the_gneech: (Default)
re: Veterans Day, my dad served in the South Pacific in WWII. He hated everything about it and would not willingly talk about it. He was strongly anti-war, anti-militarism, and anti-imperialist the rest of his life. The conflation of “military” with “patriotism” was something that particularly irritated him, although in his usual fashion he would just mutter and give sullen looks about it.

I think it’s important that in recognizing the service of veterans, we also recognize that America has a strange, almost cult-like fascination with violence that we need to address. Our video games and movies et al. are created to breed violent, competitive young males, so they can be pointed across the sea like attack dogs. The current flareup of fascism is directly related to this.

If WWII, often hailed as the last “morally justified war” could do so much damage to my dad, I can only imagine what the neverending war since then has done to countless Americans and the world.

I love my dad. In his memory, I do what I can to move us to a better way of life.

Anyway. Just a thought I had.

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Default)
The other day [personal profile] inkblitz posted a little thing about seasonal depression, which prompted a thought in my mind that I wanted to observe.

I've known Blitzy for something like five years now. We were thrown together by our online RP group but pretty much immediately clicked. And while the RP group is not the focus of either of our lives any more, the friendship has endured. By the standards of, say, high school or college friendships, we're practically blood brothers. But the thing is, we met as adults– in my case, as a middle-aged adult in particular. So for me, a period of five years, while nothing to sneeze at, still counts as being "recent developments."

When we met, I was still in the darkest parts of grief, and quite often depressed; during one of my conversations with Blitzy at the time, I said that having met me after my friends and family started dying left and right, so constantly mired in grief, in many ways he hadn't met "the real me."

But when did I stop being "the real me"? How long can an extended period of grief last before that is "normal"? My father died in 2011 after a long and stressful decline; Kerry died in 2013. I met Inkblitzer somewhere between those two events, and they've cast a long shadow ever since– as have the deaths of Sandy, FrostDemn, Buddha, my aunt Iris, and my mom, and the loss of our house and jobs of 15+ years, all in the same cluster. It's not like my grief was unwarranted. ¬.¬

But recently, something has shifted in me. I'm not sure exactly how, why, or when, although I did comment on it a little while back. I have started being myself again. I still miss everyone that I've lost, and it's not like I'm feeling peachy-keen about all the crap currently going on in the world, but there's an important internal difference.

I'm fine in the moment. I'm thinking about where I am and what I'm doing, instead of thinking about how much pain I'm in or what I've lost. The emotional wounds, as it were, seem to have scarred over. This manifests mostly in a better mood, a sunnier outlook, and a lighter, more playful approach to just about everything. I'm back to treating life like a party or an adventure, rather a slog that I have to just keep pushing through. When I think of "the real me," that's what I think of, the guy who wants to make everything more awesome, not the guy who is stubbornly refusing to give in and just sink to the bottom.

I mentioned to Blitzy that I was finally the real me again; he said, "I think I met the real you enough. At least at conventions. But yeah, I'm seeing more of convention you in general."

So I wonder. Maybe "the real me" isn't a fixed point, so much as an aggregation, and the me that was fighting through all that crap was "really" me too, me bearing the weight of what I was going through. But it still feels like being a different person.

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Gneechtoon)
Today: 308.3
down 11.2 lbs from my highest weight of 319.5 on November 25, 2016
down 10.7 lbs from my starting weight of 319 on July 1, 2014
average lost: 0.08 lbs/week
next milestone: 303 lbs (5% loss)

I made some fairly hefty dietary adjustments this past week that brought my daily points usage down to somewhere around 40, and kept up the regular workouts. However, I was also going extra-light in anticipation of a heavy holiday weekend, and I'm glad I did. Saturday, by itself, blew away all of my weekly points and several of my activity points as well. Not because I was pigging out on Christmas cookies (although I did have some), but because there were simply few-to-no low-point choices. My in-laws, whatever else their virtues or faults may be, are not healthy eaters. And that effect is multiplied by holiday get-togethers.

So honestly, as much as I would have liked to hit that 305-307 goal this week, just having made any progress under the circumstances is a victory. :)

Anyhow, moving on! I'm home now and going to be here for the foreseeable future, so it's back to healthy choices for me. ;) Success for this coming week will be 306, with a stretch goal of 304.

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Keitaro Holy Crap)
Well. It's been a thing, hasn't it? Yeeks.

As I suspect has not gone unnoticed, I have not been my characteristically chirpy, genial self for some time now. This is because the world seems to be actively saying "Up yours!" over and over, and it has me not-unnaturally feeling peeved.

To recount, in the past double-handful of years I have lost...

  • a beloved aunt


  • both parents


  • my former business partner and best non-spouse friend


  • another friend who was the group "den mother" for us in high school and who I was actually much closer to as an adult


  • Frostdemn, a fan and friend who was a joy to everyone who knew him and was way, way too young


  • my job


  • my house


  • Game Parlor


  • Laughing Ogre Comics


  • ...and of course Buddha the kitty, whom I loved dearly


Some of these things are worse than others of course, but it's the sheer number and overwhelming breadth of it that gets me. Like there's no good thing so minor that the Universe doesn't feel like going "YOINK!"

Then last year, [livejournal.com profile] lythandra's job, which was at least paying the bills, also disintegrated, and she's been searching ever since with frustrating results.

Just in 2016, circumstances conspired to kick us out of the place we didn't especially like but had landed in when the house sold, into [livejournal.com profile] sirfox's condo in Maryland. And, wishing no reflection on Sirfie, Maryland just ain't working for us for reasons I don't particularly want to get into here.

Despite my best efforts, and even when it returns praise for the writing, I have not been able to sell my book.

And oh yeah, now the neo-nazis are on the march, and the ice caps are melting at an unprecedented rate despite it being winter, much to the consternation and bafflement of the scientists who study such things. Those who used to be alarmists on the topic are throwing up their hands and saying, "welp, we're fucked," while those who used to be only concerned are becoming alarmed.

So yeah, things kinda suck right now, on levels cosmic, social, personal, and downright petty. What the hell. And it's made me grouchy.

However, as Nick Fury put it, "Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on." And while some people use anger and spite to fuel their fire, I am not among their number. Anger and spite make me cruel and mean, and I don't like me when I'm mean. I renounced it long ago, before anyone who knows me now even met me, but it's kinda like being a werewolf or something– it's always there, trying to sneak back out. I suspect many people would be shocked at sheer volume of vicious thoughts or cutting comments that jump unbidden into my mind, and at the effort I'm constantly expending to stop it before it reaches my tongue or the page. If you ever feel I'm snarky or negative now? My public face is Mr. Flippin' Rogers compared to the crap that goes on inside my head.

Lately, just by having been worn down by the world, this effort has been a real fight. I'm spending as much energy on keeping myself "up" as I am on actually accomplishing the things I want to get done with my day. I had a counseling appointment about this last week, and that helped, but it's still something I am dealing with.

The point I'm meandering my way to here, is that I think I've finally reached a certain equilibrium over the past few days, and hopefully I am now at the "Take a deep breath, stand up, and keep walking" stage of things. The reason I punted on NaNoWriMo was so I could concentrate on more immediately-lucrative pursuits so that when our current lease is up we would have options. I have a specific goal that I am working towards, something that Laurie and I have decided as a result of the recent social events, and that goal has finally given me something positive to work towards, instead of simply trudging on because that was all there was to do.

Hopefully, as I start to make progress, and perhaps even start building more positive things back into my life, the Universe will get the message and start moving in the right direction itself, as well.

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Default)
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– [livejournal.com profile] 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 [livejournal.com profile] 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 [livejournal.com profile] 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.

Raava from Avatar: Legend of Korra

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
the_gneech: (Mysterious Beard)
Went through the Brian Weiss video this morning; the recurring motif was definitely that of the sea.

This started with the "healing color" visualization, which was the bright cerulean blue of a sunny sky. In particular the visualization that came to me was of a beach, phasing back and forth between being a realistic beach and being the more-vivid-than-life colors of an anime beach. The bright blue color was suffused with the warmth of sunlight, simultaneously giving it a "yellow" feel [1].

Appropriately enough, the first childhood memory that came up when prompted was of the National Museum of the U.S. Navy where I went many times as a kid, which had chunks of WWII-era battleships and submarines set up for kids to climb on and play around, including the deck guns and periscopes. This memory led to a string of other childhood museum-ish trip memories, including going to the National Zoo with my family when my mother's parents came up to D.C. when I was around three-ish (I was in a stroller, that's all I can point to for my age), as well as any number of field trips or trips with my Uncle Kenny to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum back when the U.S.S. Enterprise model was still hanging from the ceiling in the stairwell, and the Natural History Museum. Brian Weiss prompted me to consider why this memory came up and why it was important right now, and I got a very clear response of, "Remember, the world is bigger. You've been stuck in a very small focus of home-work-home lately. There's more to life."

The video moved on to in utero memories, which I always seem to get spotty results from. In this particular case I got the impression of amber light and a distant muffled heartbeat. (And yes, I know amber light makes no sense in utero. But that's what came to me.) I also had a vague sensation of my body, and particularly my head and face, being very small, smaller than my consciousness properly fit into.

When prompted to visualize a garden, the oceanic motif returned as I found my consciousness swimming around a coral reef in bright blue water, something I've never actually experienced but have been wanting to add to my "bucket list" as of late. Brian Weiss said to visualize a door that would lead to a past life memory and my brain supplied the door to Engineering from the original Enterprise [2]. When I passed through this door, I caught a fleeting glimpse of a mental image of a submarine, but this was a model or schematic diagram of some kind, not an actual submarine.

As the images came more into focus I saw the railing of a steamer, which was close enough to the shore that I could tell it was a forested headland, and I think there was a bridge ahead of us. Whether we were putting out to sea or coming in from a voyage, I'm not sure, but I was a member of the crew, one of the officers I think. Ahead of me I saw a friend/colleague of mine, although he was turned away so I couldn't clearly see his face. I know he had sandy brown hair and a nautical-style beard, and my mind connected him with InkBlitzer, although whether this was actually one of Blitzy's incarnations or just a realization of an analogue relationship ("In the previous life you were friends with this guy the way you're friends with InkBlitzer now" kind of thing), I'm not sure.

The video then prompted me to go to the end of that lifetime; I saw the bedroom of a coastal cottage as you might expect from a seaman. It was mid-morning and there was light coming in through the windows, but they were obscured by gauzy white curtains. There was a bed and "I" was in it, the first time I've ever seen another version of myself in one of these exercises. I looked a bit like James Mason in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, dark hair and cropped beard with streaks of white. I was somewhere in my '60s, bedridden and clearly not going to recover. I was aware of some family members were around me, but only as vague shapes. Brian Weiss asked "What lessons are there to learn from this life?" and although I contemplated the question, I didn't get a direct answer.

I suspect the next portion of the meditation provided an indirect answer, however. When prompted to find a spiritual guide or a relative, my mom was instantly there, which surprised me. I told her that I wasn't happy with the way her own passing had gone, her in bed with her mind shut down by morphine and only the hospice care nurse to be with her, but that I hadn't been able to figure out a better solution. She wasn't bothered by this particularly, and when I asked her why she had chosen to go that way, she replied, "That wasn't a lesson you needed to go through, so I wanted to spare you from it."

My studies in reincarnation, life-as-school, and spirit groups prompted me to think about my relationship with her, and so I said, "Are we done with all the stuff we had to go through?"

"Mostly," she said, presumably meaning that there'd be a little more to deal with in a future lifetime, but that hopefully it wouldn't be too much more to cope with.

"Good," I said. "I'm tired of fighting. I just want us to love each other now." We hugged, and I said, "Thanks, Mom."

"I'm not really your mom, you know. I just played your mother this time around."

Such a friggin' her thing to say! XD I just replied with "You know what I mean."

"Yes," she said. "I know what you mean." As the video prompted me to head back to normal consciousness, I could see that she was leaving, so I simply kept repeating "I love you" until she was gone, because really that's all there was left to say.

Then Professor Weiss counted up to ten, and I opened my eyes.

-The Gneech

[1] Blue + yellow = green. Green is the traditional color of the heart chakra. Just sayin'.
[2] Hearkening back to the model in the Smithsonian, which is a connection I didn't make until I was writing this. I have long connected spaceships and submarines in my mind– I have often said that the best Star Trek movie ever made was The Hunt for Red October.
the_gneech: (Kero Power Tie)
It's been a while since I posted one of these things; that's generally a good sign, because when I'm busy enjoying all the things I'm thankful for, I don't have to remind myself that I'm thankful for them.

Nevertheless, I'm posting one tonight, by way of thanking the universe and the wonderful people in it for all the things that make my life so good. ^.^

Three Good Things About Today


  1. Did my Christmas shopping for [livejournal.com profile] lythandra done.

  2. Got the Flim-Flam Brothers and a Super Speedy Cider Squeezy toy set from Fluttershy for Christmas.

  3. Picked up an awesome and gorgeous scarf.

  4. Bonus Good Thing: Had fun watching Psych.


Three Goals for Tomorrow


  1. See the new Star Wars movie with [livejournal.com profile] lythandra and [livejournal.com profile] sirfox

  2. Work a shift at SBX

  3. Get some art done, either solo or as an art jam


Good night world, and have an awesome tomorrow. I love ya. ♥

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Mysterious Beard)
Yesterday and today I read Brian Weiss's book, Many Lives, Many Masters, which is basically a history of how he got involved in the field of past life/reincarnation study. It was interesting, but didn't really give me a lot of insights I hadn't already come to.

This afternoon I tried to do a regression meditation, only to be thwarted by needy cats and a severe attack of grumpiness, the kind of "zero to enraged" anger that afflicted my dad every time he cooked dinner and that comes to me when I really, really need a nap.

So I punted on that session until nap and dinner had been acquired. When we came home from dinner, I tried again to go through the meditation session. This time was more successful, but it was still a fairly rough one.

Visualizing a healing color barely worked at all, although I did manage to get a tactile sensation like being under warm running water, such as in a shower. Calling up a childhood memory brought up a girl I'd had a sort of proto-relationship with around the ages of 9-10, and a specific memory of being with her on the Metro riding downtown for a visit to the Smithsonian. In many ways, this girl was much like [livejournal.com profile] lythandra, almost suspiciously so– right down to being a Star Wars and roleplaying geek named Laurie.

When Dr. Weiss asked what the significance of the memory was, I had an easy answer: the specific memory was one of the first times I realized we had a strong connection and very close friendship. As for why it was important, well, I eventually destroyed that relationship with an act of extreme pettiness that I never really understood the reason for myself (unless it's some bit of karmic residue from previous incarnations), and I have always felt very guilty about it. I imagine Laurie W. is still out there, somewhere, and I have occasionally thought about trying to look her up and apologize for being such an ass, but I can't think of any way to go about it that wouldn't just be a giant awkward mess.

From there we went on to the in utero memory, and when prompted to explore for feelings, I was overcome with a wave of profound but unfocused sadness, which I identified as actually being "psychic residue" so to speak from my mother. According to my sister, my mom used to suffer from acute depression, and if she was in the midst of that while carrying me, it would make a lot of sense that I simply inherited it. When the time came to re-experience birth, I did get a physical sensation compatible with being upside down and/or on my back, followed by a feeling as if I was being suspended in mid-air by my shoulders and chest.

I had a difficult time coming up with any imagery for a garden or door to a past life, other than getting a very brief glimpse of a teenage girl with long, very straight hair. But once "through" the door I got a fairly strong image of some kind of a sauna or hot spring, with a wooden slat floor that had a hole in the middle for some kind of heated rock and a lot of moisture underneath. There was a middle-aged man in 1950s style glasses, with a towel wrapped around his waist in the sauna, and I eventually identified him as being Japanese.

The images shifted into a very cartoony mode at this point, and I think my mind was starting to mix images from Avatar: The Last Airbender in, specifically the guy pictured here, for reasons that make sense only to my subconscious. My conscious mind broke in here to argue that Avatar's Earth Kingdom was more like Han Dynasty China than 1950s Japan, and the whole thread of my thoughts began to unravel.

When Dr. Weiss prompted me to move forward to the end of that life, I remember that there was a definite scene with some kind of significance, but it was very fleeting and I have lost it in between the time it came to me, and the time I got to my keyboard to write about it.

At that point, the meditation came to an end, and I was "back," feeling vaguely frustrated, vaguely ashamed of 10-year-old me's behavior, and vaguely sad. I am now simply trying to process, learn from it, and let go. I may do a bit of gratitude meditation before going to bed, to try to bring my mood up a bit before I sleep.

Three Good Things For Today


  1. Payday! Finally. :)

  2. Red Lobster, to celebrate [livejournal.com profile] lythandra and my anniversary (which is actually Saturday)

  3. Chatted a bit (via DMs) with fantasy author J.M. Frey, who seems like a very nice person

  4. BONUS COOL THING: [livejournal.com profile] sirfox texted me pics of his halloween costume, which is cool :)


Three Goals for Tomorrow


  1. Write up my recent realization on why I haven't been doing any art lately

  2. Get to the end of my book's second draft

  3. Have some downtime


-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Mysterious Beard)
NOTE: This stuff probably reads like gibberish to anyone who is not me, and I apologize for that, but I'm making these notes mostly for myself anyway. :)

As I mentioned this morning, I tried a more generalized 20 minute meditation rather than regression therapy. I tried to meditate on the question of why I feel compelled to draw my comic, and then have so much pain and difficulty with it; but my subconscious had other ideas, it seems.

Instead, it was working on the question my counselor posed to me the other day, of "Why would you arrange to live a life with toxic parents?" To which the answer returned, "Your love is blocked." That caused me to reflect on being told by my sister that as a child I used to hug the furniture because I couldn't ever get enough hugs from people, and now as an adult I still feel very isolated and lonely a lot of the time, which is the core element of my recurring depression. Even when I am offered love, I can't seem to feel it.

As for how toxic parents fit in, the thing that strikes me is that with toxic parents, love is the silk glove that hides sharp barbs. My parents never praised something I did without immediately pointing out some shortcoming as well. Left-handed compliments were the only kind they gave, when they gave any at all. If I was proud of having gotten a "B" on a test, my parents' reaction was "You're smart, so why wasn't it an 'A'?"

What does growing up with a never-ending barrage of that crap do? Obviously, besides instilling a permanent inferiority complex and/or imposter syndrome, it makes you flinch at the expression of love, waiting for the followup slap. Eventually you shut yourself away from it completely as a reflex in pure self-defense.

(Warning: Crackpottery ahead!) There is also the possibility that "love" here refers specifically to the fourth chakra. "When your heart chakra is open, you are flowing with love and compassion, you are quick to forgive, and you accept others and yourself. A closed heart chakra can give way to grief, anger, jealousy, fear of betrayal, and hatred toward yourself and others."

Grief? Yup. Jealousy? Yup. Hatred toward self? Yup.

I spent the rest of the meditation session basically trying to "unclench" that part of myself. It's not going to be something that can be done in a single session.

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Default)
Went through the Brian Weiss video again, this time with headphones on and Buddha in my lap. I didn't drift into sleep this time, and actually got some images, which was good. Of course the phone rang near the end and poked a hole in my concentration, because phones are a plague on mankind. But I was able to mostly ignore it and keep going.

Healing Light In my mind, the healing light is a blue-green color, something like the ambient light of scuba diving.

Garden The image I got here was actually a pretty specific setting of a real-world restaurant with planters and trees in it. The restaurant in question also inspired the "Midas and Maenad" hotel that appears in my most recent novel, which is probably why it was fresh in my mind. I have a lot of thoughts about that restaurant, which I'll probably delve into at some point soon.

Childhood Experience Two came up this time. The main one was of a cedar shrub that was just outside the back door at Odgenland when I was growing up. I was a toddler, maybe three or four, and I would climb into the shrub and hide in there. I would occasionally sit on one of the branches, and bounce up and down like it was a seesaw. Of course it wouldn't be my life without the attached memory of my mom telling me not to do that because it was going to kill her plant. When Brian asks why this memory came up and what lessons it imparted, my mind quickly answered with, "Obviously, there is no action so innocent that I can't be made to feel guilty about it."

Unfortunately, the second memory has slipped away now. I remember that it was at Shrevewood School, which would make it between the ages of 5 and 8. Something about a sink in the classroom.

In Utero The only solid image I got here was the sensation of some gurgling noises, but that certainly makes sense. I also got a vaguer impression of my surroundings being brighter when he said to remember being born. Post-birth I didn't have any direct memories, but I did recall being told about the way I used to say "Ungie! Ungie!" even in the hospital and how my parents assumed this meant that I was hungry all the time. (And grew up overweight. Again with the toxic parenting, much?)

Garden and Door to Past Lives I got the image of a green craftsman-style door with ivy hanging around it, probably straight off of one of my Pinterest boards.

Previous Life Imagery I actually got something here. I didn't encounter a very defined sort of "self," but I did imagine a place. Specifically it was some sort of a town surrounded by forested hills, particularly "behind" me which was almost a sheer rock face. There was a two-story building on a street corner, the bottom floor of which was almost entirely open. The imagery shifted once or twice: at first I assumed the building was some sort of stable, but on second look it appeared to be possibly a bakery or pastry shop. Then I thought perhaps there were actually two buildings, one next to the other, with the pastry shop being actually on the corner, and the stables being next to it. When asked to "look down at my shoes," I did see some narrow black riding boots, which would fit with the stable idea. The only other person I saw was a woman, who was walking away from me. She was dressed in 1700s working class garb and carrying a bundle away from where I was, towards the main town, which was up a hill. I got the impression that this was revolutionary-era Virginia or Boston, although it was not a proper city so much as a busy town.

There might have been more, but I think it was sometime around here that the phone rang, knocking me out of it for a moment. By the time I recovered, this segment of the exercise was ending.

Spirit Guide Aunt Iris, of course, it's her every time. I've never met anyone else who actually gave unconditional love (although I know several people who do their best). [livejournal.com profile] mammalammadevil was there too. There wasn't much really to say on either end: I just told them both that I missed the hell out of them, and they responded with hugs. Some tears came of that.

And that was it. Not exactly a tale for the ages perhaps, but at least I got something. :)

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Mysterious Beard)
Somewhere in the murky depths of my past I've mentioned this before, but I have long had a fantasy of living in a large-ish house with an extended family... but the wrinkle of this family is that it's not a family made up of my children and grandchildren. It's a family of adults, my cool, fun, intelligent and sane close friends with whom I am comfortable and at ease and enjoy their company more often than I don't.

(I'm not referring to polyamory here, but simply to companionship and camaraderie. However, most of the stuff that applies to this applies to polyamory as well, turned up to 11.)

Of course, there's a reason this is a fantasy. It's one of the great but rarely-spoken truths of the world that in any group of people larger than four, one of them is an asshole who will ruin it. (Some people say it's any group larger than three, but I think that's overcompensating.) And there's also the simple fact that just because person A gets along great with people B and C, doesn't mean that people B and C will even be able to tolerate each other. What are the chances of finding several adults who have compatible personalities, have compatible lifestyles, who all want to live in the same area, and who want to share a house with other people for an indefinite period and won't be spawning kiddies? Pretty damn slim.

Most groups of close young friends dissolve after school as people pair off to start families, scatter to the winds, etc., and most people change enough during the years of early adulthood that by the time you've matured, you may not be that compatible with the friends of your youth any more. Most groups of adult friends are brought together by common circumstance– they all have the same job, or their kids all belong to the same swim team– and are fleeting at best. As the circumstance changes, the friendship dissolves with it.

I think one of the reasons Rough Housing has the setup it does is as a way to vicariously live out this fantasy. The Rough Housers were exactly this sort of family brought together by Bosley, who then dropped out and sold the place to Leonard, leaving them all feeling disconnected and betrayed. It's into this situation that Charity has unwittingly stepped and has to navigate. Saving the Rough House, as much as anything, means saving this proto-family, which means becoming part of it, and that's Charity's real challenge. As I sit alone in front of my monitor, writing/drawing this out, I actually sometimes envy her. :)

-The Gneech

PS: Yes, I am doing a lot of deep thinking lately. ;) My health changes, my job changes, moving, now this post, they're all related to the process. They're all pieces of the puzzle!
the_gneech: (Cramer Crap)
2014, the Year That Can Die in a Fire.

This follows Fuck 2012 and 2013 Was a Butt. Pretty much everything after 2010 has sucked, actually, and I don't know about anyone else, but I'm pretty sick of it.

Every year I look back at where I was the previous year and try to assess how I've done and what I'd like to do. Usually I do this around New Year's Eve or sometime in January, but I'm so eager for 2014 to be history that I'm doing it a little early this year.

This time last year, I was still enjoying the "afterglow" of finishing NaNoWriMo for the first time, as [livejournal.com profile] lythandra and I were cleaning all the junk out of my mom's house in preparation for selling it, reflecting on the loss of Sandy and Mammallamadevil, and looking forward to a year in which I didn't have friends or family die all over the place.

And then my mom and FrostDemn died. :P

In my mom's case, I wasn't entirely surprised; I actually did not expect her to survive 2014, but I had hoped she'd have a little more time in the assisted living place she seemed to like so much. FrostDemn's death was completely out of the blue and just so goddamn unnecessary. It was God kicking a puppy. And after five years of death, death, death, his was the one that finally made me break down and just weep.

The year followed up that auspicious start by being an unrelenting series of outrages, society unraveling, and general crap that has not affected me on as personal level, but still sucks. It's like March of the Assholes out there.

So yeah. 2014 can die in a fire. And 2015? I'm watching you, man. Don't screw it up.

Anyway. On to specifics! How did I fare on my goals last year?

  • Exercise: I've done very well on this one, actually. Joining DailyBurn has made it relatively easy to get in an average of three or more workouts per week, and it's been very effective.


  • Publish a Novel: This did not happen. No stories at all, even for an anthology to which I was specifically invited, which really hurts. Publishing a comic did happen, but it's taken a lot more of my mental bandwidth than I expected and this is something I need to examine in the upcoming year.


  • Launch the New Comic, Get Out at Least Three Issues: The comic is launched! Two issues are out, the third is under construction. As mentioned above, the comic has taken way more time and energy than I expected it to, and that's even after having run the original SJ for ten years. I'm looking for ways to mitigate this, but it's definitely slow going. Granted, the death of my mom and the long, slow grind of actually selling the house have been a drag on my productivity, but life is life, man. There will always be something happening. Always. And my plans need to account for that.


  • Make at Least $5,000 w/ My Writing and Art: I came close, actually. ~$4700, thanks mostly to Patreon and a solid AnthroCon. I need to beef this up the in coming year, tho. Selling some stories and working more cons would have done this.


  • Work at Least Five Conventions: This didn't happen. I worked FurTheMore (but didn't make much), AC, and Intervention (at which I didn't make a red cent). I was sick and couldn't go to MFF, and didn't have the time to do any others. Not a good year on that front.


  • Bring Our Income/Expense Ratio Back Into Black, Begin Contributing to Savings Again: Nope. :(


  • Floss My Damn Teeth: Did that completely. Unqualified success. I only missed three nights all year: one when I was in the hospital, one at the in-laws' house where I couldn't find any floss, and one when I was so tired I was lucky to hit the bed when I collapsed, much less do any personal hygiene. Every other night, flossed like a boss.


What are my goals for 2015?

  • Sell the House and Move Already: Two years we've been floating in limbo. Our second attempt to put it on the market started in July, man. Compared to my mom's house, which sold in two weeks? This is crazy. We need to be done with this.


  • Bring in $13k Income: Technically, that's what we'd need to live in the current house and still do things like "eat". And while the idea is that we're going to move somewhere cheaper anyway, it seems like a good target number. If we move somewhere we can afford without my income, then anything I make is a bonus. Besides the writing and art, I'm also going to work on filling out The Etsy Shop, which needs more stock as well as advertising and promotion.


  • Four Issues of Rough Housing: I've got to either get faster at this comic, or discontinue it to make room for other projects. And I really don't want to discontinue it.


  • Get Dungeons & Denizens Rolling: I did promise my Patreon supporters that I'd be doing this, after all, and they came through, so now so must I. As of this writing, I've finished two pages... time to pick up the slack, Gneech.


  • Continue to Lose Weight: I've lost about 20 lbs since starting Weight Watchers and DailyBurn, and while I'm currently kind of stuck in the 295-300 spot, I'm working on some strategies to punch through that plateau and start making progress again. I would like to get below 290 for Further Confusion, with a stretch goal of 260 for AnthroCon.


  • Keep Flossing Them Teeth: I'm not actually worried about this habit, I think I've finally got it on lock. But there's no reason not to go for an easy win here.


Any suggestions? You people probably know me better than I know myself, what do you think my goals for the new year should be?

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Me Sensitive)
The visitation for my mom will be Thursday from 5-8 pm at the Adams-Green Funeral Home in Herndon, VA; the funeral will be Friday at 11 am.

I've said before but I'll keep on saying, thank you to everyone for all your words of support and encouragement. I have been too busy dealing with all the arrangements and details to thank everyone individually the way I'd like to, but I have been reading and do appreciate them all. :)

-The Gneech

Mom

Mar. 25th, 2014 04:30 am
the_gneech: (Me Sensitive)
She passed away at roughly 4 a.m. this morning.

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Alex Spaz)
Another new month has begun, and today, even moreso than new year's day, seems like a fine day for reflection and looking ahead, because so many important milestones have been reached!

As of this morning, the following things are true, which were not at the beginning of last month:

  • The new Suburban Jungle comic has launched!

  • My mother's house has sold and all is settled there.

  • My mother is back in her assisted living apartment from the rehab place after her latest fall, and aside from a cold, seems to be improving. She told us yesterday that she started eating again, which is a big relief, assuming she actually has. She was losing weight at a catastrophic pace in the rehab, and she doesn't have much weight to lose.

  • The sale of said house has freed up funds (and time and mental bandwidth) necessary to enable [livejournal.com profile] lythandra and I to get on with the business of selling our house and moving to a smaller, more affordable one that we can comfortably live in on her salary + what my writing/comics bring in.


In short, the last remaining 16-ton weights crushing me over the past year(s) have been slowly sliding off. This has left me in a somewhat twitchy state of "Last day of school and I haven't studied!" paranoia, wondering which 16-ton weight I'm forgetting because obviously I can't not have any and therefore a freight train must be bearing down on me from some blind spot.

But aside from this annoying bit of PTSD, things are actually going very well for me right now. It's still a work in progress, but the progress is working, so to speak! Everything seems to be moving in the right direction, and it's time to take that success and start building on it.

For work, my immediate priorities are to clear off the commissions plate from January (thank you for your patience, commissioners!) and finish off issue one of the new comic. Once those are done I will be pick up either my NaNoWriMo novel or another of the novels-in-progress and work on banging that out.

On the side, we've got to finish going through our stuff, disposing of what we don't want/need any more, and finding clever ways to hide the stuff we do want or need while doing touch-ups around the house.

So we've still got plenty to do! It's just not the huge piles of overwhelming stuff it has been.

Whew!

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Kero Power Tie)
I haven't been posting much about all the stuff going on at the moment, largely because I've been too busy dealing with it to have time to write about it. But yesterday we reached a big, big milestone and I really feel like I should carve out a few minutes to document it.

So yesterday, courtesy of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, who did a great job, almost aaaaalllll of the tons and tons of STUFF in my mom's house is outa there. We had a cleaning service come in and scrub the place down, and it now looks nicer than it has in seven years. Furthermore, all the runaround the settlement company was giving me ("It has two mortgages!" "The mortgage company says it's only one." "They need to send us a document about that!" "They say you've got all the documents." "They need to send us a document showing we have all the documents!" *slap, slap, slap, slap*) was resolved by virtue of the idiot I've been dealing with being on vacation this week and a competent person being put on the case!

Mom has signed the transitional deed; on Wednesday the last of the junk will go; on Thursday I will sign a few pieces of paper and hand over the keys, and a huge albatross will finally be gone from my neck.

There are still plenty of other albatrosses there, including getting mom home from the rehab place and selling our own house before we go bankrupt, but this is still a huge relief. The sale should cover the cost of mom's housing for the foreseeable future, and what's actually even more of a relief, [livejournal.com profile] lythandra and I don't have to keep going over there to check the mail and make sure the place hasn't been broken into or burned down when we weren't looking.

It was something of a psychological wrench for me on Friday, seeing the collected detritus of Mom's and Dad's lives being tossed into bins, and fighting back against the hoarding instinct they instilled in me as a child to go "No! That must be saved! THAT must be saved! IT ALL MUST BE SAVED!" I'd been having unhappy dreams and stressful days about it for a while, and Friday was like finally tearing off the bandage. But yesterday, when the truck finally drove off and I saw the empty, clean house, was like stepping out into the bright light of the first day of spring.

Now, to start moving forward. :)

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (me am writing!)
2013. Wow, 2013. You were a year. Whatever else I can say about you, I can say that.

2013 started with the worst gutpunch I've ever had, even in a five-year stretch of nasty gutpunches. Just a few weeks after we managed to see her one more time for a few minutes at Further Confusion... [livejournal.com profile] mammallamadevil, my business partner, one of the best friends I've ever had, my sister from another mother, succumbed to cancer.

I had just managed to get over the loss of my father and my Aunt Iris when we lost Sandy; I was still wobbling from Sandy when we lost Kerry. It was bad. I'd say I'll never forgive 2013 for taking Kerry away, but really the cancer developed in 2012, and fuck 2012.

The rest of the year from that point is mostly a blur for me, and mostly just "2012, extended"... by which I mean it was continuing to deal with my mom's stroke in 2012 (fuck you, 2012). But then sometime in the spring, I've forgotten exactly how or when now, [livejournal.com profile] laurie_robey and I came to the conclusion that it was time for me to leave Circle and start working on my own stuff at home, money or no money. The only way for that to work would be for us to radically cut our living expenses, including selling our house, and so we set a due date of "September or whenever the house is sold." And then Circle turned around and said, "Surprise! You're fired come September either way!"

Wow. Way to force me to commit, universe. ¬.¬

Unfortunately, selling the house was already a long shot before the gov't shutdown just killed the housing market for the end of 2013, so that part of the plan didn't work. On the other hand, that might be a blessing in disguise, as it was actually kind of a relief to have the stability for a little while longer. It took so much of our time and energy to get mom moved into the assisted living place that there really wasn't any left for us to be trying to sell our house anyway.

So, it might obliterate our savings, but we're still in the house for now. We might be able to back off on the price a bit come spring and put it up for sale again, and with all of the effort we've been putting into culling old stuff from the house, we should have a relatively easy time find a smaller (and cheaper) place to move into.

But the latter part of 2013 had some great bits in it, too. I got to participate in NaNoWriMo for the first time ever, and crushed it. I also wrote an outline for another novel and came up with a comic idea that I quite like. And [livejournal.com profile] laurie_robey and I have scraped off SO MUCH STUFF. Carloads of old clothes, old electronics, boxes of books donated to various places; and we've still got a garage of old Star Wars toys to put on eBay or otherwise dispose of that will be gone sometime in the next few months.

It's strangely liberating to rid yourself of things that have piled up over time. Our culture is so predicated on the acquisition of STUFF that without meaning to you end up dragging behind you a lifetime's worth of crap that you don't really care about and only weighs you down. In my case, I also inherited a tendency towards hoarding from my parents, and it has felt really good to not just beat that, but to completely overcome it. Getting rid of both literal baggage and emotional baggage at the same time? Win/win!

So, honestly, I'm quite hopeful looking forward into 2014. I think overall, our lives are moving in the right direction and I'm eager to keep going. :)

Now, to look back at last year's resolutions...

  • Reading: I have done better this year than in the past, at least partially thanks to the change in the job. By doing the writing and art as my day job, it has freed up time to pursue a bit more leisure at night, including finally getting some reading done. I want to continue this trend, however. I didn't quite make my "read a novel every month" goal, but I came close. In 2014, hopefully I can hit it.


  • Writing: Nailed that one. ;) Gonna nail it even harder in 2014.


  • Flossing My Damn Teeth: Meh. Still a struggle. I fall off the wagon and climb back on regularly. Still working on it.


  • Getting More Regular With the Gym: Well this hit a major snag, in that I can't afford gym membership any more. But I've still got the X-Box and my freeweights at home. I'll make something happen there.


  • Refresh the Wardrobe: I tossed out a bunch of stuff that I knew I would never wear again; but some of my older things are getting pretty ratty and could still use replacing. Budget is an issue, alas.


  • Sharpening Those Workplace Skills: This one got kicked to the curb. To hell with ColdFusion and the horse it rode in on. I'm a writer.


  • Tidy Up Around the House More: Making serious strides on this one. I'm very pleased, and I'm not about to stop now!


And resolutions for 2014...

  • Exercise: This one carries forward. I want to do a workout that leaves me winded at least three times a week. It can be calisthenics, weights, dance games on the X-Box, running around in circles, doesn't matter. Also I need to keep doing back and grip exercises. I have reached the age where muscles will atrophy with shocking speed if I don't make a point of keeping them up.


  • Publish a Novel: I am a writer now, after all. Along those lines, sell at least two and preferably three more short stories.


  • Launch the New Comic, Get Out at Least Three Issues: I'm aiming for a quarterly release, but sometimes shit happens.


  • Make at Least $5,000 w/ My Writing and Art: If I can get to enough cons, this should be easy. As a corollary...


  • Work at Least Five Conventions: FurTheMore, AnthroCon, InterventionCon, Midwest Furfest, and __________. Also, attend Dragon*Con (which means saving up).


  • Bring Our Income/Expense Ratio Back Into Black, Begin Contributing to Savings Again: By means of selling the house, making more money, etc. Right now we've got enough savings built up that we can coast for a little while, but we don't want to hit zero.


  • Floss My Damn Teeth: Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.


That should keep me going for a while. :)

Happy new year, everyone. :) Love ya!

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Kero Power Tie)
I'm going to be mostly-offline for the next few days visiting family and such, so I hope everyone will refrain from burning down the internet while I'm gone. ;) Have a happy and a merry whatever-it-is-you-have, and give your friends and loved ones lots of hugs for me! :) I'll see you in a few days.

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (me am writing!)
So yesterday we took InkyGirl in for her rabies shot, the last of her various inoculationey visits before her big fix (so to speak) in February. Then I went off and got a haircut, after which time the assisted living place called me and said my mom had fallen and hit her head and was now in the Reston ER.

;lkajsijvusasjdr121k

As one might expect, we rushed over to the Reston ER to find my mom awake, conscious, and mostly-okay except for a nasty gash and the beginnings of a black eye. She informed us that she'd been lying on the floor a while calling for help because, being my mother, she had left her emergency button on her walker instead of wearing it around her neck like it was intended. She'd also bled quite a bit, due to being on cumadin. So we hung around with her long enough for them to do a CT scan and check for muscular damage, but she was released with a tentatively clean bill of health and the gash glued shut with a sort of "liquid stitches" stuff. We took her back to her place, and left instructions with the floor nurse that she had to be awakened periodically in the night to make sure she was responsive.

When we got home and went to feed the kitties, InkyGirl was a bit lethargic, which is not unusual for a kitten who's just had a rabies shot, but still fairly active and chatty. She then curled up on her favorite chair and napped all evening, which again is not unusual.

However, when the time came for us to go to bed, when we took Inky upstairs with us, she was not herself. She seemed like she was just really out of it, looking around at activity, but unwilling to move or take any action unless prompted, and very, very quiet. No meowing, no purring. Most worrying of all, she didn't respond to treats, which normally make her vibrate with happiness and try to climb people. Even holding one right under her nose just sort of made her look at you like "Uh, what?"

Lethargy and loss of appetite were both listed as fairly common, non-serious reactions to the rabies shot, but after the day we'd had, [livejournal.com profile] laurie_robey and I were still pretty anxious about it. We managed to eventually get to sleep, but that was mostly from pure exhaustion more than anything else.

The good news is, the assisted living place completely didn't call us last night with any shocking developments, and this morning, Inky's up and active and back to her chatty purring-up-a-storm self, if still a little more prone than usual to napping. We are very pleased and grateful about this. ^.^

It may seem hard to believe, but I did manage to get some actual work done yesterday, too-- I sent the production files for No Predation Allowed to the books' new publisher! I haven't mentioned this up until now because we've been mostly in preliminary talks, and we're still ironing out a lot of the details. But as the original Kickstarted run has sold out, a well-regarded publisher in the furry realm has kindly offered to keep the SJ books in print! I'll pass along more details on that as they get hammered out, but as you can imagine I'm quite happy about this.

So it looks like today will be a good day. :)

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (me am writing!)
It's been very much a week.

Sunday, we moved Mom into her assisted living apartment, which was a huge step for both her well-being and ours. We've spent a lot of time in the days since then ferrying things that didn't get transferred in the move or grabbing things she needs (like a shower curtain), but that will gradually settle down and we can start working on the whole "clean out her house and get it sold" thing. She's been remarkably willing to discard stuff she used to hoard, I can only guess that's a side effect of the stroke. Much of her short- and medium-term memory has been scrambled, including her attachment to many objects. In the time she's been in the assisted living place, she's been chatting with folks, seeing the in-house movies and the like, and she seems to be doing all right; we'll be keeping an eye on her, tho.

While we had the U-Haul, we also brought home the stuff we'd put into storage, since the house is off the market and that's $180/mo we didn't need to be spending. We still need to bring home our stuff from [livejournal.com profile] hantamouse's place, so he can have his third bedroom back, but that'll probably be done a carload at a time as weekend visits permit.

Finally, yesterday, Sweetums and Inkyboy were handed off to their new adoptive mum, who took them off to their forever home. I won't lie, it was a wrench. Over the six weeks they'd been with us, we came to love those kittens fiercely, even with their wrestling matches on our bed at 4 a.m. and the way they behaved like piranhas at feeding time. Unfortunately, they would not stay kittens forever, and we knew from the beginning there was no way we could sustain keeping five adult cats in the house. My allergies are in a constant state of Red Alert as it is, and kittens grow really, really fast. Compare:



The kittens when we rescued them, ~8 weeks old.



The kittens yesterday, the last "family video," ~13 weeks old. The bed that all three of them are rolling around in the first video, and the cat tree that only two fit into in the second video, are roughly the same diameter. By February, when it's time for them to get fixed, they will be as large as Buddha.

So now, with three of the four adopted into loving homes, our kitten adventure is done. Inkygirl is staying with us as part of the family at Casa de Lion; she spent the night curled up in the crook of my elbow, eager for somewhere to snuggle without her brothers to keep her warm. Like her uncles Buddha and Dasher, we will take very good care of her. <3

In other news, it hasn't been easy, but I'm still just under par with NaNoWriMo. And I was right: there was no way I'd have been able to do this while working a day job. Between family and kittens and all the other stuff life throws at you, no way. My respect and admiration for people who manage to write and hold down a job is boundless. Even my own previous work, running a webcomic (and occasionally two) while holding down a job, seems impossible to me now. How the hell did I pull that off, and for so long? My mind reels at the prospect.

Anyway. :)

Today, if all goes well, I will reach par and pass it; that's my goal, anyhow. I also need to take care of some stuff around the house and make some calls to cancel utility accounts my mom no longer needs, and of course keep the cats fed and cared for.

This is the new normal. And so far, I like it. :)

-The Gneech

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