Sarasvati - Of Art and Knowledge

If there was any lingering delusion that autumn wasn't here already, it got blown away this morning, when the temperature dipped as low as it's been thus far: a mere 5 degrees Celcius. The nights are cold enough to really make me appreciative of a nice thick blanket or comforter. The afternoons are warmer, but there's still that particular kind of chill on the breeze that makes you shiver no matter how warm the sunshine.

With that all in mind, I bundled up this morning when I walked my daily three miles.

Well, I say "daily", but I've actually been slack on my walking goals over the weekend. Partly because I spent a good deal of Saturday hanging out with Cass, and Sunday was a day pretty much devoted to staying indoors and watching Rei play Ocarina of Time, watching a movie, and then curling up in bed with old episodes of Ranma 1/2 to keep us company. We did go out, but it was a short walk (a little less than 2 miles) to get some cake.

Tomorrow's going to contain a lot of walking, I'm sure. Not only will I have to walk uptown to get rent money from my bank account (1.5 miles), but then I'll walk from there to the north end (about 2 miles, I'm estimating) to pick up a few groceries, and then home again (1 mile). That's more walking than I normally do, but it all needs to be done, and it'll help me catch up on my weekly goal for HealthMonth. I haven't been doing too badly with those goals, but this weekend's slackness did put me a bit behind schedule, so I'm glad to have a good excuse to make up for that.

Fortunately, that should only take me a couple of hours, so if I leave early enough, I'll still have time to come home and make another batch of baked beans for supper. I want to make some multigrain bread, too, but I'm not sure if I'll leave that until Wednesday, to give me something specific to do on that day. I know I want to make a loaf of bread, and I also thought that using some leftover sausages to make some little sausage-and-cheese buns would be nice, too. Nicely portable, good warm or cold, and handy for Rei to take for lunch if he likes them enough.

Maybe on Thursday I'll try to scrub the rust off the muffin tins (they got rusty thanks to a ceiling leak in the kitchen, and I haven't had the patience to scrub them clean yet) and then make a batch of honey bran muffins for snacks. I might see if Cass's offer to give me some old bananas is still good, and make a loaf of banana bread too, just for fun. I've never made it before, but I do like eating it!

And with the exception of the cheese for the buns, all of these delicious things can be made with what's still in the kitchen, so I don't need to go and waste the little grocery money I have on buying a bunch of ingredients. It makes me feel good to know that I can make so many tasty things without needing to spend a lot of money on them. It just takes a bit of creativity and patience, and I'm learning more how to channel creativity into food and to be more patient with it and myself when I make mistakes. Cooking is good for me in many ways!

Today the only cooking I'll do will be to add another few potatoes and carrots to the leftovers of the turkey-vegetable stew, and some water. I ended up putting too much salt in when I first made it, and adding more vegetables and water to it will end up balancing that out quite nicely, and making the stew last longer. And since we still have plenty of potatoes and carrots in, this gives me a good chance to use them up before they go off.

Oh, for another icon spot so I can add a "Happy Domestic" icon. :p I know that when I get a job again, I'll be buying a paid account here. I really like Dreamwidth, as it's much more like what LJ was before they started to care more about money than pleasing their userbase, and I want to support them where and when I can. Just have to wait until then.

I've managed to keep up both a good amount of reading and writing since the beginning of the month, too, which bodes well for NaNo. I was worried for a while as to whether I could manage to keep pace with my NaNo writing as well as keep reading a good amount for my bookblog, but if this month is any indicator so far, it shouldn't be too big a problem. Even if I end up getting a job next month, so long as I stick to hard copies of books (rather than e-books, I mean) and read over my lunch and breaks as well as during the trip there, I should be just fine.

Making sure I write 1000 words a day this month is also a good warm-up for NaNo. I've been working again on Fractured. I'm only about halfway to where I was when I had to reinstall my operating system and lost everything, but it's going a bit better this time, with the plot and the flow of events, that I don't mind being a little slow with it.

Speaking of NaNo, though, I really ought to devote some time soon to planning out this year's project. I know what I want to write, but I thought that this year I'd actually do more advance work and create a chapter outline plan, so that things flow better and that I have more of an idea of what I'm doing if I end up, say, writing at work. In the past, when I worked in call centres in November, I'd have time to write some in between calls. But given that my main work was at home, I'd often end up starting what I knew I wanted to be the next chapter, whether or not I was done with the previous one. This led to me coming home, updating my writing file, finishing what hadn't been finished of the previous chapter, and trying to finish whatever hadn't been done of the chapter I'd started at work. Things got disjointed easily, phrases got reused far too often, and the whole thing felt like a mess. I didn't enjoy writing that way at all, even though it was a good way to boost my wordcount. So this year I'll do more planning and hopefully be able to avoid such situations in the future.

Of course, if I don't end up getting a job by November, this year may be a repeat of last year, where I met my 50k wordcount goal a little less than halfway through the money, and then couldn't keep myself motivated to write any more even though the story wasn't finished. Chapter outlines will hopefully prevent that from happening again too!

Back in June, I was working on what I thought would end up being an awesome story. I have a good solid plot, well-defined characters, and the writing was going along just great. I'd get a good wordcount on it, not lose steam, and I was having a fun time writing it.

Then I took a break for a writing challenge with Rei. Turns out that didn't end up going anywhere, but it's still vaguely relevent to the story.

Then my computer refused to turn on, and I had to reinstall Windows.

I had neglected, of course, to back up the awesome story I was working on that the time. The file has now, of course, been lost to the flows of time.

I still know the story. I still know the characters. That stuff isn't a problem. The problem right now is that whenever I try to restart the story, to get it all out and bring myself back to where I was before the big crash, I can't find the original feel of it. I've tried rewriting the thing three times now, and I just can't seem to bring back the feel that I had when I did it the first time. The style was write then, the flow was right, and now...

It frustrates me to no end. I had a really good story, and now trying to bring it back just feels flat and wrong.

Maybe I've been thinking about this a lot more than usual lately because as the weather turns cooler, it makes me want to write. Cool weather is always good writing weather, to my senses. It makes me want to sit down and type for hours and get out at least a decent first draft of something. Hot weather never does this to me, probably because it's often too hot for me to feel comfortable doing anything but lying around and moving as little as possible. But with the days turning cool enough that my feet get chilly in the morning and I can no longer get away with just sleeping under a simgle sheet, my fingers get itching to do some writing.

And the one thing I really want to write just isn't happening.

I have been tempted to get another DW account to use as a writing journal. I know I have a terrible habit of compartmentalizing all aspects of my life, trying to keep them apart until there's been so much bleedover that I just can't do it anymore, but when I had a writing journal in the past, I found it to be a good motivator for me. I felt the need to be able to update with something more than, "I meant to write, but didn't."

July is going to be a busy month for me, no matter how I consider it. In some ways, I'm looking forward to it, and other bits of are screaming, "Argh, how did you get yourself into this mess?!"

Reading: I have, at this moment, 9 review copies of books that need my attention. Fortunately 4 of them are geared more to young adults, so they'll be quicker to read than the other 5, but that's still a heft reading requirement. They don't all have to be reviewed by the end of July, but 1 of them is overdue and others I got direct from the small-press authors themselves, so I feel a greater obligation to finish then before others. I should be able to finish at least 1 of those 9 before the end of this month, but that still leaves 8. It'll take more than a single month to get them done with all the other things I have to do.

Writing: Aside from all the prompt and writing challenges I've signed up for, Rei and I have challenged ourselves to an early NaNo-type challenge, which we have called DoJu. (Domestic July Novel Writing Month.) I've got my premise, at least, which is a relief compared to two days ago when I had no idea what I'd write, but that, plus the other challenges... I admit, I finished this past NaNo challenge in 15 days, but that was only because I had no job and nothing else to distract me. Now, I do.

Drawing: The Sketchbook Project stuff should be arriving in a few weeks, which means I ought to take some time to at least do a few drawings for it. Or at least some photos to use as sources for things I can't quite draw yet without a good source image.

Work: No job yet, but it's not like I don't need one desperately. I have an interview tomorrow, for a night auditor position at a nearby hotel, which I think I'd enjoy. They ask for a lot and don't give much back, though, which is a blessing and a curse. They need 4 references as opposed to the standard 2, their idea of full-time hours is 25 a week, but they do pay about $13 an hour, so even on the minimum they'll give me, I could still get by on that pay, especially since they offer benefits. (I need my discount meds! I'm almost out, I can't afford to pay $140 for refills right now, and I do like to keep breathing.)

So even if I don't get that job (and I'm hoping that I do get it), it'll be a busy month with lots of obligation and responsibility. And somewhere in there I'll end up fitting in weekly dinners with a friend, going out for walks and to get groceries and any other job stuff that comes my way, so if you hear me say at any point in July that I don't have anything to do, you all have my permission to give me a smack upside the head.

But for now, since it's not quite July yet, I think I'll take advantage of a little free time and go lie down before going out to take a walk and buy cat food. It was dawn before I got to sleep last night, and I'm really feeling it now.

I don't think I could have asked for a better card, since a good number of these things are kinks I know and love anyway, and won't require much stretching in order to make work in what I write. Dirty talk, consent play, amnesia, chains... These are things I frequently RP, after all.

Now, I just have to decide on a good fandom. Shame I can't do original fiction for this, because then I'd have the most ridiculously easy time with the writing. But I'm sure I'll find a suitable fandom. I dabble in so many, even if I don't often participate actively in them. (But then, that's what writing challenges like this are supposed to help me get better with.)

I've signed up for both kinked and 36_stratagems, as a way of getting back into fandoms that I've lurked in for years but never really participated in. I've had fic ideas lurking in the back of my mind for a long time, but never really did much with them except for wistfully wishing that I could do something with them.

Unemployment has been good for increasing my fandom interest, if nothing else. I've spent more time reading and watching things that I would have passed on previously, using the excuse that I didn't have much time. I envied people who could hold down a full-time job and stay still active in fandom as well as enjoy other hobbies. It was all I could do to hold down a full-time job and finish some knitting projects. Fandom was a luxury I didn't feel I could allow myself.

But having the majority of my days free has changed that. I've had the time to read through book series or watch the entirety of shows, so I'm not playing catch-up as much as I used to.

Changing the tone from light to serious, Quebec is trying to pass a bill to ban burqa and niqab. I am strongly against this bill, personally. There are some disadvantages to wearing niqab is Western society, but most of the women who wear them understand that sometimes they'll have to remove them (eg. for hospital visits, having ID taken, etc.), and deal with it accordingly, prefering to remove the veil in private if they have to. Banning them from wearing them if they want things like health care and legal justice just disgusts me.

Supporters of the bill say that the niqab is a symbol of "backwards oppression of women" and "anachronistic subjugation", and all sorts of other things that sound convincing if you ignore the fact that banning that style of garment is just as restrictive as forcing them to wear one in the first place. Some Christian and Judaic sects believe that women should be subservient to men and thus cover their hair and wear skirts. Shall we ban women from wearing skirts in public, and ban all head covers (including bandanas, baseball caps, and winter hats), in the name of freedom and equality for all?

Most Muslim women in the West wear the hijab, burqa, or niqab because they choose to. They wear it as a sign of respect to their husbands and to their religion. (See the title of this post for an example of why banning religious clothing is just rididulous.) One can say that these women have been brainwashed by the culture of origin, and to some extent that may be true, but one must therefor also look at how we've also been brainwashed by our own culture, to believe that women must conform to our standards or else not be considered women at all.

Denying choice does not promote freedom.