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Hello, general public. This is a public freewrite. I could have a private freewrite in my journal but then I couldn't have anybody chip in and cheer me on or point out my logical fallacies or otherwise be my therapist. Sorry, no, wait, I can't legally expect that of you. But my therapist was sick and cancelled this week and I wanted to talk to her about my What Next issues lately. Like, I got that nice planner for Christmas and I put a lot of schedules and to-do lists in it and such, but I got to the point in the to-do lists that I can't figure out what to put on the NEXT to-do list, and even then I don't know what order to put them in, and even then I'll probably find out that the real reason I can't decide what to do is because my number one priority is something I just have no motivation to do and that's freezing me up on all the rest as well. How to ADHD just put out a new video on the Motivation Bridge that I just watched while eating lunch. What timing! I must incorporate a sense of urgency, novelty, or interest into whatever, I suppose. EXCEPT I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT WHATEVER IS.
On my list I have projects-- things that get done once and have a beginning and end basically-- and chores-- things that need to be done regularly. I know "chores" has a bad connotation but I'm not necessarily thinking of it in a bad way-- in this case, the chore with the biggest sense of urgency attached to it is writing my weekly GeekMom article. The projects on the list either have no sense of urgency whatsoever or require the kids to be home which they aren't yet (and those don't have a screaming sense of urgency either). The other chores? Nothing to worry about until the "make supper" one. Which will probably also be impossible to decide on when it comes around, but I've chosen not to think about it yet because it's too far away. Anyway, so I feel like the thing I "SHOULD!" be doing right now is an article but I have NO IDEA WHAT TO WRITE ABOUT. I mentioned this in our Slack channel and after a few suggestions were made, I realized my brain is basically just yelling "NO." at every tiny embryo of an idea, so it might go even deeper than simply having no idea.
Hence, me deciding to publicly freewrite. If I just basically allow whatever IS in my head to come out, maybe some tiny idea-embryos will sneak out and turn into idea-fetuses before I can stop them. Is this language in poor taste on Roe vs. Wade Day. I DON'T KNOW, BRAIN, SHUT UP, YOU'RE BEING JUDGMENTAL AGAIN.
So, here's what's up with me lately, in backwards chronological order:
I may not be writing an article, but I HAVE gotten writing done. There's this Loudermilk fic I've been working on since...September?... but I've managed to fill in all the large gaps in the story and there's just a couple small gaps wherein-I-even-know-basically-what-has-to-happen-I-just-have-to-write-it. And it's now to the point where I'm going to call it a complete draft. But I've been working on it SO LONG that I basically need to see it fresh. I compiled it from Scrivener into Word and honestly, just the change in format makes it easier. I actually plan to print it to do edits, but I want to put SOMETHING into those aforementioned Small Gaps first. But when I got to this point today, my brain was like, "uh, go do other things for awhile, you're just staring at screen and not even thinking." Which is when I went off and tried to figure out what else I have to do. By the way, it turns out this fic is 22 pages long in Word. Dang.
Kids and I are reading The Lost Girl by Anne Ursu. It struck me as a step more poetic/artsy/award-worthy than the books we usually read. I'm kind of scared of the ending as the narrator keeps alluding darkly to it. Before this I read them Ghosts I Have Been and I still find myself lost in Blossom-y daydreams again. Gosh I love her so much.
Anyway, last night was MOCK CALDECOTT FAMILY NIGHT at the library which I say is my favorite program of the year, but it wasn't so much last night because I had a really hard time getting people to participate, and passions were evenly spread between so many books that it didn't feel like we had one true winner. The good news is that *I* don't have one clear favorite, either, so I probably will not be disappointed by the real winners this year, as opposed to last year when I DID have a clear favorite that didn't even Honor. Anyway, our winner last night, determined mostly by the votes of me and my coworker who happens to run Spanish Storytime, was Vamos! Let's Go to the Market! since after I read it in my pre-reading I ran out to said coworker and said "Check out this cool book, it's bilingual, you can use it for your program, but it's just fun to look at too!" I mean, some kids voted for it, too, but it only WON because WE also voted for it. So I'm rooting for it, A Stone Sat Still, Saturday, You Are Here: an Ode to the National Parks, and My Heart I think. And I adored The Important Thing About Margaret Wise Brown, but less for the illustrations as much as the words. Other books that the kids who were at the library really liked were Sea Bear, Spencer's New Pet, The Undefeated, Home In the Woods, and The Donkey Egg. Also Field Trip to the Moon, which you might remember was my favorite new picture book of last year, see last entry. I'm excited for the real awards. I think I've stocked the library appropriately this year. But then, I always think that.
In other library news, we had a funding problem recently that may have added to my general sense of anchorlessness. The township money that has been funding my outreach storytimes was cut, and suddenly I didn't have them. The director was going to fight the decision, though, and today she called to say they'd reached a tentative agreement and I could contact the place I would have been going this Friday and let them know I'll be there. Hooray! The teacher said the kids have missed me. But anyway, support your public libraries, again. And also, maybe don't earmark funds for specific things we might not need the funds for when other things could really use the funds. For example, we have all this money for Summer Reading Programming that we don't really need for THAT, and we were discussing things to do with it at our last meeting, like buy T-Shirts, and I'm like well DANG how about put it into Outreach storytimes, or the children's book budget? (The Junior Library Guild subscription went up this year, but the overall children's book budget did not, so my monthly budget is now $50 less). But it don't WORK that way. And we have SO many freaking Outreach Launchpads, and they're only used by one of the places that still hasn't been negotiated back into the schedule.
Jason and I had a lunch date yesterday, because my appointment had been cancelled and I'd been planning to go to the grocery store after my appointment so now I had, YOU GUESSED IT, motivation trouble to get myself out the door, so he said Come and we'll go out for lunch, so we had tasty Chinese I haven't had in awhile. And Saturday we had date night, too. We went to this place at the mall we used to go to all the time when we were dating and it was nostalgic, and we finally saw Rise of Skywalker. It wasn't an objectively great movie, but I enjoyed it, and I'm honestly not sure why some people seemed so disappointed in it.
Where am I in my review of life. It's Girl Scout Cookie season. You can actually order from Maddie online right here. I am not quite as excited as I used to be ever since discovering that Aldi's sells a variation of Tagalongs that actually taste BETTER than the Girl Scout ones for 1/5 the cost, BUUUUUUTTTTTT there are still Trefoils and stuff and they still have the best Thin Mints.
Did you know Book Riot has a Google Spreadsheet template you can use to keep track of your reading for the year and also keep lots of stats on it? Click on that then save a copy. There's a video that shows you how to customize it but I don't have that link anymore. I obviously customized mine to handle the many books I read for work, which means I did have to add a picture book category, and that is definitely the category I have read the most of. It's fun. It comes with a reading challenge that I can't even imagine trying to complete-- I don't see myself picking up any plays, and I outright AVOID doorstoppers. Except I DO plan on tackling Lord of the Rings with my Samwise and his sister this year, but the doorstopper in the book challenge is supposed to be published after 1950 by a woman, so? But I even have two adult books on my list already, if you can believe it. Nonfiction, of course, but still. I'm only a couple chapters in to the one, but I sped through the other because it was short and I felt I might need to learn something from it, particularly as I was writing Loudermilk fanfic and it was making me nervous that the Loudermilks are Native American and I am very much not and I'm like, why'd the heck I have to pick characters to dive into the backstory of that have issues in their backstory I have absolutely no experience with? Not that I have experience with sharing a body with my absolutely-not-identical twin, either, but that's kind of the point of the book I read, it's called—the book I mean— Writing the Other. And it's really interesting, but I found I didn't really learn anything from it, which makes me paranoid that I'm wrong and I just think I understand already but I don't actually know anything, because people are always making mistakes writing cross-culturally so how can I claim to know something so many other people don't? But maybe they know, too. Mistakes still happen even when you might "know" theoretically how not to make them. Actually the authors say you WILL make mistakes but that's no reason not to try. Which is my problem, because I'm just terrified of mistake making which is why I never get anything done. That, and, you know, other large gaps in Motivation Bridge.
I don't need to tell you that the Senate is being scary right now, as well as most of the rest of the world. That's always, well, there. But life goes on. In this house last week all the girls had migraines, the older male had a pulled neck muscle and the younger one had a cold (and he never gets sick). So we were all kind of blah there. I got all the Christmas stuff packed up now. It's still not in the attic on account of the pulled neck muscle, but the house has moved on into the next stage of the year. It's still dark out, though. Christmas should go on until March. My foot has fallen asleep as I sit here.
My son has just reminded me that it is NOW time for that "make supper" chore to suddenly jump to the top of the priorities list, so I must now devote my indecisive mental energy to THAT question. I think something with potatoes, just because potatoes are soft and warm. I don't know what else to make besides potatoes, though. I would ask, but by the time you would be able to answer me, it will be too late. Okay, for tonight's dinner. Tell me what to make for tomorrow night's dinner. And before you get too self-confident about your answer let me remind you that I have three different picky eaters and they are all picky in different ways. Yay. So anyway.
On my list I have projects-- things that get done once and have a beginning and end basically-- and chores-- things that need to be done regularly. I know "chores" has a bad connotation but I'm not necessarily thinking of it in a bad way-- in this case, the chore with the biggest sense of urgency attached to it is writing my weekly GeekMom article. The projects on the list either have no sense of urgency whatsoever or require the kids to be home which they aren't yet (and those don't have a screaming sense of urgency either). The other chores? Nothing to worry about until the "make supper" one. Which will probably also be impossible to decide on when it comes around, but I've chosen not to think about it yet because it's too far away. Anyway, so I feel like the thing I "SHOULD!" be doing right now is an article but I have NO IDEA WHAT TO WRITE ABOUT. I mentioned this in our Slack channel and after a few suggestions were made, I realized my brain is basically just yelling "NO." at every tiny embryo of an idea, so it might go even deeper than simply having no idea.
Hence, me deciding to publicly freewrite. If I just basically allow whatever IS in my head to come out, maybe some tiny idea-embryos will sneak out and turn into idea-fetuses before I can stop them. Is this language in poor taste on Roe vs. Wade Day. I DON'T KNOW, BRAIN, SHUT UP, YOU'RE BEING JUDGMENTAL AGAIN.
So, here's what's up with me lately, in backwards chronological order:
I may not be writing an article, but I HAVE gotten writing done. There's this Loudermilk fic I've been working on since...September?... but I've managed to fill in all the large gaps in the story and there's just a couple small gaps wherein-I-even-know-basically-what-has-to-happen-I-just-have-to-write-it. And it's now to the point where I'm going to call it a complete draft. But I've been working on it SO LONG that I basically need to see it fresh. I compiled it from Scrivener into Word and honestly, just the change in format makes it easier. I actually plan to print it to do edits, but I want to put SOMETHING into those aforementioned Small Gaps first. But when I got to this point today, my brain was like, "uh, go do other things for awhile, you're just staring at screen and not even thinking." Which is when I went off and tried to figure out what else I have to do. By the way, it turns out this fic is 22 pages long in Word. Dang.
Kids and I are reading The Lost Girl by Anne Ursu. It struck me as a step more poetic/artsy/award-worthy than the books we usually read. I'm kind of scared of the ending as the narrator keeps alluding darkly to it. Before this I read them Ghosts I Have Been and I still find myself lost in Blossom-y daydreams again. Gosh I love her so much.
Anyway, last night was MOCK CALDECOTT FAMILY NIGHT at the library which I say is my favorite program of the year, but it wasn't so much last night because I had a really hard time getting people to participate, and passions were evenly spread between so many books that it didn't feel like we had one true winner. The good news is that *I* don't have one clear favorite, either, so I probably will not be disappointed by the real winners this year, as opposed to last year when I DID have a clear favorite that didn't even Honor. Anyway, our winner last night, determined mostly by the votes of me and my coworker who happens to run Spanish Storytime, was Vamos! Let's Go to the Market! since after I read it in my pre-reading I ran out to said coworker and said "Check out this cool book, it's bilingual, you can use it for your program, but it's just fun to look at too!" I mean, some kids voted for it, too, but it only WON because WE also voted for it. So I'm rooting for it, A Stone Sat Still, Saturday, You Are Here: an Ode to the National Parks, and My Heart I think. And I adored The Important Thing About Margaret Wise Brown, but less for the illustrations as much as the words. Other books that the kids who were at the library really liked were Sea Bear, Spencer's New Pet, The Undefeated, Home In the Woods, and The Donkey Egg. Also Field Trip to the Moon, which you might remember was my favorite new picture book of last year, see last entry. I'm excited for the real awards. I think I've stocked the library appropriately this year. But then, I always think that.
In other library news, we had a funding problem recently that may have added to my general sense of anchorlessness. The township money that has been funding my outreach storytimes was cut, and suddenly I didn't have them. The director was going to fight the decision, though, and today she called to say they'd reached a tentative agreement and I could contact the place I would have been going this Friday and let them know I'll be there. Hooray! The teacher said the kids have missed me. But anyway, support your public libraries, again. And also, maybe don't earmark funds for specific things we might not need the funds for when other things could really use the funds. For example, we have all this money for Summer Reading Programming that we don't really need for THAT, and we were discussing things to do with it at our last meeting, like buy T-Shirts, and I'm like well DANG how about put it into Outreach storytimes, or the children's book budget? (The Junior Library Guild subscription went up this year, but the overall children's book budget did not, so my monthly budget is now $50 less). But it don't WORK that way. And we have SO many freaking Outreach Launchpads, and they're only used by one of the places that still hasn't been negotiated back into the schedule.
Jason and I had a lunch date yesterday, because my appointment had been cancelled and I'd been planning to go to the grocery store after my appointment so now I had, YOU GUESSED IT, motivation trouble to get myself out the door, so he said Come and we'll go out for lunch, so we had tasty Chinese I haven't had in awhile. And Saturday we had date night, too. We went to this place at the mall we used to go to all the time when we were dating and it was nostalgic, and we finally saw Rise of Skywalker. It wasn't an objectively great movie, but I enjoyed it, and I'm honestly not sure why some people seemed so disappointed in it.
Where am I in my review of life. It's Girl Scout Cookie season. You can actually order from Maddie online right here. I am not quite as excited as I used to be ever since discovering that Aldi's sells a variation of Tagalongs that actually taste BETTER than the Girl Scout ones for 1/5 the cost, BUUUUUUTTTTTT there are still Trefoils and stuff and they still have the best Thin Mints.
Did you know Book Riot has a Google Spreadsheet template you can use to keep track of your reading for the year and also keep lots of stats on it? Click on that then save a copy. There's a video that shows you how to customize it but I don't have that link anymore. I obviously customized mine to handle the many books I read for work, which means I did have to add a picture book category, and that is definitely the category I have read the most of. It's fun. It comes with a reading challenge that I can't even imagine trying to complete-- I don't see myself picking up any plays, and I outright AVOID doorstoppers. Except I DO plan on tackling Lord of the Rings with my Samwise and his sister this year, but the doorstopper in the book challenge is supposed to be published after 1950 by a woman, so? But I even have two adult books on my list already, if you can believe it. Nonfiction, of course, but still. I'm only a couple chapters in to the one, but I sped through the other because it was short and I felt I might need to learn something from it, particularly as I was writing Loudermilk fanfic and it was making me nervous that the Loudermilks are Native American and I am very much not and I'm like, why'd the heck I have to pick characters to dive into the backstory of that have issues in their backstory I have absolutely no experience with? Not that I have experience with sharing a body with my absolutely-not-identical twin, either, but that's kind of the point of the book I read, it's called—the book I mean— Writing the Other. And it's really interesting, but I found I didn't really learn anything from it, which makes me paranoid that I'm wrong and I just think I understand already but I don't actually know anything, because people are always making mistakes writing cross-culturally so how can I claim to know something so many other people don't? But maybe they know, too. Mistakes still happen even when you might "know" theoretically how not to make them. Actually the authors say you WILL make mistakes but that's no reason not to try. Which is my problem, because I'm just terrified of mistake making which is why I never get anything done. That, and, you know, other large gaps in Motivation Bridge.
I don't need to tell you that the Senate is being scary right now, as well as most of the rest of the world. That's always, well, there. But life goes on. In this house last week all the girls had migraines, the older male had a pulled neck muscle and the younger one had a cold (and he never gets sick). So we were all kind of blah there. I got all the Christmas stuff packed up now. It's still not in the attic on account of the pulled neck muscle, but the house has moved on into the next stage of the year. It's still dark out, though. Christmas should go on until March. My foot has fallen asleep as I sit here.
My son has just reminded me that it is NOW time for that "make supper" chore to suddenly jump to the top of the priorities list, so I must now devote my indecisive mental energy to THAT question. I think something with potatoes, just because potatoes are soft and warm. I don't know what else to make besides potatoes, though. I would ask, but by the time you would be able to answer me, it will be too late. Okay, for tonight's dinner. Tell me what to make for tomorrow night's dinner. And before you get too self-confident about your answer let me remind you that I have three different picky eaters and they are all picky in different ways. Yay. So anyway.
