New Year's

A bit of New Year's hope.

A Fine Squidoodle-Dee--Doo... and Emily Bronte, Too

Do all things come to an end -- or at least transformed beyond the point of loved recognition? 2014 has seen the end of Squidoo and the transfer of featured content to Hubpages. I never wanted to see that day.

I opted to let a majority of my pages make the transfer... not all. Prior to that point, I had never deleted a lens. (Not for practical reasons in many cases, and not because of the hours of work that I invested, but because those pages get personified.) But in that short time frame we were granted, I saved, took screen shots, and hit delete on many, bawling away. All of them are to be resurrected someday, many are to find their home on Wizzley -- when I find the time.

It was an exhausting couple days. One poetry page that was supposed to make the move got deleted -- after I saved it, yes, but before I got its little mug shot. When I tried to do the screenshot, I got the 'green monster surprise' pictured here. As my mother would have said, "Well, that's a fine Squidoodle-dee-do."

The poetry lenses that made the move have their own tribulations. There is a policy on Hubpages that one can have a maximum of two links to any site that's not whitelisted. Flickr is okay, but Audioboo -- whoops, now the site is Audioboom -- isn't. Most of the poetry pages that transferred had more than two links to hosted audio content and thus transferred with warnings.

YouTube is largely unfamiliar terrain. The short fix is to centralize the audio elsewhere. Evening Nigh's 'sister blog' Audio Reflections is planning to do most of the hosting. Here, though, is the audio for Emily Bronte poems:

The Visionary

Spellbound

The Night Wind

The Lady to her Guitar

I plan to do a lot more writing here. Self-consciousness and guilt about being away so long can make it hard to return.

Reflection: At the Beginning of (my) History

At the beginning of American history long ago... Well, at the beginning of American history class (still long ago!) there was a survey that I had to fill out for my teacher. One of the questions was what era I would have wanted to live in. My answer was now.

My answer still now, but I have more reasons. Actually, I would have rather been born a little later than I was. What would I do without the internet? What would I do without the scientific information that I can access, that I can use to guide me... to explain the things that are contrary to what they appear.

I want to do something I haven't done in a while: share a very personal Squidoo page: My Mother, Molecular Medicine, and Me.

The picture is my 10th grade self: I was 15 (though you might guess less) and about 90 lbs ( though you might guess more).

Reflection: Onward Beats and Stopped Time

Change. The online coffee company has gone through two incarnations in my time in Seattle. Today it closed shop for the second time, sold for the second time, destined this time to become something other than a coffee-and-computer place. So much for computer and coffee. (Well, except if I have a netbook in tow...a netbook that acquired a 4G device after the seven-year-old DSL modem broke.) And so much for scanning. (Well, except for the scanner at the public library.)

So much at least for that particular ritual. Walking through Capitol Hill, a song played in my head: We walked on the beach beside that old hotel. They're tearing it down now, but it's just as well...

And perhaps it is just as well, more or less: the onward beat of computing against that backdrop of change and minor loss. And yet some of the losses experienced in this city will never be just as well.

...Still warm from the memory of days to come. Ah, not quite. A warm day in late March, the warmest day yet this year, but warmed from within only by a flicker of hope. And a prayer.

Reflection: My Friend Mandy

I was looking up "Mandy doll" on eBay for a Squidoo page I was working on.  I looked at the ads at the bottom of the page.  Apparently they had Mandy's current page, current address, and telephone number.  Wow! And was Mandy on Facebook, too?

'My Friend' dolls sending friend requests to former playmates? They don't call them My Friend dolls for nothing.

What an advanced age this is! (Or is there something disingenuous here?)

Reflection: Hey, Your Chocolate is in my Peanut Butter!

People often imagine it's easier for me to write than talk. No, one advantage to writing is that people don't have to sit around and wait while I do it -- but it's a more cumbersome.

It's not just a matter of being strategic or finding the right thing to say, though that is definitely a part of it in certain contexts.  But there's also the issue of putting it all together. And sometimes I would describe it as a cognitive thing more than a psychological one.  Words that go around and around my head before I type them -- that's obsessive compulsive, huh?  Not always.  Anxiety, perfectionism... those are not the only precipitating factors. One factor that seems to precipitate it is being tired.  And one thing that can help is a stimulant -- e.g. caffeine.

The more tired I am the more I seem to resist task switching: like switching back and forth between purely cognitive things (composing) to things that involved orchestrated motion.  I want to compose a whole paragraph in my head while lying down -- and rehearse it, too.  I might feel ready to type when I've got the paragraph to the point where... well, where it pours out almost as fluently as 3 x 3 = 9.

You know those old commercials where they go, "Hey, your chocolate is in my peanut butter!" It's like the part of my brain that orchestrates expression and the part that controls motion don't want any mixing.  There's a time for chocolate.  There's a time for peanut butter.  But not both.

And I may compose the "Hey, your chocolate is in my peanut butter!" quite fluently while having a conversation in my mind with a friend.  (Which is how I compose a lot of things.) But it can still feel less daunting to keep playing it in my head than to actually switch gears and it.

Reflection: Monotropism and Music

I understand the kind of pleasure that music gives: a pleasure that's built on emotion and repetition. I don't always quite grasp the notion of pleasure in variety.

I was writing to a friend and lamenting some of those same issues I talked about in "Making Sense of Monotropism":  The odd phenomenon of experiencing repetition and momentum as pleasure... and failing to experience it normally in novelty.

"You know what can be more difficult than two hours at a job I don't like?  Two hours at a movie.  If I am with someone I am attached to, it's no problem.  I can sit there and listen to them breathe.  That will keep me amused. So what if there's a movie going on in the background? It's okay. I can handle that it's there. I just won't... watch it."

He said he had a hard time focusing on most movies because they were "formula crock". (No, I didn't change the vocabulary there.)

Something was similar on the surface -- but something was opposite.  My response:

"You don't like formulaic crock? :)  Hmmm.  Formulaic crock is repetitive, but not repetitive enough for me. They change the characters and stuff from one formulaic movie to the next, yes?  I know they change the scenes.  So it's not repetitive to anywhere near the level that a song is repetitive. 

It takes so much time to get in-depth into... oh, caring about the plot and characters, I guess is part of it. I just can't focus much of my attention on it until I do.  But then sometimes I do kind of... by the time it's over.  So then I'd rather see the same one over again than see a new one! I am not the only person to experience that.  But I've known people to explain the phenomena from the outside and explain it in a way that doesn't fit my experience. In my experience it has nothing to do with wanting the world to have a safe, predictable structure.  Predictability, yes, is a part of it, but it's for the sake of pleasure, not safety.  Most people have some understanding of that type of pleasure -- music is based partly on predictability and repetition.  It can evoke pleasure on just a straight neural level when a word rhymes with one in the line before. And when the refrain... repeats.  And it can get even better after you know the song!  

But most people, most of the time, outside of a few little things like music,associate pleasure with novelty. That's one area where it's hard for me to understand the world.  And vice versa."   

Reflection: A Farewell to Bags

Tomorrow is July 1st, the day plastic bags become illegal in Seattle check out lines.  Paper bags will still be available -- for a price. It wasn't that much earlier that a law was rejected that would have merely put a price on all shopping bags, plastic and paper.  That one wouldn't have even sent plastic bags packing.  Then they passed a tougher one. Times change. Seattle becomes.

At Trader Joe's today, there was a sign at the checkout, reminding people of the legislation that would go into effect July 1. There were no canvas bags sitting at the check out. So the sign was...?  A reminder to bring yours next time?  A reminder to stock up on paper bags while they're free?  (Traditionally, plastic has been for carrying out trash, paper for carrying out recyclables.)

Plastic bags for bulk items... I believe you will still see those.  But I took a picture of the canvas ones in Whole Foods.  The Squidoo-ing life. I've taken a lot of pictures inside stores. And inside my apartment. (Which keeps it cleaner...)

Reflection: Auntie Histamine

Histamine is a brain chemical. Some people say it's an important one; others call it quack science.  It's interesting to me because so many things fit. I've read that the high histamine person tends toward obsessive, phobic fear while the low histamine person is more likely to be paranoid. I also read that the high histamine person can have an unusually still energy on the outside while on the inside their brain is going fast, fast, fast.

I imagine histamine is one of many neurochemicals that can have an effect on a person's functioning -- though of course that doesn't mean that a particular behavior is always associated with a particular imbalance. In my case, histamine does have an effect.  Some foods speed up my mind in a bad way.  Food that's past its peak will set my mind racing. I think about the food I ate during my years at the housing co-op: nearly spoiled produce bought at $2.00 a (large) box. Not so good!

The effects of caffeine?  Caffeine seems to calm my mind.  Antihistamines and caffeine can have similar effects on me.  Both can be somnolent.  And both, oddly, can be conducive to work... at least at extreme moments.  There was a point where I took stronger medicine, but I told the doctor the antihistamines worked better.

On histamine, my thoughts are like molecules in a solid.  They tend to move around in a tightly packed space. I can get to the point where it's hard to complete a sentence or action; those fast thoughts are repeating or going in circles instead of moving forward. On caffeine, they reach escape velocity.  There's forward motion.

Reflection: State Boards

Writing articles that require me to spend a lot of time on state licensing boards... Occasionally, I laugh out loud. And it isn't just when one declares that candidates must meet the following "eight (9)" standards. State boards seem to have their own character; some become characters in my mind. One will give detailed instructions about the documentation that a person must send to prove a name change; another will treat the process much more cavalierly. One included, in the frequently asked question section, things like, "You mean you're evaluating the ability of my state to..." (I gather that out-of-state applicants were not always happy campers.)

Ah, but the state of Indiana has managed to come across as chipper and cheery. I see that they write 'copy':

The Behavioral Health and Humans Services Licensing Board is excited to offer this new testing opportunity to all future mental health counselors in the State of Indiana and as always, “we work to keep you working.”

Home again... and home again. I went to Arizona to, among other things, cultivate relationships with the little girls before they stop being little girls.

Two red-haired girls. Their mother, my sister-in-law, has honey colored hair, a mixture of blonde, brown, and red, though I don't think she was ever a true redhead. In our family... well, I know there was a great aunt on my mother's side who had red hair; I believe there was also a redhead in that generation on my father's side. I was the only redhead for two generations.

The elder one... Well, I knew I wasn't overstaying my welcome in her eyes. She was glad to have an someone to play with, read her chapter book, direct activities. The little one... well, maybe she'll like me when she gets older. A year and a half ago, she buried her face in her father's chest when she saw me; this time, she buried her face in his chest. In the interim, she learned to speak complete sentences intelligibly, but she hasn't yet reached the stage of abstract thought...or of doing a lot of focused activity. For her, familiar faces are the best ones. And Daddy knows best.

Reflection: Flexibility Revisited

I am revisiting once more the concept of flexibility: How is it that I appear unusually flexible -- indeed hyperflexible -- to friends, yet never scored well on test of flexibility? I was sub-par throughout all my years of P. E., and was, in fact, the worst person in my class in gymnastics activities, performing like a person with joint limitations. (Flexibility wasn't the main reason I was eventually placed in adaptive P.E., but let's just say it wasn't helping.)

Sometimes it takes years to define the perimeters of something; some crucial detail eludes me. Here goes: Tests of flexibility are generally done with the legs straight/ extended. It appears that, for me, though, the ability to bend at the waist depends, to an unusual degree, on also having bent legs. In P.E., students are asked to sit with their legs extended and then touch their toes. The act of sitting with my legs extended is in itself uncomfortable; my range of motion in this position is pretty limited. But if I bend my legs deeply -- sitting on my feet, say, or sitting in yogi position -- then everything changes. I can not only bend my body flat against the ground, but I'm so comfortable I could sleep that way. (Sometimes I do.)

Pictures taken here and there, across my life, are suggestive of loose joints. If you look at the picture in With Legs Crossed, you'll see a small child with some unusual posture. In that pose, it almost looks like my legs detached. Either that or they were pretty durn short... which they weren't. I doubt I could do a toe touch, though, even then. By the time I started school, at any rate, that task was way out of reach.

Once again, I've got to get on my soapbox and say that it's not just about physical capacity. If we look at how a person acts in one context, striking as it may be, we can get into some trouble generalizing or making predictions about how they'll perform in other contexts.

Reflection: Those (Very) Protective Anti-Virus Programs

September 18 was the day Toto's free trial of McAfee ran out (or so it told me). It was hard to use the little netbook in the days leading up to September 18 as McAfee kept flashing dire warnings. I felt I had things under control, but the security program knew how to tug at my heart strings.

On the evening of the 17th, I looked up security programs, some free, some in the neighborhood of $30 to $40. It seemed like the free version of AVG did less than it used to -- understandable, I suppose, in a freemium world. Still, the free program would stave off crisis. Windows gave us a firewall, and AVG would at least momentarily give us our anti-virus; later I could decide if I wanted to purchase something additional for Toto and Snookums.

Now here is where things got curious: AVG proceeded to download more than it indicated it would -- or so it seems. (It wouldn't want to see anything happen on its shift.) Also, it is the 20th now, and McAfee is hanging around longer than indicated. It appears it is thoughtfully giving me a grace period. (Will it win my heart yet?) It put up an icon that we were in a state of alert (no protection? low protection?) But when I plugged my camera in, it warned me that there was this device connected... and did I want it to scan the thing? Perhaps McAfee has downgraded itself, but it has not left. I picture it like the Cheshire cat -- some part remaining.

Choices, choices... I guess most security program companies offer some sort of free download that's separate from their trial. Some offer more, some less. McAfee has a curious program that will let you know whether the security program you currently have installed (whatever it might be) is behaving properly. It will tell you things like, "CA Security reports that things are peachy keen. But if you want even more protection, you can upgrade to McAfee TOTAL Protection now." Snookums-the-Netbook has one of those programs. So far I have not felt the need to get Toto one.

photo: pittaya

Happy 2nd Birthday

I missed this baby's second birthday earlier this month. The blog, not the little one in the picture who has long since grown.

Ah, there have been overextended days: writing 1,500 words of paid articles, a day, working elsewhere... It's lighter now. It can be hard, when I haven't blogged in a while to decide what's that one worthy thing that I most want to put up. I frequently have my 'evening nigh reflections' and yet there are times when it is difficult to post. There's something about critical mass. f I post regularly, I don't have this "It needs to be something momentous feeling". But the most important motivator, for me, is the sense of being read. Blog posts can be siphoned off into emails...

But: Moving into this third year with ENR, I have, for the first time, a little digital camera. That makes online writing easier. A couple thousand words a day is feeling less intimidating. Snookums has an external keyboard and needs to be plugged in, but Toto is on the go. There's still a lot of writing to do... too much at times. But this blog is still my baby... grown now to toddlerhood.

Reflections: Beautiful Minds

Beautiful minds? you're thinking. But that's a pair of... feet. Yes, and those are confident feet, many would say. (I'll tie this together in a moment.)

I'm still doing readings each week on a Blog Talk Radio show, and an interesting theme came up this week. I don't really like the term, erotic capital, but the concept makes sense. There are a mixture of traits that together go a long way to creating interpersonal attractiveness. The host brought up something interesting: He said it really came down to confidence. I would surely agree that the purely physical was only a small part of this nebulous thing, that the charisma and mystique were created more by the things a person did: how they dressed and otherwise 'put themselves together', how they carried themselves, how they interacted. I would surely agree that those things are often associated with confidence. But it doesn't mean they equal confidence.

I'm thinking back to the movie "A Beautiful Mind" which I saw nearly a decade ago. That woman... oh, she had that nebulous thing. The way she blazed into his office -- the fictionalized John Nash's -- when he was an up and coming professor. At first, I didn't like that woman; she seemed shallow. But, oh, did I like her as the movie progressed. I talked on and on about her that evening: the woman who dug both feet into ground when things went crazy.

Is there a biological reason for people for people to be attracted to confidence? I daresay there is. What about associating that blaze with standing one's ground? Ah, perhaps there is. The problem is that a lot of the things on the it list -- the erotic capital list -- have as much to do with polytropism as they do with confidence.

Reflection: Still Here

Signing a lease one more time. Moving into a second year in an under-200 square foot studio that has been better to me than its larger predecessor. My favorite apartment/unit ever, if you go back a bit, was an attic. But this little room with the corridor and the separate bathroom: It's of a scale that's easy to decorate. And putting it online motivates me to do just that. My problem has never been finding the wherewithall to function; it's finding the motivation. It's hard for me to do things because they feel comfortable or because they create aesthetic pleasure. It doesn't click; it doesn't connect. The question has already been: But who will see it? Who will it please? I can't live life as a tree in a forest. If no one hears, I don't make a sound. If no one watches, nothing is tidy. There's this great need to be observed by loved ones. And the great motivator has always been: for you. Living my life online makes me live it brighter and more according to custom.

So, understanding that, maybe it wouldn't come as such a surprise to persons from long ago co-op days that one of the niche topic areas I have moved into, on Squidoo and elsewhere, is designing small spaces. This is the recent Squidoo page that has gone the highest: Shabby Chic Studio Apartment

Memory: After All These Years

Something I will never forget: the sight of Brazil nuts -- those really huge ones -- working their way slowly down into the fingers of a food handler's glove.

It was a dozen years ago. We were on our way to a potluck hosted by one of the members of our poetry group. He was scooping edibles out of the bins at Ray's Ranch Market. I called his attention to the fact that, well, most things made it into baggies, but he was scooping the Brazil nuts into something else... like maybe a glove out of the box on the counter.

He realized, hey, I was right. "Well, we can't let this go to waste," he said. "That wouldn't be environmental of us." He got a twisty label and wrote the bin number on it. He used the twisty to seal the wrist of the glove up neatly.

Something else I will never forget: the look on the face of one of the poetry group ladies when he sat the Brazil nut glove down on the coffee table amidst the other hoers d'ouvres.

I repeated the story the other day. "That was in my manic days," he said. "I don't do things like that any more."

"Mellowed?" I asked.

"Medication," he said.

Ah! I remember how he arrived in the woods for a camping trip, coincidentally, on the first day of hunting season. He briefly had the idea of playing his guitar real loud and scaring the bears away. "Would I give my life for a bear?" he'd asked.

I repeated that story. The bears deserved it, he said, but he didn't have the guts.

He has talked about visiting a couple times over the years. And finally did. He was here for a week recently. We went out to the beach at Discovery Park. He climbed over a little log fence so he could see better over the cliff. I called his attention to what the sign said about staying this side of the fence. "I didn't see it," he said, "Well, don't tell Seattle parks."

Oh , there's a few things maybe to not tell Seattle. He likes to press flowers see...

It ain't a bad thing, though, is it? Still crazy after all these years

photo credit

In Between: Tunes our Minds Play

I never know what song I will hear in Walgreen's -- or what my ears will tell me I heard. I have located the song now on Youtube, and the refrain is "Burnin' for you". Ah, but what I heard (over and over and over) there in Walgreen's was "I'm done running, I'm 32."

Reflection: The Writing Life

I am making (kind of) a living writing these days, but it's not quite the type of writing I might have imagined once upon a time. For those of us who do write for wages, that is often the case. I have a friend who makes his living -- really -- writing articles about women's clothing.

In these parts, though (in my studio apartment studio, I mean) the theme is, "You look in an associate's, but you'd look better in a doctorate. Oh, too large? We have that in a bachelor's and a master's as well. "

It may not be my adolescent image of the writing life, but I like writing articles about nursing. I believe in the cause, and there's endless information. (To think, less than a year ago, I didn't know the difference between an ADN, a BSN, and a DNP. Now I can distinguish the AACN, the AANP, ANA... And, ah, I have a talent for locating white papers and project proposals and endless lists.)

But it's nice to do those other types of writing, too, the ones from the days of once upon a time -- and the ones I picked up along the way. I am slowly pulling them back in.

Reflection: Supine

That's quite an old picture, but it relates to the (soapbox) topic of the day.

I am lucky to be (for the moment at least!) earning most of my income at home writing. It's not just for mental reasons that it's easier. Some days I do several hours of work laying down. It's very common for me to research laying on my side and then compose paragraphs in my mind while lying very still on my back. After a while, I will sit up in and type quite a bit in a short time. If it appears that I spend half an hour immobile and then half an hour writing furiously... well, often I have been working the whole time, and far more efficiently than if I forced myself to sit up at the computer.

I imagine there are people here and there who have been diagnosed with chronic fatigue, or migraines perhaps, who have low muscle tone in their necks. For me, it's not bad enough to be a migraine -- the discomfort just toes the line between tiredness and headache -- but when I was a child, I called it a headache... and I was ignored. I remember that when I started morning kindergarten, I complained of daily headaches. It was because my teacher got after me when I rested my head on the desk, and my neck simply did not want to hold head up for three hours at a stretch.

I still feel better physically when I don't have to go too many hour at a stretch with my head unsupported. I even suspect the neck issue plays some role in the body ache issues I get sometimes -- like maybe it adds a bit of physical stress and brings my endurance down. I've always (when I've had the option) done a fair amount of my mental work lying down... especially the composition stage of writing. I have a great verbal memory, so I can do that! Yet to display so much of what looks like immobility... I imagine that has contributed at times to people seeing me as less mentally capable than I am.