What Was I Saying...?

Okay. So, we all know. Let's get it out of the way.



Yeah, 2016 pretty much blew chunks in a lot of ways. Thing is, it started out so well! I thought 2014 was the worst things were going to get, 2015 was the beginning of an upward climb, and that 2016 was going to be awesome. Then everything went pear-shaped, starting with our moving plans. Then Buddha died... and from there it was a nearly-unrelenting sea of crap that culminated in the Worst Possible Result in the election. I used to joke about not wanting to live in 1930s Germany. I don't joke about that any more.

For the record, some good things DID happen in 2016, and there's evidence that 2017 will be better. So even though things have been rough, just wallowing in it isn’t going to help. Since the end of November, I have been making a concerted effort to wedge positivity back into my life by any means possible, and it is working, even if there is a lot of resistance from a world determined to set itself on fire. But more on that in the Goals for 2017 part of the post. For now, let's review the goals I set at the beginning of the year.

1. Issues Four and Five, Plus the First Collection. Partial success. Issue four is out and issue five is running currently, after moving and story development heck. This will be finished in early 2017, assuming all goes well.



2. Publish That Book! Still working on it. I've received a fair amount of positive feedback from the various agents etc. I've shopped it around to, but so far it hasn't found a home. I'm going to keep at it until it sells or I run out of potential markets. If it gets to that point, I'll look at self-publishing.



3. Finish Another Book! Didn't happen. Had to punt mid-NaNoWriMo, but I'll get back to it in 2017.



4. Get the Money Sitch Fixed. Didn't happen. Despite being a very strong candidate, lythandra went to trainings and applied for jobs and talked to headhunters and out of all that got a few tiny nibbles and only one offer– which was immediately cancelled a few days later due to the contract being disputed. I hung out my shingle as a freelance/tech writer but so far have spent most of my time on that front turning down such lucrative offers as "Write ten full length novels for us to sell without giving you any residuals or credit for $35,000/year." So, still living on savings and what income the comics and art bring in, but we have plans in motion. (See below.)



5. Move. Um. Happened, yes. But not the way we wanted. It needs fixing still/again.



6. Get Back to Conventions! Eh... sort of. AC and MFF happened again. We also went to a steampunk meet in PA, but we had to punt on FurTheMore and Dragon*Con for financial and/or scheduling reasons. I expect 2017 to be different, however.



7. Stronger faster slimmer better. Big setbacks here. Depression, stress, and a host of other factors meant that in six months I regained all the weight it had taken me two years to get rid of. :P I am not happy about this. The good news is that at the end of November I rejoined Weight Watchers and I have recovered 11 pounds' worth of progress since then, despite the best efforts of convention food and holidays. More significantly I have figured out how to live comfortably on a 35-ish point diet– basically the allocation for someone my age weighing 220 lbs. At my current rate of weight loss, I will hit that in six months, which would suit me just fine.



8. No More Afib. Success! Heart ablation surgery was a complete success. Since March, I have only experienced afib twice, both of which were in December and seem to have been triggered by salt. As long as I continue to limit my salt intake, I should be set.



9. Bernie Sanders 2016. Ugh. Don't get me started.

Now the review post from last year had unexpected things achieved in 2015. Alas, 2016 didn't really have a lot in the way of such things. However, it wasn't entirely bleak. Zootopia was really good, for instance. Also, I got into Overwatch and a fan very kindly built me a terrific computer to run it on, which prompted me to create the Learning Not to Suck at Overwatch series. It didn't exactly set YouTube on fire, but the videos were fun to make and I got to test my mettle in a competitive environment, something which I've never done a lot of. Overwatch also provided my single longest running batch of art commissions, in the form of "Play of the Game" badges. My Overwatchery has been thin since Halloween– other priorities eating my time– but I hope to get back into it in January.

So that leads me to my goals for 2017...

1. Issues Five and Six, Plus the First Collection. Five and collection should be done well before AnthroCon. Issue Six, we'll see. I’m thinking of taking the comic in a slightly new direction based on the ending of Issue Five, but that's still in the very half-baked stage so I can't really go into detail yet.



2. Publish That Book! Like I said, still working on this.



3. Finish Another Book! I am looking at creating a series specifically for self-pub. More on that as the development fills out some more.



4. Start a Company. This is a big one that Laurie and I have been messing with off and on again all year, but which is really starting to take shape now. Again, I don't want to talk about it in too much detail before everything is set in motion, all the T's are dotted and I's are crossed, etc., but it's a cool, exciting project designed to put the making of money back into our hands, since getting hired by other people doesn't seem to be a thing that really happens to anyone any more.



5. Move to California. Okay. So. I thought this was going to happen last year, but for various reasons I kept fairly quiet about it at the time, and then it fell through anyway. It's back on the plan now, and I am not keeping it a secret any more. The exact details are still being hashed out, so you can expect to hear more on this as the year goes on. But part of the reason for the Start a Company item, is to enable living where we want, and since Fed jobs are going to all be utter crap for the next four years or more as the assholes-elect try to burn down the country, there's not a whole lot of point in staying around here for the job market anyway. Our families and some of our friends are here, of course, but we only see them a few times a year as it is– Facetime/Google Hangouts and plane tickets will probably take care of that problem. California is not necessarily the only candidate, we're also looking at some spots around New England for instance, but it is by far the strongest candidate and my top choice unless there is a strongly compelling reason to go elsewhere.



6. Stronger faster slimmer better. 220 lbs by end of September is the plan. 220 lbs by end of June is the stretch goal.



7. Bring the Awesome! I was just getting through my grief about my parents when Buddha died, kicking it all off again. I spent most of 2016 in a depression deeper than anything I’ve been through since 2001, although instead of manifesting as "feeling bad," it was more like an emotional dead zone, making it hard to enjoy anything and leaving me in a constant state of "peeved and grouchy for no good reason." That shit's got to go. As I said, since the end of November I've been focusing on positivity, and I'm just going to build on that and do more in 2017.



8. Edit Myself Less. This one is kind of hard to explain without context and it's more a note to myself than anything. There are aspects of myself that I have simply made a point of not talking about for one reason or another; opinions, feelings, or wishes I have kept to myself when it would have been appropriate to share them, and so on. But honestly? It's not doing myself or the people who care about me any favors. I've had people tell me "I thought I knew you..." before for just this reason. And while I'm a lot more myself now than I used to be, I still get into that self-censorship habit when I’m depressed or afraid. This is something I need to work on. Shoving every thought in your head into other people's faces isn't a good idea– but shutting yourself down just to please other people isn't a healthy choice either. I'm not about to start drawing porn or anything like that, but I am going to be loosening up.



9. Reverse course and mitigate/repair damage to the country. Grassroots action FTW. They're not going to burn down the country while I have anything to say about it. More on this in some other post.

jamesbarrett's sister Kimmie said that 2016 was the end of a 9-year cycle, which is why there were so many deaths and endings and so much loss, but that also meant that 2017 would be a year of new beginnings. [1] While astrology and numerology are not my particular flavor of crackpottery, I can’t deny that 2016 sure has felt like everything was crumbling around my ears. Not going to California when we originally planned to, which pushed us into the Maryland move, and the death of Buddha all hit me hard. Seeing the end of the first administration in my life that I actually liked the President was going to be tough; seeing him replaced by somebody so obviously The Worst Possible Candidate For the Job just hurts.

But these things all happened and can't be undone. I've had my disappointment and my grief and my rage. While there may be emotional aftershocks, the end of November made a sea change in Laurie and me, and I am excited and ready for the things we’ve got coming up in the year ahead. If 2017 is indeed the year of new beginnings, let's make it the beginning of something amazing.

-The Gneech

[1] This is based on numerology: 2016 breaks down to 2 + 0 + 1 + 6 = 9. 2017 will be 2 + 0 + 1 + 7 = 10, 1 + 0 = 1. Thus 2016 is the end of the current cycle and 2017 is the beginning of the next one.

Stressy, flaily, and S.A.D.-ey all week, which is not a healthy place for my mind to be. So today I made it a priority to meditate in some form. Since that's built right into the Weiss past life regression video, I figured that was a good way to go.

This session's healing color was straight up sunlight, particularly yellow-white and warm southern California sunlight. Gee, I can't imagine why.

The childhood memory that came up was sitting at the dining room table, c. 1981 or so, watching The Adventures of Robin Hood on the portable 6" TV while eating spaghetti. This swirled and mixed with memories of one night that we (Mom, Dad, Brother and self) went through something like five Celeste pizzas at the same dinner table, just cooking one right after the other. (This was back when Celeste still made full-size pizzas.) I have no particular reason why this memory should come up other than association– lythandra and I recently watched Robin Hood on TCM.

The prompt for in utero memories prompted the usual sort of generic gurgling noises and sensation of being upside down, although the suggestion to remember my birth did prompt a mental image of my parents and siblings as they would have appeared when I was a newborn, with my mom holding a baby that was presumably "me" (seen from third person). I have no idea if this is associated with a real memory from the hospital, or it's a composite based on photos I've seen of my family from that era.

When prompted to imagine myself in a garden, I found myself in a cliffside park overlooking a beach much like the one we visited in Capitola with sirfox and Candy, with steps leading down to the water. Instead of my usual human self, I was actually Muse this time, which somewhat surprised me, sitting on a bench and simply looking around calmly. Instead of visualizing a door, the path to reach a previous life was to go down the steps, and I started to do that, but unfortunately Laurie started walking around upstairs, which distracted me for a moment and threw me off from that.

The distraction quickly passed, but by then the video had moved on to the "imagine the end of that life" portion, which quickly and decisively appeared as a return to the coastal cottage of the seaman from December. I was back to being my human self instead of being Muse as I observed the scene; this time I got to see more of the house, an exterior view of it as a two-story white Victorian, definitely on some kind of coastline. Judging strictly by the look, it could be California, it could be Maine, it could be Wales, even.

But I'm pretty sure in this case it was California, because when prompted to consider "Why this memory? What is it telling you?" I received the very clear answer, "Because Laurie, Buddha, and Inkblitzer are all important, and they were all part of that life. It's also why you've felt so strongly called to go there. You want to go home!" So... maybe? But I notice that none of those three are in California at the moment, whereas sirfox, who prominently is in California, was not mentioned. Maybe he's adding a new wrinkle to a scenario that's being replayed? Reincarnation is weird.

In any case, then it was time to move on from that life and look for a spiritual guide or guardian, I quickly found one, which took on the form of a massive pillar of yellow-white light, maybe 4'5' across and a good three to five stories tall, which occasionally had plasma-like cascades run up or down its length. Every once in a while a large kite-shaped bit of this plasma would extend away from the body, flitting back and forth, reminding me somewhat of Raava from Avatar: Legend of Korra, but yellow instead of blue and without all the curlicue designs.



I didn't know (and still don't) any details on who or what this entity was, other than an instinctual connection, and we greeted each other as old friends.

Me: "Oh! ...Hi."
Entity: "Hi." (Telepathically? I don't remember a voice.)
(Video: "Are there any messages for you?")
Me: *looks to entity*
Entity: "I love you."
Me: "Aww! I love you, too."
(Video: "What do you need to know?")
Me: *looks to entity*
Entity: "Just keep going."
Me: "Really? Are you sure? It feels like everything's a gigantic mess right now."
Entity: "That doesn't matter. It'll be fixed by the end."
Me: "Um... hmm."
Entity: "I know it's scary. But remember, there's more going on than just what's happening right now."
(Whatever that means!)
Me: "I'm worried about Buddha."
Entity: "Buddha will be fine."
Me: "In this life or a future one?"
Entity: "Either way."
Me: "...'k."

...And that was pretty much the end of the session.

So what does it mean? I have no idea. Keep in mind, these reports are just laying out what happens in my head as I go through these things, so they are somewhere in the no-man's-land between memory, imagination, stream-of-consciousness, and dreamscape. I make no claims to have actual knowledge or evidence of anything. I'm just letting my mind do what it wants and writing down the result.

-The Gneech

Regression therapy report. Two exercises today.

The first was to simply write a bunch of rambly stream-of-consciousness thoughts this morning, ranging from random observations on the whole past lives idea and its implications, to specific questions for myself and potential avenues of exploration. I examined the recurring patterns of my life, the situations I find myself in over and over again and the themes that keep coming up, but I didn't delve too deep into what the patterns might mean yet. I figured that for a start, just making a note of some of them would be a good first step.

One idea that comes up in discussion of reincarnation/past lives is the "soul group." These are people who you encounter again and again across multiple lifetimes, in various roles based on what the intended purpose of the current given life is. To that end, I also made a list of people who have been important in my life, for good or ill, regardless of how long they were in it. Some of that made it onto Twitter as I remembered a particularly painful "friendship break-up" when I was about 10 years old that left deeper scars than I realized until recently. I only knew the person for a year or two, and I've never seen them since, but effects were profound. On the other hand, there are people I've known literally my whole life (as in, probably came to see me in the maternity ward) who didn't get put onto the list because in the grand scheme of things they just haven't had that big of an impact.

Combined with my list of patterns and questions, it was a revealing exercise. I'm not ready to go into detail about it here (and a lot of it is definitely TMI anyway), but it has at least given me plenty to reflect on.

The second exercise for today was that I turned down the lights, sat in a comfy chair, and attempted the past-life exercise here:



The results were very mixed. Whenever I would "let go" of conscious control, my brain would attempt to doze off, which suggests to me that next time I should probably take a nap first. It's no secret that I don't sleep anywhere near as much as I should, and lythandra being away has only made that worse, as she normally tanks the cats at breakfast time, allowing me to gain a few extra hours of sleep in the morning.

So some energy was wasted in simply trying to stay awake. Other distractions included my hands repeatedly falling asleep (combined with my hand tremors, I am beginning to wonder if there is something neurological going on there), and a tree branch against the window that has taken to scraping constantly recently. So more lessons for next time: try a different chair that will hopefully not put my hands to sleep, and use headphones.

Once actually in the exercise itself, I didn't get past the stage of recalling a childhood incident, because of instead of picking one and drilling down deep into it, my brain kept jumping from memory to memory, trying desperately to find an unreservedly happy one. Given my lifelong issues with depression and unfortunate tendency to focus on things that are irking me, this was obviously difficult. My mind seems to regard happiness as "the absence of irritants," but it also has a ridiculously-sensitive irritation trigger.

Childhood memories that did come up, that I can recall now:

• Whiffle ball with family in front yard at Odgenland


• "Weeeeno, weeeeno, weeeeno!" with Danny (We were five, you had to be there.)


• Playing with a kitchen set in kindergarten


• Playing by myself with a toy Batmobile in the living room at Odgenland

The main other incident of note during the exercise was that I felt the chair go bump, as if one of the cats had jumped into my lap (which is what I thought had happened). I opened my eyes in response only to find that all the cats were asleep in various spots around the room and there was nothing apparent that could have created such a bump. I'm guessing it was a hallucination or possibly synaesthesia from some kind of noise from outside?

Or maybe we've got ghost cats, I dunno. That kitten from a couple years ago?

-The Gneech

If you're a regular reader of my LJ, you probably remember my wailing and gnashing of teeth about constantly living in the dark. So, two? Three? weeks ago, I picked up a NatureBright SunTouch Plus Light and Ion Therapy Lamp, which I have been using regularly ever since. Basically, I have it sitting next to my desk and put it on a timer for 30 minutes while I eat my breakfast, go through my e-mail and feeds, do my Lumosity exercises, etc. The effect is something like this:



Seriously, I'm surprised this thing doesn't burn my silhouette into the wall behind me. It illuminates the room, it illuminates the rest of the house, and it fools airline pilots into landing out on the street.

How effective is it at improving my mood? It's hard to say for sure. My mood is definitely better now than it was three weeks ago, but the light therapy effect isn't working in isolation here. Spring has arrived, meaning sunnier days in general, we've been making progress on the whole house sale/moving thing, and I've spent the past week (when not packing) writing a novel that I finally figured out how to fix the broken plot of. There's a lot of things going on here that could lift my mood, and while I suspect the light therapy lamp is helping, I cannot definitely say that's what fixed it.

The trap now is, feeling better, I tend to forget about using it. One of the insidious things about depression is when it's not bothering you, it's easy to slip out of management mode. The past few mornings in particular, I've been halfway through my morning routine and realized I've forgotten to turn it on, and there's no way it can help me if I don't actually use it. So I've ended up with a longer morning routine than I intended, because I end up sitting there waiting for the 30 minutes to elapse. But that's just a matter of getting my routine nailed down. Eventually it will be a habit and I'll be fine.

So! I'm going to log this experiment as a provisional success.

-The Gneech

So I had a session with the counselor yesterday, and she was of the impression that I was beginning a slide into depression again but that it was reversible. She recommended that I return to my "Three Good Things" postings, but also add a "Three Goals for Tomorrow" element, as my efforts towards anything are being scattered by lack of focus and constant interruption.

Unfortunately, last night I was way too tired to think coherently after I spent the day doing ALL THE FINANCIAL THINGS (ugh), so I completely forgot about doing my posting before going to bed. So in order to get the ball rolling, I'mma do it now!

Three Good Things

1. Wrote some good stuff for issue two of Rough Housing. It's going to be very silly.


2. Got a lot of financial jiggery-pokery done that will hopefully facilitate the sale of the house and return to financial stability, as well as increasing the return on my retirement account.


3. Managed to juggle various appointments so that none were missed or postponed after I discovered that about three of them were completely in conflict.


4. BONUS: Got to watch a heckuva thunderstorm from up close and personal while we drove home through it, including seeing lightning hit a streetlight on an overpass just ahead of us-- without ourselves getting stuck or completely drenched, as it had lightened up by the time we got home.

Three Goals for Tomorrow Today

1. Finish the script for issue two, post same to beta readers


2. Dishes/laundry/cook dinner


3. Rearrange bedroom furniture


4. BONUS: AJ needs some love

Dunno if I can pull all that off; honestly I'm dubious. But I'm going to try. I'll report back in later to let you know how I fared.

-The Gneech

Serious implosion today. I started the morning tolerably well, but as time went on my energy level dropped, my head started pounding, and every inch of my nervous system was jangling and painful. I haven't had such a deep "just being alive hurts" crash since the worst days of 2002.

I took the only viable option, which was to inform my boss that I wasn't well and come back home, crawl into bed, and pass out, grateful to bid the conscious world goodbye for a while.

Sometime around 2:00 I woke back up again, ears still ringing but at least I didn't hurt all over any more. Now I'm trying to take advantage of the unexpected time to do some mental maintenance and get to some of the things I never get to because I'm too busy-- like the shirts I've got sitting on the ironing board. Simple and straightforward chores can be remarkably comforting.

I'm also trying to work on an exit strategy for my current lifestyle, because I can't keep going this way. I posted the other day about how my current life was unacceptable, and today's meltdown is more evidence of the same. There are many things that need to change, not the least of which is that lythandra and I need to get away from the constant shrill stress of our jobs and the Washington DC area generally.

We've talked many times about where our "dream home" might be; my current touchstone is "the town of Nelson as seen in Steve Martin's Roxanne." Nelson B.C. is a real town, actually, and it's apparently fairly well known as a funky artsy town, but I'm not really interested in trying to move to another country if I can avoid it.

Kerry was convinced that Laurie and I should go to Eugene, OR, which is a college town in the Pacific Northwest, and I don't know that she was wrong. We're also eyeing Portland, on the grounds that it has two used bookstores on every corner (not to mention Powell's, the largest used bookstore in the country), which suggests that it's a town that might be filled with our kinds of people.

I will miss our cozy little Hobbit Hole, even if I won't miss the neighborhood it's in. But y'know, there are other cozy houses out there, and there must be at least one that we could afford to live in and have jobs that weren't driving us to early graves. Maybe even (gasp!) one where I could afford to start trying to make a living doing what I should be doing, not what I'm forcing myself to do to earn a big enough paycheck.

Meanwhile... guh. I've got to keep calm and bugger on.

-The Gneech

The thing with social media is finding the right balance of enough people to follow that you're connected, but not so many you're overwhelmed, comfortable enough that it doesn't cause you distress, diverse enough that it's not just a giant echo chamber...

The past few weeks my mood stability has been on the vulnerable side, and I've found that more often than not social media (and especially Twitter, as it's far and away the most active form of social media) have ranged from wearying to infuriating. So I've been going through and targeting posters who, even if I agree with them, add stress, and quietly unfollowing them.

This is a tricky thing to do when I'm emotionally wobbly... the temptation is to go all Oprah on it. "You get an unfollow, and YOU get an unfollow-- EVERYBODY GETS AN UNFOLLOW!" But that's neither healthy nor productive in the long run, it's just the tendency-towards-implosion that emotional wonkiness creates.

But trimming the social media tree is a good thing every once in a while. There are enough stressors I can't control, there's no reason to hold onto the ones that I can control.

-The Gneech

Since September-ish(?) I've been in counseling for a particularly deep depression that hit me some time in late 2011 or so and was really bad earlier this summer. This particular counselor was recommended to me by my chiropractor, and even though there haven't been that many sessions, she has been very helpful.

Today, by mutual assessment that I was in a good and happy place, I brought the round of counseling to a close. My grief has been processed, my stress has been largely reduced, my creative energy is up. In short, I'm better. ^.^

Depression is never completely defeated of course, and there's no telling when I might go into another round. If that happens, I can always go back. But for right now, my mental health is good, and I'm a happy Gneech.

I'll take it!

-The Gneech

Well a month and a half of exercise was doing a great job at curbing depressive episodes, but the black dog is back and in force today. It is literally physically painful just being awake and mobile. My body feels like one giant bruise and my mind doesn't feel much better. I can't remember if it was ever this acute in 2001-2002, but I don't think it was.

Fortunately, I have a doctor's appointment later this week anyway; while I'm there I'll ask about Zoloft or something similar. This is no way to live.

-TG

PS: Comments closed. Believe me, hugs and well-wishes are normally much appreciated, but right now I don't have the mental bandwidth for them. The only reason I'm making the post at all is in the hopes that other people with depression will know they're not alone.

Wheeeee! Mood Swings!

Yesterday was a weird day. The past several weeks I've been hit by unusually strong depressive episodes, to the point where it was physically painful, and yesterday afternoon was one of the worst I've had yet. I did manage to pull myself out the tailspin eventually, but it wasn't easy and I didn't do it alone-- chatting online with graveyardgreg, a trip to my chiropractor Justy, and an awesome pizza dinner with lythandra all brought me back to the land of the living, which in turn gave me the strength to go on and have a fun night partying with the #TwitterPonies, including some I hadn't seen in months and sorely missed. So what started as one of the worst days ever, became a very good day by the end, and I'm grateful for that!

Discussing the depression w/ various folks (including Justy), one of the things that came up was the possibility that the blood pressure meds I'm on might be intensifying the depressive episodes (which were already being intensified by all the other crap going on that I've posted about here ad nauseam), thus creating a "straw broke the camel's back" scenario. It's certainly possible and something I plan to bring up w/ my primary doc in August. In the meantime, I will be going back onto the St. John's Wort, which was a big help during my last "crisis" period back in 2001-2002 and probably finding a new counselor.

Art

I've still got a few of the June commissions hanging over my head. I had in mind to get at least two done this past week, but I kept crashing instead. D'Oh! This is why I rarely offer commissions: it's just really hard for me to get them done in a timely fashion.

Anyway, I'm going to see if I can bang out one or two this weekend, although the way stuff that ABSOLUTELY NEEDS TO BE DONE tends to jump up in my face on the weekend, I'm dubious of that too. I'll give it my best shot, tho! If I still owe you a commish, keep watching this space. :)

Ponies

I have officially decided that I want to avoid hearing about season three as much as possible. Season two has made me twitchy, and what little I've heard about season three has made me just as twitchy if not moreso. I'll watch the episodes when they come, but in the meantime I'm going to stick my fingers in my ears and go "LA LA LA I'M NOT LISTENING!"

Anything Else?

As I posted yesterday, I'm contemplating joining Webcomics.com in order to try and get a little more into the "community," such as it is. I've been feeling very out of touch lately, like even moreso than usual, and I want to get back into the swing of things. I'm also looking at SoFurry, but I'm not sold so far. What's the difference between it and FurAffinity? Apparently it's not filtering out content (at least based on their declaration "all types of furry creativity are precious"), which to me just means it's full of all the same "refrigerator porn" that makes FA so irritating. I'm guessing it was created in response to some other schism of which I'm unaware ("FA totally doesn't let us post fursuit pictures, man!") and have no particular interest in.

I think that's it for now, so I'll catcha later! Got a lot to do, and time is always running away. Have an awesome day!

-The Gneech