2015 October Platform Challenge: Halfway Mark, #PlatChal

So, there’ve been Twitter chats and poetry. Robert Lee Brewer has ordered us to, “Just Do It,” as the famous slogan for shoes says. This works for writing and I’ve been writing, so it must work.

I’ve decided to combine the lot of these, as we’re passing by mid month here, and I can certainly take a stab at writing poems about:

science

and

swings or swinging.

It’s National Poetry Month, but that might not be the same here in Canada, as with so many of these days. Until I can get the “CAPTCHA” read for me, I am not really doing this challenge with the rest of them anyway. If this is just for myself, I will go on my own timeline.

Poem About Science

Formulas which prove what science can do,

I hated science in school.

What did it do for me anyway? What did it all mean?

Periodic table went on for infinity, or so it seemed.

Science is everywhere, everything.

Particles, microbes, things you can not see.

What else is new? This is my world.

Telescopes, microscopes. Both beyond me.

Biology. Medicine. Chemistry. Astronomy.

“Omy.” Oh my!

I wouldn’t be here without it. You wouldn’t be here without it. She, he, they wouldn’t be here without it.

It’s everything and nothing and all of it combined.

Poem About Swings:

During the day or during the night.

Mattered not.

Buckled in tight. No roller coaster for me.

I finally felt free.

Up and over the park, the fair, the world.

In the bright sunshine I’d glide. Up and into the dark sky I would fly.

Feet dangling. Hands gripped tight.

My breath would be taken. My stomach would dive. With or without sight.

Perfection: Jaggled Little Pill Turns Twenty, #TBT

It must have been important, if I was being taken out of class for this.

Oh no! Not again. What did I do now?

I wasn’t in trouble, not in the usual sense of the term. I just wasn’t trying hard enough, I guess, or so I was lead to believe.

I needed to focus. Why didn’t I want to go out for recess and play with my friends? Why wasn’t I putting up my hand and participating in class?

I should have been in heaven. After two years, I was finally reunited with my best friend. This year I had all my friends in my class. Everything should have been perfect, but everything was going wrong.

These little talks were expected to inspire me to try harder, I suppose, but until a real diagnosis could be offered to explain my behaviours, I was considered falling behind and possibly unable to keep up.

I’d done well, these past six years, but maybe trying to remain in school with my sighted peers was just not working out anymore.

PERFECT

It’s the quality or state of being perfect.

Freedom from fault or defeat, flawlessness.

The quality or state of being saintly.

Definition of “perfection” – Merriam-Webster

You know how it is said that nobody’s perfect?

I know we can all relate. We know we can never achieve it, but we keep trying, we keep on hoping anyway.

“Run another lap, once more around the school yard.”

“Get up. It’s not good for your system to do that. You should remain standing, for your muscles.”

My gym teacher barked his orders at me, but all I could feel was the cool damp grass against my cheek, right in the place I had collapsed, after running laps had taken every ounce of energy I possessed. I couldn’t move. I felt near death. I was failing.

It’s been twenty years since “Jagged Little Pill” was released.

Check out the guest post I wrote for a music blog, just last weekend, to find out why “Perfect” became my ultimate favourite of all the songs on Alanis’s breakout album:

Jingle Jangle Jungle – Perfection (Guest post)

Let’s go back there, to the mid nineties: 1995/96 to be exact and my failure to do anything right, no matter how hard I tried.

People didn’t do it on purpose. They didn’t intend to pummel me with expectations and demands on my energy and on my abilities. They wanted me to be a part of my class and the year, to get good grades and thrive socially, but I was barely keeping my head above water. It was a year of confusion and I lived it in a fog of fear and stress and pain.

I was twelve years old when I first heard it. It was unlike anything I’d ever heard, right up there with albums from Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, and Sheryl Crow. These female singer song writers were my idols, my soundtracks to the decade, with all of its ups and downs.

I wondered what had happened to her, why she was so angry, not having experienced anything close to what she seemed to be describing. Romantic love was not yet a concept I could imagine.

She starts the song saying she wishes nothing but the best for him, rumoured to be Joey Gladstone (Dave Coulier) from Full House, but I couldn’t actually believe it.

Then…

I’m here to remind you of the mess you left when you went away.

You seem very well. Things look peaceful. I’m not quite as well. I thought you should know.

It’s so conversational sounding. Yet, so powerful in its raw emotions.

Now, I understand that feeling of betrayal, at the idea of someone you once loved moving on with someone else.

I want you to know, I’m happy for you. I wish nothing but, the best, for you both.

And every time you speak her name, does she know how you told me you’d hold me until you die, till you die, but you’re still alive.

You Oughta Know (Official Video)

Such a roller coaster of emotions that I had yet to experience.

All I knew, in 1996, was that the song had a swear word that, most times, was cut out. Ah, aw, to be young and innocent.

You oughta know. You learn.

I would learn, eventually, yes. I would learn.

🙂

You Learn (Official Video)

You live. You learn.

You love. You learn.

You cry. You Learn. You lose. You learn.

You bleed. You learn. You scream. You learn.

I would bleed and scream and cry. Hundreds of needles. Multiple surgeries.

In this song, she specifically uses the words “jagged little pill”. I was having to take a lot of pills in the nineties, literally, but I would one day learn the metaphorical swallowing of life’s difficult pills she was referring to.

I would live. I would love. I would lose.

Loss of love         would be one of those difficult pills to swallow.

Alanis must have encountered a lot of sexist treatment, but from the sounds of this iconic album, she stood up for herself, no problem.

Her catholic background, growing up in Ottawa, in Canada all make their appearances, in and amongst her thoughts on men, irony, and pills, as jagged as they sometimes are.

🙂

Songs ranged from angry feminist rants, to religious reflection, to sad musings.

What’s the matter, Mary Jane. Tell me. Please be honest, Mary Jane. Tell me.”

In my own head, when I would listen, I would change the name of Mary Jane in the song to Kerry Lynn.

It’s a long way down, on this roller coaster.

–Mary Jane, lyrics

It felt like a roller coaster, but it’s funny how much music can help and just how much it sticks with you, bringing back the memories it was there to first witness as they happened.

I learned about irony from Alanis, even if the song is a little much. It’s a classic, all these years later still.

🙂

Good thing I learned more about what irony means in English class.

Hand in My Pocket (Lyrics)

I’m sane but I’m overwhelmed.

I’m lost but I’m hopeful.

I feel drunk but I’m sober.

I care but I’m restless.

I’m here but I’m really gone.

And what it comes down to, is I haven’t got it all figured out just yet.

I’m green but I’m wise.

I’m sad but I’m laughing.

I’m brave but I’m chicken shit.

But what it comes down to, is that nobody’s got it all figured out just yet.

What it all comes down to my friends, is that we’re gonna be fine, fine, fine.

These flip flopping emotions were, to me, highly relatable.

I was, most often during those years, putting on the bravest of faces through the pain inside. People began to praise my bravery in the shadow of the medical problems I was dealing with, but deep down I felt that chicken shit thing she mentions, from that first time the doctor said the words “needle” and “surgery”.

🙂

Her sad and raging made way for the more hopeful and upbeat.

Head Over Feet (Official Video)

So maybe she had found acceptance and happiness after all, through writing Jagged Little Pill, harmonica playing not withstanding.

😉

Maybe love and peace were possible, throughout all the turmoil and the growing pains.

This gave me hope that things were going to get better.

Last but not least, it had a secret song! How cool was that, back when I was newly discovering CDs? You had to be patient, if you waited after the last song ended, and there it was.

I wouldn’t truly understand her songs about love and relationships, not until much later, but now I sure can.

Your House (Secret Song)

If you never heard this one, never had the patience to wait after the album was technically done, I highly recommend you check it out.

It is full of longing and desperation. Sure, it may be a stockerish song at heart, but it is how we all feel, at one time or another, whether we’d admit it out loud or not like she did.

To listen to the album, in its entirety, go here:

Jagged Little Pill

Thank you, Alanis and JLP, for getting me through the nineties and the hard stuff. You’re still helping.

Letting Go and Continuing to Write Another Day

Last May I read a call for submissions, from an online author’s Facebook group I had recently joined. They said it was for an anthology they were thinking of putting together, for charity, and that people didn’t need to be experienced or professional writers to join in. Sounded like an excellent cause: literacy for children was the thought at the time. I could think of no better cause than that.

I was new to this, thinking this would be the perfect way to get my feet wet, so-to-speak. I felt welcomed with open arms. I thought it could be the perfect opportunity to send a short story in and I started working through some ideas in my head immediately.

As summer progressed the idea took shape in even clearer ways. The storyline grew out of some things I had recently experienced in my own life, but I was attempting to deal with those real-life issues and feelings through the magic of fiction.

I write a lot and I mostly have written memoir over time. A lot of authors say writing memoir makes them feel naked and exposed, but I find fiction does that more for me than anything I’ve ever written about myself outright.

Now that it is mid-January I am trying to stick to really the only sort-of resolution I’ve made since 2015 began a few short weeks ago. I am trying to not feel envious or jealous of what others have and to find the good in my own life, where I currently stand and to not feel angry at what I see that others may have or be doing without me. Then something happened to me last week that left me feeling angry and wounded.

I know. I know. That didn’t take very long at all, did it?
🙂
I actually did it. I have very little to show for any sort of fictional writing, but I wrote a short piece to submit to this charity anthology. Other than the half-way attempt at a novel from 2013s National Novel Writing Month and a few short stories I’ve written on my blog, I have very little to show for the years I let pass me by, but I hoped to start on the road to changing all that.

Unfortunately, things did not work out like I hoped they would. First of all, I found it difficult to communicate with the group of writers who were publishing this anthology, especially over the holidays. This is totally understandable. People are busy and days are hectic and harried.

So then when the new year came and went I had sent several emails, gotten help to make sure I’d sent my story in a format easily edited, but I hadn’t heard back that my story had been edited at all. I still assumed, having kept in some contact over the private Facebook group about this anthology, that everything would work out somehow. I guess I was being naive.

I received an online contract from one of the authors in charge and I sent it back, all filled out. I wasn’t making any money from this. I didn’t want any. I only wanted to be included in something with a group of other writers, just a way to get my work out there amongst others, for the experience of joining something alone. The contract wasn’t perfect, but it promised my story would be one amongst the others in the anthology and that I would receive one e-copy for myself.

Someone else, with much more experience than myself, they would be handling everything else. I only had to write the story and they would see that it got published with the others in the group, on the online ebook selling sites such as Amazon. I knew, from others who had recently done it, that the formatting and publishing of an ebook on Amazon is difficult and confusing. I was glad to have my story included and this first time I didn’t have the stress of trying to figure all that other stuff out.

There was to be a big online release party on the weekend and as far as I knew, I would be a part of it, but I wanted to be sure, before I went and told friends and family.

I thought I was getting a short piece of my writing published on a site last spring and I couldn’t help telling people about it; I was so excited. When that did not materialize, I felt let down and disappointed. It had been my fault though. I was the one to jump the gun and rush into speaking about it, before I had any real confirmation, but I figured I would get another chance.

Well this wouldn’t be it.

I decided I needed to confirm so I came right out and asked and was informed that my story was lost, never received, and that they were sorry to tell me I would not be included in the anthology. The timing had never been right and I felt like there was enough blame to go around, me included, but I felt the sting of rejection and mistreatment nonetheless.

This story was a short story I wrote about the roller coaster, the ups and downs, all that love can throw at you and how to move on and turn a new page. Even the title of the anthology seemed to be perfectly fitting and meant to be. That is what it was called and what it was about.

Why should I be upset? This was just some online thing with people I have never met in person. Why did it hurt so much when I heard for certain that I was not a part of it?

I was mad and hurt, in equal measure. I felt toyed with, like a lot of drama and unprofessionalism had gone on behind the scenes somewhere and through no fault of my own. I did not fully understand what had happened and I never will. I had worked hard on my story and had written it about a particularly difficult period of my life, hoping too that the publishing of this story would mean a new page, a fresh start, a blank slate and next chapter in my own life, personally and maybe even a step forward with my writing.

I felt like I had been messed with and treated carelessly. I wanted to complain and whine and vent my frustrations on Facebook, to all who would listen, even those who were celebrating their stories all being published in the anthology that weekend. I got upset all over again when I accidentally heard notifications and statuses about the anthology’s release.

I have sat with these emotions ever since and have tried telling myself I am better off. I know it wasn’t meant to be and I will have future opportunities still to come. I know the important thing is that I wrote it and nobody can take that away from me.

Then negative thoughts entered my mind. The suspicious part of my brain feared that someone somewhere still actually has my story and that they could possibly take it and publish it as their own. I know this isn’t likely. I know the authors involved are still people I have never met in person and that I didn’t really know any of them. They don’t owe me anything and I don’t either.

Even online I feel it, it can be petty. I have realized there can be and there are groups like in real life, like in high school and beyond. I suppose what I wanted was to be a part of something, to feel my writing was receiving some sort of attention and recognition from others. I had to let go of any anger, realizing that I had written something that meant a lot to me. That hadn’t changed.

I believe in taking the good and the positive from any situation and learning and growing from it. I have felt a bit lost and adrift lately and since the start of 2015 even more so.

I have found a lot of interesting blogs and bloggers, writers and authors, but online is still a mystery to me, a place where circles of people hang out. I see it all the time. I wonder how these circles form and how they keep going. I see it because I have a blog. I can’t avoid it, but it is important to remember that there is a big bad world not to be missed outside my own door. Sometimes it’s just easier to hide out where I have been, but I know I will move forward and on to experience new places and new people, perhaps even over the coming year.

So much bad stuff in the news and these latest above experiences notwithstanding…I woke this week to a truly wonderful thing going on online, mostly through social media and blogging. I wrote about it the other day. If you missed it or are a blogger who might be interested, check it out here:

https://kkherheadache.wordpress.com/2015/01/14/my-voice-amungst-the-thousands/

It’s hard for me to understand why people do what they do. A lot of it, although often called selfless or good deedish, still comes off feeling disingenuous and unauthentic. I wonder if anyone ever does anything without expecting something for themselves, deep down. Even the best people with the best intentions, it seems to me, are ultimately hoping to get something out of it.

This isn’t a bad thing; however, I have a hard time with it. Perhaps that is why, online or off, I am not making a lot of money, certainly not of my own. I can’t feel like I am selling myself. I feel dirty and uncomfortable, like I am not being true to who I am. It doesn’t seem to sit well with me.

I know writing is most often an attention-seeking endeavour. It screams, if you choose to share it, “LOOK AT ME!” and I do play a part in this dance.

I guess I just haven’t found a way to use my blog to sell something to people or to sell myself as a product. I have developed a brand for myself: the Her Headache of this blog and the Insightful Wanderer more recently still, but I can’t quite seem to fit comfortably snug in either role, not entirely anyway.

Sounds fickle, I know.

Finally, I just wanted to share the following link, an interview below with a writer and blogger I’ve followed for some time now. She is a Canadian, a mother and wife, and a writer. I have been attempting to focus in on a selection of Canadian literature and writers when I can find it. This interview is the purest explanation of what being a writer means, why it’s important, and how life feels without that outlet. I couldn’t agree more with Carrie Snyder and her thoughts:

Carrie Snyder’s Advice to an Aspiring Writer

I want things too. I want, ultimately, to be recognized for the thing I love and for which makes me whole. I want to be able to support myself through this thing.

Is that possible or a far-away pipe dream?

It isn’t easy. In the end I will need to let go of the relative security of the online world and hopefully show what I can do to real people, people I can speak in person with, who I can look directly in the face. I declare here that I will find a way to do this. I have taken steps and I will take more of them. I will not let myself grow bitter and disillusioned. I just won’t!

My Glass and the Roller Coaster

Well here I am again.

🙂

It’s been several weeks since I participated in the

Redefining Disability Awareness Challenge,

having taken a bit of a break over the holidays.

Now it is a brand new year and I am ready to get back to it because I truly enjoy taking part in this series.

***

So here goes nothing, with the first Memoir Monday of 2015 and my reply to this prompt from the challenge:

Describe your baseline, or an average day.

Life can be a roller coaster sometimes. Sometimes you feel the thrill of being on top of the world and the rush of the loops. Those moments which can cause your stomach to drop out, the twists and the turns, they can make the ride all worth it. This exhilaration can be a feeling you never want to end.

Other times the ride may get stuck up there. Maybe you weren’t expecting it, were unprepared, when the ride turned you up-side-down. Or the deflation of knowing the excitement of the ride is over can pull you down to the ground.

I wrote, in previous posts for this challenge, about my darkest thoughts and my best moments, but really I am a nice mix of the glass half empty/half full.

As a metaphor I like the image of a glass of liquid to represent one’s outlook on life. I think about it often, with the troubles I sometimes face, allowing it to clearly balance my thoughts and to bring perspective.

A lot of the time though I am somewhere in the middle. I like to say that my glass can be either half empty or half full, depending on when you ask me, but that I am constantly spilling.

I sometimes hold it crooked or walk to fast. Life is messy and I make my share of messes.

I love roller coasters, but I don’t tend to be one myself. I believe in balance in most things, in life.

Sure, I have my moments of over-dramatics, like everyone else, but I guess today’s post should be the perfect one for me because I like to remain in the middle somewhere.

This could be called average or baseline I suppose. Most days I just live my life like anyone else would and there’s nothing much to tell. Pretty boring, because that’s what average amounts to.

We should be careful with such words as “average” and “normal” though.

They aren’t a bad thing. I am usually even-tempered, even with some of the thoughts and emotions I have inside.

I can be passionate, when I really care about something, but on a day like today, I let the fact that it is the first full week in the long and cold month of January sink in.

I stay warm and I write. I think and plan and imagine the coming year and my future. I don’t let anything get me particularly down and I try not to get my hopes up too high.

The past several months have been a roller coaster, I would say, even for a mild-mannered person like myself. The holidays were a whirlwind and emotional for me.

On a day like this I try to take stock of my life and I keep my visual impairment in perspective. I assess my strengths and my accomplishments and I try not to get ahead of myself, as there are still 360 days or so left for me to ride the roller coaster again.

***

So which one would you say you are: glass half empty or half full? OR are you somewhere in the middle, like I am?

Stay tuned:

What are the biggest challenges that you face in regard to disability?

The answer to that question…one week from today.

Happy 2015 and may it bring plenty redefining of disability, a nice mix of life’s roller coaster ride, and fewer challenges for us all.