Life Is Good
Like most of us, I worry a lot. A lot over things I cannot control, and that is a waste of time, t my mind. Yet, I still worry. I combat this with realizing just how good life is for me and the Blessings I have had that put me where I am today, even to the precise minute I am writing this.
I have written in these blogs before about tragedies and losses that affect me to this day, emotionally and otherwise, saying this about them: everything that has happened in my like to date has led me to where I am today and who I have become, and being content with both, I am thankful for them.
I have been loathe to do so, but have begun looking into a personal loan to retrieve my belongings that still remain in storage in Alaska. This is mostly due to this supposed non-recession we are not having (that sounds off, but written as meant) and the cost of everything still going up. Having looked at the budget, I am spending over 25% more than last year at this time for essentially the same things. At any rate, the monthly increase in expenses is more to repay, but not as bad as it could be when I consider the amount that will no longer go out each month to maintain stuff in storage. As well, the market for collectibles I have in storage is much better on the East Coast than in Alaska, so I could very well make a pretty quarter (pennies just won’t do it!) by getting that stuff down here.
Flexing The Creative Muscles
After a time away, I am looking to see what opportunities there are this Halloween to get involved in a Halloween stage play in the vicinity. Perhaps looking towards directing a show or two down the road. This may be sidelined depending on the loan and heading up to AK before the snow hit to start the shipping process, but I still wish to act again.
The writing yet goes apace, and I am rapidly (?) approaching the final part of the book-length story. The question mark denotes that writing is getting done, I have surpassed 300 pages, and I have re-evaluated what I was thinking would be perhaps 325-350 pages total is now looking like possibly 350-400 pages. I still need a read through and re-drafting of the whole part I am writing, so there may be less, may be more, but now more than ever the writing just seems to take off with story I didn’t think would be important.
Been having a bit of an epiphany as I enter the last part of the book; maybe because it has been an project spanning some 8 or so years. When I originally determined to write what happened to my Renaissance Fair character after 18 years of Fair life, I already had an end in mind, and those are the first parts I wrote down. There were two parts, the reunion with his long lost wife and the death of one companion in the fight to regain her. Just the last week or so I have finished writing the story that connects to those parts. As I did that, a sense of a kind of nostalgia and almost loss has overtaken me.
It seems to be a mental preparation to be finished with the story; it is by no means done yet, as not only it there a return trip to where it started, but still a lot of background material that was glossed over in earlier writing, but also that to come as he finds out what his wife had to endure the past two decades. This is why I expect another 50-100 possible pages yet to be written. As well, I am looking forward to being done with it as I love to read and that has gone more to the wayside as I find I need to write. Working four 10-hour days and fitting in provisioning and cooking and baking into a 3-day weekend, writing time comes at a premium; reading time more so.
I suppose it is to be an expected set of emotions for a work that has spanned close to a decade.
Other Things, Miscellany and Final Thoughts On Staying Positive
I the ‘Life Is Good’ category, I must add the joy it gives me to help my elderly parents lives easier. Yeh, i have written this a few times before, but it remains a happiness to repay in small what they have done for each of their children. More so after the loss of my brother.
This coming Labor Day weekend, I will drive to South Carolina to attend my best friend’s child’s birthday party, both of who I haven’t seen since last Autumn, and also look into possibly joining some of the 1700-1800s live history that he and his father-in-law take part in. We’ll see if I can find the time for it.
My weight is finally going in the right direction and it is just possible that the beginning of 2023 will see the replacement of the Goodman traitorous knee!
I stay away from Social Media as if it were a virulent disease, precisely because it is. I cannot believe the ignorance and cowardice that it engenders. ‘People’ speaking of things they don’t know or what their preferred news channels tells them is so, so they do not care to or feel they need to exercise due diligence in finding the truth (if possible) behind the lies. It is maddening, then, that in the same way, ‘people’ feel they can attack those they disagree with employing ad hominem attacks and vitriol, doing their best to feel better about themselves while completely ignoring decorum or actual conversation. Seems to be more anti-social media…
I am all for people being the best Them they can be. It should be important to themselves before it can even be considered to be important to others. What does that mean? To myself, at any rate, it means being completely comfortable with yourself and how you Identify so that NO ONE can take that Identity from you or diminish it. Some of this comes from seeing and/or hearing how upset people can be when people they do not know call them by pronouns that they do not identify with when there is no way to know before hand. Most of it comes from my own experiences with relationships that have bruised and battered my heart. I have accepted that I may very well be single until The End, and I am comfortable with that, it doesn’t bother me when people ask ‘why’ or especially even when my Mom says I should find someone because I’m ‘such a good person’. That’s as may be, but she’s biased. 🙂
Again, my point is being the You you can be and fuck what anyone thinks as long as your rights aren’t impinged. That gets into some bizarre territory these days, I know, but let us stick to laws on the Books as they stand. I know I am a Geekaziod Weirdo and I lean into that, baby! I allow new information to enter my thought processes; I allow experiences to guide me, and I DO mean ‘guide’. I know I am not finished evolving who I am and do not ever expect to be done evolving. I am good with how I think I will react to almost anything, while knowing there are some situations I have no experience in and truly have no idea how I will react. You see: evolution.
Finally, being a Hopeful Romantic at heart, I am partial to the Romance that, although it is tragic, is Cyrano de Bergerac. I always have been since my first reading of it, and even the several movies that have been made from it, including Roxanne with Steve Martin. Cyrano’s Panache means so much more than his poetic self, so much more than his personal honor; it is his Self. He has a grand soliloquy where he defends being who he is and why he will never bend to anyone’s will but his own, which is a perfect way to my mind to end this entry. Enjoy, be well and I bid you peace.
What would you have me do?
Seek for the patronage of some great man,
And like a creeping vine on a tall tree
Crawl upward, where I cannot stand alone?
No thank you! Dedicate, as others do,
Poems to pawnbrokers? Be a buffoon
In the vile hope of teasing out a smile
On some cold face? No thank you! Eat a toad
For breakfast every morning? Make my knees
Callous, and cultivate a supple spine,—
Wear out my belly groveling in the dust?
No thank you! Scratch the back of any swine
That roots up gold for me? Tickle the horns
Of Mammon with my left hand, while my right
Too proud to know his partner's business,
Takes in the fee? No thank you! Use the fire
God gave me to burn incense all day long
Under the nose of wood and stone? No thank you!
Shall I go leaping into ladies' laps
And licking fingers?—or—to change the form—
Navigating with madrigals for oars,
My sails full of the sighs of dowagers?
No thank you! Publish verses at my own
Expense? No thank you! Be the patron saint
Of a small group of literary souls
Who dine together every Tuesday? No
I thank you! Shall I labor night and day
to Build a reputation on one song,
And never write another? Shall I find
True genius only among Geniuses,
Palpitate over little paragraphs,
and struggle to insinuate my name
In the columns of the Mercury?
No thank you! Calculate, scheme, be afraid,
Love more to make a visit than a poem,
Seek introductions, favors, influences?—
No thank you! No, I thank you! And again
I thank you!—But...
To sing, to laugh, to dream
To walk in my own way and be alone,
Free, with an eye to see things as they are,
A voice that means manhood—to cock my hat
Where I choose—At a word, a Yes, a No,
To fight—or write. To travel any road
Under the sun, under the stars, nor doubt
If fame or fortune lie beyond the bourne—
Never to make a line I have not heard
In my own heart; yet, with all modesty
To say: "My soul, be satisfied with flowers,
With fruit, with weeds even; but gather them
In the garden you may call your own."
So, when I win some triumph, by some chance,
Render no share to caesar—in a word,
I am too proud to be a parasite,
And if my nature wants the germ that grows
Towering to heaven like a mountain pine,
Or like the oak, sheltering multitudes—
I stand, not high it may be—but alone!