a little differently than the others. Most of them take the edge off, and then about 20 minutes later, I get blasted with a panic attack from hell.

Valium makes me thick as a brick, except if I’m going to the dentist when adrenaline overrides it, so it doesn’t work at all. I’m already prone to nightmares, and while Valium helps me fall asleep nicely, it also intensifies my nightmares.

SSRIs make me manic and psychotic.

So, yeah. For me, the magic pills are bad magic.

Don’t get defensive if you take these medications and they work for you. I’m not passing judgment on you. I’m not you. You’re not me. That’s something you can be thanking whatever deity you worship or fate or the Universe or whatever for.

This post went over 100 words. So what? It’s my party, and I’ll go over 100 words if I want to.

Yeah, I agree; it’s a lame party.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~

Image by Greg Waskovich from Pixabay

Ornery Owl's coming in fast with a hot take.

A to Z Challenge 2024: Anxiety

It's my goal to let the world 🌎 see 👀 what anxiety means to me. 

Maybe also to you, or maybe to someone you know. 

In segments of one hundred words each, I'll try to educate about a problem that I haven't been able to adequately describe using tens of thousands of words. 

You don't think I can do it. 

I doubt I can either, but you never know because sometimes less is more. 

I haven't handwritten anything in a long time, and it shows. 

To be fair, my handwriting has always been crap, but it's gotten worse. 

So goes my first disgusting drabble. 

Ornery Owl 🦉 has spoken. 

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Blogger app for Android super sucks.

Here's a concert from an Argentinian band called Soda Stereo.

https://odysee.com/@Filip:f/Soda-Stereo---El-%C3%9Altimo-Concierto--DVD-Completo-:0?r=GTwnGJ4fFBQfzuJgpHVpfKBKaC9b8B16

A to Z Challenge Theme Reveal: Hiiiigh Anxiiiiietyyyyyy!

I'm tardy to the party, but I wasn't even sure I was going to attempt the challenge this year. I dropped out early on last year. I'm going to try again. This time my theme is something I'm all too familiar with. Get ready for The Aspects of

Free use image by The Digital Artist on Pixabay

As for interactions, I'm not looking for advice, although if something has worked for you, feel free to share it. I don't get along with psych meds, so I definitely don't want recommendations for those. If you can't relate to the topics I discuss, that's fine, but don't be a dick. This is the Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp, not the Awful Asshats Argument Area. 

As Mike, the delightful host of the That Chapter channel on YouTube says, let's give it a go. 

I can't promise I'll get through to the end, or even much past the beginning, but what the hell. I'm in.

Free use image from Open Clipart Vectors

Owl. The ornery kind. 

I'm actually pretty much a teetotaler, but I feel like doing this most days.

Just Jemi: WEP & Schrodinger's Letter

Just Jemi: WEP & Schrodinger's Letter: Like Schrodinger’s cat, the envelope rested on Ty’s kitchen island. Propped against the pepper mill. It had been the first thing he’d spott...

I'm glad the protagonist gets a happy ending to his story. I honestly feel like this when publishing comments, which is why sometimes it takes me a long time to get around to it.

Fucking Around Friday: The Definition of Insanity

 

Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay

After several days of Stupid, we're back. I sort of know where I'm going with this, but there are a few topics I'd like to address. I've given myself permission to take as long as I need and write as much as I want. I've told my inner critic to fuck off. So, let's do this.

First, some questions from 52 Weeks of Writing. The link to purchase a copy of this book for yourself can be found at the end of the post.

What are your goals for the upcoming week?

Let's just take a page from my planner. It looks a little bit something like this.

Write a flash fiction for the Fish Flash Fiction writing contest. Maximum words 300. No limit on theme or genre. Does not need to be about fish. Deadline 28 February.

https://www.fishpublishing.com/competition/flash-fiction-contest/

Enter Women on Writing Flash Fiction Contest (Max words 750)

https://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/contest.php#FlashFictionContest

Deadline 28 February.

Submit poetry to Humana Obscura

https://www.humanaobscura.com/submit

Humana Obscura is now accepting submissions of poetry, prose/short fiction, and art for its next issue!

Submissions will remain open until the end of February 2022.

No politics, nothing rhyming, nothing longer than 75 lines. Haiku is preferable to Senryu. Previously unpublished only, no simultaneous submissions.

Poetry – 3 to 5 poems (or up to 10 haiku, tanka, or other forms of micro poetry, 5 lines or less), no longer than two pages each. Please include all poems in one document.

Short Prose/Flash Fiction – no more than 2 pieces, 1,000 words maximum (per piece).

Unpublished only, no simultaneous submissions.

Work on story for Dragon Soul Press Chance on Love anthology.

https://dragonsoulpress.com/anthologies/

Deadline: 31 March 2022

Anthology: Chance on Love

Word Count – 5,000 to 15,000

Theme – Everyone deserves a chance at love. Whether it lasts forever or ends up being temporary, these characters will fight for the chance at happily ever after.

Rating: R

Work on story for L Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future contest. Sci-fi, fantasy, or dark fantasy, up to 17,000 words. Deadline 31 March 2022.

https://www.writersofthefuture.com/enter-writer-contest/

Work on Cosmically Bonded (part of my ongoing serial series.)

Submit a piece for this month's WIP contest.

Have another look. Are you being realistic? If not, what would be more realistic?

On the surface, this looks rather unrealistic. But when I break things down, I don't think it is. I've already written the poem for the WIP challenge. I just need to put it in a post and submit the link. 

I can write a few Haiku for Humana Obscura. 

I can submit Lucina Entombed to the Chance on Love anthology, although there's a possibility it may be a little clean for their liking given the R-rating in the description. The story contains no descriptive erotic scenes and scant profanity although it contains adult themes. 

It took me a few months to write this 7500-word story. It's a combination of three fairy tales (The Buried Moon, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White) re-imagined in a sci-fi setting. I submitted it for potential inclusion in an anthology and never even received an acknowledgment of receipt. I attempted to contact the person compiling the anthology and heard nothing from them. I have given said anthology up as a lost cause. 

The story is a bit of an oddball and I'm not sure anyone else will want it. My policy is to shop out the stories that aren't part of my ongoing serial over the period of a year and then publish them myself. I'm thinking of compiling an anthology of my work at the end of the year and calling it something like C.L. Hart's Space Oddities Volume I. 

I feel like ideas of this nature make me sound extremely arrogant and self-absorbed. The truth is, I don't think that I will ever have much of an audience. I really like my stories but nobody else seems to. This hurts me more than I can convey. 

Also, I completely suck at promoting my work.

Image by Robin Higgins from Pixabay

Me promoting other people's stories

Me promoting my own stories

What can you do this week to make sure you achieve your goal(s)?

Not have my car battery conk out on me again, something I completely blamed myself for. I had a bit of a mental breakdown when it happened. I am in quite a vulnerable position. Living in the middle of nowhere I need my car to work 100% of the time. I keep up on maintenance. The battery has plenty of life left and there's nothing wrong with the alternator. So, what happened?

I only drive about once a week. Modern cars (even an older one like my 2011 Ford Fusion) have computerized gadgetry and an alarm system that impose a small chronic drain on the battery. I'm taking the car back to the mechanic next week so they can install a switch that will allow me to turn off the battery when I'm not driving the car. This disables the car alarm, but I live in a very low crime rate area and my room is in the front of the house. The car is nearly always in my line of sight. 

Also, we had a few very cold days last week and my car is parked in the open. The cold drained the battery as well. 

My anxiety was astronomical after this happened. I hated myself for allowing it to happen. I could not make myself write and spent several days just watching episodes of When Calls the Heart. 

Why was I unable to write you may ask? It wasn't as if I suffered an irreparable loss. My fucking car battery died. Boo fucking hoo. What a crybaby.

Back in 2013 when my car was hit by a wall of water as I was trying to get to work during the 100-Year Flood in Boulder, Colorado, I was unable to write for a month afterward. I felt like I didn't deserve the luxury of a "hobby" like writing. People had lost their homes. Some people lost their lives. How dare I think I should be allowed to engage in a fucking leisure activity? I'm always such a selfish bitch.

I suffered from (additional) PTSD following that incident. I have complex PTSD from chronic incidents of abuse throughout my childhood. When things are working normally, my anxiety is manageable. Put something out of place and I start to come apart. 

I know all about how people who can "go with the flow" are more likely to be successful. I have had to realize the fact that I will probably never be such a person. I am always teetering on the edge of disaster. I live in a house of cards with a sand foundation built on the San Andreas fault. I am always one huff or puff or seemingly minor disaster away from devastation.

The Spent module allows users to experience what it is like to live paycheck to paycheck. (In my case, disability check to disability check.) It isn't fun.

https://playspent.org/

I used to have such big dreams. Some really were unachievable. I can live with that. What kills me is the feeling that none of them are achievable because I am so awful at everything. 

Hold on to your hats as things are about to devolve into a bitch fest.

It's probably evident by now that I like to listen to independently produced relaxation music and electronic music such as deep house or trance while working on these posts. I saw some long mixes that I might have checked out except for one teeny problem. Rather than posting some nice pictures of, say, nature or candles or people dancing, the thumbnail images feature blatant tits and ass. 

How the hell it's supposed to be relaxing to stare at cleavage or butt crack is beyond me. Even if I was attracted to women, I wouldn't want to be staring at cleavage or butt crack. I'm attracted to men and I don't want to be staring at package shots or male butt crack. Fucking hell, just rename your channel Dudebro Haven. Tits and ass don't convey "positive coaching."

Anyway...

Spirit of the Universe, I am lost again. Please help me find my way.

~Ornery Owl is Searching~

Image by moonzigg from Pixabay

Resource Books:

52 Weeks of Writing

https://amzn.to/33sESxd

Self-Help Sucks

https://amzn.to/3sCWA9q

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

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https://odysee.com/@M%C3%BAsicaElectr%C3%B3nica:3/LA-MEJOR-MUSICA-ELECTRONICA-POSITIVA---THE-BEST-ELECTRIC-AND-POSITIVE-MUSIC:d?r=GTwnGJ4fFBQfzuJgpHVpfKBKaC9b8B16

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https://odysee.com/@WKDsociety:8/WKDsociety-house-of-electronics-mix:9?r=GTwnGJ4fFBQfzuJgpHVpfKBKaC9b8B16

Mes crazy expériences: WeWriWar 342: The House at the Crossing 50

Mes crazy expériences: WeWriWar 342: The House at the Crossing 50:   Hello everybody and welcome for a new Sunday of writing with Weekend Writing Warrior and Snippet Sunday !   How are you doing?   ...

Oh my gosh, if I had to deal with three crying babies plus seeing me from alternate universes appearing and disappearing, I think I'd lose what I have left of "it."

I live in a big old house in the middle of nowhere, which I really love. Unfortunately, the parts of myself and memories of my past that I don't really love followed me here, and I've been having nightmares.

About Me Monday: To Sleep Perchance?

 

Image by jay Clarke from Pixabay

This is a response to a post by Kendra about writers and sleep.

https://taintedtrinity.ddns.net/wordpress/2021/02/03/iwsg-sleep-and-writing/

Sleep and I have never seen eye to eye. 

My mother delights in telling people what an awful baby I was because I would, apparently, never sleep for more than two hours at a time. 

I learned much later in life that I had ADHD, which accounted for my being "scatterbrained," a "space cadet," and "flaky". 

However, my son also has ADHD, and while his sleep patterns are all over the place (sometimes he goes to bed around 6 PM, sometimes at midnight, sometimes not till the wee hours of the morning) he always slept well as a baby. In fact, I had to wake him up every 2 hours to feed him because his blood sugar was prone to crashing.

My son thinks that he may have a 25-hour circadian rhythm. It makes sense to me. He's high-functioning autistic, which may affect his sleep as well. Outside of his issues with anxiety and depression, his sleep issues are a key factor in why he has never been able to hold a "normal" job.

Back when I was still working, I had problems with not being able to fall asleep at night and, conversely, falling asleep during the day. Unless, of course, I wanted to. I had trouble falling asleep when I got home after working a night shift. However, I had to fight to stay awake while driving home. I would roll the window down to let the cold air blast me in the face. I would pinch and punch myself. I would blast music and sing at the top of my lungs.

The inability to sleep if I had to work in the morning may have been partly due to anxiety. I didn't really want to go to work and was afraid of fucking up. I got sent home from one temp job for being sleepy. Even now that I'm on disability and am usually able to fall asleep by midnight, I still have issues with daytime sleepiness, which was one of the issues that led to my being approved for disability. 

There is a huge stigma on people who aren't the "early to bed, early to rise" type. All you have to do is get to bed earlier like the Good and Saintly do. Easy enough, unless you just aren't wired that way.

~Sleepy Cie~

Dreamers, lovers, and Star Voyagers: WeWriWa: EU62

Dreamers, lovers, and Star Voyagers: WeWriWa: EU62:   Hello fellow warriors. :-) Happy last weekend in January! It's almost the month of Cupid, Mardi Gras, and a short month to bo...

Feeling out of control is the worst. Fortunately, Emmily seems rather level-headed.

A friend of mine has been diabetic since childhood. He has been battling throat cancer. A nurse was sent to his home and took over doing his blood glucose tests and injections. This was actually one aspect of his life that he felt he could control, and to have that taken away from him sent him into such a bad state of anxiety that he had to be hospitalized. 

Giving people as much control as possible over their own lives is important. I don't expect invading extraterrestrials care much about that, though!

 

Barriers

5 December 2020

Written in response to the Tale Weaver prompt “Barriers.”

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2020/12/03/tale-weaver-304-barriers-december-3rd/

What barriers exist in your life?

Are they barriers that can be overcome?

I will probably use this prompt to create both a fiction and a non-fiction piece. It is inspiring thoughts for the latest chapter in my WIP, The Key Of Eidolon. However, I also have answers to the above questions.

I have both physical and psychological barriers to accomplishing my goals. They don’t stop me from trying, but they make things harder.

There are physical goals that I will never be able to accomplish because of my handicaps.

At this point, I can walk up to two miles a day using an upright walker. Without the upright walker, I can only manage between a quarter of a mile and a half mile, and a half mile is pushing it. I never thought I would be having to use a walker at 55 years old, and the promotional material for this item indicates that no-one else thinks that people my age are using such a device at my age either.

We need to stop with the assumption that only elderly people need assistive devices or that there is some sort of shame in needing an assistive device if you are not elderly. I have a lot of problems with my back. I am not ashamed to use this device, but I am very conscious of the fact that people are conscious of my use of it and some of them pity me for it.

I have diabetes. This is a disease that can be managed, but, conversely to the bill of goods that some overpriced snake oil sellers are trying to hand you, there is no cure for it. Type 2 diabetes does occasionally go into remission, but this happens so seldom that I do not expect it any more than I expect to grow several inches taller.

Diabetes does not really frighten me. I am aware that it makes me vulnerable to kidney failure, which also doesn’t particularly frighten me, although I would not want it. The one that scares me is the vulnerability to strokes and vascular dementia. Fuck a whole lot of that shit. Fortunately, I also take antihypertensive medication, so my blood pressure remains in the safe zone.

My thyroid destroyed itself when I was in my early teens, so I have been on and off thyroid medications since then. I can’t tolerate Synthroid. It gave me headaches and it almost put me in the E.R. because it was elevating my blood pressure and heart rate so much. Rather than consider that the Synthroid was the culprit, the doctor I was seeing at the time blamed my weight for causing my blood pressure to rise and put me on propranolol, which is a beta blocker. I have asthma. Beta blockers make me feel like I’m breathing underwater.

Because of the panic attacks I was experiencing when I became tachycardic (talk about your vicious feedback loops), he also put me on clonazepam. I tend to have paradoxical reactions to benzodiazepines, and I had the worst panic attack of my life. I went off ever single one of the medications. It took me three months to return to normally abnormal.

I have been on Armour thyroid for the past 14 years. My current P.A. has adjusted the dosage a couple of times to strike a balance between my TSH reading and my blood pressure and pulse. We seem to have found the sweet spot. I like my current P.A., who has been respectful and treats the patient rather than the chart.

Alas, although my TSH is now in the zone, I am still tired all the time. It is what it is.

I have been trying to get on disability this year. I have been working with a lawyer, and it is still taking forever. I lived in a state of constant anxiety for literal decades due to not being able to sleep properly because I was afraid that I would oversleep. I worked night shift because it worked out better for me than day shift. However, I can no longer do the punishing physical work that I used to do.

My son and I moved to a remote rural area in September of 2019, and we both love this house and this town very much. My son is high-functioning autistic. He has a lot of skills and he is physically able-bodied, but he has never been able to work a normal job.

Both of us would be happy enough to do certain types of remote work. However, even though it has been shown through the pandemic that certain jobs can be done remotely, nobody wants to hire the smelly poors or icky disabled people.

My physical appearance has also been a barrier to achieving certain of my goals, including, oddly enough, my writing goals. You’d think that it wouldn’t matter if a writer has a good face for radio, so to speak, but I’ve seen that, at least with female writers, people tend to want us to be pretty. Seriously, what the hell? Would looking like a beauty queen or a Playboy centerfold make me a better writer? I get so fed up with the bullshit and am disgusted that I’m still fighting the same battles at 55 that I was at 25.

So, what’s to be done? Well, I am nothing if not pig-headed, so I will keep hammering away at things until I make some headway.

I’ve been working to craft my Rough Writer monthly zine, which includes my WIP chapters, poems, and daily-ish nonfiction blather as well as anything else I may write in a month. Sometimes I think that this is a great idea and I’ll be sharing some wonderful wisdom. Other times I’m afraid it’s just another one of my crackpot ideas and that I’m not nearly as deep as I imagine myself to be. I suppose it remains to be seen, but at six bucks for some 50,000 words, you can’t beat the price!

And there you have my thoughts on the barriers in my life.

 ~cie~

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

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Anxiety

  

Free use image by The Digital Artist on Pixabay

https://pixabay.com/illustrations/anxiety-stress-depression-1156225/

fear

freeze my heart

as you melt my brain

you don't allow me to rest

but nor can I get work done

if I was daring

I would try

all

******

why

why not try

this is what you ask

anxiety the reason

for my procrastination

I fear I will fail

look the fool

me

~cie~

notes

I am aware that the image is visually disconcerting and unpleasant. It is an accurate depiction of the way anxiety feels.

the prompts

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2020/10/24/saturday-mix-opposing-forces-24-october-2020/

http://www.octpowrimo.com/2020/10/octpowrimo-day-24.html

Poetry Style

http://www.shadowpoetry.com/resources/wip/josephsstar.html

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This poem was posted to these places:

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https://lbry.tv/@poetryofthenetherworld:9

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Copyright Information

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

Copyright 2020 by Naughty Netherworld Press/Poetry of the Netherworld

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. LBRY’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 LBRY. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

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Tackle It Tuesday: Blogging With ADHD and Anxiety

Free use image copyright Grae Dickason from Pixabay

https://pixabay.com/photos/alone-sad-depression-loneliness-2666433/

Having a brain that doesn't work the way brains "should" puts a person on a lonely road in this world when people are impatient and unwilling to understand. Which, to be honest, is most of the time. With posts like this one, I hope to foster tolerance and to encourage an attitude of helping people learn and grow rather than ostracizing those who don't fit the mold.

I'm not talking about trolls and spammers. They should be banished with extreme prejudice.

I'm talking about those bloggers who aren't "good" bloggers. The people who may not reply to comments right away and sometimes don't reply at all. The people whose participation in blog hops is irregular at best. The people who don't return visits or sometimes visit only a few people on the blog hop. 

These kinds of people tend to get labeled with epithets like "jerk" and other less kind names and are thought of as being rude and selfish. However, in my experience, most people whose "blogging etiquette" is not up to Emily Blog-Post's standards are not the bungholes of the blogging world, they are overwhelmed.

These guys actually are bungholes

I still struggle with the comments part of things. I'm pretty good about visiting all the blogs in the writers' blog hops (except for the IWSG--let's not go there), but sometimes it may take me a while to getting around to publishing comments, and, depending on my state of mind, I may not be able to reply to them. That isn't ideal, but I'm better than I used to be about it, and I probably will never be perfect. I could get drunk before replying to comments, but that wouldn't be pretty and it's not a good idea, so I think I won't employ that strategy.

I have ADHD, which means that I'm garbage with organizing things. However, one trick I've learned--very recently--is to prepare my posts ahead of time. I missed this month's MFRW Steam Hop because I'm disorganized and forgot about the sucker. 

To ensure that I'll be up to speed for future MFRW Steam hops, I've prescheduled my posts for October, November, and December. I can go back in and edit the posts as needed, and they will be there in my queue for this blog to remind me that I need to add my linky to the hop at the appropriate time.

Thus, the TL:DR for this post is:

Disorganized Wonders, schedule your posts ahead of time whenever possible. It will make your blogging experience easier.

Practically Perfect People, please try to be patient with those who seem to always be running behind and whose etiquette may not entirely align with yours. You don't know what challenges they may be dealing with. Don't curse them out or call them names like "dead weight" or "jerk." 

I'm in my fifties now and am just learning certain things that might have saved me a lot of misery if I'd caught on sooner. Nothing has come easily to me, and it didn't help that I had people calling me stupid, flaky, and selfish. We should try to build one another up rather than tearing each other down.

~Ornery Owl Has Declared It So~

Free Use Image from Pixabay

Copyright Information

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

Copyright 2020 by Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp and Naughty Netherworld Press

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. LBRY’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 LBRY. 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.

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