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What a long, strange journey it's been...

It looks to me as if Blogger no wishes for me to post here, so I'll be forced to move this to another site. A bit of a shame, as I'd really liked some of the features offered and I felt I was finally getting the most use out of it. I've heard good things about Wordpress, and since I'm too simple to figure out how to migrate this to my own server space (and really too poor to maintain it with hosting on my own, hence the attraction of Blogger in the first place)
I'm going to try migrating this to "custom domain" first, as they're calling it. Hopefully I won't lose everything, especially since I'm almost up to my 90th actual convo and enjoy sharing those. We shall see. Keep your fingers crossed, and if the journal needs to lead you somewhere else, I'll point you to it.

In the meantime, be assured I'll be keeping it at www.roninmensch.com somehow.

Vulpes vulpes

I've seen a fox this morning. He was harried by the crows who cat-called down at him as he looked for something in the rough and snows outside. Then he turned and fled across the green towards the pond and I didn't see him again.

It was a weighted moment, like one might feel in a church. There was a sacred charge in the air of something momentous that I still feel even in the wake of his absence. He was beautiful and moved more as a cat than his canine brethren. A lithe red fox that stared me down as I ran to the door to watch him move, then dismissed me and proceeded to look for whatever he was being driven to find.

Fare you well, little fox. If we meet again, I will be less agape and more reverential.

I'd thought the arrival of the redwing blackbirds was cause for celebration, trailing spring behind them on their backs as they flew up from the south to arrive here in their happy mated pair and trill away in the reeds and cattails of the wetlands that surround this place. But now I know this is a momentous spring, and I shall probably never see the life of it again. I will cherish each ticking hour of sun and moonshine and what it reveals. I have never unknowningly longed for something so silently as I have for these first days of spring. Those who have long accompanied me on this walk of the planet earth are revealing themselves gradually, seasonally, once more.

Actual Conversation #89 - the dangers of traveling abroad and mutating virus strains strikes home.

me:I told her that because we are an awesomely dynamic duo I make no decisions without activating the wonder twin powers, and thus I would consult with you about the feasibility of this plan and/or any other ideas you might have.
You can pretend you're sick at home and play video games if you'd like. I think that would be the best possible outcome for the Bob contingent in this plan. :d
:D
gru: I see no problems with this plan at all. I endorse this. :-)
me: Alrighty.
You have the HIV. That's the story we're going with.
So you have to stay at home with a nebulizer.
And take steroids.
or something.
And there's a morphine drip and a nurse.......
gru: Okay. Did I get it from a panda or a monkey or what? Just in case they ask.
me: ......oh, panda. We were in Japan, after all.
gru: Tru.dat
me: Latent Panda HIV.
gru: Sneaky bastard of the HIV universe
It lies in wait then pwns your bamboo
me: Yup. It's triggered by stir fries.
gru: If only I had seen that after school special. I might still be alive today.
me: I miss you so much. I wish you hadn't died of the Panda HIV, sweetie.
gru: Good talk, Helen. Good talk.
me: :D

(a special side note... when you see "HIV", it was actually being pronounced "Hiihhvvvvuh" in my mind, so you have the full and ridiculous affect. As always, I am your public servant.)

Actual Conversation # 88 - the importance of preventative health care.

"Neener neener, I don't have cancer. Fuck you!" - Bob's recap of a text I sent to my mother re: the moles I never had removed.

Note to self: when possessing

Note to self: when possessing an eReader, come get a list of all the classics listed on the header shelf in B&N-download & read ALL.

~there are simply too many cool books already created and tried and true to go worrying about new fiction right now. I nearly bought The Inferno, The Purgatorio and The Paradiso based on just finishing Dante's Inferno and my general love for older epic poems... getting to finish the Kalevala might be nice one day, not to mention Beowulf.

Of what import is a mere 750 words?

I thought I might make an actual post instead of a post that was sent here from another website that I've been playing on. It has been a rather good day and I wish to document it before bedtime, which I am happy to say will be earlier than usual.

I discovered a terrific website yesterday, called 750words.com, which is beautifully coded and based on a very simple premise - the morning brain-dump. That is to say, it offers a place for you to slap down 750 words in the constant-stream-of-consciousness format that allows you to purge whatever's bugging you and get on with your day.
Back when I first read The Artist's Way, the author recommended writing 3 Morning Pages a day, handwritten, to do the same thing. I loved it while I was doing it, though the quality of writing is not to be really lauded. It is mostly a mechanism to clear your crap out. the only downside was that life eventually got so busy I was unable to find time to sit down and hand write 3 pages. There was also the chance that the person I was venting about might locate it and get ticked (as there was a history of that). The habit died away until I really only thought about it in passing. But I'd always enjoyed doing it.
Now with the introduction to the website, I'm able to sit down and bang out 750 words via typing, which is honestly easier. I can then write as fast as I think, clear that out, and have a decent rest of my day. After trying it this morning I discovered I was faaar better off and happy with life. While there were multiple things (see entries below re: donations, going to the bookstore, etc...) that contributed to it, it can't hurt that I started out with that.
The main thought behind the morning pages is that when your mind is clear of its crap, you can take the rest of that energy and dump it in to other things. Your creativity is free to utilize what it needs in order to grow, and things go from there. I'm not sure I remember how well it worked the first time, but as a solid psychological trick it can't be beat. I know it gave me a boost to drop all that junk on to a page and walk away to focus on the day. I'll definitely be back.
I've signed up for the One Month Challenge starting in April to see if I can write my pages every single day. If I manage it, I'll get myself a nook saving me from future traipsing up and down very old stairs with many, many boxes of donate-able books! I figure dedication should be rewarded, and by then I'll have gotten so much done with the freed up energy and mind space that I'll have time to sit down and read.
An interesting side-fact - I found this site via Lifehacker, which apparently was what a lot of other people did as well. It was damned nigh impossible to get to it yesterday, with constant time-outs. It finally loaded this morning. I was halfway through an entry when the website started doing odd things and stopped responding. After that I kept getting Error 403: Forbidden. Being that this is a server issue and I didn't' have access to client-side, I was stuck that way (or so I thought). It turns out that there was such a pull on the server's resources that the website admin pulled the plug on people trying to sign in and had to get a bigger server to handle the rush for it. I slid in just under the wire and get to keep writing until the new server shows up. For this I am grateful, and adore my usual sense of good timing!
I'm sure few people care about it besides me, but I was amused and interested. It may fall away in a month or two, but thus far I'm excited to have found it.

Tomorrow we will be getting our photos back from the trip to Seattle! Fingers crossed they're in okay condition, though most likely not. The film was 5 years old. I only found it when I went ballistic cleaning out the yoga room, otherwise it might've sat in the box for another 5 and been totally useless. I hope we've got some good images to share, I've always wished we had memories to look at together.
And now....to bed. Had an early morning, I'm not staying up until 2 am like usual. Tomorrow has excitement to share!

Chipping away slowly but surely...

Another entry in the battle against letting fear win, and today it did NOT!

I am normally apprehensive about walking in to situations where I don’t know what’s going on, and dropping off a bunch of books at a building I’d never been in to before seemed seriously daunting (so daunting I put it off for 4 days). This morning I woke up and thought you know what? Screw it…I’m not going to die if I walk in there and I don’t know the deal beforehand!
It was so silly, I had nervous twitches up until I got there, and I had to give myself a pep talk over a small, silly thing. but then I walked in, asked where they went, and started ferrying the books back and forth. A few short minutes later and it was done.
I was rather proud of myself. To celebrate and bolster my courage in the future I followed it up by going to the bookstore by myself and wandering around looking at things… something I’d always felt a bit silly about. Like anybody really cares why I’m there by myself? It’s all so silly! Then, as the trifecta of giving nervousness the boot, I went and ordered a green tea latte despite my hesitation, and then enjoyed one hell of an hour sipping at it and looking over the book I got for my niece’s birthday along with a few other things. I wrote in my red moleskine with my red Lamy that had Noodler’s red-black ink, and in general enjoyed the hell out of the day.
I have a new mantra: “This won’t kill me. It’s not that big a deal.”

See more progress on: overcome my fears