Erik Amundsen's Blog, page 79

Run Blogging: Run 2

So the every hour thing is not working so hot.  Last hour was taken up with work-work.  Thissecond run was a lot more demanding than the second half of a mile, that's for damn sure.

Run Blogging: An Experiment

I don't have time to do a significant run all in one block, today, but I do have time to go once around the building (.5 mi) every hour.  Did it once.  Will tell you how it goes.

The Grimoire Day 21

Sorry, busy day today, so not a lot of content.  Actually, half the time I say that I come up with a thousand words anyway, but let's just see what happens.

Day 21

I am afraid of sleep.  Unless I am exhausted, I find it an ordeal or, at best, a chore to get through before I can get on with what else I want to accomplish.  I don't need to be told why this is a foolish way to be and untenable over the long term.  What I can tell you is that it's kind of unpleasant, and I don't like it so I mean to change it.  This is what I've started doing, and I only have 4 nights so far in this, so I cannot tell you if it will stick or not.  But if there is anything I want anyone who is reading this to get out of what I'm writing it's that you shouldn't ever stop trying things, even if they are kind of silly.  Always be trying to do something to make your life a little better, always pick a goal and try to reach it.  Pick many so you don't get bored but not so many that you'll be overwhelmed, and don't be shackled to them.  If they don't work, drop them.  For now, anyway, you could pick something up in a month or a year and find it works very well for you then.

Anyway, this is a good place to start talking about trance and meditation and altering your own consciousness.  Quick disclaimer, anything to which I am not allergic I have been too chicken and remain too chicken to try, excepting alcohol, which I have not found does a lot for me in terms of magic.  I find that doing magic while drinking is like doing anything else.  It's pleasant to a point but the margin for error goes way up.  And really, you do not want to come back from an otherworld journey and find some jackass has drawn a dick on your face.

I sipped some tea with wormwood in it, once.  It tasted awful and I babbled for about three hours afterward.  Maybe four.  ETA six hours while dragging a worried party of two that I remember through semi-frozen swamp in the rain and/or snow.  So there's that.

Anyway, alcohol in quantities where it helps you sleep doesn't help and you don't sleep, exactly, so we'll leave that there.

This is what I do:  I go to mercury. 

Not the physical planet which is a physical ball of very hod iron orbiting very near the sun, but the mercury that sort of exists in my head.  Because I have been thinking about the planet recently in regards to the stuff I posted yesterday, and because it's supposed to be a good place to go for inspiration.  I put myself in space and go.  I think of a soft, cool, blue world which is really, really not the mercury of our solar system, but what the hell, and I fly toward it. 
 

It's not that much different than counting sheep, I suppose; what does make it different is that when I go, I put a couple of goals in mind before I set off.

1) I am going to dream when I get there.
2) I am going to be inspired; even if what I dream is not inspiring, my brain will be working while I sleep and the things that are unsettled will settle, and I will pick them up in the morning.

So far, it's been pretty helpful.  It's important to set the goals before you sleep and then ignore them, not think about them, just the cool, blue planet.  You set the course, now fly.  You'll get there.

Y Cant Erik Rite? Part m of n.

Erik cant rite motherfucking pirates becuz there is no foocher in an aventure story wit that much cussin.
Erik cant rite hare water becoz he dont rite YA.
Erik cant rite child in his sword bcuz he doznt no how to rite it rite.

And now bullshit is out of the way.  The only one that has real issues is the last one.  The Child in His Sword pretty much needs a protagonist rebuild, and really, that's not as bad as it sounds. 

I am afraid of committing to any of these stories.  I hadn't realized it, but two years making the great gallumphing, trunk bound mess that was Prominence has me afraid to throwing another 120K after something that never comes together for me.  I'm scared.  I'm shivering with fear.  It's a miracle that I retain bladder control when I open a document. 

I might be afraid of succeeding, too, but I can't fathom why.  Okay, I kind of can, but not so well I can put it into words.

Maybe knowing this will be what I need.

The Grimoire Day 20

I'm not really a follower of astrology, but, one thing I find myself paying attention to, for one reason or another, is what Mercury is doing.  It makes even less sense for me than other times, since, astrologically speaking the two planets closest related to my birth are Venus and the Moon, but it seems like, at some point during every run of shit luck I've had, someone mentions that Mercury is in retrograde, so there you are.

In other news, the wearing purple thing turned out to be highly stressful and stimulated my natural drama queeny-ness to truly distracting levels, but also convinced me that I need to make some CHANGES round here.  So results are mixed. 

Sorry guys, that's all I got for you today.  If this were running, I would tell you I felt heroic just for showing up, but this isn't running, just me with a head full of cotton wool. 

cucumberseed @ 2011-01-08T18:04:00

This is my shitty bright side:  When your enemies bring violence, take comfort in the fact that you are doing right.  Take further comfort in the fact that despite an unprecedented national, multimedia call for violent action that has received almost no censure, only a few are so desperate and deluded as to actually act on it.  Like I said, shitty bright side.

The Grimoire Day 19

I don't want to do this today.  I had something in my head and I was just on the cusp of coming into the light, but then I had to tell the tale of work-related stress and some fool decided to enact one of those second amendment remedies the people who would be our leaders were threatening us with, and that's pretty much fucked it. I have two Clonopin left.  Taking them both, right about now.

Day 19


So here is my problem.  I'm going to try something different and not project so hard that you can use me to show PowerPoint slides and just talk about the problem like it's mine, but I hear tell this is a problem that is shared by every member of the human race with enough liesure time to pursue tasks that are not survival critical.  That is, put briefly and simply, I waste a good portion of my life with no clue what I want, and no notion about how to get it. 

 

This is not an easy skill, and most people are never taught to be clear about what they desire, or to be honest with themselves about it.  We rarely get beyond the 8th grade, standing with our asses to the bleachers looking across at the target of our affection, but daring not to admit our affections, let alone act on them. 

If you've won any lover with boldness, I salute you.  And I hazard that the number of lovers you have won thus are smaller than the number that you just sort of lucked into being with.  I was bold precisely once, by accident, and got two people simultaneously interested in me, and ended up with the one I had not been trying to woo.  It was a mess, I was 17.  I don't think it counts as being bold. 

And think, those are lovers, romantic partners, possibly life partners you were looking to win.  Terrifying, yes.  High stakes, and anyone who has woken up to the wasteland that is the world on the first morning after a heartbreak knows what happens when things go wrong. 

You would think, or maybe I did think, that in cases where the stakes are lower, or feel lower, it should be easier to face my desires, to understand them, and to act on them, but not so much.  I have been wrong about that.  The stakes don't matter so much as desire.  Stakes don't mater near so much as desire.

I have seen that finance book, and I'm sure you have as well Rich Dad Poor Dad; and I haven't read it, so I can't tell you what's inside, but I always figured that if there was any secret imparted by the upper classes to their children that isn't taught to us, it's how to want.  How to desire something for yourself enough that it compells you to do what you need to do in order to achieve it.  This is not a skill I have.  This is a skill that only a few people I know have any facility in, and, now that I think of it, all of them make a hell of a lot more money than I do.

So here is what I want from you on this admittedly very pretty winter day.  I want you to learn to want.  I want you to face your desires and look at them, to number and count them.  Shine them up and hold them to the light.  Some will be worthy and others won't.  Put the unworthy ones back.  I believe you will know which ones are worthy and which ones are not, but we will worry about those later.  In the meantime, look at what you want.  Name it.  Write it down somewhere.  Make some tangible thing that reminds you of what you want, because you are probably not well trained to want, yet.  I sure as fuck am not.

I want you to pick one.  Something that you can do in a month, or a couple of weeks, if a month's work is daunting you, or, shit, if you have to start small, start small, something you want that you could do tomorrow.  Not something you think you should do, not something you want for or because of someone else.  Not something you want because you think you should want it, something you want for yourself because you want it for yourself.  Once you learn to handle your desires, you will be a hundred times better at handling other peoples' desires.

Yeah, I guess I'd better back that one up.  Think about what you do for other people.  Think of how many times it exhausts you, how many times it pushes you back from your wants, how often it makes you resent.  Once you understand what you want, you'll start to figure out how it fits with what the people for whom you do things want.  If you know your desires, you can join them to the needs of others, and use the energy that what you want gives you to give others what they need.  It's a bold claim.  It's a tricky thing.  It takes work, but wanting a thing brings with it the energy to get that thing.

So, do something you want.  First you need to name it, and be specific about it.  It does me no good to say I want to have the first draft of a novel ready by Readercon.  What novel?  Which of the fucking dozen?  I'm not sure.  I want to decide what to write as a long project by the end of this week. 

I want to convert my new desk to a standing desk, whatever that requires, so I can work standing.  I'll be moving to my new desk by the end of January. 

I want to run another 10K by the end of February.

I want to have a playtest group and a game to test the week after next.

All these things are specific.  All these things have time frames.  All these things depend on actions I take.  I can succeed or fail at all or some of them, but I am going to try them all.  And I will tell you how they go.

Maybe I did want to do this part after all.

The Grimoire Day 18

I don't know many people who think they need help being invisible; my culture only continues to exist on our facility for ignorance and forgetting, so I include this for two reasons.  First because being unnoticed is different from being invisbile, and the former is often too easy and rarely useful while the latter can be difficult and also rewarding.  The second reason is that once you control one aspect of your presence, it becomes a lot easier to control the other, and willful visibility is far more dangerous for many obvious reasons.

Before we begin, I do not mean that light shines through your body like you weren't there invisibility.  Like most really dramatic things that magic is supposedly able to do, I have heard some people claim to have been able to do that, but I've never seen it (that, in this case is not as compelling evidence of absence as it usually is, I'll grant).  What I am peddling today is a way to help control who notices and does not notice you.  Human brains have an amazing capacity to forget, and there are times when you want to be forgotten, when you want attention to pass over you.  It will not necessarily prevent someone who is looking specifically for you from finding you, and I cannot guarantee it will protect you from someone who means to do you harm, but it can come in very handy a lot of the time.

1) Decide to be invisible before you feel you need to be invisible.  Invisibility is something you need to plan before you use it, at least until you become very confident in your powers of invisiblity.  If you try to become invisible out of fear, you'll only end up drawing attention to yourself.  So no matter what, let your fear go before you try this, and be ready to confront whoever might confront you, if you need to.  I'm not a fan of the idea that fearing an outcome makes the outcome more likely, but, in the case of self defense, looking like the weak, sick prey critter is just as bad as looking like a cocky tough one.  Worse on average.  And acting out of fear is never a good idea.

2) Ground and let your fears roll off you.  Once you have decided to make youself invisible, quiet down your thoughts as much as you are able.  Think of a song and concentrate on singing it.  Songs can be powerful talismans, and the one above is better for this than some. 

3) You can interweave invisibility into your other protections.  A lot of the urban witches I know go big in for this, just because living in a city can be very exhausting if you are sensitive, and invisibility offers some cover of privacy when you're in the throng.  Also, to minimize the encounters with the more distressing specimens of your fellow man.  N- mentioned visualizing how glycerin is invisible in water and incorporates that into the creation of his protections.  I go in for a smoky sort of mirror effect, which is not nearly so subtle or effective when still, but works really well for movement, and helps me adapt it to visibility when I aim to be seen.

4) You may want to practice a little before you put this into serious use.  I cut my teeth being invisible to mall security (don't ask why), and, as long as you're not trying to use it on the mall security cameras (which work a lot better than human eyes where catching shoplifters are concerned, so don't take this as me advocating such.  I'm pretty sure security has only gotten better since I was one of the bad kids), it's good exercise.  Mall cops are perfect for this, since they are generally looking for people who are misbehaving, they have uniforms that identify them, and you're not misbehaving, right?!  

5) Don't be furtive.  When you move, move.  When you're still be still.  Be like the Unicorn in The Last Unicorn.  Don't frighten yourself.  You're a fish in the river, an breeze of air in the wind, or dust, or a spark flying up and just continuing in the dark after the light has gone out.  

6) Practice makes this work.  Practice, even when you don't need to.

7) If you are confronted by someone you wanted to avoid, use all the stuff I told you about when dealing with invisible critters.  Stand your ground, don't be hostile, but don't let them close, either.  If you were trying to be invisible then you were prepared for this.  If you kept your mind quiet, then you're better able to handle it.  If your opponent isn't, then you have the advantage.  

8) Once you're a little comfortable with this, you might want to start on the more advanced process which is essentially being visible to people you want seeing you and invisble to those you don't.  This takes practice, and it's a sort of practice that's a little tricky to describe, but like being invisible, it's a deceptively simple matter of
a) making your intention clear
b) acting on that intention
c) observing what happens around you and
d) changing your actions to suit what you observe in light of your intentions.  First you kill the grizzly bear...

Finished my Self Assessment

And it sucked.  I made one thing a very large part of my objectives for the year and spun my wheels on it, throwing a lot of good work after bad and keeping myself to myself when things didn't work.  I won't get let go for this, but a raise is totally out of the question. 

Actually, that really sums up 2010 for me.  I put out a lot more effort than ever before, and met with success not commensurate to my efforts.  I didn't finish many things or accomplish very much other than TRYING VERY HARD, which is a sucker's game. 

As such, my new resolution for 2011, the real one: play fewer sucker's games.

Run Blogging

Woo!  Faster than 6!  Speed round was actually kind of successful!  And lots of jumping over snowbanks, still for adventure!  **Witchy Bonus** Being purple is fun!