aesmael

I have actually been up to a few things lately, many of which have had to go unreported a time for various reasons. So it is a relief to now be able to talk about at least one thing I was up to, now that we have news to report of a successful outcome.

Yesterday I received in the mail my membership card for ALIA, which I had waited rather a long while to apply for. I'm not sure why I didn't do that earlier, except that I had no income to pay for membership.

But we have that now, so I get to be officially a member the Australian Library and Information Association. Along with a whole lot of other people. But now I can put that on job applications and do other library type things too. Whee!

This also happens to be the only organisation I know of where I am currently listed as Ms, but that's their fault for making me choose.

I think I forgot to mention a couple of months ago I did get to officially graduate and even collect from a perfunctory office a spiffy certificate proving so to anyone who can find where I hid it. That was nice too.

For a couple of days now I have been back on my laptop, since it came back repaired. For almost the same time I have been back in Vista, because there were people who wanted to talk with me on Skype and the company has let its Linux version lag very far behind the current state of Skype-art.

Am likely to continue using Vista a while again because I am somewhat relying on the calendar app for the Google Sidebar to keep myself on track in my life. If I don't have something that pops up alerts without my input then I fairly completely lose track of time and lately especially I am feeling the need for being reminded to take some breaks, get some space and distance. Having that definitely does not completely fix things, and I often do not act on it, but merely having that there in my sidebar reminds of these things.

So I think I am better off for now using Vista than Ubuntu.

Been locked out of my usual laptop due to what seems a final and total failure of power. Don't yet know when that will be resolved, or what the cost will be. Fortunately we were availed of some small degree of foresight and backed a few of our more crucial files - mainly fiction and resume - onto a USB flash drive from which we can comfortably operate awhile.

Attempts at industry have persisted, perhaps even been heightened. Some progress has been made in seeking work, though I fear the job found so far is beyond my qualifications. It is at least some renewed practice at the art of application. Hopefully that will serve well; library jobs seem fairly few and searching more often turns up programming jobs than anything else. I did actually consider today that I might undertake some course of study to render myself qualified for those as well, but I would be either employed or devoid of income for some long time before that could come to pass, which seems presently highly inadvisable.

Of less pressing activities... for the minor, I had resolved to fill my original intention and leave off playing roguelikes until I have done with the other games in my collection. Mainly because of the high difficulty and so forth they seem less exhaustible, less conquerable than games with more repeatable paths. Without our accustomed machine they have been turned to again as the amusement of our idle moments for now.

I think I shall play light, and take them in turn - a single game of each we collected and move on to the next in rotation, come death swift or slow. But there is always allowance for a change of mind as fancy suits, this just is what seems fun for the now.

More major accomplishments, to at least myself. Today has seen some story editing, enough perhaps to call two stories of mine 'done', perhaps as finished as they shall be, though one may yet bear further tweaking on future tweaking. We at least know where and in which direction, waiting only its precision for that presumed final amendment.

This goes with our other project, the pretence of publication in the form of a set of HTML files, as if a little website. In that there was also some great satisfaction, sense of triumph, as with the aid of loved ones in sociable discussion I found the path to some desired improvements in presented format via CSS which had previously been a source of much frustration.

Am very pleased with the accomplishments of the previous two paragraphs, having been vexed some long time by them and only yesterday to see some finalised resolution to them at the next opportunity. It is rare that I feel I have done well, that I consider myself to have done any worthwhile thing, even to myself, and I intend to savour this, to take advantage of it if I can.

Meanwhile of writing itself, though a backup was made, it was some couple of days previous to our most recent writing of the current story, which thus is locked away for now. Am treating this as a vacation from the story particular but do not feel content to cease writing entirely. Therefore a new tale is sought, one which would hopefully be light enough to write in a state of reduced access. I don't ever seem to find that easy, but right now the best chances for it seem either comedy, erotica, or fanfiction. I might take this as a freedom to right whatever takes my fancy of the moment, with no care for now to focus with the aim of steady completion.

Seems quiet since clearing out of flist, peaceful. Tempting sometimes to add people back but I don't know why, or if for motives I'd call worth following. Quietly frantic indecision when the subject arisen.

If I am going to be learning and doing more of HTML or coding, really ought to find a tag for that.

There's a thing about executive functioning issues often associated with autism. And I've noticed my hygiene doesn't seem to be taking care of itself. Sleeping too. I thought I could manage those since I seemed to go okay when I was younger.

I don't know, but I've identified two factors which, being addressed, should help with this a great deal. One is making time specifically for these necessary activities, the other is disengaging from what I am doing when those times come up to go deal with the scheduled important thing instead. Because I like being clean, and well rested, I just keep forgetting to make those happen.

The second part... I don't know how to make happen yet. Am hoping a mere conscious choice to put aside and do will suffice. As for the first part, that's a bit easier, and why my personal calendar is going to be for a while experimentally marked with such peculiar instructions as 'shower'.

About a week ago my laptop gave up on being useful. Today it has been partially repaired. The problem with the adaptor has been fixed but the battery is still nearly useless, so until I can get that replaced I am still confined to wherever I can plug in. But this is still an improvement, definitely.

Today was also a jobby sort of day. A local city library likes to come in once a year to collect resumes and quick, informal interviews from senior students they may want to employ casually. While waiting and immediately after I thought of some more ways I could improve mine to be more comprehensive, appealing, and still less tainted by filler. I do think it went okay though, and while I don't expect to be called upon, it still helps to have a bit more interviewing experience and to be reminded that I am possibly employable.

In conclusion, cats are adorable.

Thanks to not sleeping I finally managed to complete a project I'd set myself a couple of weeks ago.

I'd wanted to increase my familiarity with HTML, for reasons of school / work benefits and also especially on account of wanting to, so I set myself the task of creating a bundle of pages which held my stories. A sort of book, an anthology of my work shaped like a website.

I am always surprised at how long HTML takes for me to put together. Especially as once I learn the tools for the task the actual putting it together goes rather quickly - most of the time on this project has been reading up on the subject itself, and only the past few days attempting to sort layout. I am pleased to have learned a teensy bit of CSS for this too, but only a tiny bit of skipping ahead because I want to avoid use of any deprecated elements or attributes if I can.

And now it works. Not any glaring errors I have seen. Pleasant to look at, but not spectacular in even an understated sense. It works, though, and I can call the first version done to enough satisfaction for me to say so. First version, which I have playfully* decided to call v0.1, is done. Nine and a half very small stories and nine poems; eleven and a half stories if you count the version with erotica included. That seemed so few in collection, and they so short, I just had to give a correspondingly low version number, to show how far and how many places we have to go.

Jayde, I ended up excluding. She's something different and does not intersect with this at present (later, that changes). And all my larger stories, those are yet in a state of incompletion. There is at least one, maybe a couple of others I might have included, but they would have required further organisational thought to find their places and I wanted first to establish a version of this story bundle as something that works and exists.

And now it does, and I am happy with my little accomplishment. I did have, starting out, a vague idea that I might share this with people as a sort of writing sample or collected work. May as well go through with that and offer a copy, either version, of this little thing to them as would like one. Everything included is available on my journal already. And this makes another incentive to keep working on other stories as I want to work my fingers in them, shape them, tell them, and now having another place to keep them too, somewhere to arrange and enjoy what I have made, that I have made.

*and sleepily, but don't forget the playfully!

The past few days have been pleasantly quiet. Relatively few people around, leaving me more time to myself. Been trying to take advantage of this to focus more on taking care of myself and my projects.

Slow progress so far, but a lot of what I need to learn is persistence and discipline, so sticking with it and building better habits is important. That, and learning more to be free, but that freedom perhaps ironically seems to stem a lot from gaining organisation and focus. As I've said a few times by now, having structure with which I can confidently reach for my goals will make departures easier - I will be able to have confidence that doing so is not failure or ruination and awareness to judge my actions. Everything going well enough? Great, no problem taking a spontaneous diversion or few this week. Things falling apart a bit? Better work on shoring up the foundations... unless the alternative is worth that risk.

So, I am trying to put these pieces together. Structure writing time, avoid distractions. Finding this hard. Quite hard. Think it worth learning. Once I can manage that, might be able to add time for other activities too. Learning things I want to learn, doing things I want to do. Should do for schoolwork too; I have a whole month to practice focus in.

Some things are too important to leave that long, though. Living maintenance work, things like housework, healthcare, finance. I need to add those in too. Harder than scheduling writing, but maybe not much more. Maybe not at all, once I get used to what they are and what they demand.

I am finding this quite hard, but still believing I can do it. Streamlining, allocation, awareness. Fluency built from practice. If I can't do it, how would I know?

And this was going to be a different post, but the above is divorced enough from the intended subject it gets to be two instead. I don't normally do the 'turn of year, year in review' post type thing, but there are a couple of different reviews I have been meaning to write for a few months now. Those should be done and posted over the next couple of days.

A couple of months ago I set about organising my life better by marking times on my calendar for working on tasks I had to accomplish, including a regular nightly time for writing. To an extent that fell apart when some of those tasks proved beyond my then capabilities (and home life factors were seriously disruptive at points) but I still think that was helpful for me. I did manage a significant amount of writing during that trial period.

Unfortunately November happened and I realised I needed to set aside writing to work on my assignments (this entity thus far is incapable of both at once). I managed that but have not been writing since, feeling overwhelmed by other things I am trying to get on top of. Except a lot of that is actually listless idling... so if I could learn to focus and direct that focus I could do a lot more of what I want to. I think I am learning this, slowly, with frequent backsliding.

And where does that lead this post? I had been intending to work on tSOW after finishing my assignments. At the beginning of the month I devised a plan which would hopefully see me both writing regularly and bringing projects to some state of completion . According to this plan I would write tSOW for a month, then in January I would edit Epic Fantasy into a more polished state.

I would continue from there, alternating between writing a project for a month (later revised to aim for a minimum of one month, but continuing until some suitable part of the story for stopping is reached [the end would do nicely]) and editing the story produced by a previous cycle for another month or two. My aim is to be productive by focusing on one project at a time, for long enough to accomplish some significant progress, but also avoid burning out by changing my focus every few months and getting me to actually produce finished stories.

Possibly I could even set something less than a full week for myself, leaving a day or two for other projects, maybe even rest and have a day of nothing in particular... that might work if I can get other areas of my life like work and school organised too. If I am getting done what I want to get done, I think I would not feel guilty about taking a day off for other things sometimes.

I was going to work on tSOW during December, but December is nearly done. New ideas, of a smaller sort just recently I have had, so the plan is to finish out the calendar year, begin the next by writing out those. Not going to name them though, make promises, until we see if they will be anything. Then we see about giving tSOW its time.

Have been for a while really, since October at the least and my brush with insomnia. This year I have been increasingly reluctant to sleep as my dreams discomfit me, and for years I have been in the habit of staying up until the early hours of the morning, until sunrise even.

Only in the past couple of months, however, have I been actively avoiding sleep. I think it likely I have been subconsciously avoiding sleep; only recently did I realise I have a habit of looking for more and more to to do and read so I do not have to sleep, until I am too tired to stay awake any longer. Lately though I have been feeling increasingly anxious after and around midnight. I feel scared and upset, not conducive moods for sleeping. Mostly I have been pushing myself until it becomes too much effort to be awake.

I think some of it is not wanting to be alone, but I think there are other reasons too. [and right now I want to cry out loud for someone to help me] I don't know exactly what it is. Maybe I am just not happy overall and feel it most at night when everyone being asleep emphasises how alone I am, don't know how to find happiness.

Speaking of happiness, what am I going to write for today's happy post?

I am going to try and find some fun stuff to do. Maybe watch a fun show, read webcomics, work on stories. Also some busywork. Busywork is good. Probably the result will be exhausting myself to sleep again but that is not the goal. Goal is to feel good so I can say "Today has been a happy day, this is the feeling I wish to carry with me into the next day."

It might help too if I start going to bed earlier, probably after my mother but before my sisters so I can feel comforted there is still someone up and about. Maybe stay up overnight tonight and sleep early tomorrow. Requires discipline to continue sleeping early. Maybe I will learn to restrict myself to activities which are at least one of productive and enjoyable, so when I put something down to sleep I can look forward to picking it up again the next day.

Same old, same old goals really. Pervasive problems, pervasive solutions seen from many angles. Learn to have fun and learn to do what I need to do in order to improve my life. Set aside that which helps neither.

Staying up tonight is risky since I would like to have some time with pazi_ashfeather later, although I think I have neither asked it of nor promised it to her, so at least it is only myself who would be disappointed so far.

Overall, even though there are plenty of good points my life is a pretty sad mess and I have a lot of work to do before I am happy participating in it.

Can I post this public? Yeah, I think I can. In the right sort of mood to believe the world benefits when people show vulnerability as well as the hard stuff. What's that called, grandiose? I often don't feel human, but do think I care enough about them to try as hard as I can to be one.