Moving March

AM Devine2 Comments

To put it mildly, I don’t know how people move with any regularity – then again – I’ve moved three times, that I actually remember, in probably 20 years. And they were: 1998, 2011, and 2012. And the moves in 2011 and 2012 weren’t really complete moves. I was moving to my first actual apartment and didn’t end up actually taking absolutely everything I owned. The 2012 move was me returning to my parent’s house – so again, not a super rushed move, as I knew it was happening for a while before it went down. And I managed the last half of it while driving 3 hours each way to help train a new store’s employees.

I would not do THAT again willingly.

I’ve reached a point where I realize that I need to do a whole lot of purging this move. A whole lot. Almost 80% of the things in my parent’s house that “belong” to me probably needs to be thrown out.

Some of it precedes the original move from Kentucky to Tennessee – and I honestly do not know why it has reappeared from my parent’s stash of stuff – as I fully expected a good half of it to have gotten thrown out years ago.

My mother will deny she’s a hoarder until she’s blue in the face, but she’s wrong. She is a hoarder – how else do you explain the fact that I’m being handed a tote of toys that should have been thrown out /years/ ago every time I see her now.

I know I’ve got the gene, and I’m generally losing against it. I’m slowly working on that, but it is exceedingly difficult. But, unlike the rest of my family, I’ll admit I’ve got the problem, and I also admit that I am working on it as best I can.

Some of the stuff that she’s brought me, I might save, most of it, though, probably not. I’m trying to limit everything I take with me now because I don’t want to have all the closets stuff full of totes anymore. I want to be able to use my dresser like you’re supposed to.

Part of my problem comes from the initial move that I remember – we went from a 4,000+ square foot house to less than 2,500 square feet, and we didn’t really get rid of a whole lot of stuff during the move.

In Kentucky, I’d had a 14 by 16 or so bedroom with dual closets, and a massive playroom that was comfortably twice that. Both my mother and father had offices in the house, we had a guest room and a dining room, an eat-in kitchen with a command center desk area (before those were even a thing in common house plans) and a massive living room.

In the Tennessee house, I’ve lived in for nearly 20 years, they had to share a single desk in a corner, what was my bedroom is 10 by 11 with a single closet and had to hold everything that belonged to me. Our kitchen was half the size, our dining room, foyer, living room, and office nook all shared the same area as an open layout. Don’t get me wrong, open layouts are great – when you plan for them with your furniture purchases. My mother didn’t have an open layout in the custom built home we had in Kentucky – so we had too much furniture for the open plan, though that didn’t stop my mother from stuffing several more furniture pieces in there over the years.

What does this mean concerning the things I’d owned? It means that quite a lot of it got put away in areas I couldn’t get to – and often due to the amount of furniture in my room, I couldn’t actually utilize everything like I should have been able to. Then, in about 2004, while I was on a people to people student ambassador program trip abroad, my mother gutted my room and redid it. On the one hand, I’d been wanting it done. On the other hand, I’d expected to be there. Coming home to that was one hell of a shock, and actually made me hate having anyone in my space without me there. I still have that issue now. I hate it when people are in my space, and I have very little trust for guests or visitors in my home.

Going forward, I hope to have the largest amount of “clutter” being my crafty things. Sewing, crochet, embroidery, chainmaille, calligraphy, paper arts, my bullet journal supplies, etc. I’m naturally inclined to be artsy, and it bugs me when I don’t have access to the items I need for crafting due to not having enough space to having a working craft area.

And while we’re at it, I’m rather hoping that we’ll be in this rental for a few years – that way when we move again, it can be into a custom built home, with all the amenities that we would like to have.

It’s a Catto Life

AM Devine

And boy oh boy are my cattos angry at me.

They saw the vet for the first time last Friday and got excellent bills of health. (For having not been to the vet in their entire lives, I consider that a win.)

They’re at the vet’s again today for their neutering, and microchipping.

And let me tell you, they were not pleased to be stuffed into their oversized taxi again this morning. Nor was Inkspot, (my fatto catto), willing to eat last night – I don’t think he’s had anything but a few licks of the medicated food and a couple of treats since like 8pm last night. I dropped him and his brother, Nicholas, off at the vet’s office about 7:20am this morning, and they were angry enough at me that they didn’t “talk” to me until I tilted the taxi up to say bye for the day to them.

And of course, Sunday night and Monday night I got maybe 4 or so hours of sleep each night, so I feel rather dead. (Venti Starbucks all but injected into my system, and I still feel dead.)

Of course, cat mama side is exceedingly worried to have left them at the vet’s office by themselves. But I need to be at work all day, well, most of the day, so that I can afford to pay for the vet services today.

I’m also going to get them microchipped today, which will help prevent me from freaking out as majorly about them possibly getting out. I mean, I’ll still freak out about it, but at least I’ll have a chance of getting my two little dorks back if they do.

Either way, today I’m going to be a bit of a mess all day because I don’t like it when they’re basically not being jerks at the house.

Catto updates will probably be had over on Instagram, once they’re back being pests in my car on the ride home.

 

(and as usual, bless the scheduling thing, it’s so blasted useful.)

MARCHHHHHHHHH 2018

AM Devine

So it has been an incredibly long time since I so much as looked at a personal writing project for any length of time. (This blog post is divided into three sections, Mundane and Writing and This Blog – Skim for the color you’re really here for, if you want to skip around.)

Mundane
The last 5 months have been an incredibly chaotic time – and while I did take part of NaNoWriMo it was with a much smaller goal than I’d originally planned, and with a lot more free time than expected. Though, while I had free time galore, I didn’t have any sort of true freedom. As at the beginning of NaNoWriMo 2017, my company laid off all of my department, choosing instead to have that service taken over by a company that specialized in that sort of thing. The change over took place about two weeks before our last days at the desk, and I 100% question the strength of that decision – we got to watch disasters go down in real time and get chewed out by customers for the change.

I spent most of November job hunting so much that I was running out of new job postings on several websites and in the end it was a “who you know” situation that tipped me off to a fantastic job being posted in early December. I applied, got interviewed and would likely have gotten hired on the spot had it not been for my connection. Either way, I was still hired that day, and I’ve been working full time since. (Well, except for the flu week, but I think I’m forgiven for that.)

I’ve been with the company for a little over 3 months now, and I’m enjoying the new reality of being in the lower middle class, which no one in my immediate family has been since before my 19th birthday. (My mother’s pink slip was issued on my birthday, which is how I can so precisely pinpoint that.)

I’m also enjoying the fact that given my competence level at my job, I’m already up for a bit of a promotion like thing. (From mere content writer + product additions specialist to social media manager + content writer.) The downside is that I’ve somehow set the bar so high that we’re having trouble finding a second content writer that’s capable of playing in excel files and handling a lot of technical details, as well as writing some fantastic articles. (Let me tell you, we’ve seen some janky English in our hunt.)

I’m also learning a great deal about SEO and being a better writer for non-fiction things, and even slowly learning some code.

My mundane life is finally looking like it’s worth something, and I’m glad.

I’m also in the process of moving right now, which makes life even more chaotic. Especially since they’re doing construction on my commute and it can take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to get from my home to the office. Trying to come home and pack for a couple of hours is utterly exhausting – on top of the fact that I’m already exhausted from working all day.

My mental health? It’s holding for now, since with my layoff, I lost health insurance, and the American health care marketplace failed me. (I technically had insurance, but never got an insurance card, so could never use it. I paid nearly $700 for that insurance and couldn’t use it at all.) Thankfully, the company I now work for offers health insurance and I’ll have the ability to sign up for it sometime in the next week or so.

Writing
And finally, onwards to my writing…. What you’ve either skipped everything between the last mention of my writing and now to read, or you’ve stuck around this long to read.

I haven’t been doing a whole lot of personal writing these last few months. I either was too stressed out about how I was going to pay the bills, or I’ve been exhausted and haven’t felt like writing.

I haven’t put the pen down, though, and I’d like to try and get something out this year. Whether or not I’ll be able to do this is currently beyond my knowledge. I’m going to try.

I’m having to adapt my writing times to be quite different from what I’m used to, as I’ve gotten a significant other and we’re working on living together. My needs and wishes when it comes to my writing life don’t always line up with his needs and wishes, and I’m hoping we can find a balance once there’s less travel time between home and work. Otherwise, I fear our carpooling idea will never be more than two days a week, as I’ll end up going to Starbucks or Panera Bread to write for an hour or two at least twice a week after work.

I have this awful suspicion that my writing time will actually be 5:30-6am Monday through Friday. But, that is better than nothing at all.

I hope that I’ll get back some of my serious typing speed and will be able to add at least a thousand words per day to my various personal writing projects. 1k per day should allow me the opportunity to get one or two through the beta and editing stages, and possibly all the way through to the published stage. I don’t know which of my stories I might put more pressure on to finish, I’ve got so many – though I do hope to get something that’s at least 20,000-50,000 words from the O’Mally’s Station universe out this year. That way I’ll get a tiny check from Amazon for a few months.

I might be able to get one of my steampunk stories out too, it’s just a matter of seeing what I’m capable of, and hopefully, being able to avoid the pitfalls of the combination of mental disorders I have.

Most of my other creative pursuits will probably fall on the weekends – as with our rental home, we’re getting an absolutely fantastic crafting space. It’ll be big enough for us to each have two work tables, as well as two chests of drawer-like things, my sewing desk, a bookcase, my big round chair, and I hope to be able to put my red chest into the room as well. (The little red chest was always used as a footrest with the big round chair until I needed it in another room and couldn’t also move the chair into the other room.)

If you’re wondering: I’ve been known to sew, crochet, knit, and paint. I also sometimes do calligraphy. I’ve occasionally dabbled in jewelry making, and hope to pick up chainmaille making. And yes, I did say “most of my other creative pursuits” would be there, which leads to the notion that there are others. I also do some minor graphic design, and I’m learning how to code with Laravel and PHP, so I can make my websites better than ever. Those pursuits and that computer will be in the office/library with my enormous collection of books, more bookcases than people realize I own and an infinite collection of coffee mugs. (Which I think I’ve just realized I collect.)

As for this blog?
I’ve had this domain registered since 2006-2007, (I can’t remember which, to be honest), and I have no intentions of letting it go anytime soon. Yes, the history is not that old, I couldn’t afford hosting for a couple of years, at one point I just flat out nuked the blog, and at one point my original domain registrar was all but holding the domain hostage. I’m with GoDaddy for all my website needs now and am much happier.

Everyone says to find your niche to make your blog work well, but to be honest, with my ADHD – that’s exceedingly difficult. I can’t choose just one topic to focus on, or even two or three. So this blog will never have a particular niche, and I’m fine with that. Besides, I’m managing to stay hyper-focused on the niche with my mundane work writing, so I think even if the ADHD meds worked well enough to rein me in and leave my creativity intact, I don’t know that I’d have any focus left to put AScribedWorld into a niche.

What I can tell you, is this: I’m going to try to make sure that there’s at least one new blog post per month and that maybe they’ll even have a pretty picture or two. Probably not having pictures with this one, as it’s rather bloody hard to get my internet to behave at the house right now. I’m not sure if it’s the mothership computer, if it’s me, or if it’s actually the provider because both my phone and the mothership have a bloody tonne of issues staying connected to the outside world via wifi. And yet loremaster, my iPad, the iPod touch, the tv, and both the PlayStation 3 and 4 don’t seem to have the same issues.

I’m hoping to document my learning new things, and hopefully share whatever tips and tricks I learn along the way.

(also, bless wordpress for letting me schedule this blasted thing, ’cause I would have 100% forgotten to post it today.)

I had made plans, dammit

AM Devine

I had made a great plan for myself and then life promptly kicked me in the ass.

Needless to say, those plans had a bit of a wrench thrown in them by my slowly adapting to the new meds I’m on for my various issues. The ADHD meds have given me enough blocks that I am having trouble writing again, and of course it happened right as I was planning to put nose to the grindstone and bust out three novellas in 9 months. As of right now, They’re being pushed back with the release of the omnibus being aimed for halloween of next year. On the original plan, the omnibus was meant to be released in July of next year – but I’m less than 10 days from the first planned release date and I’m nowhere near ready with the first story’s complete second draft. At this point in time, I should be formatting and getting the cover finalized, and I’m absolutely not ready to even say it’s a solid draft, much less a complete one.

I’m worried that my writing creativity has mostly dried up with the adhd meds, whereas my artsy creativity seems to have fully reappeared. As such, I have actually started poking around in photoshop again and I will be thoroughly honest, I’d forgotten exactly how much I love to do that sort of thing.

As such, I have started a redbubble shop, and I can be found at https://www.redbubble.com/people/amdevine – I make a lot of moons, and text based things, though I am about to start getting into geometric patterns. I am looking into a zazzle shop as well, though Zazzle’s uploading system is a piece of shit, and it’s really hard to tell what the hell the products are while you’re trying to set them up for sale.