It's Been A While!

It was about four months ago that I made my last post. I've been so focused on writing that I haven't taken the time to create an update.

What have I been doing? Well, writing-wise, Pivot is continuing along its path to potential professional publication. I don't want to say more, but I have passed several hurdles. There are still a few more, but I'm focusing on knocking them down. One by one. I must say that I have been astounded and overjoyed by how far the book has gone.

I have written a second book NOT in the Pivot-verse. It is in the fantasy genre (dark fantasy, perhaps). I have a good first draft completed, and I have submitted it to the powers that be. The response so far has been great. I will be revising that book in a month or two, after some other items get done first.

I also adopted two new cats! Smaug and Dusty - brothers - became part of the Barlow family in June. They are both gorgeous and so playful, sweet and loving. I am happy they are with me.

In August, I took a trip to Chicago for the first time ever. It was for a friend's wedding (I was a bridesmaid), but I went ahead and spent three days just exploring the city. I did three bike tours with Bobby's Bike Hike - a food tour, a night lights tour, and just a day tour. Great bike tour company. Totally recommend them. All the guides were funny and entertaining. It was great to get out and see all the parts of the city I might have missed otherwise. I also went on an architectural boat tour, and I went to Second City twice to see Soul Brother, Where Art Thou? and Panic on Cloud 9. I can't recommend Second City enough. They are a fantastic group of comedians, and I am so so glad I was able to enjoy their performances. I totally recommend Second City if you ever find yourself in Chicago. Also, after I left - like two days later - they had a fire! They had to shut down Second City and rebuild! Crazy. Glad that everyone was okay and they have everything under control.

Ended up buying a green Savinelli tobacco pipe at the old Chicago tobacco shop: Iwan Ries. They have been in existence since 1857 and are America's oldest tobacco shop. The building itself is amazing and is worthy of a look. I purchased a pipe because I don't own one and, though I don't normally smoke, I do maybe once a year. I asked for "cotton candy" smelling tobacco, which cost about $8. One of the men selling it to me thought I was probably purchasing all of that for a male friend of mine. I guess I don't look the type to sit in an old-timey mafia-like tobacco lounge. But I am. Once a year. ;-)

I also went to a blues club called Kingston Mines. It was great. Had a drink after twenty-one miles of biking that day. It was a nice bit of enjoyment after a long day. Met a couple from Australia there. It was nice talking to them.

The wedding in Chicago was fantastic. It was held at Starved Rock State Park (great name for a park, eh?), and my friend Stephanie was just gorgeous and obviously brimming with happiness and excitement. It was worth the hour and a half drive from the city. Of course, the fact Enterprise let me rent a 370Z didn't hurt, either. First time driving a Z, first time renting a car, so I was nervous at first. But I felt more self-assured when I got on the highway. Btw... Chicago highway speeds are crazy slow. Like 50-55 mph. What is that? Come to Texas. It's all 65-75 around here.

I also went to Austin recently to see Cirque du Soleil's Kooza. Great performance. I really want to see O in Vegas next year. Vegas is where the StokerCon will be held - the World Horror Convention and Stoker Awards split, so they will be held in different locations at different times. I likely won't make it to the WHC next year, but I'm looking forward to a Vegas trip.

What else? I did indoor skydiving at iFly in Austin. Apparently, the military trains there. There were about thirty Army soldiers practicing during the hour before I was supposed to fly. Indoor skydiving was an interesting experience. Definitely an ab workout. Loved the part when the instructor spun me around the cylinder. Such a great time. Definitely felt ALIVE! that day.

I've been trying mindfulness meditation and decided that I enjoy it. I suggest downloading the Calm app and trying it out. I also met up with a meditation group one Wednesday and have been meaning to go back. It was held in a GORGEOUS old home - three stories, with the topmost story being a meditation room. We meditated for an HOUR. Way more than the ten to twenty minutes that I normally do. But by the end of that hour, as I was driving home, I really felt different. Almost like I had just done a session of yoga. More at peace. It is pretty amazing what meditation can do (and believe me, I was the greatest skeptic when I first started).

Right now I'm reading Russell Brand's book Revolution, and in it he talks a lot about the benefits of meditation. In fact, there are a lot of wonderful things he says in that book, and I'll paste some of his quotes at the end of this post.

But, yes, he talks about meditation, and he likes to call it a way to tap into a higher consciousness. I think that's one way of describing it. But I also think there are many others.

I think what it comes down to is (and this is something you learn in psychology and psychoanalytic theory as well) there is a strong difference between thinking and being. I won't get too much into the theory I've read, but basically, we're forced into thinking, away from being, as children. And, ultimately, we sometimes forget how to just be. How to disconnect from all of our emotional connections and logical connections to problems and actions, etc.

But everyone has to disconnect somehow, someway. Some people do it through exercise. (Read Eminem's article on exercise as therapy here: http://www.people.com/article/eminem-... ) Some people have to do it through drinking or drugs. Some people disconnect via smoking. And then there are some who do it through meditation and yoga.

You have to disconnect somehow. HAVE TO. (Because there will always be outside pressures that take you out of yourself, out of a state of flow, of being). And once you realize this disconnect is required for being a healthy individual (that you're not a hamster in a wheel 24/7), then you just need to find the tools to help you disconnect. Yoga and meditation are probably the healthiest. Smoking and drugs, though they achieve the same thing, are far less healthy.

Other types of disconnection are setting aside "me" time - time to do whatever one wants with no judgment. There are no requirements or judgment in "me" time.

What this disconnection does is try to help you simply BE in the moment (movement FROM thinking TO being). What does that mean? Well... imagine going hiking, and while you're on this trail, imagine there is something else you HAVE to do. HAVE to. And this thing that you have to do you can't achieve while hiking. It requires you to go home and use the computer. Oh, and this thing you need to achieve will take hours. You're going to feel anxiety - because you're so far away, and you can't get it done because you're hiking. So, suddenly, you despise the hike. Now, with your mind, erase the assignment. Make the time when you are hiking "me" time, where there are no requirements or judgments. Poof! Anxiety gone. And that's the basic idea. Meditation, yoga, exercise, drugs, alcohol, television, they're all used to help you not know about the "assignment" or "task" while hiking - of forgetting tasks that are impossible to do while you are elsewhere in life. Instead, the question is simply "What's next?" That's all that has to be answered.

This post turned into a discussion of meditation. Oh well. The above is pretty much a good summary of everything that has been going on for the past five months.

Anyways, I leave you with several Russell Brand quotes:


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"The unrelenting bombardment of consumer imagery, the intoxicating message that you are not good enough. You are too fat, spotty and wan. You are not as fit as David Beckham or Beyoncé, escape your life into this PlayStation, mask the stench of your failure with this fragrance, run from your debts in these gleaming new shoes. Don’t be you. Don’t be you. If it had occurred to me, and if I’d had the guts, I’d’ve reduced that treacherous temple to shards. I’d’ve torched that shrine and scarred the sky with a smog like the fugue like they’d glued to my mind."

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“We are living in a zoo, or more accurately a farm, our collective consciousness, our individual consciousness, has been hijacked by a power structure that needs us to remain atomized and disconnected. We want union, we want connection, we need it the way we need other forms of nutrition, and denied it we delve into the lower impulses for sanctuary.

We have been segregated and severed, from each other and even from ourselves. We have been told that freedom is the ability to pursue our petty, trivial desires when true freedom is freedom from these petty, trivial desires.”

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"If you can’t escape the system, you’ve got to escape from yourself. If you’re looking for God, for salvation, for a connection, for sanctuary from the cuckoo self incubating in you, and there’s no map, no guide, no story, no folk memory of how to get there, sooner or later you’ll pick up a bottle, a pipe, or a brick."

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"The reason I became a drug addict was because it was too painful not to. What’s more, I had no means to describe the pain and no way to access any kind of solution. In the absence of any alternative, self-medication was a smart thing to do. Even now, eleven years clean, I still feel the feeling that led me to drink and take drugs, but now I have access to an alternative way to change my feelings. The techniques are simple but not easy. I believe that by sharing these methods we can overcome together, not only addiction to substances but our addiction to a way of life that has been intoxicating us all."

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"Who are you really? Are you your name? The place you are from? The negative feelings you had as a child? The anxieties you have about your future? No, these are all conceptual. In this moment now, your name is not real, your relationships are irrelevant, and, most important, your thoughts - all your thoughts - are secondary. In my mind, even as I type and adhere to the metaphorical codes of language, there is another awareness. A distinct awareness. An awareness beyond, behind, and around those incessant thoughts. Whilst some other inaccessible aspect of my being keeps my heart pumping, produces digestive enzymes, makes the muscles in my fingers spasm according to the precise qwerty ballet, there is awareness. This awareness is often neglected in favor of fear and regret or projected need."

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[On how the thin tightrope was created between the twin towers for someone to walk across] "What they did was attach a thin piece of very light fishing thread to an arrow, then they shot the arrow between the two buildings. The thin thread was attached, and then wires, strings, ropes, and cables of gradually increasing thickness were pulled across. It is with increments of this nature that mantra meditation induces a different state of consciousness."

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"I'm not a total idiot: If taking drugs worked, I'd still be doing it; if promiscuous sex was continually fulfilling, I'd've carried on; if fame and money were the answer, I'd hurl this laptop out of the window and get on with making movies. They don't work, in spite of what I was told, and there's a reason for that, as we'll discover."

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"But who are you, stripped of those things that tell you who you are? Your job, your car, your husband, your kids, your favorite TV show, that pasta dish you do that's just so mmm? All these things that will one day go with death if not before. With death if not before.

Good to find out who you are with nothing, because nothing is really what we have."

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"On the short walk to the front past the others, either bowing or kneeling or whirling or howling, I feel glad that my life is this way; so full of jarring experience. Sometimes you feel that life is full and beautiful, all these worlds, all these people, all these experiences, all this wonder.

You never know when you will encounter magic. Some solitary moment in a park can suddenly burst open with a spray of preschool children in high-vis vests, hand in hand; maybe the teacher will ask you for directions, and the children will look at you, curious and open, and you’ll see that they are perfect. In the half-morning half-gray glint, the cobwebs on bushes are gleaming with such radiant insistence, you can feel the playful unknown beckoning. Behind impassive stares in booths, behind the indifferent gum chew, behind the car horns, there is connection."