Sandra Tayler's Blog, page 126

Thoughts on Identity and Categorization

I was in High School and the assignment was to create a quick drawing to represent who you are. The teacher did not mean for it to be an important or profound assignment, it was the prelude to a guessing game activity. I was completely unable to comply with the request. I knew I could draw a picture that would allow other students to guess who I was, but somehow I became emotionally tangled in the idea that such an image would be a false representation of who I was. I felt like a person of infinite possibility and to draw an image would be to show only a sliver of who I was. Anything I drew would be boxing me in, limiting my possibilities, and ultimately be a lie. My teacher was quite frustrated with me. He wanted quick drawings, not an identity crisis.

I have always disliked being pigeon-holed or labeled. As a child I claimed all the colors as my favorites. As a teen I entered high school with the deliberate intention to re-define myself in the eyes of my peers. Later I had to undo all that work and re-connect myself with my true interests. It was only well in to my adult years that I learned that I did not have to constantly challenge other people, daring them to accept all the aspects of who I am. Only in the last five years have I learned that allowing other people to categorize me for their convenience is a courtesy I can extend which has absolutely no bearing on my life or what I accomplish. I have an array of labels to describe me, but none of them define me completely. Having lots of labels means I can display whichever one is appropriate to the social situation.

I spent this past weekend at LTUE, a symposium on Science Fiction and Fantasy. It is always interesting to me to see what panels I am placed on, because it is a reflection of how I am viewed by the local writing community. I had one panel on organization, one on parenting, and two on business/financial things. It is endlessly amusing to me that I, the person who picked a humanities major in college because it required no math, am now teaching basic accounting and business structure. Yet these are things I know very well because I had to learn them. I think it is encouraging for creative people to know that organization and structure can be learned. I love teaching about these things. They are good things. However I am more than just business, organizational, mommy lady. I would love to teach classes on story, blogging, and creative non-fiction. I believe I could do these well, but I don't yet have the credentials to back up my belief. I don't have visible evidence of my capability and thus that is not how I am thought of when the time comes to arrange panels or presentations.

The need to categorize is built into human brains. We have to be able to file experiences and dismiss them or else we will be in a constant state of mental overload. One of the primary drives of early childhood is the creation of categories. No one wants to examine each and every fork we encounter to determine it's qualities and use. We need to be able to label it quickly as a fork and move on to something else. We do this same thing with people. We have to. Every person in the world is a being of infinite possibility, but contemplating that for every cashier at the grocery store and every person you drive past would overwhelm. Thus to me the young lady with a head full of hopes and dreams is just a cashier. To her I am just a customer. This is good and necessary, no matter how much I hated it as a teenager.

I think I worked so hard to dodge categories because I was afraid to be trapped in them. This is a very real problem. Sometimes the imposed categories of others can limit a person's potential, particularly if the categories are applied by people in power. A child may have a very difficult time breaking free of being "the smart one" if that is how parents and neighbors see her. I have friends who make a full time living at writing and yet are still treated as if they've picked up an amusing hobby. This can be infuriating and emotionally crushing. Repeated application of a particular category can make even a being of infinite possibility accept limitation. I am in a very fortunate position. None of the categories that other people apply to me block my pathways to my goals. I am not barred from my dreams by being too female, white, Mormon, maternal, scattered, reliable, messy, or any other category. Fighting against the perceptions of those who have power over your dreams is hard. The first step is to not accept the limitations of the categories assigned by other people.

I never did draw a picture for that class game. I sat out while the other students played. Several months later I realized what my visual representation should be. It was a dandelion puff scattering seeds on the wind. All of the seeds had the ability to sprout into a new plant and they had the potential to travel far. It still was not a perfect representation, but I liked it because it represented possibility rather than limitation. The fact that real-world dandelions are often treated as weeds was perhaps a meta-commentary upon the fate of people who defy categorization. Or maybe it wasn't. Maybe I just loved to remember blowing the dandelion puffs, watching seeds sail off into the blue, and wondering where they would land. I gave my teacher a hand drawn picture of a dandelion puff months after the assignment was forgotten by everyone else. He gave me an odd look, not quite sure where I fit. I felt quite good about that.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

Thoughts after a panel on self publishing

You've probably never heard of Anna del C Dye. I hadn't until I sat next to her on a panel and listened to her talk about her books in heavily accented English. She talked about the stories she'd loved writing, the process of working with a self-publishing company, and the enormous confidence she'd gained by proving to herself that she could write a book in her adopted language. Anna also talked about the satisfaction she receives by hearing from people who have loved her books. I've never seen Anna's books. I can't speak to their literary quality. I know for certain that Anna herself was a good and admirable person who has worked really hard to achieve a personal dream.

You are also unlikely to have heard of Jill Hancock Reeder. I sat next to her at a book signing. She set out her children's book about surrogate pregnancy next to my picture book about impulsivity. Jill was supremely qualified to know how to explain surrogacy to children. She has three kids of her own and has been a surrogate for other people three times. She decided to have her 12 year old daughter do the illustrations for the book as a family project. Her book is well known in the online surrogacy communities and is hailed as both useful and necessary. She sells very few books to the general public, they glance, refuse to meet her eyes, and walk away.

Since you're here on my blog, you probably have heard of me. I self-published a children's picture book. I take it with me when I do appearances and sell copies here and there. The project was a story my daughter needed and then published so that I could pay the artist. I've paid the artist now, but still haven't made any money on it myself.

These are the faces of self-published authors. I've met many, and I expect I will meet many more as I continue to attend conventions and events. With only a few exceptions I have found self-published authors to be intelligent people with solid reasons for choosing the path that they took. They have their fair share of insecurity and eagerness to promote their work, however I see that among commercially published writers as well. In the end we are all writers with stories that we want to share and I see no value in trying to enforce a social class system based upon publication venue. Commercial publishing has as many toxic people as self publishing.

It is possible, even probable, that my self-publishing background has impacted my views on this. I'm inclined to consider self-publishers as good people because I want to be considered in that light myself. Hopefully I will retain this viewpoint even after I have a project published commercially. I know many commercially published people do hold this view. Anna talked about them and was extremely grateful to the ones she had met. I am always glad to meet writers whose love for story is more important than an imagined status system.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

In which I explain my current sleep deprivation

Three days of high intensity social and public presentation time came to a conclusion when my cell phone rang multiple times. Link, having been an excellent baby sitter for most of the evening, abdicated his post 30 minutes too soon. Kiki failed to back him up and to do a couple of simple chores that I specifically requested. So instead of coming home to a clean quiet house, Howard and I had to come home and be parentally disapproving. The kid are contrite and perhaps a lesson has been learned which will result in long term good. We all dragged off to bed, quite thoroughly drained.

Sleep was interrupted at 2 am when Patch crawled into bed with me and declared "I need a pot!" I ran for the pot, he ran for the bathroom. Thus began twelve hours of a particularly vicious stomach flu. Howard stayed home from church with the sick boy. I went to church with the other three. This was when I learned that my newly acquired church job (Relief Society Committee Member) came with an attached afternoon meeting that precluded me taking a long nap. I've been sleepwalking all day, fortunately the day is drawing to a close and the kids have no school tomorrow. I will be shutting off the alarm clocks and sleeping late. Patch seems to be feeling better and has managed to keep water down for two hours now. As long as no one else comes down sick in the middle of the night, I should be able to sleep.

I'm far too tired to feel much about the concatenation of tiring events. At most I feel a mild amusement, knowing that this will be fodder for good stories in the future. It really has been a good week and a good weekend. I need to hold tight to that thought as a shield against anyone else in the family getting sick.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

Lunch at LTUE

Julie Wright and I walked fast as we exited the conference center where the hall was filled with LTUE attendees. We waved at friends as we passed, but kept moving. When the doors closed behind us we looked at each other and giggled like teenage girls ditching school. One of the joys of conferences and symposiums is the fact that there are always large groups of people with which to have lunch or dinner. I like having the chance to visit over food. The disadvantage is that large groups are hard for restaurants to seat and I only really get to visit with the five people seated near me anyway. So this time I took a page out of Mary Robinette Kowal's book. When she came to visit in Utah, she arranged her schedule so that she could have small group visits with many of her friends. I loved that. Large groups are for laughing. Small groups are for talking, catching up, and really learning how the other people are doing. I wanted to make sure I had some of both as part of this year's LTUE experience. What I'd really love to do is sit down and visit for an hour with each of my writer friends. That project would take about a week of 8 hour days. Instead a casual facebook conversation resulted in lunch plans with Julie Wright and Jessica Day George. I figured the plan was a good place to start.

My very first year attending CONduit, the annual science fiction and fantasy convention in Salt Lake City, I attended a reading. It was a joint reading by James Dashner and Julie Wright. I stopped by because I'd never been to a reading before. I wanted to see what they were like. I don't remember what Julie read, but James read from the manuscript that later became The Maze Runner. What I remember most is sitting around a table and talking to everyone. They were all published authors. Jessica was there. She had just sold her first book. I was not published, most of them didn't know me at all, yet I felt completely welcomed and at home. It was the first time I felt like a professional writer.

After our escape from the conference center, Julie and I met up with Jessica at a nearby Zupas. We did not talk about anything profound. Profound does not quite fit with a crowded soup and sandwich shop. However I was able to catch up with a few details about how their lives are going right now. Of such small conversations are friendships formed.

I had friends in High school. Quite a lot of them, but then we graduated and no longer had shared experiences or proximity to keep the friendships alive. I lost touch with all but one or two. I had friends in college, girls who were my roommates or lived in my building. Then I got married and they moved far away. For awhile Howard and I had friendships with other young married couples, but they moved and somehow I found myself adrift. I did not quite know how to make an acquaintance into a friend. I remember hearing about other women and their Girls' Night Out events. I wanted to be a person who went out to lunch with friends, but somehow it never occurred to me to arrange these things. I longed for them, but never was willing to risk calling and arranging an event. I look back at my younger self and I wish I could get her to say "Hey, next time you have a Girls Night Out, can I come?" This is exactly how I found my Writer Girls group almost a decade later.

I'm not sure how I learned to be a person who collects friends and arranges for lunches out. I think it was mostly by being around people who knew how. Some of it was demanded of me in the course of learning how to be a business manager for Schlock Mercenary. I do lots of things now which used to terrify me. The doing of terrifying things makes me stronger. Perhaps sometime I will try to identify core thoughts about making and being friends. Maybe I'll even write up a list. Mostly though it is about arranging to be around each other and listening with sympathy. The women I observed did not have Girls Night Out because they were friends, they were friends because they arranged to have Girls Night Out. I had the causality wrong all those years ago.

I've been attending local conventions for six years now. They've grown to feel like family reunions as much as professional events. I had my stolen time with Julie and Jessica. It was the result of over a dozen emails as we tried to figure out where in three days there was a block of time long enough that none of us was busy. The effort was worth it. Tomorrow I will take time to step aside and talk with dozens more people. Inevitably I will miss someone with whom I'd dearly love to catch up. Thank goodness for the internet. Social media tools allow me to create a simulated proximity. I will be able to share messages and thoughts electronically. It is not the same as talking in person, but better than nothing.

I need to remember to make efforts outside of conferences to plan for lunches and dinners with other creative people. I always come away happier and with new thoughts to think.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

Notes from LTUE panel: The Writing Life

My final panel of today was The Writing Life. It was one of those panels where I scribble down notes, not only to help me remember what I wanted to say, but also because other panelists said things I want to remember. It was also one of those panels where I say things which I then have to write down because somehow the act of talking about living a writing life reshaped my thoughts in new ways, then the new thoughts spilled out of my mouth.

I knew before the panel began that I wanted to mention the inevitable break down of systems. Creative people get very excited and enthusiastic about their goals and plans for achieving those goals. When the plans fall apart three days later, they get very discouraged and are inclined to give up. The thing is to pick up the pieces and make a new system based on what you learn from the old one. Through iterations of this process a writer can find what works for her. Then life changes and iterations begin again.

The other panelists made excellent points about finding your priorities, setting goals, and scheduling time. I particularly liked the statement that writers need to not wait around for writing to be convenient. Time is made, not found laying around. There was also much discussion of sacrifice, specifically giving up things like television and video games in order to make time for writing. I loved all these thoughts and nodded agreement while scribbling notes.

Then I found myself thinking of fractals. The defining attribute of a fractal is that the large pattern is repeated when you zoom close to any particular part of the fractal. As you get closer and closer you see the same pattern ever smaller. Our lives are fractal. We don't have to make our whole lives meaningful, but if we make each day balanced and good then the larger pattern will reflect that. I seized a microphone to share this insight and ended up talking about the five things I am still trying to put into my life daily. Every person will have different things, but the point is to try to balance each day so that priority items are front and center.

Since this was a symposium at a religious university, the authors on the panel with me shared that they often begin their writing sessions with prayer. They talked about how this calmed them and that they felt it inspired their writing sessions. I think this is a marvelous idea and I intend to try it.

A question was asked about specific practicalities of making time for writing. The truth is that I don't always make time for it. There is a level of guilt attached to writing because sometimes I have to sacrifice things which are more important than television or video games. Sometimes it is a choice between writing and doing the laundry. It seems like a no-brainer, who likes laundry. But I know that if the laundry does not get done, then the next morning's school scramble will be awful which will lead to a cascading failure of day. There are times when laundry is more important than writing and I choose it. Or I choose some other thing in my life. Other times I choose writing. Each day has its own answer and the only way I can find the right answer for today is to be in touch with my own priorities and inspiration. This is where my five daily things are so critically important. They center me in the priorities of my life. Often I discover that, contrary to what guilt would have me believe, writing first makes the laundry easier.

The panel wrapped up on the thought that sometimes what we have to sacrifice for writing are our own neuroses. We have to relinquish control of some things. We have to be willing to let kids do jobs poorly or to let them struggle and fail. We have to be willing to emotionally untangle ourselves from dramas which we can't really solve, but which sap our energy. We have to find ways to allow ourselves to not be perfect. This can be very hard.

It was a really good discussion and I am glad I got to participate.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

Contemplating the next three days

Tomorrow morning I get to put on my professional clothes and go to LTUE. I'm excited to see friends and visit with other creative people. I'm looking forward to all of the panels in which I'll get to participate. My brain is fairly bubbling with points I feel are important for the various panels. It is all good stuff that I am happy about.

However, there is also a voice in my brain which counts the cost. In order to go on Thursday, I had to arrange for one neighbor to pick up my kids from school and drop them at another neighbor's house. My teenage daughter has been tasked with catching a ride home from a friend. I'll need to plan an easy microwavable dinner for my teens to feed to my younger ones. I need to spend most of today on preparatory work both for the family needs and preparations for the sales table that Howard and I will run at the event.

On Friday I'm skipping LTUE because it is the day to discuss with my son's counselor about scheduling his classes for next year. Except I may run down to LTUE just for lunch to visit, but I have to be back home in time to pick up kids from school. All day Friday I will have an awareness that people I love to be around are having fun while I'm not there.

Saturday I've arranged with a third neighbor to take my younger kids for most of the day. At dinner time they'll come home and my teenagers will babysit for the rest of the evening. I expect to get at least two phone calls from kids which will interrupt conversations or dinner. Saturday night I will be happy and socially exhausted. I'll want to be very introverted, but my kids will be ready to latch on to me and demand attention. The house will probably be messy. There will be crankiness. In the whole process I will have inconvenienced 8 people to cover things that I usually do.

For the next three days I will be split between family and business. I will swap between parent and professional. In some ways it is much easier when I hand off my kids and don't see them at all for the duration of an event. Then I can pack away the home and family parts of myself. On the other hand it is really nice to have kids to hug each evening. They remind me that I have an importance and value which is completely separate from my professional successes and failures. I like coming home and having everything be normal.

Being split is getting easier. Each year the kids are older and thus less unsettled by me being absent. I can depend upon the older ones to help with the younger ones, who need much less helping than they used to. I know it is better, but it is still hard. For the next three days I will not be as good a parent as I could be because I'll be conserving energy for LTUE. Since parenting is a primary focus most of the time, the lapse will not cause any long-term harm, but it definitely creates internal stress for me. Contemplating the stress, some small part of me whispers that it might be better to skip the symposium.

All I can do is evaluate events on a case-by-case basis. LTUE will be good. It always is.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

Grouchy

Some days things which are normally easy, seem impossible. Some days commonplace things drive me crazy. It is part of being human. The hard part for me is when I am having one of those days and a child is also having one of those days. I hear the rants and moans about schoolwork and my first instinct is to do damage control. Then I stop myself and spin in the little circle where I get frustrated that I have to care about their work. And I worry about co-dependent behaviors. All of this is especially frustrating when things have been fine for awhile. Before we achieved "doing pretty good" things were "relatively awful" and the back of my brain gibbers in terror that we'll slide back down into the pit.

I need to chant my new mantra "I'm sorry this is hard for you." and then practice letting them struggle and sort it out themselves. Much easier said than done. I just have to remember that while sometimes rescues are really necessary, if I always come to the rescue I rob my children of their chances to triumph. I just wish it was easier to tell when to rescue and when to say "I'm sorry this is hard for you" while letting them struggle.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

Kiki, The Boy, and the dog

Posted with Kiki's permission:

I first became aware of The Boy sometime last Fall. When Kiki talked about her high school friends, The Boy's name occurred with increasing frequency and always in positive terms. I first met The Boy when we changed Kiki's post-school pick-up location. He was standing there with her, talking and laughing. He and I did no more than wave at each other, but it was nice to put a face to the name I'd begun hearing. Kiki spent the whole ride home telling me about funny things The Boy had said and about how nice it was to have friends who were boys.

Every day for months The Boy stood with Kiki, talking to her while she waited for me to arrive. He brightened her day and always had a cheery greeting for me. I liked him. He seemed nice. Upon my assurance that she was welcome to invite friends home even if they are boys, Kiki invited The Boy over to our house. On several different afternoons they spent gleeful hours shouting over games of Halo, Brawl, and Castle Crashers. Kiki growled fiercely at her siblings if they dared to do anything which she deemed even remotely embarrassing.

So it continued, and I watched. Kiki is fifteen. The Boy is a few months younger, he is in the same grade. They stand together on the lawn, talking. Or sometimes they sit close together (but not quite touching) when Kiki has had a bad day. He listens to her, and I think he is sometimes bewildered by her tears. The fact that he listens makes Kiki feel better.

Today, on Valentine's Day, I pulled up to see Kiki holding a little stuffed dog. The dog was tucked self-consciously, protectively in the curve of Kiki's right arm. She saw me and began to gather her things. The Boy walked her to the car as he always does. I smiled, waved, and commented on his hair which he bleached over the weekend. He smiled and waved back. Kiki closed the door and turned to me.

"So did The Boy give you the dog?"

"Yes." Kiki's grin was near to splitting her face. "It was waiting for me in 2nd period, on my desk. I was late, so everyone looked at me come in. Then I had to ask, in the middle of class, was it for me?" Kiki's hands rubbed the dog's soft paws. "I've carried it all day. And I keep fiddling with it. The paws are so soft. All my friends keep telling me The Boy likes me. I guess he does."

The dog was brown and white. It carried a little stuffed heart with the word "love" on it.

"Yeah." I said. "I'm pretty sure he likes you."

"His mom made him get the dog for me. She drove him to the store and told him to pick out something. He wasn't sure what to get, so she said a bear. He decided on the dog and a Hershey bar."

Apparently I'm not the only parent observing from a respectful distance as these two sweet, geeky kids hang out together.

Kiki rubbed the paws again, then realized she was doing it. She gave an embarrassed wiggle "I've been holding the dog all day and my friends laughed at me, but I liked holding the dog. It's all so complicated."

Yes it is, and Kiki has only begun to scratch the surface of how complicated relationships can be. I'm just glad for Kiki and The Boy that neither feels inclined to rush. They both have lots of growing and learning left to do.

Upon our arrival home, Kiki proudly showed her stuffed dog to her siblings. They wanted to know what she intended to name the dog. She answered that she did not know. Once they left, she told me she probably wouldn't name the dog. "That would feel weird." she said to me quietly. Now the dog sits on her shelf where she can see him easily, and maybe reach up to touch a soft paw when she wants to.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

My book project

My current writing project is a memoir in essay form about my struggles to balance work, family, spirituality, community, and self. Most of the essays that will go into the book were originally blog entries here on One Cobble, but they've been revised and I've also drafted some completely new material as well. Right now I'm about half way through a revision of the entire book. Last Fall I slapped all the essays into place so that I could view the book as a whole project rather than as scattered pieces. This was the right call, because as I go through I'm adjusting essays and information flow depending upon what came before and what will come next. Sometimes this is simply lightly going over an essay, other times it means drafting connecting material from scratch, and once it meant completely scrapping an essay entirely.

Working on the project is taking up most of my available brain space. Family and business chores are still front and center, but in the remainder of my time I'm either working on this revision, avoiding working on the revision, or deliberately taking a break from the revision. The avoidance is almost always triggered by thoughts of how the writing sucks, I'm not saying what I mean, or that no one will care to read it anyway. The most discouraging thing is that for all the emotional energy I'm pouring into the project (and into avoiding the project) I really thought I would be done with the revision by now. Some of the delay is caused by higher priority tasks needing my full attention, but I've also wasted time. I know I have. I often question whether the project itself is a waste of time. It impacts my stress level. It takes up time I could be spending on other things. It uses up creative energy and fills the corners of my mind in which I percolate blog entries. Like any creative project, it is expensive.

I will finish this project. Whether or not the completed work ever sees the light of day in print, whether or not anyone else ever reads it or cares about it, whether or not the work is good, I need to know that I saw it through to the end. This book is important to me. The learning processes associated with writing the book, revising the book, and submitting the book to agents are all important to me. None of it is going to be easy, but it is all something I want to do. So I'll keep at it until the work is done.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

Snippets

Last night our dinner table conversation was a discussion of exactly how Darth Vader eats. Howard was a proponent of the "food block inserted through chest plate" option while Gleek was a vehement supporter of the "opening face plate" party. The discussion broke down when Gleek declared that Darth Vader's real name was bubbles and Howard said "Wait, did we just take a left turn into Gleekland?" No firm conclusions were reached except that the word "bubbles" is made out of giggles.

Kiki has been reading books about kidnapped and/or raped girls lately. She's read Hidden in Plain Sight: The Story of Elizabeth Smart and The Lovely Bones. As I understand it, both of the books are ultimately optimistic and the really hard stuff in them is touched only very lightly. Now all she need to read is Not Without My Daughter in order to have a perfect trifecta of books that I am completely unable to read as a mother. They hit too close to my fears and would hurt too much.

Gleek has decided that combing the cat should be her daily household chore. Both the cat and I think this is a marvelous choice.

It turns out that 24 hours is a long time after the opening of the GenCon hotel block. I completely forgot to register on Tuesday at noon, and by late Wednesday Howard's preferred hotel was full. We found another close by, but it still had me a bit panicked last night. I don't know why GenCon is always surrounded with a cloud of terror for me, but I am perpetually afraid that I will make some mistake which irrevocably ruins the event for us.

Speaking of conventions, Howard's April has changed from empty to full. He'll be attending both Ad Astra in Toronto Canada and Penguicon in Michigan. Penguicon is especially notable because Howard will be there with Brandon, Dan, and Jordo of the Writing Excuses crew. They are going to have a great time.

XDM X-Treme Dungeon Mastery is now available in e-book versions via both Amazon and Barnes & Noble. That was last week's project.

I meet with our tax accountant today. Hopefully he will not have very much homework for me.

Patch has been reading through our family photo books at bedtime because he "wants to look into his past." Last night he reproached me for a pair of photos I took of him as a baby. In the photos he'd grabbed an open yogurt container and accidentally dumped yogurt on his feet. Instead of instantly helping him clean up, I took two pictures of yogurt covered baby. 7 year old Patch thought this was nigh villainous of me. I hugged him and assured him that I helped him clean up the moment I put down the camera.

Last night Kiki and I had a long and rambling talk about boys, relationships, life plans, and a host of other things. During the course of the conversation we determined that she is completely normal, which was something of a relief for her to learn. Apparently that "all teenagers think they are weird" thing is not a myth. Also the "teenagers never listen to their parents" thing is a myth, at least for Kiki. I hope that she and I continue to have many conversations about many things through the years.

After being sick over the weekend, Link is read to pick up his health and fitness schedule again. I'm pleased to see that the time off did not break his motivation.

LTUE begins one week from today. I need to clear away some space in my brain so that I can contemplate the topics of the four panels I will be on. Not much preparation is needed for most of them. I just need to dust off my thoughts so that they're a ready resource. The one for which I do need to prepare is the session on financial management. I'm the moderator and I want to make that hour as packed with information as I possibly can.

I'm at about 50% on my project revision. I'd hoped to have it done by now, but since I am continuing to make progress instead of stalling completely, I plan to just keep going. Eventually I'll work my way to the end.

And now it is time to head out on my errands for the day.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.