Sandra Tayler's Blog, page 4

Things Changing

A couple of weeks ago my country had an election and the results of it are a real shift in how things are done. Many people I know are terrified of how the changes will play out. I’ve spent some time anxious as well. So my usual online places are full of anxiety, outrage, calls for people to calm down, and calls to action.

Much closer to home, my congregation was reorganized last week. My church organizes its congregations (called wards) geographically. Where you live decides where you attend and who you attend with. The neighborhoods around my house have had significant demographic shifts in the past five years. Lots of apartment complexes have gone in, the average homeowner in my area is a grandparent rather than a parent with young children under their roof. These shifts left some of the wards seriously understaffed and other wards overflowing with new residents from apartment complexes. So they re-drew the imaginary lines which defined the ward boundaries.

The new boundaries have some of my friends, with whom I’ve attended for years, now attending different congregations than I do. It adds a lot of new people to my ward. My ward has a different number than it used to (7th instead of 9th). This means a complete shakedown in ward leadership. We have a new bishopric and new presidencies of all the auxiliary organizations (like youth classes, children’s classes, Sunday School, etc.) For myself, all of this is fine. But it means that my children will have new teachers, and I may have to go explain to those teachers about the special needs of my kids. There are conversations incoming, and I have no way of knowing if the conversations will be quick and simple or if I’ll be spending significant time and energy teaching people how to deal with my kids. I’ll begin to know who the new teachers are starting tomorrow morning.

On top of all the above change, we’re also remodeling. Oddly the remodeling has been more grounding than disruptive. The original plan would have been very disruptive. We’d intended to hire a contractor and do our best to stay out of his way. But the significant increase in our health insurance premium, and financial uncertainty surrounding how the new national administration will affect our business, made us decide to do more of the remodeling work ourselves. As a result, we’ve been taking the work in small sections. Move furniture from corner, paint corner, replace furniture, prep next segment. It is an odd, piecemeal approach, but it gives us time to think about each step as we get to it. When we get to the point of replacing cabinets, counters, and flooring, we’ll hire professionals. But the small stuff we can do, and we have been.

Taking control of the physical appearance of our house doesn’t actually help us control any of the other changes, but we feel better about all of it. We are slowly, carefully, piece by piece, creating the place where we want to live. I figure I can take the same approach with the other changes as well. I can pick a spot to focus and try to make that spot work as it should. On a community scale, I might spend a life’s worth of effort in a single spot, and that is okay.

For now, I have a ceiling to paint.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Over Time Small Efforts Make a Big Difference

A couple of days ago I tweeted:

“Today I’m shipping packages, taking care of household tasks, and considering carefully what I should do to make the world a better place.”

“I need to pick a “make the world better” goal which is sustainable over the long haul, which is why I’m considering carefully.”

A friend tweeted back that she would love to hear what ideas I came up with. I still haven’t formulated a full plan, but last night a piece of it came into focus. It started with reading this series of tweets from a former Congress staffer on

How to effectively talk to your member of congress

A step not mentioned in that link is figuring out what to talk to my representatives about. Specific conversation is much more effective than generalized conversation. If you call and say “Please oppose Bill A because of reason Z” That is concrete and actionable. Whereas “Protect the rights of vulnerable people” can be interpreted in all sorts of ways, both good and bad. It is also more effective to talk about specific bills right before they are voted on.

It turns out there is a website dedicated to informing US Citizens when Congress is in session and what they’ll be voting on.

Calendars and Schedules for the House and Senate

They don’t yet have a schedule for 2017, but I noticed that the House will be in session the week of November 14. Here is a list of bills they will be voting on. Maybe one of those bills matters to you. You might want to check.

I also googled and found a website that makes it easy to find out who your representatives are and how to contact them. whoismyrepresentative.com

Having found those sites, I’ve realized that if I take a small fraction of the time I spend reading news sites and just scan over upcoming legislation, I will be aware when a bill occurs that I feel strongly about. Then I can take the few minutes necessary to call my representative. Or if I feel really strongly, perhaps I can speak up to draw attention to the bill. Or if I feel critically urgent about a particular bill, I might be able to organize a group of people to work together to support or oppose.

I suspect I won’t feel critically urgent very often. The vast majority of bills are routine or have no effect where I live. I’ll leave those to the people who are affected.

For this next week, one bill jumped out at me. H.R.5332 Women, Peace, and Security act. (Full text available at the link) In my quick read, it states that, statistically, peace treaties and agreements last longer when women are involved in making them, so therefore the US should make an effort to include more women in creating peace treaties and in negotiations. I would like to see that pass, so I’ll be calling my representative this week.

I’m also setting a reminder on my calendar to check back on the scheduling website in a month to see if they’ve posted the 2017 schedule yet. Then once they have, I’ll set reminders to check the specific bills the week before they get voted on. This is a small sustainable thing I can do.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Worries

It turns out that I am among the people who are afraid because of the election results. I’d already been informed that our health insurance premium would be going up by $600 per month. Now I’m wondering if I’ll have health insurance at all a year from now. I worry that financial uncertainty will impact sales in our store over the holiday months. Which then affects my budget for next year. There are lots of large question marks. We’ll figure it out and find a way through, but the ambient anxiety in our house has gone up. I have a child who seriously and earnestly advocated for moving to a different country, even though it meant leaving her friends. She’s that scared. I don’t know what the increased uncertainty, and possible unpleasant interactions at school, will do to destabilize my kids’ mental health. We’d barely managed to get to a place where no one was in crisis.

And those are just the top of my head worries. I have larger worries for friends and family whose situations are far more vulnerable than mine. I worry for friends who are more likely to become targets for anger and hatred.

Yet, I believe in the power of people to band together and help each other through. So I’m going to spend today being kind. I’m also going to try to listen to the thin thread of reassurance which is coming to me and saying “It may be rough for a while, but you’ll be okay.” I’m also going to remember that anxiety means I’m focused on the future instead of being focused on today. I don’t have to do all the days ahead of me yet. I just have to do today, one hour at a time.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Cocooning

Since last Friday I’ve been practicing some deliberate cocooning. This means I’m not checking news sites, only peeking at social media to see if I’ve been messaged, and generally letting the larger world take care of itself without me paying attention. I’ve already placed my vote, what small amount of control I have has been exercised. So I’m going to ignore numbers and polls. Tomorrow I’m going to do my best to be occupied with work. Then Wednesday I’m going to do the same while there is furor over whatever result we get. Because no matter the election results, a significant portion of our fellow Americans will be terrified of the result. I hope that those who are relieved can be kind to those who are afraid. Because if I am among the afraid group, I would dearly love to be reassured that things will be okay.

I do think that if we can all be better about how we interact with the people we meet in person, then the sum of millions of compassionate interactions will be the America we’d like to be instead of the partisan one which is visible on the internet.

So tomorrow I will sign a paper to okay printing for the Pristine Seventy Maxims book. I will tweak the layout on the Defaced Seventy Maxims book so that it can go to print in the next few weeks. I will email the next batch of Kickstarter backers so that I can get their orders updated with the version of book they want. I will put finishing touches on a document we plan to release to Planet Mercenary backers. I will answer email. I will fold laundry. I will listen to my son tell me about the first performance for the school play (he’s stage crew.) I’ll listen to my daughter chatter about whichever random thing she is focused on. Maybe I will talk to my college girl on the phone. Perhaps I will send a picture of flowers to friends who I think might need one. Maybe I’ll rake leaves.

When I really think about it, all the fears are far out in the wide world. The things up close are mostly worthwhile and wonderful. For the next few days, I’m going to keep my eyes focused on the things up close.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Halloween

My social media feeds are full of costume pictures. This makes me quite glad. It is much nicer to have personal pictures that I can click to show appreciation rather than posts full of links where I have to click “hide” to protect myself from anxiety. I’ll take pumpkins and costumes.

We’re having a low-key Halloween here at Chez Tayler. None of my kids are interested in Trick or Treating. Only one of them put together a costume. The other three either didn’t care or didn’t have the energy to devote to thinking one up and making it. We even missed the neighborhood Halloween party. Not on purpose, it just fell in the middle of a working Saturday. We got to the next day before we realized we’d missed it.

I’ve been focusing my energy on Kickstarter management and getting my junior high kid settled into partial homeschooling. I’ve also been clearing the way so I can spend Friday retrieving Kiki from college. She’s coming home for a weekend visit and a doctor’s appointment. So Halloween happened all around me while I was not paying attention.

It is strange to shift from a life where Halloween was a major event requiring weeks of deliberation and planning to a life where we might accidentally miss it if there weren’t trick or treaters at the door. But that is where we are right now. Perhaps another year we’ll get back into the costuming groove, but for this year we’re spending our energy elsewhere.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Loose Thoughts

This afternoon I got to listen to myself say “Yes, I’ve made a bunch of extra work for myself, but the extra work is much less stressful than what I had before. Because I know at the end of the work I will feel confident that I delivered what the backers expected. That is a much nicer feeling than sick doubt.” All of which is true. Much of the piles of work ahead of me are tedious, but right now I’ll take tedious over complicated. So many of the things on my To Do list are complicated and require difficult decisions.

While I was at SiWC I got to sit down with a close friend and talk about the things in her life and the things in mine. We talked for hours. Several times during that conversation I spoke things that I hadn’t put into words before they came out of my mouth. This is one of the treasures about long hours spent with a friend. There are so many thoughts that I’ve buried deep underneath the surface pleasantries. I never meant to hide them. I’m not ashamed of anything that is in there. I just didn’t have time to pay attention to my thoughts as things happened. So I end up with layers of thoughts, so many layers that I’ve forgotten what the floor looks like. I write about the things as they happen, but fundamentally writing is like talking to myself. It does not spark the same insights that happen when my thoughts meet someone else’s thoughts.

Many of the thoughts buried in my head are sad. I’ve collected memories of many difficult moments over the past few years. The sadness doesn’t go away just because the thought is buried. It leaks. And it doesn’t magically get better even if the situations which caused the sadness are mostly resolved. Before I can let the sadness go, I have to find the source of it and see it for what it is. Only then can I move onward. All these layers of unprocessed emotion are part of why the anxiety gets bad sometimes. They are definitely a source of fatigue. It is hard to keep moving with so much built up in my head.

I’m trying to be better about seeing friends. I’m trying to spend time with people who don’t mind listening while I sort. There’s just so much that I worry I’ll wear out their patience. It would be very nice to start reducing the quantity of unprocessed emotion rather than watching it accumulate.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries

We will be releasing two editions of this book. Kickstarter backers are being given the option to choose which edition they want. This page is designed to give them information so that they can choose. If you are not one of the Planet Mercenary Kickstarter backers and are interested in pre-ordering one (or both) of these books, you can place your pre-order here.

The Pristine edition of the Seventy Maxims book has a cover that looks new and interior pages which are crisp and clean to read. The paper for the pages is actually off-white in color and has a nice texture. This is the ideal version for introducing friends to the maxims without confusing them with the character handwriting. It is also ideal if you want to do your own handwriting and notes either by yourself or with a group of friends.

The Defaced edition of the Seventy Maxims book has a cover which shows rust, gouges, and dents from bullets. The interior pages look aged and stained. There are handwritten notes around the maxims which were written by various characters from the Schlock Mercenary comic strip. The Defaced Edition is an in-world artifact. It originally belonged to Karl Tagon, was passed to his son Kaff Tagon, and also went through the hands of Captain Alexia Murtaugh and Sergeant Schlock. This version is ideal for the fan of the comic who wants to laugh at in jokes and gain additional insight into some of the characters.

Here is the front endpage of the Defaced version.

And here are some comparisons of Pristine pages to Defaced pages.

I personally love both editions of the book and am glad that we are able to offer both.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Surrey International Writer’s Conference

View of Surrey from the hotel window

I spent my weekend at Surrey International Writer’s Conference in Surrey British Columbia. I had never before been to either that portion of Canada or to that particular conference. I found both to be a lovely experience. While at SiWC, I got to present The Power of Picture Books and Design Principles for Book Covers. Both presentations had fantastic audiences who asked really smart questions and shared pieces of information which added to the discussion.

The remainder of my teaching time was spent on Blue Pencil sessions where attendees would bring me a few pages of their writing and I would read it on the spot so I could give a quick critique. Each blue pencil appointment was fifteen minutes and a session was five of these in a row. It was mentally tiring, but also really invigorating. I love sitting with another writer and helping them find pieces they need to make their work closer to what they want it to be.

One thing I loved about SiWC was the breadth of genres that the conference embraced. They had teachers for romance, science fiction, fantasy, memoir, narrative nonfiction, picture books, middle grade, YA, non fiction, etc. Most of the writing events I attend have a heavy Sci Fi and Fantasy emphasis. This makes much of what I write tangential to the focus of the conference. It was lovely to attend an event where I specifically invited for expertise that other events don’t want.

Another thing that was different about SiWC was that the meal times were wrapped into the conference experience and made to serve as a time for writers to connect with each other. There were banquet style lunches and dinners with round tables and open seating. For each meal I got to sit with a different group of people. This was sometimes a little bit tiring for an introvert like me, but then the conversations started. We talked writing, the classes we’d been to, things from our lives, and about the conference itself. These meals were a chance for friendships to form. It was a beautiful thing.

On my evaluation form, the conference asked me about my best moment during the show. I’d have to say it was watching people who’d come into a class by themselves leaving the class in groups who were talking to each other and sharing contact information. I was so happy to be a part of that, because we all succeed better when we connect with and help each other. SiWC is a conference where being welcoming to new people is written right into their goals for a successful conference. It certainly worked with me. I was never left standing outside some in-joke where long timers were laughing and I didn’t know why. They brought me inside, invited me to laugh with them, and I did.

If you’re looking for a writer’s conference to attend in 2017, you should consider SiWC. It is worth both the time and money. I know I would be delighted to be able to go back again.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Reversing Direction

Ten days ago we made a hard business decision. Then I put in the work to release the PDF versions. Then we got emails from people who were just as sad as I was that the defaced version would not see print. And with each email, even the kind ones, my anxiety grew. It kept me up. It ate at me. We’d promised to deliver a thing and were disappointing people with our choice. A Kickstarter is a trust and we were not living up to it. The sick feeling inside sent me into printers quotes and research mode until I was able to present a plan that might let us print both versions of the book and let backers choose which one they wanted. So that is the new plan. It is the right one. It is going to cost us more money and me a lot of time, but at the end of it I will be able to look at both copies of the book knowing I did everything instead of stopping short of everything.

Now if I can just get my anxiety to wind down, that would be nice. It is roaring at me, telling me that I have already failed, that I’m doomed to fail forever. It howls around me making me want to huddle up an hide until the noise goes away. Only the noise tells me all the terrible things that will happen if I hide. Tomorrow I would like to get up and get back to work. I get to make the book I’ve been working hard at. I get to make companion book for it that I didn’t even realize we needed until twelve days ago. I get to put together a presentation. I want to be able to just do that work in peace and happiness and let failure happen (or not happen) somewhere off in the future instead of becoming a self fulfilling prophecy because stupid anxiety won’t let me concentrate today.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Updates

In the past four days we have relocated our wall mounted television, disassembled and reassembled our Ikea couch so that it is mirrored from its former configuration, pulled down our wall mounted media shelving, prepped half the room for painting (the other half got painted a month ago), and began repainting trim. The room is going to be so much nicer when all the things are done. The rearrangement makes much better use of the space. Also, we were really tired of the white walls which had 18 years of accumulated nicks, stains, and smears.

Other things I’ve been working on:

Prepping the annotated PDF of the Seventy Maxims book. I need to get that to backers this week.

Assembling a powerpoint presentation on cover design

Working on a presentation about picture books.

Shipping packages

Helping my two school kids track their homework

Taking my older son to his first class at Passages, which is a transitional program for autistic adults

Mowing the foot-high lawn so that it won’t kill itself over the winter

Even with all of that, I’m surrounded by things I ought to do, but haven’t managed to squeeze in. I need to catch up on laundry because tomorrow Howard needs to pack for his trip to ConStellation over in Huntsville Alabama. The Planet Mercenary book needs more attention (though I’ve spent significant attention aiding and abetting Howard’s editing time on that project.) I see cluttery spots all over my house, and then there are the spots which are outright dirty and need to be cleaned.

I haven’t had a whole lot of time for slow thoughts about big things. And some of my thinking time gets sucked into politics or into watching a hurricane slowly create disaster as it marches inevitably across homes. With something that huge, all a person can do is get out of the way and then hunker down until the storm passes. That last sentence applies equally to the hurricane and national politics. I’ll be glad when we finally get to the day when I can cast my vote. I’ll be even more glad when the noise dies down.

The good news is that it finally feels like we’re stabilizing into the school routine. We’ve finished clearing up the make up work from our trip. The days have begun to have a rhythm to them. That’ll be disrupted a little by Howard’s trip this weekend and then by my trip next weekend, but the routine is nice to have.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.