Rainbow: a model office worker

Rainbow: a model office worker:                                                                                 Author: Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken 

My neurological makeup made me a poor candidate for office work. I would become severely clinically depressed after a couple of weeks having to adhere to a schedule that necessitated being awake at 4:30 in the morning. The years that I worked in an office setting were among the worst in my life. I always did much better working evening or night shifts, which generally meant doing physically demanding jobs.

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

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

Copyright 2020 by Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp and Naughty Netherworld Press

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Tackle It Tuesday: Tackling the Truth Part 1: I Suck At Blogging

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

I am a walking contradiction. It isn't that I set out to deceive anyone, but I'm not always forthcoming. This may be part and parcel of the fun shenanigans played by a brain with bipolar disorder. (Type 2)

When I am hypomanic, I tend to be very forthcoming.

When I am depressed, I withdraw because I don't figure that anyone wants to hear anything that I have to say.

When I'm euthymic, it's somewhere in between, only without the self-loathing. On one hand, I don't feel like I have anything to hide. On the other hand, I figure nobody needs to know anything that I don't feel like revealing.

I have a high degree of social anxiety. Sometimes the hypomanic component overrides this, but it always comes back. This is why I may have a day where I'm waltzing around promoting my faboo posts on blog hops, and the next day I am overwhelmed and may not be able to reply to comments for a long time.

People tend to feel that someone who doesn't reply to comments right away is simply a rude a-hole. Most of the time, I find that people are overwhelmed by trying to do too many things, for instance, they may have a job and a family and are also trying to create and promote. Also, many people have anxiety and other psychological issues and these can sideline them. I tend to assume in most cases that the person who didn't reply isn't rude, they're simply overwhelmed.

There are two things that I suck at. Sheesh, I wish it was only two. Truth be told, I suck at everything, but these are the two things that pertain to this discussion.

I suck at blogging. Seriously, I am not a good blogger. Someone once said that being a blogger and being a writer are not the same thing, and boy howdy is that ever true. 

I suck at promotion and networking and all that kind of happy crappy. I seriously wish I had the money to hire someone to do it for me because I make such a mess of it. This ties into the whole sucking at blogging thing.

Here's how I messed things up this time.

On Sunday, I thought: "Say, let's do some blog hops with my Sunday Dinner post!"

On Monday, I thought: "Well, let's continue with that..."

On Tuesday, I was still trying to get to all the blog hops that I thought it would be a good idea to share that post with.

There are some of y'all out there who participate in a metric butt-ton of blog hops every week and I have to admit that I HAVE NO IDEA HOW YOU DO IT! That right there is a full-time job. Maybe (probably) I'm just stupid. But my hat would be off to you if I wore a hat. I could take off my pants, socks, or shirt, but ain't nobody wants to see that.

I have a group of goals (more like a cluster f**k of goals) that I'm trying to make happen. Some of them I've been trying to make happen for years. Admissibly, it's harder for me because I'm not a social butterfly. I'm more of a social hermit crab. My attitude tends to take one of two forms.

1) I scuttle up, present my work, and say "here ya go, love it or leave it." Then I scuttle off to make something else.

2) I scuttle up, present my work, and whimper "please don't be mean to me!" Then I scuttle off and withdraw into my shell for a week or so.

Now, let's talk about me for a minute.

I've been belittled on many occasions for not honing in on JUST ONE BIG THING WITH LASER FOCUS!!!111!! I've also been belittled for having shaky self-esteem. I always beat myself up for both of these "shortcomings." 

Why would I put "shortcomings" in quotation marks?

Because I don't think these things are shortcomings. It sucks to have poor self-esteem, but how the actual hell do people think it helps someone overcome their low self-esteem when you're berating them for having low self-esteem? Improving one's self-esteem isn't the kind of thing that happens overnight.

People with low self-esteem have one thing in common. We have all been abused. Whether this abuse comes from family, schoolmates, or society at large, we've been abused. Abuse gets internalized, and it can take a long time to reverse that process. Often, it is never fully reversed.

The self-esteem issue is a post in itself, so I'm going to table that for now.

As to being unable to hone in on one target with laser focus and pigeonhole myself into a niche, I've tried that. Again and again and again. I have failed at it every time. 

It took me 54 years to learn some important things about me. First, I have ADD. This has an effect on the way I interact with the world and what it throws at me. Combine ADD with bipolar disorder and you're pretty well guaranteed to have a person who will not do well trying to have LASER FOCUS!

ADD affects the way I write. I'm a prolific writer, but I go off on sidetracks. I learned that instead of trying to write focused novels, I need to write collections of novelettes that have a central theme and that can work together or be read as separate short stories. 

My thought process works a lot like the way time works according to Dr. Who.

What I'm getting around to is this:

My writing comes first. I get very upset when I don't do it. I hate the fact that I have to promote it. It makes me very anxious. I know that I'm an acquired taste that most people don't tend to acquire. So is my writing. I doubt that I'll ever make a lot of money off my writing. But I can't hold a normal job, so I'm trying to find alternative ways to make money.

I need to promote the alternative means, just like I need to promote the writing.

But then people get angry with me for promoting...well, anything, really.

Anyway...

Here is what I'm getting around to.

I didn't mean to make anyone angry at me. I'm sorry if I didn't reply to your comment yet. You may think I'm a jerk, but I didn't mean to be. I'm still trying to refine my process, and I may never be any good at any of this. 

Thanks for reading. I'm going to go make some soda bread now.

~Your Ornery Old Aunt Cie~

The Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp's Come As You Are Party + Ornery Musings: Why Book Reviews are Useful

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

As the late, great Shorty Medlocke used to say, howdy solks, I mean folks! If you don't know who Shorty Medlocke was, it's time for you to at the very least hit Wikipedia and brush up on your music history, and then go listen to some Blackfoot, where you can hear Shorty's grandson Rickey shred on some sadly underrated Southern rock masterpieces.

Sadly for you, this post is not about great blues musicians, twentieth-century radio hosts, or great guitarists. It's about book reviewers.

At the bottom of many posts, you will notice the image of a plump owl carrying a couple of books, one with a pentagram and one with an anarchist symbol. This owl is my alter-ego, my inner badass. Where I am infamous for apologizing for myself constantly and becoming defensive quickly, this owl never apologizes (unless she has actually done something wrong) and has no time for defensiveness. If she is under attack, she will fight back, but she doesn't harbor any of the insecurities that I do. Therefore, defensiveness is foreign to her. This owl is unapologetically, authentically herself.

Me, on the other hand, I tend to always wonder if I'm doing something (or anything) right. I am a horrible--I mean adorable--little (okay, large) bundle of insecurities. I have both physical and psychological disabilities, and I also have ADD and dyslexia. Dyslexia does not have only one manifestation, by the way. I read most things clearly, and I'm a relly gud spelur. My dyslexia tends to present itself with numbers more than words, and I have a great deal of trouble with tests involving pattern recognition, which led to me being labeled borderline retarded when I was in the sixth grade. That label was a thermonuclear hit to my already severely compromised self-esteem, particularly when one of my nastier classmates overheard my parents and the school psychologist discussing it in the hallway and proceeded to ask my father if I really was borderline retarded, to which he naively replied, "yes, I'm afraid so," rather than telling her to run along as he should have.

So, here I am in my fifties with a lifetime of abject failures behind me, disabled and living in poverty, and I review books for a living. Seriously, that is how I eke out a living, and sometimes I become rather cynical about it. Here I am, doing something completely useless yet again because being useless is my M.O. in life. I would do very poorly as something like a virtual administrative assistant or customer service agent. I have moderate anxiety about talking to people on the phone, and if I get bored, I get distracted. I would be fired from these jobs fairly quickly. However, I can read books. These days I prefer e-books because of my vision and because they don't take up space on my shelves. I also enjoy listening to audiobooks. 

Anyway, I possess the ability to read, opinions are like assholes, and I am an asshole with an opinion. So I sneaked in the back door at the Online Book Club and tried my hand at doing reviews for them. My first few reviews were unpaid, and then I started getting paid for my efforts. Doing reviews for paid review services like Online Book Club means that I can do reviews on request for independent authors without charging money. My costs for an independent review are as follows:

If the book is available on Amazon, you give me permission to have an affiliate link in my review post. You won't pay me a cent, but if someone buys the book through the link, Amazon will pay me a few cents.

If you like the review, you provide a link to it on social media.

You understand that providing me with a copy of your book does not guarantee a positive review. There may be reviewers who get their rocks off writing negative reviews and destroying authors' dreams. I am not one of them. I love giving positive reviews. With most of my less stellar reviews, I find that the problem with the book tends not to be the story itself, but the execution and lack of proper editing. By the way, I am also available as a beta reader.

Very rarely do I give scathing reviews. On the occasions that I have done so, it is because I find the author to be an odious jerk with awful opinions who targets vulnerable people for ridicule.

You may be saying (as I sometimes do), "well, that's all fine and good, Cie, but the world wouldn't stop turning if all the book reviewers were abducted by aliens. Book reviewers do not provide vital services such as emergency services personnel, medical personnel, construction workers, mechanics,  teachers, grocery clerks, customer service personnel, cleaning crews, or, pretty much anyone else provides. Reviewing books is fluffy stuff and isn't a real job. Like, you know, the kind of work that you claim you can't do anymore but probably could if you tried, and don't give me that 'but I can't walk very far or very fast, I can't stand up for long periods of time or my back will start hurting, or, but my diabetes fucks with me and starts making me weak and confused' bit!"

Well, you hopefully don't say that last part, but my inner voice is, not to put too fine a point on it, an absolute twat. Anyway, the overall gist is, most people find book reviewers to be non-essential members of society, and I sometimes feel angry at myself for doing a job that most people see as sprinkles on a cake, not even icing or pretty decorations, just sprinkles. The kind of sprinkles that come in a jar and you pay a couple bucks for them and you sprinkle them on your kid's birthday cake and it makes the kid happy. Except that I have the potential to make people's inner children unhappy with my words.

However, today I read a wonderful review from one of my fellow Online Book Club reviewers, and I would like to share that review and my thoughts on it with you. Please follow this link to read it.

Here is a copy of my comment for the reviewer:

Thank you for your lovely, descriptive review. I had tears in my eyes reading it. Although I grew up in a home with both parents present my family was inadvertently emotionally abusive and didn't understand someone like me at all as they were very perfectionistic and I had learning and psych issues (I have type 2 bipolar disorder that wasn't correctly diagnosed until I was almost 40.) I did a lot of the same things that Eva did, moving out with my now-ex-husband when I was 19, being divorced by 29, having a string of abusive relationships. I really appreciate reviews like yours which tell me everything I need to know about a book, even better than simply reading a sample. Have a good day.

Sometimes you can teach an old dog new tricks. While being a book reviewer is not an essential occupation such as those mentioned in the previous paragraph, nor is it a meaningless occupation. Too many bullies calling themselves critics have given a bad name to critiquing. A professional critic should endeavor to be kind, discussing the best aspects of a work while, if necessary pointing out areas needing improvement.

~Cie the Ornery Old Lady~

Free use image from Pixabay

Cie reviews books and is no longer ashamed to claim it as her profession.

She is also available as a beta reader

Click the link to learn more

I'll bet that some of you would like to know which book I was referring to when praising my fellow reviewer. Well, now you know and can get yourself a copy! 

Disclosure: If readers purchase a copy of this book through the preview link, I receive a small commission from Amazon.

Carpe Diem Field of Flowers: Honeysuckle

I can remember

the smell of honeysuckle

New Mexico night

~Cie~

Notes:

I recently completed and am about to submit my manuscript for the Insecure Writers' Support Group anthology contest. The genre is middle-grade historical fantasy/action.

I normally write for adults. I find writing for youth extremely challenging. I ended up opting to write a lightly fictionalized autobiography of myself between childhood and my pre-teen years which centered around my imagination and the fantastical fiction genres which inspired me. In writing about myself I ended up opening a lot of pockets of unresolved grief.

The place I lived between the ages of four and nine was a semi-rural pocket in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where people could have small farms and keep chickens and such. We had a very large yard, a half-acre. Unfortunately, the house was in rather a shoddy condition and cockroaches the size of school buses had a tendency to get inside. The bugs are huge in New Mexico, and I was not keen on that. But I did love the little skinks and horned toads and such. We also had many beautiful plants around such as the honeysuckle vines, and the cicadas would sing us to sleep.

I was a very shy child and did not have many friends. The characters I met in fantasy worlds were my friends, as were my pets and the animals in our yard.

Although I was born in the Western United States and raised in the Southwest for a number of years, my parents were both from New York. When certain relatives would visit, they would ridicule my accent. A New Mexico accent is a bit of an off-Texas drawl. To this day, I bristle whenever anyone askes the seemingly innocent question: "where are you from?" To me, that question is loaded.

Happy 29th Birthday Michael

Click to Enlarge

Haiga copyright The Real Cie

My son was born on this day 29 years ago at 8 A.M. I was unconscious at the time. He was a long baby with no meat on his bones: 19 inches long, 5 pounds 12 ounces. He lost 4 ounces of that weight after being born and scared the hell out of me. He had to be fed every two hours because his blood sugar kept plummeting.

My son is a very intelligent chap, but he doesn't do things the way our current society thinks people are "supposed" to do things. He's high-functioning autistic and battles depression and anxiety. He has a great artistic eye and loves photography and woodworking. He learns best by doing and does very poorly with attempting to learn from textbooks and lectures, which is why he ended up not doing well in college except for in his German class.

My son and I are stocky people, so with the foolish biases that modern society holds about larger people, most people think we eat a lot. We don't. We are food insecure. We ration our food and tend to only eat one or two meals a day. 

Our neuropsychological conditions and my physical issues mean that neither of us can work conventional jobs. Since modern society has Draconian ideas, disabled people are punished and not allowed adequate food or housing.

I am not being hyperbolic when I say that if it weren't for my son, I would not still be in this world. So, now you know who to blame for my continued existence.

Happy birthday, Michael, and may you have many, many more, and may each one be better than the last.

Yo Mama

Tan Renga Challenge 2019: Day 6: In Shadow

Image Source

autumn moonlight--

a worm digs silently

into the chestnut.

presenting a sunny face

though my brain feels full of worms

Basho & Cie

Notes:

The Hokku (Haiku) stanza of this Tan Renga was written by Matsuo Basho. The Akegu (closing stanza) was written by me.

Matsuo Basho was born in 1644 and died 28 November 1694. As a point of coincidence, my father died on 28 November 2010.

As Chèvrefeuille explains, Basho's Haiku references his desires for a man. Basho was a Samurai, and, as with the warriors of ancient Greece, homosexuality was considered normal and acceptable. Relationships between older men and adolescent boys were also considered acceptable.

I do feel that homosexuality is normal and acceptable, but I think it is better not to have sexual relationships between adults and youth.

My portion of the poem does not refer to my sexuality. Being heterosexual, I never found myself in the position of keeping my sexuality a secret. It refers to living with mental illness in a society which stigmatizes people who struggle with depression and suicidal thoughts. 

Some people think that in this age of readily available psych meds, no-one should struggle with psychological problems. Many people do not respond well to psych meds, and not all psychological problems are chemical in nature.

Inspire Me Monday #224 + Spread the Kindness #119: Real Cie Reviews: Eighth Grade

This post is a duplicate of my review of this product for Amazon.

4 out of 5 stars

Elsie Fisher does a marvelous job as the insecure, likable Kayla and Josh Hamilton plays his role as the sweet but sometimes irritatingly out-of-touch and overprotective dad perfectly. Kayla's high school mentor Olivia is adorable if a bit clueless. There is the eye-roll-inducing stereotypical pretty mean girl Kennedy, and Kayla's crush Aiden has all the personality of wallpaper paste.

The movie does a nice job of addressing sensitive subject matter such as Kayla's panic attacks. I was a teenager in the late seventies and early eighties, and was unable to discuss my psychological issues with anyone for fear of being placed on a psych ward or dismissed as "seeking attention" or being "overly dramatic." When I read about bipolar disorder (then called manic depression) in my junior year psychology class, I recognized myself in a lot of the symptoms. I approached the subject with the teacher and she told me I couldn't be manic depressive because manic depression was a psychosis and I wasn't psychotic. I would not be properly diagnosed with type 2 bipolar disorder until I was nearly 40 years old.  If nothing else, movies such as this one approach issues such as panic attacks without pathologizing the person suffering from them.

The movie also does a good job of addressing the pressure on teens, particularly teenage girls, to be sexy and sexually active. Olivia's creepy friend Riley attempts to pressure Kayla into removing her shirt during a game of Truth or Dare when they are alone in his car together, and Kayla's crush Aiden is rumored to have broken up with a previous girlfriend because she wouldn't send him nude photos.

The movie is appropriate for teenagers. Kayla is a relatable character, an ordinary and likable if socially awkward young woman. I found myself thinking that it was a shame for her to waste any time or energy on a shallow, self-absorbed twit like Kennedy or a limp dishrag like Aiden. 

Teens struggling with feeling like they don't fit in and those of us who used to be (and sometimes still are) the odd one out will feel a kinship with Kayla and be proud of her as she learns to stand up for herself.

~Cie~

Also sharing to the Spread the Kindness blog hop on Tuesday April 23, 2019.

Insecure Writers Support Group: But What If I Hate Socializing?

Copyright G.H. Cassel

I'm not "in with the in crowd." I never was, and I never will be. The older I get, the happier I am with that. I've come to see the "in crowd" as fake, dependent on keeping up appearances, superficial in the extreme. I was the opposite of popular when I was in school, which in some ways suited me just fine, but in other ways was very painful and left scars on my psyche which will be with me until I die.
Fine and good. I'm not in school anymore. I don't go out socializing and I don't particularly want to. I don't entertain and I definitely don't want to. I'd rather wash my hair with sand than go clubbing, and the idea of online dating, speed dating, or anything with the word "date" in it except for "how about trying this recipe for date bars" sounds about as enjoyable as eating soap. In other words, I've become okay with being asocial. It's even become a bit trendy to be an "introvert," which kind of makes me gag. The last thing I want to be is "trendy."
A funny thing I've noticed is that there are a lot of people who confuse "introvert" with "jerk." I was in a Facebook group for introverts for a time and I left that in the dust fairly quickly. The people there mostly seemed to want to use their "introvert" status as an excuse to act like assholes.
I may be critical and snarky when it comes to politicians and celebrities or social trends, but I am the sort who believes in punching up rather than down, and I believe in calling out attitudes, not belittling physical appearance. If Lord Dampnut and Justin Trudeau switched bodies, Lord Dampnut would still be a hateful, pea-brained, lowlife criminal. Suddenly having a conventionally attractive appearance would not make him a better person.
So, since I am far more of a badger than a social butterfly, one would think that I would be well suited to a profession such as writing. Is this the case?
The answer is both yes and no.
If asked "would you rather go to the Party of the Year (TM) and Mix and Mingle with all the Pretty People, or would you rather stay home and cocoon yourself with imaginary characters of your own design while probably drinking too much iced coffee and consuming food of questionable nutritional value but which tastes good," the latter would rise to the top every time. The only reason I enjoyed going to parties in my youth was that I knew I would end up plastered. I can't drink these days and I can't abide hangovers, so at this point asking me to go to a party is pretty much like asking me if I want to spend the night cleaning toilets. I really, really, really don't want to do either.
However, if you want to be a Successful Writer or a Successful Anything, pretty much, you are supposed to socialize, which makes things difficult for those of us who are shy, introverted, and whose tippling days have long since been buried by time and dust. There are times when I have trouble making myself reply to comments because of my social anxiety. With parties, at best I spend the entire time feeling completely out of place and hoping I can find a large plant to hide behind. A Social Butterfly I am not.
Similarly, the idea of joining a writer's group is about as appealing to me as drinking a quart of milk. Hint: I'm lactose intolerant.
So, am I now going to spring a Happy Ending on you where I forced myself to go to lots of parties and am now the Toast of the Town, my first best-seller is going to win some sort of prize, I am now super duper uber conventionally thin and attractive and look like a supermodel, and I am about to marry the Handsome Prince (TM) and live Happily Ever After?
Newp.
I am going to tell you that I have no idea in hell what to do about hating to socialize while enjoying participation in a field that is very attractive to introverts but yet still being expected to be sociable so people will like me and therefore take an interest in my work. However, if you are like me in this way, you now have the knowledge that you are not alone.
Yeah...I didn't promise that it was a particularly inspiring answer. Sorry about that.

~Cie~

I'll admit that this is an "in" crowd that I'd like to have had the opportunity to sit in with!