Costcochondritis

 Well, basically out of nowhere, I decided to jump back into the short story submissions game, for as long as my mental health can take it at least. The thing that broke me out of my inactivity in the area was watching 1917, which poignantly reminded me of my vaguely WWI inspired story. It's like the realization, Oh, yeah, I'm sitting on like four short stories in various states of finality! Dang! hit me in the face. It came roughly alongside that it's probably not worth it to belabor the editing to the extent I have been, lest I edit any sense of naturalness out of my prose, probably. I feel like I can't tell the difference between good and bad in my writing any more, unless the bad is there in huge, grating quantities, so I guess I just have to hope it is any good.

So, just got the first rejection letter for the short story mentioned above and immediately re-submitted it elsewhere, then stared at the dark kitchen window for a while, dissociating for some reason. I'm trying Action and Commitment Therapy, which is all about not tuning in to the radio station of blithering self-hating BS that is always occupying at least part of my brain's wavelengths. It's been helping, I think, and it's a big reason why I'm writing this blog post. It's deliciously tempting to go off and hate myself right now, play Skyrim and watch crappy anime until it's suddenly 3 AM and my body is totally mummified with pain, but am I feeling that for any good reason? No, not really, I should expect like a thousand more rejection letters before I get any foothold here, and all I can do is be myself and do my best. So, best to do the directly opposite thing to my self hate, which is write a little however I can, such as by updating my blog. Then, go to bed.

I guess the most interesting personal development in my currently quite restricted life is I seem to have randomly developed costochondritis (which I am forever pronouncing incorrectly), an inflammation of the cartilage attaching ribs to sternum. Apparently it's super common for people with fibromyalgia to develop it, which makes intuitive sense to me, despite the fact that no one knows what fibromyalgia really is.

I bring it up not to complain, but because it's all been so weirdly hilarious to me. At first I thought I was having more pre-cordial catch moments then usual, then it settled into all this stinging pain at the center of my chest, clearly coming from my ribcage. Tim and I had to go to Costco that evening (we went super late to avoid people) and I remember trying to put together the shopping list, eat dinner, etc., and laughing a lot at how ridiculous the pain was, this melodrama of my body, which stacks on misfortunes like the plot of a Lemony Snicket book.

(A note on the pain, too -- it's not that it's ridiculously painful. I'd put it at like a 6 on the pain scale most times, though that first night it got quite intense. It's a perfect example of something I've been contemplating lately, which is how the quality of pain is so different from its number. This weird, 20-needles-in-my-cartilage-feeling is so hilariously awful, but simultaneously kind of pleasantly distracting, spicy, and fun compared to the dull ache that runs down my legs sometimes, which, while only being at like a 4 or 5, can wear me down over the course of a day like coarse sandpaper. I have no idea if this makes sense, it gets so hard to write about pain when you're in pain.)

Well, we went to Costco, I felt like my chest wanted to pop open like a cabinet, I took muscle relaxers and ibuprofen at bed time and since then the pain is generally not constant. It just flares up randomly, often making me laugh. The best part is that since I discovered what it probably after we came back Costco, it's Costcochondritis!

Okay, time to stop rambling about pain and remember this is a writing blog.

Other than the short story thing, I've started in on my worldbuilding project, using the template I posted below. Well, mostly using it. I've found a couple more categories were necessary, including who lives in an area. I also came up with the cool idea of listing the challenges an environment presents, then listing how they are addressed. So I'm doing this for a canyon/plateau area in my story, which necessitated a lot of research into the Grand Canyon, since that's the only canyon anyone cares enough about to provide much information on. I enjoyed that, I just have to move over a small hump now of deciding what domesticated plants are in the area. I might make up one or two, just because I can.

I've continued adding to my NaNoWriMo manuscript. It's hilariously bad, so the less said about it the better. We'll all look back on it some day and laugh.

I'm trying to let myself be bad at things. I picked up acrylic paints today and took another shot at a painting I hadn't been able to make work ages ago. The whole process felt god awful but I think the result is fine, at the very least. Maybe I will put up a picture if the finished result looks any good.

The actually good-looking thing I've been working on is a series of creatures I'm calling gnomes. I'm considering making them into stickers and selling them. I couldn't expect to turn a profit really, but it would be fun.

I made myself an elaborate New Years' resolution, which involves keeping up my writing quota from last year (writing 6x a week at least), adding in reading 5x a week, drawing 3x a week, and working my way up to meditating 3x a week for 10 minutes or more at a time.

As a result, I'm moving through books a little faster. I finished Settlers: Mythology of the White Proletariat before the 2020 ended, actually, and absolutely loved it. All I'll say about it for now is that white people should really read it, even if it hurts. Sure can't hurt as much as the pain of people who have been oppressed by a settler colonialist state for centuries.

I started something much lighter after this: Learned Pigs & Fireproof Women, which is a piecemeal history of entertainers through Western history. So far I've read about the titular learned pigs, as well as horses of knowledge, people who would write with their feet, Matthew Buckinger, Malini, and so on. It's fun, but Ricky Jay is using some terribly outdated language in some places, which is unpleasant and jarring. Even though the author doesn't seem to be deliberately contemplating it, this book has me thinking about how often these entertainments are people commodifying/being commodified for their disability/different ability. I've definitely deeper thoughts about this, but most of them while trying to sleep. Maybe I will come back with more some day.

I also started reading Roots of Strategy, which is a collection of historical war manuals. I'm reading Vegetius at the moment. It's dreadfully boring, but necessary stuff to know for worldbuilding purposes, as well as the fact that I plan on writing about war a whole bunch.

I finished The Fellowship of the Ring and am on The Two Towers. I haven't much to say about it except that I just read the scene where Grima Wormtongue gets thrown out, and there's this hilarious moment where I guess he just lies on the floor for a while.

Tim and I got some Christmas money from a relative, so I used my portion of it to order myself a little perfume (Womanity, which is a cisnormative name for a perfume that smells like vagina, Seminalis, which smells like semen, and Stercus, which smells like feces. Team with the theme.), and three books, all non-fiction. I'm excited about all of them. There's Tommy Boys, Male Lesbians and Ancestral Wives which is about lesbian practices in Africa (unfortunately written by white women, but I'll take what I can get). I also got a copy of I Am The Grand Canyon, which is about the Havusupai people, and a copy of Regine Pernoud's Joan of Arc. I'll probably read the Grand Canyon one first, but I so badly just want to read them all at once some how.

Well, I should go the heck to sleep. I feel a little less randomly and pointlessly defeated. With any luck, I'll be back at it again at Krispy Kreme tomorrow.