Interlude: End of Year Resolutions

Today when the conversation at work turned to New Year's resolutions, I realized that over the past few years I had made and kept very few New Year's resolutions, but for some reason during December I frequently found myself making and keeping End of Year Resolutions.

By End of Year Resolutions I mean when you see the calender running out and you resolve to accomplish certain tasks before the end of the year. I've found I'm actually quite successful at these (and more inclined to actually make them), so rather than post a list of New Year's Resolutions on January First I've decided to take December Twenty-second--the day after Yule, the day the year officially winds down in my mind--to list some things I intend to accomplish before December Thirty-First slips through my fingertips like so much spilled wine (and believe me, on December Thirty-First I intend to be stumbling and spilling wine):

1) Finish the Conrad and Kirowan story series on this blog, possibly the first post series I will have finished on this blog in a long period of time. This is important to me not just because it's finally getting back to analyzing character trends in serial fiction but it's me getting back to writing and thinking for my own enjoyment rather than just passing along information or refuting idiocy on the internet. I have 4 stories left to blog. The very next Kirowan post will be on this story, if you're interested in joining me. It leans more on the adventure and suspense side than horror, so I don't feel a need to issue a warning.

2) Find my copy of Dreams of Terror and Death-- which appears to have been lost in the move--or make arrangements to have a replacement sent.

3) Go through my books and my LibraryThing Account and make sure they all made it through the move.

4) Finish unpacking from my move to Germany.

5) Clean out the refrigerator, which is beginning to smell rank.

6) Actually get my trash out to the curb in time for pickup (I seriously have 4 months worth crammed into that little bin). I have one last shot at this, and I think I've managed to figure out the schedule the landlord gave me.

7) Watch that copy of Tristan and Isolde (yes, it is the recent and very bad one, but I am curious.) that a coworker loaned me. This will probably be the easiest, I can put it on while I clean out the fridge and do the dishes. I will probably complain about it extensively to whoever is available on AIM.

8) Write, edit and submit at least one more short story to a paying market before the year slips away. This will be the hardest, I haven't made a serious stab at actually writing fiction for much of this year. I want to get my feet wet again.

9) Start the new year with no dishes in the sink, no laundry in the hamper, and my apartment actually tidy. This is a tradition for me, actually. I always try to start off on a decent foot when it comes to housecleaning.

As you can see, End of Year Resolutions are modest, but they need to be because you make them with only a month or two weeks or ten days to go. Personally, though, I prefer them to New Year's Resolutions because I would much rather start the year with a feeling of satisfaction about the old year and nothing but possibilities open for the new year, as opposed to feeling pressured about some vast, unrealistic goal that I couldn't attain last year. I'd like to advise the rest of the blogosphere to give this a shot in the last week of 2008.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled overthinking of weird fiction.

Haze

So over the past few months or year, or two years because every time I look back I seem to have written less and less of substance than I thought I had I've sunk into a doughy lump of unfocused laziness. I haven't sat down to write. I've thought of some reasonably entertaining posts, but like the old Doug Stone song I was too busy enjoying the feeling of of creative juices filling my head to pour them onto the page. The time passed, and I didn't write, no matter how energized I was.

When I wasn't thinking of something analytical or enjoyable or humorous I was sinking into an ever-deepening pit of depression. I say depression rather than misery because I haven't been miserable. I've been unmotivated. I've been uninspired. I've lost interest in the hobby I used to spend hours perfecting. I'd lost the will to write. It's a down feeling, a form of depression where everything seem gray and uninteresting. Whenever I sat down to put my thoughts into words a haze to rival the thick fog outside my morning window settled in and I'd look for other things to distract me. I've walked around the village, I've obsessed over American politics, I've watched the entire series of Futurama, Arrested Development, Maude, and Scrubs, I've viewed movies I hadn't seen in years, I've surfed the internet randomly, I've been lost in several German cities and villages, I've sampled the wide array of dirty movies available in cyberspace purely scientific purposes for that one, I assure you, I've gotten to know new people, I've annoyed the living shit out of Kalinara over instant messenger, I've attacked the ever-growing pile of unread books in my living, I've dumped my heart and soul into the neglected paperwork of my new workcenter, I've eaten European food, I've baked, I've cooked, I've taken so many baths that I legitimately fear I'll grow gills, I've learnt about the gods of my ancestors, I've raged at coworkers for parking in places people aren't fucking allowed to park would it kill them to fucking walk a few extra feet?!, I've taken pictures of Germany, I've driven around the countryside... I haven't made it up to Uppsala to visit the temple yet but I've managed to do a lot to distract myself.

All meaningless frivolities. Not an ounce of substance in the whole pile. Because whenever one of these activities--the large or the small made me feel the slightest bit of real emotion I started to write about that emotion in my head. And I fully intended to act on that, and actually write down these thoughts once I reached my computer. Then when I turned on the damned thing I lost the motivation. It drained from me, leaving me as a lump of formless, functionless--my god someone's gotten into the vocabulary shed and set loose my prized collection of adjectives!--goo sitting in a bathtub trying to will myself to pick up that half-read book of Robert E. Howard stories on the windowsill.

Or heaven help me I've written it and it's turned from something witty and clever to a muddled mass of bleakness, so I don't publish it.

I'm not the sort of person who labors under the misconception that only she feels this way. This is not the first time that this dear god I do not want to use ennui to describe it that is so fucking pretentious I could crawl under my kitchen table and die ennui has set in. It certainly won't be the last.

In the past when I've felt this intense lack intensity I've pounded out a rambling stream of consciousness post and put it up on my blog. Thereafter this gelatinous apathy clears up and there's once again room for the rage that blends with my venomous blood in the darkened chamber of my heart to produce that thick, vicious hatred that I gleefully spread upon the internet. And that leftover goth melodrama from my wasted teenaged years still soothes my soul whenever I fling it onto the page.

There's a problem, though. See, I live for your comments. I crave your attention, your adulation, your animosity. I don't like your pity, though. It rubs me the wrong way. It's uncomfortable. Give me a pack of snarling misogynistic wolves beating down the front door, a thousand trolls at my back gate--I'll face each and every one enthusiastically and come out of the fray laughing with their blood on my teeth but send a candy-striper and I'll be hiding in the basement with the lights off until she goes away. It's awkward and I shouldn't have to deal with it. But whenever I do one of these depressed stream-of-consciousness posts it never fails-- I get sympathy comments from those of you more readily suited to living in human society than I am.

I don't like those so I stopped writing the depressed posts. That was wrong of me, because now that I've taken such a long break I'm not sure I'll be able to shake it properly and get my anger-fueled writing energy back.


Usually about now the post peters off, because even I fear I sound too unhinged when I let my uncensored thoughts free to roam cyberspace and I get too nervous to continue. Though I'd lay money down that not a single one of you sound saner inside your own heads, and if you do think you sound sane in there you need to get yourself checked out because that's not normal. Sadly, I'm never sure how to stem the tide of stream of consciousness writing so I just turn off the faucet.

Superhero Fans: Chapter 22, Verse 1

(Warning: This one is going to be hard to stomach, but it just didn't work when I tried to minimize the egotism. Just be glad I didn't title it as an excerpt from the Book of Ragnell.)

And in the days following the return of Hal Jordan, there lived a reclusive creature of the nightshift who read the Rebirth miniseries and took great joy in the tale. It awakened a joy of comic books as had not been seen in two years for this creature, and she thought excessively about superheroes to the despair of her coworkers. As an outlet for this enthusiasm, she started a blog. She started a blog of humor and joy. She was measured and polite when she complained and she apologized when she had to let off steam to assure everyone it was nothing personal because she foolishly worried that expressions of anger would alienate her few readers.

Until there came a day of unusually strong irritation, when she cut loose and wrote a long venomous rant directed at a single writer.

And lo, her traffic rose and her comments multiplied and she met bloggers of a like-mind.

But still she worried that expressions of anger would alienate her old readers.

She attributed the success to a long-winded analysis on the subject of gender and Seven Soldiers, and worried that expressions of rage would alienate her new readers. So she went back to holding her tongue until there was another point that she could hold it no more and she let loose in a fury of comedic rage directed at the trigger for this outrage which was a person who was certainly not responsible for all of the bottled up energy and emotional that she was expressing, but by heaven he had caused some of it.

And lo, her traffic rose and her comments multiplied and she met individuals of a like-mind.

And now she worried that no expressions of anger would alienate her new readers.

When her rage had cooled, she experimented with writing another essay to achieve the same effects but discovered she was unable to finish. Other bloggers ranted and raged about various problems and she linked them, and she analyzed art and she wrote what she could but life wormed into the way of her writing. She soon found that even when confronted with an image of unimaginable horror on the cover of her favorite series she was unable to raise the necessary passion for a proper rant. She didn't have the energy, she didn't have the humor.

Her blogging faded, and her comments were few, and her traffic sank into the depths of obscurity. But she had friends of like-mind and her writing and her comic books.

Time passed, and many rose in outrage at the image of Mary Jane Watson doing laundry; and they were condemned for it; and the creature soon discovered that when enraged her more than anything right now was the fans and she blogged rants and rages and battle-cries against them.

And lo, her traffic rose and her comments multiplied and she met individuals of a like-mind.

In time a beautiful storyline began in Green Lantern, one which brought incredible joy to the creature's icy heart. She blogged her pure joy with the storyline, and then read the regular fanblogs. And many of the fanblogs were equally pleased, but when she returned to her own blog she saw that some of her commenters were displeased and making arguments that made little sense. And then she traveled to the message boards and found many pleased fans and displeased fans, and in the fanblogs the displeased began to surface as well. And some of the displeasure was subjective, and much of it was arguable, but some of it was truly out of left field and based on events in different series written by different writers. It angered her, because it was one thing to have event fatigue and another to dislike the writer or artist but the constant prophesying of the end of her favorite character really served to sour her otherwise lovely mood.

She worried about blogging this, because some of the people she was ranting against were certainly her regular readers and commenters, and she had long ago learned not to pull punches when expressing her rage but she blogged it anyway. She blogged her anger at fandom, and she held nothing back and she fully expected her readers to abandon her. For it is better to spew poisonous anger on one's own blog than to invade the comments of others and pester them like a little troll, the scripture says, and despite what dumbass commenters would have you believe there is no prohibition against ranting in the Law.

And lo, her traffic rose and her comments multiplied and she met individuals of a like-mind.

And such was the story of the reclusive Green Lantern fan in the days following the Infinite Crisis.