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: Occupational Therapy with Cyber-Slime

Sometimes I am struck by how much my netbook is like me. I have determined that the dear netbook has a processing disorder... no, no, I am not talking about its hard drive, I mean more of a sensory processing disorder. It's hypo-responsive to some stimuli.

It happened off and on for a couple months: There were several keys that would sometimes be difficult to use and then sometimes go out altogether. (Ever tried to paste in periods at the end of sentences?) Ah, but then it would be fine again, completely fine.

When one of the afflicted keys would go out, they would all go out. When one of the afflicted keys would return, they would all return. I wondered if temperature changes were causing condensation. It appeared to be something more than dirt, and yet -- here's where the story starts to get strange -- I learned that it really liked the yellow cyber-slime I bought to clean it. I mean, it really liked it. I mean, those keys could be the cleanest ones on the whole keyboard, but if I took a moment to massage them with cyber-slime, voila, they worked again! Like magic! Over and over again, the trick worked. As odd as it sounds, it's no coincidence. It might take a few therapy sessions over the course of a day before the keyboard is ready to work smoothly for an extended period, but then things will really kick back in gear and it will be fine for a long time.

I am actually at a bit of a loss to explain this. Is something slightly warped or out of shape? Or... Well, I've heard that occupational therapists sometimes have some success using sensory materials to rewire the processing systems of children with autism or SPD. Whatever the underlying cause, it appeared that my netbook just needed a little occupational therapy.

Now here's something that relates (though it doesn't involve netbooks or cyber-slime). I've added quite a bit to it recently, and it's probably the best job I've done telling my own life story on a Squidoo lens or a webpage: Memoir of a Hyporesponsive Child

Reflection: Different Ways of Experiencing

I think a lot of people, at this point, have at least heard of the brain chemical dopamine. Among the many things it does... Well, I've heard it described in this way: It makes things pop out from the background and seem relevant. It intensifies them. (The picture on the right, which had quite a lot of local contrast added, is intended to represent higher dopamine perception.)

Me, I perceive things more like the picture on the left. I know -- I mean, I can tell -- I don't have normal dopamine processing. As an example... The ayuderdic herb, mucuna pruriens, is one of the only things that naturally contains the most direct precursor of dopamine. It has legitimate medical uses. Some people, if they weren't used to it, would find that it made them more than usually cheerful or confident. Some would find that it sent them right over the edge into anxiety, agitation, mania -- like caffeine, but likely worse. (Some of the disorders that frequently show dopamine overactivity: schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anxiety.) My reaction to mucuna pruriens is that is calming and sometimes sleep-inducing. I consider it a preventative measure when it comes to bad dreams.

Sometimes coffee brings me down, too. Going to sleep on stimulants is not an uncommon reaction... for a person with ADHD. I don't have ADHD, but there are common threads. There's a theory that people with ADHD procrastinate so that they can add excitement to a task, so they can stir up enough stimulants in their brain that they are actually able to do the task. Me, I don't do that. It's when it comes to human relationship, very specifically, that I behave as an underwhelmed person. I have consistently, across most of my life, been attracted to people who are far, far more emotional than the norm, who are simply over the top. I have consistently been attracted to situations -- human situations -- where the stakes were high. My emotions are aroused. My bonding impulses come more strongly into play. Low stakes human situations fail to motivate me to the point where... where I can function.

I think it would fly in the face of logic, for a lot of people, that my reactions to certain substances would be characteristic of the underwhelmed as opposed to the overwhelmed. And yet it seems so obvious to me. I am the polar opposite of the hyperaroused person... when it comes to just strolling around. (Though yes, I do respond in intense, 0 to 90 ways to a very few things -- the same ones, predictably, year in, year out... Hey, do you think the light in the corner stands out maybe even a little more on the picture on the left, where there is so little contrast. maybe that's why I calm a little on stimulants. More of the world starts popping out a little and commanding my interest.)

Reflection: A Loss of Pliability

A soapbox post -- not the one I was planning, but a very 'me' one. I have hesitated sometimes to mention the cat -- aware of people here and there, just freezing at the mention -- but it has been a long time since he died. For a time, I would go to a support group at the humane society, and I was aware how some people hesitated to bring another animal into their life because they were afraid they would love it and it would die. I was aware also how people would sometimes interpret things I said that way -- like once when I was talking about how maybe it would be better to get a foster animal. Someone heard in those words that I was afraid of getting attached and having an animal die. No. The pair bonding impulse in me is so strong that... I have never in my life even one time that I can remember resisted any attachment because of a fear of being hurt. Quite the contrary. I can't imagine being hurt by the people around me because I can't imagine loving them. But that's not because I don't mold myself to others' shapes. It's because I do it too much.

When I was a little kid, I was like Play-Doh fresh from the can. By the time I was a teenager, the pliability was down. I wrote before about the classic storybook image of the little girl who can only love her doll, and not even another doll someone buys for her that looks just the same. Up to a point, that tendency is part of the beauty of being human. But too much of that is a barrier to normal living. It's normal for a person who's been married to someone for thirty years to say, "I will never love again," and be a perpetual widow. It's not normal for a young teen to already be moving in those directions -- finding it progressively more difficult to love, not out of fear, but out of doing it so completely (We're not even talking romantic liaisons here!) that anything else just gets a "But that's not my rose!" reaction.

So many issues people have are normal -- even good -- traits and drives that are just upregulated beyond the norm.

This picture was titled "Helping Hand". But what do I title it? "A Loss of Pliability"!

Reflection: Kyrie...

Kyrie Eleison: a Greek prayer. Across a lot of my life, I have closed letters to particular people with "God bless". Since the word "blessings" carries such a unique meaning in Squidoo culture -- and one can't necessarily go about it for general purposes -- well, I thought I should look up a new blessing.

I didn't now the spelling of "Kyrie Eleison" well enough to enter it the search engine and find out... how to spell it -- but I did find the phrase promptly upon typing "Carry a Laser" into Google. (Carry a laser down the road that I must travel, Carry a laser through the darkness of the night...)

While searching through my files for a picture for this post... I had no awareness of having I clicked on any music files, but I guess I must've because Windows media player popped up and (aptly) began playing Joshua Kadison's "Born to Shine":

...Got on the bus today... didn't get off I just knew I had to take a ride... a strange man sitting right next to me said, "I can feel what your eyes can see, don't you worry, brother, everyone's doing fine"... something must have changed cause somehow everyone seemed blessed.

I am your reflection, and you are mine, all of us reflections of the light divine, so shimmer, little one, you were born to shine...

Indeed.

(Editorial Note: The next post may crop up under this one -- again.)

Reflection: The Sweep of the Harbor Tide

I did put up that other site: Evening Nigh Reflections has sister, Audio Reflections, who is doing mostly public domain poetry, and is of a more pragmatic mindset than this one.

I've learned a lot from 'Squid-people' about putting things up on the internet that support one's pragmatic existence: one's teaching, writing life... The new site is doing the 'Professional Squid' Challenge: a post a day for 30 days. (I know: Professional Squids?)

But I am not so pragmatic with my attachments -- online as elsewhere. I love this blog! (And as I say that, it wags... well, not its tail, but its header, perhaps.)

Reflection: The Fox and the Roses

Sometimes human interaction -- mine -- does seem like something straight out of The Little Prince. Here and there there's a fox; here and there there's a rose... Oh, and there are are a lot of other roses, too, growing together: roses who may be beautiful in their own right, but to whom I have a tendency to say inside my mind,

"You are not at all like my rose... As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world."

"One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you--the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose."

I may say it inside my mind... oh, but that doesn't mean I have never let that attitude seep out and show itself on the outside. There were times over the years when letting it show got me in some trouble.

I've been writing to a fox as of late. Some of my letters over the years to different people... well, they can be almost like blog posts. I may soon post excerpts from a letter to a fox. And the post may appear under this one (as I actually begun it before).

Photo Credit

Reflection: People as Poetry

Some of my blog posts grow out of letters. This one grows out of a letter to... well, I started to say "someone you don't know", but do I really know who might be reading on a particular day. It started with... No, it didn't start with, but it included a quote from an author who said poems are to be read --not analyzed -- as they're images from their creators' eyes.

About that quote: I am going back and forth on whether people are slightly like poems in that sense. On the one hand, I do sometimes get into reading people to unlock mysteries. On the other hand, they too can be seen as images from the author’s eye. One surely can get into trouble when they analyze and take apart and go on the basis of what they think they know as opposed to listening to the gestalt.

That picture of me writing is from many years ago -- I scan various things that I might use for photo-illustration, and sometimes I just go on a search through them.

Reflection: Uploading Oneself to the Internet...

I did an online test of my netbook's internet connectivity speed. The upload speed was slower than the upload speed, yes, but not by as much as is usually the case. The upload speed measured at close to average for all computers with similar ISP addresses, while the download speed was markedly slower. What does it mean that the netbook has a much better upload speed than download speed? It (like me) shows, relative to the general population, marked adaptation/ preference for uploading itself to the internet as opposed to merely downloading.

Reflection: Netbook Attachment II / Beautiful to my Ears

I read somewhere that if a netbook quieted down when you picked it up, the noise was probably coming from the fan, and not the hard drive. So does that mean netbooks are like babies -- they seek human contact and go hush-a-bye when you hold them? (Or do you suppose it has more to do with circulating air?)

The netbook in the picture is mine. It was christened Aubrey, but it answers to Snookums. I have thought at points of doing a Squidoo page for this here netbook. It could recommend some products/ security programs, and I could include some blog posts where it appears as the charming creature it is.

Perhaps I shouldn't personify it too much, though... I've been concerned about it this week. It's a bit noisy, though not as noisy as the noisy Acer netbooks people have seen fit to post to YouTube. If it were to need a major new part... ah, well, better than getting a new netbook.

Snookums, you and I are going places! This here is the best netbook because... well, rather than give you pragmatic reasons I could give a mishmash of stuff straight out of The Little Prince and The Velveteen Rabbit. Seaking of which... do you suppose there might be a Blue Fairy for netbooks, a fairy who swoops down and gets them eventually, and says thing like, "You have been an absolutely awesome Acer Aspire One netbook. Before you were real to Karen. Now you shall be real to everyone."

Reflection: Mirroring Abilities and Disabilities

My left hand is proud of its schoolwork and delighted with the comments and smiley face that the right hand left for it in red ink. (Do you see the title there in gold gel marker?)

Seriously, though, this relates to some issues that are important to me. I just put up a lens on Squidoo titled Neurological Disorders: Differing Abilities and Gifts. I've got some lenses featured on it that are my own, and also half a dozen that are by other Squidoo 'lensmasters'. (A lot of us do feature or link to each other's writings; it's a way of helping one another... and the site.)

I've read different statistics; I believe one thing I read said that Squidoo was one of the top 100 websites in the U.S. -- and it's very much in the black in these trying times. It can be a good thing to work not only to increase one's share of the pie, but the size of the pie -- especially when one finds many pages that are quality and that they believe in.

Among the premises of that page I just put up: that multiple anomalies tend to reflect an underlying condition, and that anomalous brain structuring may come with mirrored disability and giftedness (usually in a metaphorical sense... and not quite so graphic as what you see in the picture).

Reflection: The Kitty Carryall Metaphor

I hope that folks read a previous post titled Tagging (A Metaphor for Monotropism). I think it was read by quite a few people -- it does show up in the "Link Within" widget under a number of posts.

I want to add these thoughts:

I am pretty sure that most people in this world experience either more or less pleasure in other human beings based on the behavior of those other human beings; even if they don't actually love them less, they experience less pleasure in the interaction. The funny thing is, I don't. I experience other people as having 'tags' and 'categories' -- people are either 'my favorite' or 'not my favorite', either 'mine' or 'not mine'. Pretty much my entire emotional experience of other people comes down to those tags and categories. I think it's hard for a normal mind to fathom that I will experience another person the same -- and feel the same pleasure in the interaction -- whether the person gives me roses or runs around and squawks like a chicken.

Before I'd ever heard the term monotropic, I was looking for metaphors to describe a way of perceiving the world. One of those early metaphors involved Kitty Carryall: When she was small, Cindy Brady toted around a doll named Kitty Carryall. Once when the doll was lost, Cindy's brother bought her a new one that looked just like the original. Cindy took one look at the doll and shrieked, "That's not Kitty Carryall!" I do so identify with that behavior.

Across my life there have been attachments that are my Kitty Carryalls. Someone either is Kitty Carryall or they aren't. And Kitty Carryall herself just is. The notion that my feeling for a Kitty Carryall -- or the pleasure I derive -- is determined by Kitty Carryall's behavior... well, that seems absurd to me.

Strengths and weaknesses exist as two sides of the same coin. It's hard when the traits I see as my strongest strengths are seen by some others as my weakest weaknesses. I'm sure I have myself at least partly to blame. One thing I did do at points in my life: act as if other people existed solely for the purpose of discussing my Kitty Carryalls with me. That came back to haunt me. Something that stings across a span of so many years... a person who said I was "just looking for someone to be there for me". Ah, not so!

Reflection: Tagging (A Metaphor for Monotropism)

I belong to a lesser known social bookmarking site -- and from the experience of bookmarking and tagging, I draw another metaphor for monotropism:

I tag websites with keywords and -- metaphorically -- I tag real-life stimuli as well. A particuar stimuli is tagged 'fear', and it is always fear; a particular person is tagged 'love' and they are always love.

The funny thing is, I actually have trouble responding emotionally to stimuli that haven't been 'tagged'. Here's something I've puzzled over at various times: I will sometimes order an item at a restaurant or juice bar that ends up turning my stomach. I think I do it because I don't recognize, or experience, body signals well. I can tell you what my favorite foods are, but if you ask me what my stomach or taste buds crave at a particuar moment in time, you'll be met with bafflement. Salty? Sweet? I don't know, and I'm not sure I know how to know.

Some people say that emotions are largely physiological responses to stimuli. Well, this is just a theory, but it does so seem to fit: Deficient in normal body signals, deficient in the very mechanics of attraction and repulsion, emotion for me consists largely of conditioned responses to a limited number of stimuli. (I just want my favorite. I just want whatever it is I've tagged as 'favorite'.)

Re-reflection: Running Fast Without 3-G

I think this is, after all, a day for reprinting one of those old posts that dates back to the days before I let this blog be crawled. I was tired out from a lot of off-site writing... and then I happened into this freebie picture on a photo sharing site. So here, again (not necessarily by popular request, but with better line spacings):

I have a friend whose name is spelled the same way forward and backward. Long after the fact -- long after I had gone so very far away -- he expressed some regrets..."I got scared," he said.

"Why?" I asked. "Everything I expressed was real."

"I knew that," said my palindrome-named friend. "That's what scared me."

If you are, like me, the kind of person who loves with every breath you take -- or not at all -- it can be hard to control your energy. Another person may pick up on that note of desperation and not know what to make of it; they may be able to see anything and everything but the truth, or they may glimpse something real that scares them.

Referencing the ad I quoted in an earlier post (3G: faster friends) ... Now why would someone want faster friends? Some of us have friends who run plenty fast without electronic enhancement.

Reflection: CA Security and 'Snookums'

After the two-week trial of McAffee security software wore off (some months back) I installed the CA Security Suite that Radio Shack had included as a promotion. I preferred (and indeed somewhat missed) the McAffee program. Still, I am glad that I have not only refrained from referring to CA as "the currently installed dictator" but that also, when CA sends up a popup telling me what it's protected me from thusfar (mostly 'inbound connections' and adware) I say "Thank you," quite politely as I click the message.

Well, CA has come to the netbook's rescue on two recent occasions. Once I got a message of some threat that appeared to come from Windows, and foolishly clicked; immediately it was obvious that I had entered some other website that was merely masquerading as a Windows window. CA sent up a message about a virus-infected file; apparently it dealt with the file quite adequately (zapped it? cleaned it?) on contact. It was then that I threw in the "dear". "Thank you, dear," I say when it sends up one of those boxes to numerate the various things it's blocked or otherwise dealt with, and remind me that it's protecting my computer.

Then came the second incident. Apparently there was a third-party module on Squidoo that was briefly compromised/set to download contaminants. CA dealt with that smoothly as well. Well, hmmm, there are only so many ways one can express gratitude to a security program. I'm already calling it "dear"; I'm not about to upgrade it to "Snookums". (I reserve that term for the netbook itself.)

That picture is not Snookums, by the way. Snookums is "wittel-wer" and cuter. A few people might recognize that laptop photo from my "Struggling to Pass Brain Chemistry" piece, linked to in a previous post.

Now about that piece: I came home to a message from a "Giant Squid" who had written something in my "guestbook" that she had intended to be anonymous but that her name appeared alongside. She wanted her words deleted as she was concerned that they might reveal information that was told to her in confidence. I deleted of course -- but I was glad for the opportunity to have read her words. I had titled that guestbook "Similar situation?" but I hadn't necessarily expected another Squidoo-er would pour out so much in that particular spot. There are a lot of writers on the site, and sometimes one of them has indeed been searching for something similar... In our hearts and minds, we are sometimes closer than we realize, but we don't know 'til we open our mouths.

Reflection: Santa Google and the Monotropism Lens

...he sees you when you're sleeping, and knows when you're awake...

Apparently Santa Google was out riding last night with a sleigh full of 'page rank'. My main teaching site was actually given a lower rank in Google-land. It had come out of 'the sandbox' after a few months with (for whatever it's worth) a PR of three; a couple months later, Google determined that it was really only a two after all. S'all good! Papa Google was quite generous with some of my Squidoo pages: "You've got some three's there I see (ho ho ho) -- oh and, here's a five..." Well, that's apt to be a mistake, I thought. So then I typed "monotropism" into the Google search box and did rather a double take, to see what position my own lens appeared in on that relatively obscure search term. I've said that for personal reasons -- far more so than pragmatic ones -- I wanted/needed people to see that particular lens. On this particular day, Google seems to be obliging on that matter.

There have been people on Squidoo who have been so very supportive of that monotropism lens -- comments and angel blessings. There is a line in that lens that is so very true: If you can visualize pleasure as dependent on momentum -- an endless path in one direction or an endless orbit around one thing -- then you come a long way toward understanding.

Reflection: 'Play Dates' For My Blog?

I am not sure whether I just arranged 'play dates' for my blog or signed it up for summer camp. I wrote in Out and About in the World of the decision to make this blog fully public and searchable, and in For an Audience of One, of feeling that, if I was going to be perpetually inspired to do my best work for an audience of one or two, then I'd do well to try and harness the products and let them serve me in more pragmatic ways...

If you've ever gotten the impression that my more business-oriented websites hold this one in disdain -- oh, no, they adore this blog; they just wonder what others (clients, colleagues) would say. (I've known human beings to think along very similar lines.) Anyway, the websites had a meeting today. They felt they had a superb community program for this blog to enroll in. "Evening Nigh" they said, "How do you feel about going on some 'play dates', doing show and tell -- that sort of thing?"

Translated, that means that I decided it would be good to enroll in a creativity challenge, where my blog could discuss and share creative works with other bloggies. (I do want to note that the other websites view this one as a most valuable contributing member of the 'family business', and they very much want it networking and making friends -- however, they don't all necessarily very much want it networking and making friends with their friends.)

Note: This picture is a Creative Commons piece -- thought it would do well for an article with a children's lit/storybook theme, then also decided to use it here.

Reflection: More Horse-Themed Metaphor

I'm contemplating why it is I've sometimes impressed people as passive. Partly it's because that strong will comes out in such narrow areas, while in most areas of life, I'm -- if not exactly lackidaisical -- at least without strong opinion or urge to act. I think that false perception results also from my willfulness being turned inward. Have you ever noticed that people who get in yelling debates on the bus never convince each other of their arguments? They always have exactly the same opinions at the end as they did at the beginning. It's so obvious: No matter how sure a person feels about being right about something, they still can't exert their will on others -- that's dangerous as well as futile. Lying on the couch and crying, on the other hand is merely futile. Those tears, though, are generally perceived as passivity and not as inverted will.

Someone dear once said that his bouts of self-aggression were expressions of inverted anger. Well, outward anger was no more apparent in him than that strongwilled streak in me -- indeed the suggestion could seem laughable. I'm thinking of the ways in which we're similar and the ways in which we're different. There really isn't a lot of anger in me -- but ah, that streak of willfullness... So here's my next horse metaphor: Just because one thinks they should have the reins, it doesn't mean they're mad at the horse.

Reflection: My Widget's Under the Weather

I checked in on the website of the "Link Within" widget a few minutes ago -- I'm referring of course to that nice widget that makes the cute little thumbnails under each post. The message still said that the site was down for maintenance, and to try back in a few hours. I was glad for that much news. You see, I grew concerned when my friend, the widget, up and vanished.

The widget is hosted by a company that probably has aspirations to make money someday, but right now seems to be at the stage of just saying to people, "Psss... Look! Widget! Cool, huh?" Cool, indeed! I would not want to see the enterprise fail. I am concerned that their site might be seriously under the weather. If I had a way to do so, I would send the widget a get well soon card. My blog here is feeling a little glum today, missing its widget. It did not even feel motivated to put up a picture. Sure, it has other widgets, but it is so very fond of that particular one. Pictures just aren't as much fun, it expressed, when you can't share them with a special widget someone.

PS The widget is back, and my blog is again feeling inspired.

Reflection:Riding a White Horse With a Toaster Oven

I made this blog searchable along about September 23. Posts before that time don't show up as thumbnails in the Link Within widget. A few are linked to there on the side under the heading "Favorite Soapbox Posts". Today, I'm posting a link to some off-site writing, and I'm also including a snippet from an older post:

"Being monotropic... it's as if you got born with a giant power cord growing out of your back. Plugged into an outlet -- a suitable obsession -- your energy is high and the level of drive and dedication can seem surreal. Unplugged... well, appliances just don't work so well unplugged.

Being monotropic can mean there are times when you're growing up that people see you lying there immobile, and imagine you need a knight-in-shining-armor. But it can be hard to be a knight-in-shining-armor to a person who runs on obsession the way an appliance runs on electricity. It's a little like hoisting a toaster oven up onto a white horse and expecting it to start doing something."

When I write blog posts, I strive to make them reasonably short and snappy, as well as colorful. My Squidoo writing sometimes goes into much more depth on a particular subject. "Making Sense of Monotropism" is the most complete piece of writing I've done on this subject. It's the 10th Squidoo lens I've written, and the 2nd one I asked for a "Squid Angel Blessing" for. Maui's lens has garnered blessings from several 'Squid Angels'. The angels have more clout than regular members, and the ability to boost a page's lensrank a little -- the page may then be seen by more people.

I do want people to see this. My friends -- there are some friends out there -- will you be my squid angels, too?