A Dream Deferred

I still remember in first grade, that time of the year when we were asked to pick a famous figure to do a report on. This wasn't for Black History Month; just a regular requirement. There was the usual list of names to choose from, but this time, I saw a name on the list I'd never seen before and it was a name that called to me: Langston Hughes.

I'd never heard of the poet before, but at the age of seven, education was still focused just on learning how words were sounded out, not on the merits of literary greats. I wasn't even that concerned by the fact that no women made the list. Back then, there was no internet, and books were still lacking that were available to shine some light, more than a flimsy paragraph or two, on them.

It wasn't even a surprise that Langston Hughes was a black man. This soft-spoken boy raised by his grandmother was a great lover of escaping into books, a sentiment that married me to the project, if not the man, more. I didn't just look for the biography, I followed the work-- the famous, the obscure.

While it was clear that his life, the circumstances of birth, were an obstacle somehow, I saw a man that never minded them. Or rather, if he did, his circumstances didn't dull his desire to speak through thoughtfully chosen words. I've seen it in many people since-- Judge Judy Scheinlin, for one. When people speak about them in terms of their gender or race, they are quick to shut it down, to remind people even that it was a selfish desire to nurture their talent, that how they succeeded and consequently became role models was out of their hands.

Without knowing that Langston Hughes was a name engraved in my inspirational log, my nephew Marcus chose him for his own Black History Month project in first grade. I felt the welling of tears, the warm spread of a nostalgic grin, and the eagerness to revive anew what I'd learned and share it with my nephew.

History, literature, art-- it belongs to all of us. In the back of my mind, I wonder if my name will sneak in there. Yet, under it all, is just the spark of a little girl who wouldn't dare to give up a dream because anyone else believed the shoes were too big to fill.

I have big feet and bigger dreams and I intend to leave a few footprints behind.

Assault of the Dreams!

"Never say never..."

Someone said that to my sister once at a psychic fair. We were looking at jewelry and some woman thought it was quirky to dreamily say she wish she had more fingers. I didn't really overhear what happened, but apparently the conversation evolved into someone else saying the above quote with even more unnecessary solemnity before my sister challenged it with a forcefully whispered 'never...'.

Recently, someone had the boner-bright idea to humble-brag in a writing group about their lucid dreams and how all of their ideas came from this 'unique' ability to dream up their ideas. Ironically, it's a snore-fest full of people chiming in to either say 'me too!' or scoffing in refute. I took the bait with my never-say-never jinx that I haven't dreamt much at all over the years but I have daydreams so I'm blessed that my brain shuts the fuck up at all. I just never dream that much anymore so that can't be a driving force for me.

I've had lucid dreams, wet dreams, actual orgasmic dreams, night terrors, etc. I, however, assumed that everybody experienced all of these things at some point in their lives so I never quite get how many people seem to humble-brag about it as if most of us miserable people are consigned to the boring dream world of dogs. (Apparently they dream in black and white and mostly about mailmen and cats. The first, I have no clue how they arrived at; the second is my guess since I can't imagine anything would make a dog run and bark in their sleep, short of mailmen and cats.)

However, for whatever reason, I truly haven't done much dreaming at all over the years. Maybe it's because I'm an idea-wagon when I'm awake. Maybe it's down to triggered traumas (deaths of loved ones, old poorly-buried garbage). Either way, I've never really found myself to be particularly more productive or insightful or better at what I do because of dreaming at night.

There's that 'never' again...

Quoth the Raven 'never more'. This is not the GIF I was looking for, but it's the one that Gotham needs...

Because I'm dreaming a lot since I said that. A lot a lot. I mostly keep telling my designated Joe about them since I'm hoarding them. This most recent one would make for a good dystopian fiction, a novel that will NOT turn into a series, for once. I've said that before, but this one actually had a definitive beginning, middle and end.

And yeah, I'm going to be like those bitches on FaceBook that say shit like 'you know who you are and what you did, but I'm not going to say it so anyone else knows what the fuck I'm talking about.'

Could be allergies. I've been taking a Benadryl each night to sleep. Could be that. Could be because that stupid comment actually kind of made my brain feel threatened and challenged and eager to prove this anonymous rando on the internet it was better. Could also be because I said 'never'.

Either way, whatever dreams I did have were not AT ALL usable for my work. It wouldn't be wrong to even say they were lame and not really worthy of writing down, a mishmash of uninteresting garbage that my brain just discarded to my consciousness in an act of rebellion to hide what was really going on in there.

Now I know. Oh, I know, thank you very much, exactly what my brain had been hoarding in dreams.

Really, it kind of pisses me off even. My least favorite thing to do is wake from a huge dream I've remembered with the need to write it down before it fades. My ideal morning is waking up from a peaceful nothingness (a type of sleep I call 'practicing for death') and lingering for a while, staring at my ceiling or the screensaver of falling sakura blooms on my TV, stretching each muscle in a state of meditation, the first thought being whether I should make coffee or not.

But no. The brilliant landscape of dreams Godzillas all up in my preferred morning ritual by making me half-fall, half-tumble out of bed to scramble for a pen and notebook to scribble down whatever dream will fade if I wait even a half hour to do it.

"I'll be your dream, I'll be your wish, I'll be your fantasy..." Again, with the GIFs missing the mark. Can a girl just get a NORMAL Godzilla GIF already?

It's an abomination, let me tell you! Not only is my love of handwriting completely aborted in this scribbled mess, but I tend to grab one of the many booby-trapped busted pens (that I'll probably grumble about throwing away 50 times before I do). You know what that means-- smearing that shit all up the side of my hand when I'm in a frenzy to write it down.

Can it, floppy orange shirt guy. Let me complain about all the disadvantages of my advantageous dreams in peace!

Okay, yeah-- so it's actually not terrible. Except for the whole Murphy's Law sort of fact that I'm almost certain to need a notebook and a pen every time I put them away in some smug need to be more organized. I should know by now that that's my brain's cue to call up their imaginary friend Murphy to write a new amendment. I'm not REALLY complaining about anything more than mornings that aren't ideal due to my luxury of being scatter-brained. My ancestors would have been eaten by sabre-toothed tigers and shat out into tar pits.

If I can assume my ancestors were actually humans. Aliens, some missing link of dinosaurs, animorphic dragonkin-- I'm not ruling out those possibilities. I can't imagine their mornings are as anti-climactic yet dressed up with flashy words to make it seem more interesting...

In all actuality, I feel ridiculously blessed. Ideas are not something I struggle for. Sure, I wish I could channel them more effectively to complete things without distraction, but better a batshit crazy muse than none at all. Even if they are kind of the devil on my shoulder.

He's got a lot of room to walk. I have very broad shoulders. #humblebrag

Really, I'd love to sleep more. With the dreams tend to come a sort of exhaustion in my waking hours. I've heard it said that we only remember the dreams that we wake from. It's possible that our brains even intend to finish them but we spoil it by waking up. 

I'm sure you've done this too, all you extraordinary people who dream, but sometimes you wake from a good one and go ahead and try to finish it. Sometimes this ends well, other times... well, don't know about you, but on occasion, once I wake, I realize this dream I want to finish is... completely stupid and that overwhelming desire to finish it almost becomes a weird kind of embarrassment. It's even a guilty pleasure kind of thing where you get caught not just watching a stupid movie, but enjoying it. In this case, thankfully, no one is actually seeing what stupid nonsense you were initially excited about, but what your unconscious brain told you was the shiiiit, your conscious brain starts to make fun of you for. No. No, you don't want to 'finish' this unless by 'finish' you mean...

And we're done here.

Maybe I can at least say what is making these dreams the 'not-stupid' kind. Well, mostly 'not-stupid'. There's usually a fact or two that I will purposely leave out when I'm remembering it. It'll be something dumb, like who my significant other is in the dream (sometimes an old co-worker, yikes) or my best friend and I stealing markers from a daycare center. Something tells me this isn't the first time I've brought that up...

They're not stupid because that feeling resembling embarrassment doesn't come up within the first five minutes of being awake. (Seriously, I don't think there's a real word for that feeling-- it's not embarrassment, but the physical response is similar-- tense, naked, awkward, vulnerable. This is close enough.)

Bad example! BAD EXAMPLE! Dream-embarrassment shouldn't be a GIF search for embarrassment conjuring up my first example of a cartoon crush wet-dream! ARGH! In fact, I know his voice actor was Scott Weinger and his singing voice is done by Brad Kane. Yeah, bitches; I know my Aladdin trivia. *Longest caption ever.

So I can tell you what these dreams aren't that makes them qualify, but what ARE they? The easiest way I can answer that is to say that they are complete in some way. Some tidbit of residual interest. Even incomplete, there is some feeling of genre, of a beginning and a middle, or a middle and an end. I say this because beginnings and endings are the difficult part so a dream solidifying those is already passing inspection. Beefy middle meat is always a bonus.

(Room for my perverted friends to heh-heh on that one...)

What I consider successful for an idea is one where I'm all 'hell yeah, that should be a book/movie/comic book/bubble-gum-wrapper.' It seems all of my dreams have this quality these days. I want to complain because none of them have anything I can put towards my actual book. However, what inspires my actual book has to come just as organically, so it can become a lesson in patience. 

Awww, look at me, all unprofessional without my fancy deadlines and prolific discipline. Look, I still get my words up, so twist it all you want. Again, I give all ideas room so that there's no such thing as lulls in my production. Don't harsh my buzz.

I should probably work on my story now though... Blogging always gets me going on what I know I should be doing.

Hey, how about I leave you with an embarrassing bad dream? I once had a ridiculously failed sex dream. Because it was probably supposed to be one, but did. Not. Go there... This one stars me and... Chris D'Elia making out in my sister's childhood-bedroom closet. For some reason, neither of us can figure out how to undress each other and we stop in frustration and end up falling asleep angry on my waterbed.

I know-- embarrassing, right? I don't even have a waterbed.

At least you understand why I say many of my dreams are completely unusable. Great for self-deprecating blog entries though.

Spinning Wheels

I started playing Dragon Age Inquisition again. It's not a perfect game but it's one of those games that I can really talk story with another fan and no two people have the same focus or interpretation. Because I'd been several books deep into a series with obvious and vague parallels, I felt a sort of connection to this game (as well as the resolution to make it wholly different despite that).

Which means I'm not writing much, but that's okay. I had some issues with sitting up, fighting odd waves of vertigo, so I took it as a sign to pay attention to my health. I switched to housework and long walks to stay mobile but opted for video games so I could sprawl out on my memory foam mattress posture-free. My muscles feel energized, just needing to get the digestive system and head back in line.

In fact, I try not to think about my work at all. Why? Because different ghosts have been visiting me. I've been having strange dreams, sometimes lucid. They're crap as far as stories goes, but there's a personal element, namely WHO I see, that intrigues me most. It's not always the WHAT but the WHO and WHY that seems to matter. Maybe 15 minutes after waking, the mysticism starts to stale and I write it off as brain play (because brains do that too). All the same dreams seem to be giving me some reprieve from the physical discomfort and hiatus from playing creator.

I don't actually believe in karma or higher powers or cosmic balance, but I love that the feel-good hormones seem to find ways to kick in. It may not be in the way I think I need, but if I can be grateful for the way my body does work for me, I can find reserves for forgiving what alters my plans. There are plenty of things I don't understand and those things don't necessarily need sentience or reason for existing. It's because of this flexibility of evidence that I'm more rigid against the sort of arrogance that assumes moral authority based on feelings alone. You can get a sense over time of what stances are based first in feeling then try to build a shaky logic around it. The argument always circles back to appealing to feelings when the logic has holes for exceptions.

I'm going to pick on veganism again for this example, but I truly have no issue with the practice where it works for people (only the arrogance of a supposed morality). It is often successfully passed on by appealing to emotion. It's introduction, even when presented as a health concern still circles back to compassion for animals. When they can't wrap their head around a person loving fish but still eating it, then in an outburst of feelings, it often escalates to a personal attack. Would I eat my family? Well, no. Just like incest, there's consequences for cannibalism which is also why we largely disapprove of it. I don't love a fish as a fish myself so it's not cannibalism and moot point. I don't even love all human beings equally. I was devastated when my mother died but I was only distantly unhappy when a favorite actor passed away. To assume that all living things are equal or that I can be a truly compassionate person by spreading it so ridiculously thin is absurd. There are hierarchies basedmon experience and to be the most compassionate human to other humans and the planet alike, the battles I pick are not going to be yours. In fact, often we support and negate each other for the benefit or detriment and some things balance-- some things need work. Ruining the world with massive agriculture isn't feasible. Dreaming of genocide bringing the planet down to a happy utopia of vegans might work... But you've left all moral high ground where that is a worthy goal.

We don't need to appeal to the direct issues to inspire the intended feelings though. Successful vendors make you feel good about your purchase, like it was your idea all along. Someone sold them veganism, my burden is to sell my stories.

It's why I don't take the profound feeling of my weird ass dreams and assume that anyone could duplicate the feeling through that nonsense. It's not always about the content. The containers are not where you find the whole story. These places are where I find the thing I want to duplicate. How do I make someone feel bliss through the mediums I use? How can I hope to make someone want to pull their cheek muscles into a goofy smile? How people are drawn into books or pictures is, like in my dreams, how much we let ourselves go (or even how we are held hostage).

You could call it research. Or spinning your wheels. There's a freedom that exists where I am right now in this journey. I am free to step away and consider how to be a creature of experience. Yes, a writer is a manipulator, a list, but remove the negative context. You can like the content and be there to affirm it. You can dislike the content but if it's still intriguing enough, you'll want to see where it's going. When I write for me, I want to consider if what is for me makes sense to someone else. In real life, I often just don't get what is acceptable. I also get that it's my problem. Not that there is something wrong with me, just that I'm seeing it differently. So what needs to be in place for us to reach understanding.

People try to say it whenever bigotry is present, but struggle with the vocabulary. We aren't looking for your definitive morality or view, we're looking for you to handle the burden of proof and sell it. So many people on a moral high ground use yellow words to color a feeling with 'facts' that just don't apply to everyone. Is that not reflected creatively as well? Are we not looking for a way to charm our audience with words? In the end, it's not the ideas alone that sell it, but how you can reach the people who want to hear it.

In fantasy, even when the hero saves the world in some fantastical way, they are sometimes ordinary in their world at first. Sometimes they were never ordinary at all but still wanted to be. They are usually not born with a loyal army and the werewithal to conquer great evil. Winning free people is no overnight occurrence.

Of course, fantasy writers, you are welcome to completely prove any of that wrong in fantasy. However, ultimately, you understand it takes a fantasy world to make fantastical ideas work. We can't just wave a wand and make these ideals work here. Even if you could, you're aware that for someone to gain power that fast, the weight of oppression is also an immediate blowback.

In fact, for those conditions to be met, anyone not on the side of the 'hero' might resent and oppose such a regime and even call them the villain. There will never be a happy hive mind because free thought.

I'll wander off now that my wheels have spun, but please preorder the upcoming anthology! It was a fun chance for me to write just a one-off story with no intention to spin it off or expand it. It is what it is and I had a blast delving into a fantasy theme I usually don't write. I won't get the chance to read the other authors' work but I look forward to getting an advance copy before I buy my own print copy.

The Magical Book of Wands, available October 31, is up for preorder on Amazon. One year only! Prints will be available on release day as well.

The Climax and Cost of Accomplishments

Once upon a time, I never finished anything I started. It was easily a painful time of my life for more reasons than that, but more so because I was both angry with and willing to concede that I was full of wasted potential while doing jack shit about it. Focus was not something that came easily and new ideas would lure me away from the old. Abandonment was a pattern I couldn't quite escape, even when it was in my hands.

I'm going to ditch the "What Writers Should Blog About" advice and not attempt to make the whole concept a general one we can all get chummy and 'me too' about. I'm going to dance over some of my own history, but I'm going to apply the evidence of changing that attitude.

The first thing I ever completed wasn't high school; it was getting my GED. I did it so I could get into college. However, the arrangement was difficult since I had a lot of things piling up on me--

• I'd quit working as a pizza cook. No financial independence, but I'd started moderating in share hubs and learning how to operate a computer, including hardware installation. I also ate a ridiculous amount of hotdogs. When you're 19 with the metabolism of a hummingbird, that seems like a foolproof diet.
• I hated riding the bus and was even followed off of it a couple times. I can't tell you how many days I pretended I needed to shop at the grocery store at the bus stop, just to make sure I wasn't being followed home.
• My grandmother was lecturing me about money, which is insulting in most cases, but especially so given she was wealthy and I was quite aware of how to pinch a penny. Enabling was frowned upon, unless you were my mother. Someday, I'll memoir all about that double standard, but I'm not bitter enough to care to dwell on that these days.
• I wanted to enjoy being a 'new adult'. I reunited with a friend I fell out with in high school(a sort of soul mate). When the old college try didn't pan out, she actually got me a job at Subway until I worked for Border's and then worked with her again at Target.
• The counselor that signed me up for courses screwed up my major and basically told me I'd have to 'lock in my position' and take classes which wouldn't credit towards my major (and after having my grandma snap at me for finances, I was mortified of bringing that up). Seriously, government needs to crack down on the deceptive practices colleges are allowed to use. Keep in mind, this was University of Cincinnati, a public college, not a private one. And these are supposed to be the 'good guys'. One girl was in limbo for three years waiting for a coveted space to open up in Photography.

A lot of things that just added up to walking away from a shitty liberal-arts-that-should-have-been-fine-arts degree. I did get a single credit in the elective basic drawing class I took, so guess what it takes to get me to the finish line?

*Back then, I didn't realize that my confusion and moods were related to BPD and ASD. lol Back before these were on the radar, my sort were just kind of the clowns, court jesters, off-color, or eccentric sort. It's not really unfiltered or even brutally honest, but social acceptability tends to fall pretty low on the list of why I should probably not share something. Either way, I like the adjectives over the letter crap, but the letters were a good baseline for understanding what dumb shit triggered me. It took a lot of lost jobs and hospital visits before I realized that I have to approach life Mission Impossible style. I kind of have to risk looking dumb to show I know what I'm doing.*

Me, except setting the alarm with my boobs.

Either way, I learned then that 'winning' isn't really a pattern or a streak. That everything that reaches an end is a battle with time, priorities, self-doubt, even isolation. Again, life started piling on against my aspirations. I started college again in my mid twenties, this time online so I could take the pain in the ass of transportation out and just focus on the work. A few months into it, I had a breakdown (again, memoir-- this one had to do with more toxicity and abuse). Just woke up in the middle of the night thinking I was having an heart attack because it felt purely physical. Even though my BP was in stage 2 hypertension, the culprit was a panic attack. On medication, I just got sicker, which led to another ER visit. I admitted to a nurse I was fantasizing about how I wanted to kill myself. Sure, that wasn't exactly new, but it was the first time I ever told an adult as an adult myself.

I don't know; goodbye, cruel world?

What tipped her off is that I was very matter of fact about it. I was numb to everything, just going through the motions. I signed myself in to psych, spent a week looking for where I left myself. Disassociation is a weird bitch. You're sharply aware in a way, but you kind of feel like you're a placeholder for yourself, holding your seat until you get back. I ate well, drank a lot of juice and watched people. Nosy as fuck, I'll admit, but I wanted to know what put us there and since *I* was a placeholder, things like reputation and self-consciousness were out to lunch too. Essentially, I was more like my childhood self, the me before trauma started its uneven layers, surrounded by more child-adults. Were we weak? Broken? Did we get a scarlet letter now? But no, they were mostly just people pushed too hard on one side of life and couldn't avoid a face plant. Most of us were kind of in a state of shock when we first got there, like when blood is gushing out of your nose and your first instinct is to try to put it back in. I wouldn't say the bullshit little groups we had to go to were actually valuable, but I think ultimately, they knew that too. It didn't really matter if we participated. We were herded around so we could relearn the basics of function. Really, they could have talked about how to make grilled cheese with Elmer's glue, but instead they told us how to breathe and scribbled on a whiteboard. I also remembered I was still a college student, but we'll get to that.

My new friends for the week. Some I'll never forget. I like three-story-verbatim guy and his rivalry with the sniveling angry guy who kept asking if he could call home to ask his wife if she let the dog out. They both wore their shorts and socks too high and I'm convinced this is why they were rivals. Three-Story kept going on about baseball (he was a friendly dude, just a broken record on a nostalgic loop) and the other guy was flipping his shit because he couldn't take the repetition. When my dad and brother came to visit, I whispered to my dad 'shhh, watch this' and repeated the next two sentences of the guy's story when he said them. I'll never forget my dad's face because there are few times my quirkiness can genuinely surprise him. I think it was mostly relief that I'd gotten my weird sense of humor back.

What happens after you lose your shit is often this laser focus on the order of things. I started to say this when I brought up the groups, but it's pretty important to how all people 'work'. It's never more true than after a breakdown. In fact, the morbid aftermath isn't just embarrassment or disorientation, but an underlying sense of relief that the simple things are still there after the chaos blew everything else to shit. I was in reboot with a bunch of people reorganizing their life code. When I ate, it wasn't about enjoyment (even though the food was good)-- I took a bite of everything in a clockwise direction one time. Another time, I worked on eating all of something before eating anything else. It wasn't even because of the limited stimulus or boredom or burn-out; it was more akin to reprogramming ourselves with conscious attention to ritual. There was no indoctrination here. We still had to go it alone, but we didn't have to explain it to our audience-- there was a cathartic understanding that we were all on training wheels. For me, every day was on autopilot until I was able to update. It took a lot of fruit juice and some pretty amazing nurses too, but I graduated from placeholder to person again.

When I found part of myself (again: group activity-- what were you most proud of?), I immediately panicked. I had a big project due in a 3D modeling class and if I failed, I'd have to retake it. They let my dad bring my laptop and watched me in an observation room while I scrambled to turn in a passable final project. I got a B.

Appropriate share time! A room modeled from a source picture. I was in my 20th week of school and finishing my model creation class. Side note: the rest of my models from that class are in my FaceBook photos, so add me and check them out!

I wasn't yet hip to the scam that private schools are, but I don't think you could have stopped me from doing it anyway. My credit was already shot to hell and I didn't think school was even possible. So when I got in and got through a mental breakdown but kept my head above water, I think my intent to fight was just stronger than my vulnerabilities at the time. They sprung on me that I needed to pay several thousand to make up for what financial aid didn't cover. When I got into this school, I made it clear that I had no income so I was devastated. I didn't want to give up! It was one of the few things that made me want to stay alive at the time. Instead of dissolving, I started looking at transferring to a more affordable school. I couldn't find another animation program, but I switched to graphic design. It wasn't exactly a downgrade either since the idea of getting better at digital painting was appealing too (and turned out to be what pushed me into learning how to publish my work).

I worked my ass off and nabbed my associate's degree, but financial aid was dancing on some more deceptive crap. In order to get my AS (which I achieved cum laude honors on), they wanted more money I didn't have. I applied for grants and decided to continue for a bachelor's and this covered it (somehow-- I think that legally they're just allowed to lie to some extent to extort you). Financial aid kept shitting on my doorstep throughout. The stress of busting out my best work was hard enough, but add to that the dreaded phone calls every few months that needed me to maneuver through loopholes to plug their loopholes. I had taken on a part time job even though service jobs never worked out well for me. It still wasn't enough when FA decided to bend me over again shy of that second degree. I wrote an essay writing contest and secured a grant that let me walk away with two degrees (and $60K in debt).

Another personal victory was achieved. Petco was the longest job I've ever had, at 20 months. And I didn't get fired for acting out/insubordination. For the first time, I handed in a formal two weeks notice and got to leave with dignity.

After college, I still wasn't 100 percent what I wanted to do. I had a lot of teachers that asked to use my projects in future classes, graduated with honors-- I knew I was damn good at what I do. It felt... Beyond gratifying to be more than just a job monkey for once in my life. A writing teacher told me I'm organic, deep, funny and faithful to my ideas. I'd already begun reviving the longest story I'd written to date-- sixty pages-- after I found it while rummaging for old word docs prior to rewriting a fairy tale for that class. That book became The Truth about Heroes: One of Many. It became seven books by the time my mom died.

I've already talked about the impact of death over the course of writing those books. I was able to bend my mind around finishing the series at nine books. I'm currently working on my 11th book. If you've been reading my blog, you know how much my mom was a part of the process, so I won't go into that again. I grieve best when I don't let it paralyze me, so stopping was never an option.

Huh, what? You mean these books? How ever did they get on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and digital retailers all over the world? Could it be... sheer stubbornness?

There isn't a turning point to nail down here. Over time, I even stopped imagining what things would look like when done because I stopped believing they would be. I don't regret going to school and it wouldn't have mattered if it were Yale or some rusty shack out of Deliverance-- my instructors and my knowledge are irreplaceable. It taught me how to trick myself out of a pattern of walking away. Because I was so fixated on 'the end' being years away, I was amassing a body of work after each class, finished work, and before I could self-sabotage, it was too late. I couldn't pretend I was destined to flounder because I'd found the mental shortcut, a way to finish by always putting the end out of reach.

The downside here is that my victories are something almost transient, more like an orgasm than a trophy or a tiara I can wear everywhere. In a way, I became a sort of Daenerys, Collector of a Million Titles, a character more about adapting and determination than pride. What I did is something I still fail to connect to at times because it's also a mind-altering drug. I'm addicted to seeing big projects through so the victories pass when the next idea twinkles ahead. I finished things, but what else am I capable of? Again, mobility towards my goals was possible because I always keep a big fat carrot on the end of the stick, but it almost means I am TOO far-sighted creatively. For now, it's enough that I am actively working towards goals, but it does need some work.

I'd be lying if I didn't say the obstacles are there. There are a lot of people that assume what I'm capable of as a woman or a white person (we're unfashionable in identity politics and trends these days) or presume to tell me what I could or should write about. There are people who don't realize that my drawing style is intentional and not because I can't keep up with the trends in realism, that I love exploring ways to incorporate realism into my style, but am still a comic book artist and fucking proud of it. And yes, people swear by one discipline in their career but what makes my talent so healthy now is that I know how to feed it.

Drawing, nom, writing, nom nom, comics, nom nom nom. Notice the one cookie dangling juuuuust out of nom.

The cost of accomplishment is exposure, which creatives are wary of in its many forms. People will either swear you can't do better or can't do worse (AKA you suck). You're naked to this, but once I've broken through my prison, my hell, my tormentors, there's this thick extra layer, air tight and a perfect fit, this layer that de-weaponizes words, silences trolls, tunes me into my purpose. I can take in what I need to realize my vision, to share it, but it doesn't really matter how precious people think their tastes are. It doesn't get to decide if we're worthy of seeing it through.

Get around to reading my work sometime, if you haven't already. I'm learning to be a bit less humble about it. It's a very different creature from my blogs-- I have a lot of fun with fantasy that is worth a try. While I have to admit, it's a dream of mine to write for a video game company some day, I'll stress again that I use THIS medium to ITS benefit-- my books are books, not just the basis of a show, movie or game. They'd have to be reworked into those mediums because I optimized them as books, first and foremost. I know my way around a story. And yes, swearing and sex happens in my adult books, but just like their appearance in my blogs, they're not accidentally there. Them being there at all seems to be 'gratuitous' without exception to some people. On the upside, they're... not really that long. Maybe someday I'll do a page/paragraph count just for the hell of it.

There's a market for me. And one of these days, I'll look for it. I keep saying that, but someday I'll mean it more than the other times.

You know... now, when I think of that stupid interview question 'where will I be five years from now', I can feel a secret smile twitch at my cheeks. Just me, you, and my ceiling... chasing dreams.

Dreams and the Writer

I rarely dream at night over the past few years especially. I suppose when I was younger, I enjoyed lucid dreams but also didn't enjoy the occasional night terror. Not dreaming at night became a godsend because when I'm awake, my brain never shuts the fuck up.

I daydream... sort of. I interrupt myself when talking and hop immediately back on course. I can hear a line coming up on a show I've watched before while reading out loud, say the line in sync and go right back to reading. My short term memory is very, very unreliable but I can remember things that happened when I was still in diapers. Hell, I can recall how the world looks at less than two feet tall and crinkling around in the diaper. I can prepare lunch from scratch and forget what I spent half an hour making two hours later. Probably sounds problematic for a writer but I develop methods to complement the way I think. Daydreaming for me can be both hyper-aware and completely absentminded in turns. It can be a bit scatterbrained or very focused. 

No matter how you dream, it's a toolbox that sometimes reveals things you didn't know you knew or absurd counter logic your rational brain might miss. Dream are a scramble of information, sometimes garbled, other times crystal clear. Sometimes it can disturb you, staging something disgusting or horrifying as a desire or turning your sugar sweet pastel world into dripping tar nightmare. Once I saw people missing perfectly geometric chunks of their body, missing legs or part of the neck, but all smiling and walking around as if it was a regular day at the cotton candy pink office. Sometimes it can trick you into feeling real. I had a really ordinary dream that got weird when my best friend and I suddenly broke into a church to steal markers from the Sunday school room. It can feel real quite literally. I felt both sensual and violent dreams that had me gasping awake.

Because of dreams, we can adopt ways to immerse ourselves in our stories and ideas. It's certainly not a requirement. Even extremely logical and rational types that never dream are capable of collecting and reordering information and making something whimsical or at least fictional. I've seen plenty of art students trying to one-up each other on who has the artiest brain. ''I have lucid dreams!" "Yeah, well, I fart realistic portraits when I eat crayons!" "That's nothing! I was born holding a paintbrush and reproduced Starry Night in womb blood!" "Tax evasion!" *Literally all dissolve into puddles of forced hysterical laughter*

I know because I was one of those and I am so. So. So happy that I didn't get a digital camera or webcam until my early 20s and post that noise on the internet. Ffs, we think we're being quirky and original but only about 15% of it is funny to anyone who doesn't know us. And in this age of aggressive and insincere complimenting being a youth trend, I see most of these kids getting sick of each other pretty quick. "No, I do mean it! My bff is so ridiculously hot, I could just stalk her and strangle her!" Funny how quickly they'll switch hot into annoying and talk garbage from there.

Yeah, we all get carried away. Dreams are a much safer victimless way to explore uncomfortable ideas. Uncomfortable can even be a breath of fresh air if you're feeling jaded by the same old stories. Really, writing can be a uncomfortable as you can lean it and you can web publish it free in most hosting sites. Other places, including self publishing markets will set guidelines so be wary of where your wicked dreams lead. 

Personally I never assume that sensual settings gave to arouse that violence can't be disturbingly sensual. I realize it very well could used as an excuse to harm but could easily sate someone to keep them from doing so as well. Sometimes I like a safe, warm or comedic story, to be light and not going fir a little shock or squirm. Sometimes I just want to be a nerd, to tackle quirks or illnesses without laying it on too thick. Maybe the challenge is trickier than I thought, but I pool through daydreams and counter failing logic with dream logic and work it out better.

Writers can often affect changes in reality, even without that intention. Interpretation from dream inspiration can spark invention and innovation. Things thought impractical can challenge a determined thinker to create the logistics to make it so. At one point, touch screens were unlikely, laughable, but now that they're common, we accept the possibility that Tony Stark's air gestures operating a dimensional holographic computer could be widespread someday even in the near future. Virtual reality that can affect other senses than sight, including smell, touch, real movement, are possible. Everything we experience is a specific charge to our brains and science shows the possibility that virtual reality might someday be a place where people with disabilities can experience a convincing facsimile of sensations they have not in the past. (I hesitate to use deprivation or call it a lack of senses-- those who have never experienced something don't exactly miss it if they never had it. We all maneuver with limitations.)

Corny and overused or not, it can't be denied that dreamers are doers, encouraging all of us to dare to dream bigger.

Kids Never See Me as Unemployed

Once more, I have to give props to kids for their perspectives about life. Yes, there are places where their inexperience or optimism or even open-mindedness may seem naive, but it also helps you shed some of those crusty edges-- the misery we mask as practical or responsible, the way we judge ourselves so harshly.

I've said before-- I hate the humble brag. Yet the other day, I was caught doing it. When asked what my job is I reverted back to saying that my last employer was Petco, but now I'm an artist (and author, duh, but it was my friend Erika that chimed in on that for me). It wasn't a conscious attempt to humble brag but, damn it, that's exactly what it sounded like and one that downplayed a DREAM. Not just a job, not even a reliable career, but a dream that I'm actively pursuing. And yes- it's still in its infancy, still feels surreal. Hell, when someone remembers that I have fibromyalgia (among other things), I almost forget that sometimes myself. Not because I'm not in pain, but because I'm used to defending myself as being 'fine' and my threshold for pain is something I've just grown so used to, it's not something I give any thought to. It just is. Like how kids can put zero thought into the transition between running and jumping on a bicycle and pedaling.

I can't say for certain why I felt so apologetic instead of proud. I work 8-14 hour days on my work. I was actually embarrassed that I had responded with so little enthusiasm-- at least until my friend's son Billy (wait, I think we call him Will now, but I am bad enough with learning one variation so that might take a few tries) was genuinely impressed. I don't mean just with a 'wow' but that instant lift of eyebrows and sudden lean towards you that isn't faked interest. No 'why don't you have a REAL job' or 'yeah, but what ELSE do you do?'

Perhaps a lot of adults forget their dreams or give up on them. Some actually resent people who take different risks and prioritize different sacrifices. Something about society made them believe that anything you wanted prior to age 30 was childish and impossible. Kids (and my very wonderful friends and family) just know me. Long-time friends and family know what I went through to gain that courage, what sacrifices I make to balance my priorities, and so on. Kids, well, they don't know the grittiest parts but they are still capable of understanding something that adults gloss over. 

For kids, dreams are stars, way up high, and know that up through the unknown is scary, unpredictable, but thrilling. For a great deal of adults, dreams are still stars. The nearest one is the Sun, the others impossibly far, and you'd burn up before you ever got there. So maybe a dream does start out as impractical. That we start to learn our expectations are unlikely, unrealistic, and many decide it's not worth it. My dream may have had its infancy, but when I collided with disappointment, doubt, and fear, I readjusted my attitude.

And I get this much; much of the responsibilities we chose to take on, thinking it was just what adults do (kids, marriage, jobs) gave us new priorities. I spent a good 15 years in short-lived jobs, battling my health issues, never understanding why adulting just wasn't panning out. My life, like so many others, wasn't according to plan. I never made enough money to have my own place, never kept a job long enough to do so, jumped in and out of hospitals, lost so many people. I didn't want marriage or kids, but I took on raising my nephews without a second thought. After gaining my second degree in graphic design, I wanted to find a job as a graphic designer, but I never learned how to drive and zero offers were reachable by public transit. Plus, my hours had to fit into when the kids were in school. I couldn't physically work as a cashier anymore. I tried sell handcrafts but I got tired of people undervaluing my work.

Writing started to fill those anxious hours where nothing seemed to fit right. And kids, kids are always the ones that can be completely ignorant of that last paragraph and simply think it's exciting that I didn't just write-- I drew, I formatted, I published. Tons of people write but, as I've said before, everyone 'has ideas' or 'is writing a book'. Some people even publish then get discouraged when they aren't a smash hit and it ends there. Kids see the results and marvel at them. Even without experience to make them jaded, they know it's no small feat. They don't need time or trials to understand insecurity and not finishing what you start. 

You can grumble about kids these days all you want. There have always been hormonal, entitled, reckless, unstable kids, but more often than not, I see kids who make me hopeful for the future. Many of them do more than access social media to bully or gossip-- they're smart and aware and struggling with a world very different from ours at their age. My parents was before the technological boom, mine was on the cusp, these kids are in the thick of this explosion of information and chaos. None of us really get each other and I'm tired of the pissing contest on who had it worse; you really can't compare the sum of anyone's experiences that simply. Still, I see people giving up on these kids before they've even gotten started. They certainly don't whine or procrastinate any more than adults and beneath the teenage bravado, they're scared of what the future might hold too. Youthful arrogance that they can do better might be overblown, but it's like revving your engine before a race-- showy but it puts you in the mindset for the race and preps the vehicle.

I'm rather fond of kids that don't let a jaded world limit their perspective. Whether we completely 'get' each other or not is of no consequence. For someone to be able to assess the value of your contribution without asking you to justify it is the most wonderful, reaffirming experience. So I'll work at it. Someday, I won't revert to the stupid impulse to apologize for working hard to chase a dream. I may need a few brilliant reminders from the most amazing people I know. They don't always know how amazing they are, but that's what I'm here for.

We raise this village. Not one busted cog in the bunch.