Welcome

My drug of choice is writing––writing, art, reading, inspiration, books, creativity, process, craft, blogging, grammar, linguistics, and did I mention writing?

Monday, October 21, 2013

Lappies, Rooms, and Anxiety. Oh my!

My impromptu Lappie death hiatus will SORT OF continue this week; however, I have been able to get some good writing done on my desktop.  Most of it is fiction, but there's some decent stuff around here somewhere. I'm running out of time to grouse about NaNoWriMo and Ender's Game, so I'm going to have to get those articles fired up with or without a laptop.

Crazy how much you don't realize you take advantage of the "write anywhere" ability of a laptop until it is gone. I'm not particularly good at longhand--my wrist and hand start hurting right away, and since most of the things I write end up online, I would be transcribing immediately anyway.

Articles will return this week--they just might not be the robust examples of awesome that you've all grown accustomed to.  I've got a couple of things of substance cooking, but the problem is still that there are half a dozen articles saved on the Mac (including the last bit of 15 Things Not to Do to a Writer).  I think some of it is in the iCloud, and I could get to it if I really wanted, but some of it went down with the ship.

Fortunately there is some good news on that front. The SciGuy is going to fix the hard drive. Apparently, he has to order a part, so it's going to be out until Friday, but he thinks Vera will be as good as new--possibly with a little memory loss. You'd think having an R&D department with a temporal physicist, cloning biotech, and computer genius would mean you didn't have to wait a week to get your laptop fixed...but, we're on such a shoestring budget here, and I'll take what I can get. At least the fact that I'm his boss means it will be free.

I spent yesterday cleaning out my quarters in The Hall of Rectitude. We've been doing some refurbishing before the Uberdude and The Brain have their little bundle of crime fighting joy. (I'm still thinking this kid is going to be psychic, because the things it mind controls The Brain into eating....woah.) I want to get my room straightened into a place I can retreat to if needed.

The problem is Uberdude and his projects. There are like ten of them throughout the house. He starts them in good faith, and I know he really doesn't mean to be someone who forgets about stuff for weeks, but a week later, the tools and materials are still all over the super-secret fortress and the lair, and if I try to clean them up, he yells at me "I wasn't finished!" So the main foyer, the battle simulation room, and the tactical planning room with the giant wall screen are all just covered in junk from the baby shower that was almost a month ago.

This is sub-optimal when you work with a hero known as "Miasma."
The less said about that, the better.
I haven't felt very comfortable in the house at large for a while, but lately it's gone from bad to worse. With the dormitory's bathroom being totally redone, the little emergency bathroom we keep in the lower levels (right next to the VTOL Jet of Rectitude's launch pad) is the only one right now.

Plus we've piled up boxes in the training simulator from when we moved three years ago, and I'm not allowed to get rid of it or put it away since it's all super villain weaknesses. ("You can't get rid of that old answering machine Chris! It's the only thing that can stop Cold Call's horrible over-the-phone freeze ray!"  "But you defeated Cold Call! He's in Arcslam Asylum." "But he could ESCAPE....at any point!! So we can never throw any of this stuff away ever.") They keep saying they're going to take care of it, but there's always some giant hornet army or tidal wave of doom or evil league of evil from which to save the city.

Recently the baby has been psychically ordering us (from within the womb) to stock up on clothes and toys and stack them in its own private quarters. Now that room is filling up with junk too. Diapers and powder and toys and clothes and electronic components and a schematic for a psionic amplification gun.

So the whole house looks a little bit like it could be the set of a post apocalyptic survival movie. And not the touching kind about the power of the human spirit. I'm talking the ones where you wonder if humanity's entire civilized edifice could come crashing down in a tragic heartbeat and return us to our savage roots.

I usually keep my room a mess because it's just a place I crash at night, and I enjoy the house to live in, but seeing as I can't really keep the Hall in any livable condition, it seems like that is shifting to be almost backwards. So I busted loose with some major cleaning to try and make my personal space more inhabitable. Four hours of cleaning off the ground in guts from the Octorian/Ninja war (roughly this time last year) and it looks a little better.

I gotta be honest: I'm excited about this baby, but a little anxious as well. Being the one sidekick in an entire Crime Fighting League means I do most of the cleaning around The Hall of Rectitude. Baby's not even here yet, and I've reached a tipping point where I can no longer keep up. I can't even imagine what's going to happen when you have dirty diapers with a superhero's superpoop thrown into the mix and the increased inability of any back up due to the difficulty of tossing a long day of fighting crime onto a second shift of raising a psychic not to end up being an antihero....or worse.

Mostly I'm worried about how my writing is going to fit in. The accumulation of JUNK is kind of squeezing me out of some of my preferred writing places. I can (and will) find a way to make it work because writers who wait around for everything to be perfect end up being waiters instead of writers.  If I have to leave the house every day for hours or barricade my door with psychic reflectors, I will find the time to write, but I do feel kind of squeezed and anxious.  I may be able to write anywhere or write at any time, but I definitely have my preferences.

1 comment:

  1. You can do it, Chris! Stand up on top of that pile of junk with a stinky baby in a sling, a pen in one hand and a bottle of Eco-Clean in the other and shout, "O Captain! My Captain!"

    ReplyDelete