A Restart But Not a Hard Boot.

I am never going to post on this blog again if I don't re-establish some parameters. I can't even blog about why I'm not blogging, it seems.

So first things first, an update schedule, and a fitting punishment. I am going to tentatively claim that Monday will be blog day, starting next week. If I don't post on Monday I must share a video of myself apologizing in iambic pentameter by the end of the week. A heroic couplet. If I don't post it the line requirement doubles. And so on.

Now that that's out of the way, I can ramble a bit and you can ignore me or hang on my every word or somewhere along that continuum while I do so.

I have entered a funk, which happens to me a lot. I moved in the middle of spring and I haven't been in any positive sort of groove ever since.

This is because I feel like I need to be home to be comfortable. In typical male fashion, I think this entails essentially space over which I have dominion. Maybe it's not so oppressive as that, but I certainly don't feel like I am in an environment where I can expect any level of control over my sensory input. Wearing headphones to block out tv noise is not, in my estimation, a legitimate form of control.

Part of it also includes responsibility. If a space is "mine," then I feel it is my responsibility to care for it. And I don't feel that where I am. Thus I cannot get comfortable and my focus levels are at an all time low.

Couple this with drastically different waking hours than I am accustomed to and you have a formula for anti-productivity.

Even that attempt at personal analysis feels like an excuse. Everything feels like an excuse.

I am also frustrated by the circumstances keeping me in this position. Originally Rachael and I were going to find a place to live within the first month or so of living in Ann Arbor, but we discovered that we wouldn't get the hours we had been before moving and so the funds weren't there. It doesn't help that Ann Arbor is a pretty expensive region to live in. We keep waiting for a change, keep poking at possibilities, but nothing seems to be panning out and it's taking its toll on both of us.

Part of the reason we're locked into this region is because I want to go to school here and it doesn't make sense to sign a lease somewhere else only to get in. So bottom line is we're in A2 until March at the earliest when I find out the results of my second round of applications.

I have to learn to overcome my discontent or nothing is going to change. Thus this blog post. Because just ramming my will against my emotions because I think it'll be good for me will be nowhere near as effective as setting some concrete goals. Like updating my blog consistently again. And putting real effort into my writing. All while keeping up with my poetry and short story assignments which have the perk of colleagues to whom I am beholden.

Obviously this a step, but as humans we tend to break everything down into processes to understand them. The next step is setting aside a solid time and place for my work.

And prayer. God knows I need to be doing far more of that than I am.

I can think of a dozen different segues into other posts I have thought about making but for now I am going to end this here. It's good to be back, such as this is. If you read this all the way through, I want you to bug me about this. Hold me to my schedule. To my iambic sorries. And pray for me.

I'm not sick. I am not in trouble. But I need to be better than I am, because right now I'm not what I could be. And I want to live up to my potential.

Not just for me. For you. For God. For everything.

Thoughts scattered in time

I guess one of the troubles I have with receiving critiques of my own writing is that it has a tendency to dash my hopes. Oftentimes I am trying to elicit a certain emotional response from the reader, but some other details get in the way or the reader first feel invested enough yet.

If I were to try and diagnose the underlying weakness in my writing behind such difficulties, I would point to my high degree of introversion, though the manifestations of it in my writing may be manifold. For instance the surface explanation may be that I simply don't have the same emotional makeup as many if my potential readers and so what causes emotional distress in me is not what arouses the same in them. Crowds of people as small as a score can make me fairy uncomfortable, but some people thrive in such numbers.

It goes deeper than that, though. Certain situations can render me almost paralyzed with something between fear and anger, and I have rarely if ever handled these times in my life with grace. I have several friends who have expressed confusion (if only with their faces) over my paralysis in these situations. Perhaps it's only my perception but I feel I come across as something more animal than human in those moments.

The time between the above and this paragraph is the space of a few days, and considering I have seven minutes of my break left it's possible there will be another gap before this post is made.

In some of my free time I have been re-envisioning the work of my youth. Most of my free time is sent watching Sword Art Online, playing Guild Wars 2 and Facebook games, or reading Homestuck and theories thereof. There's food consumption in there somewhere but that's more of a part-time job than a way to spend my free time.

And as predicted it has been another few days. Honestly I should just post this before the year ends and this becomes even more of an incoherent mess. So here you go, a post in which I ramble.