Sir Prize

Jan. 30th, 2025 05:46 pm
shanmonster: (Dance Monkey Dance!)
January has started with a bang.

My poem "Pony" has come in third place in ZO Magazine's Decennalia Contest.

And, for the first time ever, I was awarded a Literary Creation Grant by the Ontario Arts Council. This grant money will be used for the development of a collection of short stories tentatively titled Breath Sea Earth Flesh.

Part of that is allocated towards travel, and I have already booked a trip to Newfoundland. I lived there as a little kid and haven't been back since 1981. I've written quite a bit about my life in Newfoundland, so it will be interesting to see how the rock has changed, and how well my memories match up. I didn't realize how homesick I was for Newfoundland until I realized I am now able to finance a trip.

I hope to use more of the grant money for trips back to the Maritimes as well as some research trips within Ontario. I'm so grateful for this cash infusion. It lets me realize my work is valued by more than just my tiny circle of readers and friends.

I'm finishing up my stint at GrubStreet. The LGBTQ+ Novel Immersive has been very work-intensive. I sometimes have over 100 pages of close reading to do in a week for this course alone, let alone what I'm also doing for my other writing circles. I had applied for a speculative fiction novel workshop through Clarion West, but I didn't get in. This rejection is a merry-go-sorrow. Yes, I was looking forward to it, but not being in another intensive right away means I get some breathing space. And I need that.

I just went through the first round of edits for a couple of poems which are being anthologized this year. More information on that when I get publication details.

Next week, I am back to horror-writing school with Alex Davis Events. It runs on Tuesdays for six weeks, and you can still sign up, if you're interested. I recommend his workshops, classes, and seminars. They're top-notch with a lot of terrific guest speakers/instructors.

I'm continuing to revise my novel The Everwhen, but my work on the novella The Development has stalled. Hopefully, I'll be able to resume work on it by the end of February, when my work with GrubStreet finally wraps.

Life gave me mouldy lemons to go with all this delicious lemonade, though. I was recently diagnosed with frozen shoulder, and have a year and a half or so of a new disability to contend with. I'm hoping it won't interfere with my writing, though it definitely interferes with pretty much everything else. Today I realized I can no longer put underarm deoderant on, so I guess I'm gonna stink for a while. Yay.
shanmonster: (Zombie ShanMonster)
I'm so boring these days. All I do is write. Thanks to long COVID (I finally caught COVID at the dentist office last October), I don't have the energy to do much more. Good thing I have an active imagination!

That being said, I had a public reading a couple of weekends ago for the Cabbagetown Festival in Toronto, and this weekend, I have a reading at the Multicultural Festival of Elmira (I'll be on around noon) and at the book launch for Mihko-Kiskisiwin--Blood Memory book launch at Idea Exchange in Cambridge (from 2-4). I'll be wearing a mask at the indoor reading because I do NOT want COVID again.

An excerpt from my award-winning story "The Tupilaq" has been published by Kinsman Quarterly.

Another award-winning story, "The Snow Hath No Queen," has been accepted for publication by MetaStellar and should be going live next week. I'll share the link once it's up.

My story "The Lupercal" was a runner-up in Louisiana State University Alexandria's flash fiction contest, and my story "The Yolk of the Moon" came in second place. The latter story will be published sometime soon. I'll share the link when it's available.

I was also longlisted for the diverse voices/diverse worlds grant sponsored by the Speculative Literature Foundation, but I didn't make it to the short list. Womp womp. This is my second time getting longlisted by them, so I must be doing something mostly right.

To top it all off, I applied for residencies in Alaska, Costa Rica, and Switzerland for next year. If I get them all, I'm in big trouble.
shanmonster: (Default)
I was recently interviewed by Rachel Thompson on the podcast Write, Publish, and Shine. We talked about visceral writing and writing with ADHD. I even sound like I know what I'm talking about! If you'd like to check it out, I'm on Episode 91.

I should be featured on another writing podcast this spring. More details on that to come.
shanmonster: (Default)
My essay "The Anxious Writer" has been published by Open Minds Quarterly. Here's the opening paragraph:

I suffer from anxiety. I didn’t know I was an anxious person until I was well into adulthood. It’s my default state. For years, whirling thoughts have been my power generator, but this seems different from most other folks. I’ve always been viewed with suspicion, longsuffering, and irritation by a lot of other people. I’m hyper. I’m outspoken. I’m blunt. I’m loud. I take things too literally. I ask too many questions. I’m kinda...much. And even as a little kid I knew it. I knew I was weird, talked too much, and that the words and noises pouring out of my mouth in a cascade were drowning whatever empathy others might feel for me. I saw faces harden, eyes roll, smiles shrivel into white-lipped aggravation, yet still my words fountained out of me in an attempt to appease, amuse, or elicit something other than hatred or disinterest.


In other news, I am currently taking a horror-writing class and am enjoying it. Once a week for the next month and a bit, I get to learn from a variety of horror authors, and then I get to workshop short stories and excerpts with other authors. I only started last week, and I'm loving it so far.

I recently completed a story called "The Infective" which will be published in the Asylum of Terror Volume 2 anthology next year. It's about pandemic anxiety and is creepy as hell. I began writing about a month ago while healthy, and was diagnosed with my first (and hopefully only) bout of COVID halfway through. I finished it while still sick. It seems apropos.

In another irony, I recently sold an essay called "Hiding in Plain Sight: Life With and Without Masks." It's about my struggles with avoiding getting sick in a world which pretends the pandemic is over. The day it was announced my story had been accepted was the day I tested positive for COVID.

My symptoms were fairly mild, but long-lasting. I was contagious for almost a month, and I spent all that time in solitary confinement, hiding in my room and writing. I am finally testing clear, and my symptoms are almost gone. I am hoping that the disease doesn't have any awful surprises for me further down the road. Several of my friends and family have experienced terrible health issues after contracting this deadly disease. I am very slowly reintroducing exercise. I do not want to increase my chances of developing long COVID. I am at elevated risk of it because of my various medical conditions.

Based on recommendations from other writers and editors, I have started paying closer attention to the masterful dialogue of Elmore Leonard. Based on that, I wrote a new story called "Ethel's Bones" which I'm very happy with. I've begun sending it around to different magazines and expect someone will want to snatch it up. I'm especially proud of its ending. Endings are the hardest part for me, so I get excited when I nail one.

I have entered several novel excerpt contests with my manuscript-in-progress The Everwhen. I'm getting much closer to finishing it. Only about 15,000 more words to go. If all goes well, I'll have my first draft completed before the end of the month. Many thanks to the Waterloo Arts Fund for their support.

I've also applied for the graduate program at The Writers Studio at Simon Fraser University. I was accepted into the program at the beginning of the year but turned it down because I'd won the Yosef Wosk fellowship with the Vancouver Manuscript Intensive. I have also applied for other fellowships, so hopefully at least one of these options will pan out for me.

I have so many things I am writing and want to write, and it is extremely helpful for me to have mentorships and classes. They help keep me motivated so I don't feel like I'm working in a vacuum.
shanmonster: (Dance Monkey Dance!)
Throwdown Collective is an award-winning contemporary dance company based out of Toronto. They have been doing a dance residency in Waterloo region, and invited several local dancers to participate. Although I've essentially been retired from dancing for a few years, I was grateful to receive an invitation. The workshop was sponsored by MT Space, an organization which is amazingly supportive of the arts, locally, nationally, and internationally. They're kind of a big deal.

Day 1 was held in the Charles Room of Kitchener's Downtown Community Centre. It's a tiny dance studio with an amazing sprung hardwood floor--probably the best floor I've ever danced on in Waterloo region. I used to teach in that studio several years ago, and it was nice to be back. After we all did our Covid rapid tests, we took our masks off and many of us jumped off the deep end of our comfort zones. Although I have often worked in tight proximity with other people over the years (eg. acro yoga, martial arts, contact dance), I have not been in close contact with other people since the beginning of the pandemic. Our first dance exercise was based off of slow-motion hugging/embracing. We paired up with another dancer and worked through this exercise, which after three years of physical distancing, felt scary, transgressive, intimate, and tender. Being close enough to feel skin on skin, smell shampoo, hear breath while moving up and down from the floor took me back to experiments with butoh and contact dance. And when we broke the group into two sections so we could watch the other dancers work together, it was fascinating to see the unplanned synchronicities of movement.

The second half of the day was spent working on walking at the same tempo while moving in separate patterns from the other dancers. The synchronization gradually dissipated, and then dancers would collapse, and other dancers would help them up, press them back down to the floor, or ignore them. It was a simple exercise, but it yielded complex dynamics, and was fun to watch, too! Dramas unfolded, and some comedy, too.

Unfortunately for me, I developed a limp, and by the time I got home, my foot was very sore. It appears that something has been lodged beneath the skin close to my toes for some time (maybe a sliver or a piece of gravel), and when I went into relevé, all my bodyweight pressed onto that spot so it felt like I'd jumped onto a four-sided die. There's a nasty bruise there, and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to participate in the second day of the workshop. I woke up feeling down, but rather than call and cancel, I decided to pivot. I brought a sketchbook with me because at the very least, I could sketch the workshop.

Day 2 began with takeout from Three Kretans (I had the lemon chicken soup: it's good) at the Registry Theatre. I've danced at this theatre many times over the past seventeen years, but never on a rotating stage!

I've still not danced on a rotating stage. I kept my winter boots on so I wouldn't accidentally go into relevé again and re-injure my foot, so I stayed off the stage in order to not get it dirty. The first half of the day was spent in groups of three on the spinning stage. Each dancer did a figure eight with a consistent walking tempo, with each dancer coming in on the fifth step. The result was sort of dance fugue, something like a movement-based rendition of singing in rounds. Paired with the spinning stage, dancers frequently got lost in their figure-8s. When rotating is put into the mix, it seriously messes with proprioception. Eventually, the dancers got it figured out, and it looked a bit like a human spirograph or the Scrambler ride at the fair done on foot.

Since I was unable to safely participate in this part, I decided to do a drawing of the sounds I heard. These single-line drawings demarcate the rhythms I heard, the various instruments of the music, and the footfalls of the dancers.

white lines on black paper

The second half of day two was something I did feel safe participating in. I am not good at memorizing choreography. That being said, this choreography was simple enough that even I didn't have a hard time learning it. I stood off to the side of the stage to do a cycle of swaying, side stepping, and finger snapping on 8 counts. Each cycle got bigger and bigger until the rhythms began to disintegrate and movements grew wild. It was a lot of fun, and my hair, which has grown very long again over the pandemic, started dancing with me.

I've missed dancing with big hair.

I'm grateful I got to participate in this residency. Hopefully, the next time around, my body will not malfunction and I will be able to throw myself into dancing again with full exuberance.
shanmonster: (Zombie ShanMonster)
Scintillating scotoma. Migraine status aura. This is the fancy name for the condition I had from my late teens through to my early 30s. For most people who get this, it only lasts for a few minutes. I am one of those unlucky few who get it as a chronic condition.

[Scintillating scotoma]

For some reason, it left when I moved from New Brunswick to Ontario. My variety of migraine isn't the usual one. I don't typically get pain with it, although I definitely become more sensitive to sound and light. Instead, I get brain fog and hallucinations. I don't see people or monsters that aren't there. Nothing like that. I see strobe lights and fireworks and blank spots and lots of flickering, twinkling floaters. It feels like the visual representation of my chronic tinnitus. If it wasn't chronic, I'd think it was pretty, but it can be debilitating. Between 1999-2004, I would have bouts which lasted months at a time, 24/7. The flickering took over the bulk of my vision leaving me unable to read, see where I was stepping, or follow a conversation. It was there when my eyes were open. It was there when my eyes were closed. It was almost impossible to think clearly or converse with folks because I was being distracted at every moment. If you had a strobe light going in your peripheral vision at all times, you'd be spacey, too.

[Blind Spots]
About a week ago, my own private light show returned. I'm told this is a neurological condition, not a mental health one, but I honestly don't see the difference. They're both in my head, after all. One is just viewed as less "crazy" than the other. I guess it's not mental illness if you go to a neurologist for your hallucinations instead of a psychiatrist.

I reluctantly went to the doctor yesterday. I've never spoken to this doctor about my migraines before because they've been gone for over fifteen years. But here they are again. I suspect they have returned because of the extreme muscle tension in my jaw. I have bruxism, which means I have the jaw strength of a pitbull. If my teeth weren't such a crumbly mess, I could gnaw through iron bars.

These overdeveloped muscles are causing me a world of hurt. Ruined teeth, mouth pain, headaches, wry neck, tight trapezius muscles, dislocated upper ribs.... It's a cascade of body trollery. I am one of those folks who look fit and healthy, but it's a disguise worn by my array of invisible disabilities.



So I went to the doctor and explained what was going on. I told him I'd been on beta blockers before and the side effects I experienced were far worse than the migraines they were supposed to treat. He told me to go to an optometrist (it's not an eye thing), to increase my vitamin D intake (ok), and he wrote me a prescription for a medication called Cambia.

I went to the pharmacist and was given a box of meds. I said, "Wait. What do I need to know? Are there any contraindications?"

The pharmacist lied and told me no.

I got home, mixed my meds up, and drank them. It tasted kind of like someone chewed Double Mint gum and then spit in my mouth.

This morning, I woke up and the fireworks are still there, so I went to mix up another pouch. That's when I noticed that there actually is a fact sheet buried at the bottom of the box, and yes, there are all sorts of contraindications and risks. The more of this stuff I take, the greater the risk. Heck, I could end up with fatal bleeding at any time after taking this. I will not be taking any more. I'd rather deal with partial blindness than have heart failure, bleeding ulcers, increased asthma attacks, kidney failure, stroke, or life-threatening skin reactions. No, thank you. I'd rather live with my own private light show.

Why do doctors prescribe medicines which cause more harm than good? What happened to the hippocratic oath?

Oddly enough, it does not seem to affect my writing. As long as my fingers are on the keyboard, I can write even if I can't see properly. And the light show isn't quite as bad in dim light, so maybe I'll just become a night owl again.
shanmonster: (On the stairs)
I had a colossal fuck-up yesterday regarding scheduling and tried showing up to something I was supposed to show up for the day prior. I find that the worse I'm feeling, the more clouded my thought processes get, and things like time schedules get downgraded from essential to optional. As a result, I sometimes come across as a total flake. I hope I did not inconvenience folks too badly. This week, I've been dealing with the aftermath of a surprise asthma attack: a few days of heavy exhaustion, the resulting headache caused by oxygen deprivation, the increased anxiety caused by knowing my physical health and mental acuity will be affected for several days, dense brain fog, and the upset guts which always accompany my anxiety attacks.

I don't just have asthma or IBS or migraines or other body/brain malfunctions. I weather tempests of body/brain fuckery. I dearly wish I could keep the climate of my corpus to myself, that my health or lack thereof wouldn't storm-surge and flood other people's days, too. I often end up overcompensating by over-explaining my situation, which is off-putting. I know I find it irritating when someone does it to me, though I feel more empathy about it now than I did ten years ago.

I *think* I am back on track, but my brain, if not foggy, still has a precipitous mist about it. Yesterday's delightful anxiety attack and its resulting gutquake are behind me. I finally finished filling out forms for the Canada Council for the Arts grants. I'm positively dreadful at self-promotion and applying for grants, but this makes me one step closer to maybe getting some monetary compensation. I don't like money, but most people/businesses aren't into the whole gift economy thing.

I'm getting caught up on assignments for the Lit Mag Love course offered by Rachel Thompson. I'm looking specifically for literary journals run by First Nations, Metis, and/or Inuit, and they appear to be very few in number. I'm going to keep looking and see what else I can find. I've already had some of my work accepted by one of them: The Yellow Medicine Review. I'm not sure of the publication date.
shanmonster: (Zombie ShanMonster)
Yesterday's coffee incident caused a setback. Last evening, when it was about time for bed, my guts returned to their old familiar bloat state. "No worries," I told myself. "It was only a mouthful, not a half cup or anything, and you've experienced far worse pain than this before. Far worse."

And so I held cautious hope.

Too early this morning, gut pain woke me up. (Insert Darth Vader NoooooOOOOOoooo.) The exhilaration of my yesterday felt pressed to death beneath the distension of my swollen, creeping intestines. But there's the thing. My intestines were creeping. They weren't lying there like roadkill snakes. They were moving. For so long over the past year, my guts felt like dead things containing slowly fermenting food and the gut flora who gorge on whatever I eat, burping and farting it out while my cilia were apparently comatose. I was pretty excited any time I heard a borborygmus. My belly and I cheered aloud together.

I went back to bed, telling myself I'd feel better the next time I got up. And a while later, I got up, and did not feel much better. After the joy of feeling healthy and awake and clear-headed yesterday, this descent was just not fair. Not fair! I felt myself planning a pity party.

But I didn't want a pity party. Those have never worked for me. Not even on the short term.

I didn't feel well enough to go for the walk I'd wanted to go on this morning, but I did feel well enough to sit and tinker with my erasure poetry project. I picked up a copy of Stephenie Meyer's New Moon from a Free Little Library with the intention of vandalism. I've been keeping my eye out for a book I figured no one would miss if it were repurposed for art. I was idly looking for one of the ubiquitous 50 Shades books, but New Moon served my purpose well enough. I decided that every day, I would read one page of this book (I'd never read any of the Twilight books before), and sculpt its words into something else. I call the project Twi-Write, and you can see it on my Instagram account.

Today is day 8, and here I was, beating myself up because I hadn't stopped myself from having a big glug of Tim Horton's rotgut special, hadn't remained on that strictly vertical pathway to recovery. I would never blame someone else for going through what I was going through, so why should I be so rough on myself? I sat down, opened New Moon, and threw myself into page 8. After about an hour of scribbling and editing in my journal, I came up with something fun.

That's when I realized that although my guts were still sore, my mental state was much healthier. Not only that, but the lightened mood had lightened the pain load. This perked me up. Thanks, Stephenie Meyer. If someone had extolled the the panacean powers of your books at any other point in my life, I'd have had a good belly laugh. But there I was, planting lettuce in my garden, tidying the kitchen a bit, making myself a gut-friendly breakfast, and starting the laundry all before 10:00 am. All while wearing pants with a waistband. Not bad, Shan. Not bad. Six months ago, I'd have been happy to accomplish that much in 24 hours.

As for my Twi-Write project, I'm finding it's making me look at words and structure and editing in a very different way. Some pages are more challenging than others. I feel like this exercise is excellent for my brain, helping me form new neural pathways. Ideas snap into focus, and I fiddle around with them on paper. I'm looking at rhythm, rhyme, and maybe even bits of cryptic wisdom. It almost feels like I'm casting a bibliomantic spell.

My self-imposed rules are these:
  • The words must be used in the same order as they appear on the page. eg. "Charles came in with a pizza box in his hands" can be turned into "Charles came in his hands," but not "In his hands came Charles."
  • I can ignore and create punctuation at will.
  • I can carve smaller words from bigger ones. eg. "I reached up on my toes to make the kiss last longer when he pulled away" can be turned into "I ache to make hen pull," although I have no clue as to what that means.
  • Whenever possible, I do one page each day.


Wanna join me? I like it better than Sudoku or crossword puzzles.
shanmonster: (Default)
Since ditching a bunch of meds which were more detrimental than helpful, I feel like my body and brain are waking up, shaking off cobwebs and dust and disuse. My sleep schedule has entirely changed. No longer do I go to bed very late, lie awake for a few hours, sleep fitfully, and get up exhausted. Now I go to bed, fall right to sleep, and although I think I could use a bit more sleep than I've been getting, I wake up refreshed and early. I decided to treat myself this morning, and before it was even 7 am, I was walking down the road to a Tim Horton's to grab a cheese croissant and a steeped tea. On my walk back, I gobbled up the croissant, took a nice big sip of my tea and had a mouth freakout.

That wasn't tea.

It was coffee.

Even when I was a coffee-drinker, I did not drink Tim Horton's coffee. It tastes appalling to me, like a mixture of cheap instant coffee cut with cigarette butts. It also does awful things to my digestive system, and no, I'm not talking about the ubiquitous coffee shits. I'm talking about major IBS gut spasms, nausea, and excruciating cramps which can last for a few days.

I only had one mouthful of the odious stuff, so I'm hoping my belly will be forgiving.

I went back and got the tea I had paid for in the first place. That tasted much better.

On my walk back, I heard the desperate screams of a hawk, and looked to watch a high-speed chase. A crow flew in hot pursuit of a Cooper's (or maybe a sharp-shinned?) hawk. The raptor made hairtrigger turns and corrections in her flight path, screaming in dismay at her predicament. The much larger crow flew in silence, intent on causing grievous harm. The hawk was juuuuust keeping out of reach. Crows hate birds of prey. They'll flock around owls and pester them to death. I paused to watch this tiny drama, and soon it was gone from my sight and hearing. Did the crow catch the hawk? Did the hawk get away? I dunno. No resolution for me, today.

When I got home, I spread a mixture of white clover and native wildflower seeds all over what was once a front lawn. It's supposed to rain for a few days, but this morning is beautiful and bright, so I wanted to take advantage of the ideal planting weather. Afterwards, I spread a mixture of chinchilla litter, shredded basswood bark, straw, and old leaves atop it all as a mulch. My yard is a carefully cultivated mixture of native varieties and introduced species. No longer is my yard covered with basic lawn grass, which is nothing but a food desert for pollinators. Now I have sweetgrass, sunflower, coneflower, goldenrod, gooseberry, strawberry, boysenberry, sour cherry, calendula, brown eyed Susan, red currant, honeyberry, hoarhound, goji berry, kiwi, rhubarb, blackberry, mallow, viper bugloss, dandelion, Saskatoon berry, day lily, poppy, raspberry, ramps, trillium, mayapple, Solomon's seal, trout lily, sorrel, chamomile, plantain, bergamot, cinquefoil, violet, and more. I am still working on getting milkweed established, and I'd love to bring in some crackerberry and red dogwood. I even have a planter where moss is growing. Three years in, and it's no longer short. Now it is sprouting higher, sending little mossy antennae skyward from dense green cushions. I don't know much about moss. I just know this particular moss planted itself, and is happy where it is.

When I first moved here, there were few pollinators to be seen in my yard. Now, my yard is a haven buzzing with life. More bees than I can identify take advantage of this mini wildlife sanctuary. I've seen green sweat bees (the official bee of Toronto), honeybees, bumblebees, swallowtail butterflies, monarch butterflies, yellow jackets, and more. Bats come swooping into my backyard at night, gobbling up insects and delighting me with their acrobatics. I've set up a bat house and a birdhouse. I've set up a potential den for a queen bumblebee: a buried teapot, spout facing the south, with a mixture of mouse shit and dried grass inside. Bumblebees like mouse dens. The droppings let them know that this might be a good place to have a family.

I'm not as keen on the way the ants tend to their aphid dairies on my food plants, but if nothing is eating the plants, they are not part of the ecosystem.

Every now and then, I go walking and look for species to bring home. I'll scoop up ladybird beetles and show them what I hope will be their new digs. I put nightcrawlers into my big permaculture planter out back. I dig up plants from the forest (careful to only choose spots from where that species is plentiful so I don't cause a paucity), and I introduce them to my yard. My yard shakes hands with the new plants and welcomes them to the community. Today, I brought home a bunch of day lilies someone had thinned out from their yard. Those lilies make for good eatin', and they're pretty. Sounds like a win-win to me.

Some of the plants I keep in planters, because I don't want them everywhere. Motherwort is one of those plants. It will gladly take the place over, so I grow it in pots. I also have a nice patch of stinging nettle in the back corner of my yard, carefully positioned so no one will accidentally rub up against it. I just planted it last year, and now it appears to have naturalized. Young shoots are popping up everywhere in a good-sized planter.

Now, where shall I put horseradish so it doesn't take over? And thistle? And I also want to set up a deep planter for burdock. I don't want that growing just anywhere, but I do want it.
shanmonster: (Liothu'a)
I've been spacey lately. This year has been one hell of a theme park ride, and it's all just a bit much these past few days. I've been taking care of myself, and the people who live with me have been helping, too. I live with good people. But still, I am spacey. I go off into my own world, and I don't see or hear people or things around me unless someone or something snaps me out of it. It's not a thing I typically do on purpose (although it has served me well at the Kingdom Hall or riding public transit). When my mind is occupied, it happens all by itself. I guess this is what all those teachers meant by "daydreamer" on my report cards.

This year has given all of us stuff to be preoccupied about. We all have our different ways with dealing with stress. Unless I have to do it under pressure, creating is one of the best therapies I have for myself. I do it because I love it, but also because it helps me feel better and collect myself. I also do it because I love to share with you and with other people. It gives me a nice shot of the good brain chemicals.

This past year has been particularly hard on my executive function. All my regular routines crashed and burned early in 2020. Suddenly, I was home all the time, and almost never alone. It began hard to do any of the things I'd always done. Things like cook, clean, exercise, camp, hike, etc. I wanted to do so very many things, but no matter how much I wanted to do them, my body would stay paralyzed on the couch. Or on a chair. Basically, I spent a lot of time on my ass doing not much of anything tangible.

Then I rediscovered MOOCs and online classes and so forth, and I found that if I had a particular time set aside on my calendar where I'd be doing some sort of creation with other people, I was able to get some of my mojo back.

I've been participating in a lot of writing prompt groups online. I love the accountability they provide, the timed free-writing sprints, the prompts, the community, the positivity, and the opportunity to unleash the stories bouncing around inside my head. It's been hugely helpful to my wellbeing. I'm creating things that I'm proud of, and it's low-stress and low-pressure.

Today I joined an event I've never attended before. Although I got some good writing done, I will not be participating with those particular folks again. I joined it with the understanding that it wouldn't be a workshop with critiques, but a basic free-writing session with a meditation component. I was looking forward to escaping the week's anxiety for a while by throwing myself into writing.

The prompt came up, and I entered that liminal zone between meatspace and imagination, that spot where I translate into words the thoughts in my head. My brain doesn't think in images or words. It thinks in a big old storm of ideas and distractions flying everywhere, and I have to catch the best ideas and describe them into scribbles with my pen. I don't remember what someone looks like, but I can figure out how to translate their appearance into finger strokes on my keyboard. I can describe sensation. I know how something feels when it touches my skin. I know what I taste when I hear a certain sound. I know what something looks like when the sun hits at a certain angle, I know what coldness smells like, and while I'm knowing and translating all these things into words, I'm not really seeing or hearing anything around me in the real world because I'm in this whole other dimension right now and wait.... Someone's saying my name.

The moderator was looking at me from the Zoom screen disapprovingly. "I'm sorry," I said. "Can you repeat that?"

She asked me to say a few words about a story which had apparently just been read aloud. Put on the spot, I blinked a few times and said, "I'm really sorry, but my brain is just not cooperating right now. Please skip ahead to the next person."

She then made a group announcement that we should all be paying attention to one another's readings out of respect, an announcement which I'm well aware was directed at me and my foray into dissociation, an attempt to shame me. I wanted to send a private apology to the reader whose story I'd totally blazed on, but there was no time to type one up because it was time for another reader to read. And of course, I wanted to actually listen to what they were saying. I didn't tune out the other reader on purpose. I honestly wasn't even aware she was reading at all.

When the next strictly regimented mandatory comment portions of the session came along, I extolled the virtues of the previous author. I said things like, "I enjoyed your use of metaphor when you talked about the buoy", or "The last two sentences were an excellent way to end your piece," but apparently the moderator expected each person to write down their favourite quotations from the pieces read.

I didn't expect the moderator to use a line from something I'd just read in her own stream of consciousness writing, but power to her. I guess she liked it.

I respect that some people like to have a very particular order to how they create and work with others, but this way is not for me. Throughout the entire session, my mind kept pulling me away into the world I've been describing on paper and on my computer screen. I was drifting away from consciousness without the need of sleep, all the while waiting to be pounced upon for inattentiveness.

So yeah. Anxiety is illogical, but creating can be a good medicine, as long as that creating is done without additional pressure.

Be kind to one another, folks. We're all dealing with some shit.
shanmonster: (Default)
I haven't been posting here like I should be, and I want to change that. I've been feeling pretty awful, these past few weeks. I'm almost always tired and in pain, and it's wreaking havoc on my productivity and mental health. Although I've been going to tai chi chu'an and bachata classes, I've barely been to the gym and I've missed an aerial silks class. I've been going to china painting sessions, but have not a lot to show for it. And as you can see, I have not been writing. This needs to change.

This morning, I'm going to the doctor, because it's apparent to me that there is some sort of physiological reason for all this. I have some sort of systemic ugh, and it's even set off my asthma a few times, despite my asthma previously being well under control.

Last night, I was feeling pretty shitty (as usual), but I forced myself to go to aerial silks. I napped through most of the afternoon to ensure I'd have energy to do so. My endurance wasn't great, but I did manage to pull off a move which has been eluding me for almost seven years. I got back my cross back straddle, and it wasn't even particularly difficult. I don't know what suddenly made the move click back in place, but I'm pretty chuffed about it. I was feeling very discouraged until that move made its way back into my repertoire.



I hope this marks a return to my previous levels of productivity and health.
shanmonster: (Default)
This is my first post on DreamWidth since evacuating from LiveJournal. I wish I didn't need to abandon ship, but the new terms of service are untenable. I'm part of the rainbow brigade made illegal by the Russian powers that be. I'm still waiting for all the comments from LJ to be ported over here, and then I plan on doing a computer backup of all my files. I'm gonna miss you, LJ. You were my electronic home for at least 18 years.

In cheerier news, I have passed the first round of selection for the Arctic expedition. My references have been contacted, and their deadline to get their forms in is the 14th. I think I have an excellent chance of getting selected, and that's exciting.

I've been steadily working at getting my health and fitness levels back up to snuff, and it's not comfortable. Stepping outside your comfort zone is always uncomfortable, by default. On Sunday, I did a couple hours of escrima and then went for a run. Yesterday, I did strength training at the gym, went for my first bike ride of the year (~7 km), and did a flamenco class. Today, I went for a run, and tonight I'll be working on gymnastic skills at the gym.

My strength and endurance continue to improve. In the meantime, I'm stuck always feeling a bit sore and tired. The first couple of weeks after increasing activity levels are always like that. Here's a clip of my most recent session playing on the rings. My equipment wasn't quite set up ideally.

Eeeee!

Mar. 19th, 2017 06:04 pm
shanmonster: (Purple mohawk)
I sent a short story out for possible publication in a science fiction anthology last week. I haven't had a story published in ages, so it's high time I get my arse back in gear. I hope it gets published.

I sent out my application for the Canadian ocean expedition on Thursday as soon as I got confirmation from my china painting instructor that she would be a reference. Eeeee!

On Friday, I purchased airfare for my trip to Africa this summer. I'll be travelling through Namibia, Botswana, and Zambia (~1300 km), seeing the Namib Desert (where Fury Road was filmed), the Kalahari Desert, meeting Bushmen, hopefully seeing elephants, lions, zebras, and more, and then ending my tour at Victoria Falls. Eeeee!

Later on Friday, I went to the gym and during my squat set, something freaked out and tried to lock/spasm on my lower back. Different kind of eeeeee. Eeeeeeeouch. I have no idea what happened, there. As far as I know, I wasn't using bad form, and was only lifting five pounds more than I usually do. I tried to find a massage therapy clinic that was open, but none are ever open on the Friday evening of Saint Patrick's Day. I managed to find someone yesterday, but that someone was a tiny sadist who was the roughest massage therapist I've ever experienced. She started with elbows in my back. There was no warmup. I feel just like I was in a fight. I'm pretty sure I'm bruised from head to arse, but I do have mobility now: enough that I was able to go to the gym today and do a full training session. I skipped burpees in favour of jump rope (I didn't want to do fast movements which could have negative impact on my lower back), and all my squats were with an empty bar.

I leave for Toronto tomorrow morning for a week of butoh training. I plan on hitting the gym a couple of times while I'm there. I'm determined to get back in shape. I'm registered to compete in two races this spring/summer: a 5km obstacle course race, and a 14km trail race.

Over the past year, due to health issues and the disruption incurred by buying and renovating a house, my training has been spotty at best. This month was going very well until my back freakout on Friday. I feel strong again, and my endurance is slowly returning. I've been paying much closer attention to what I eat (not calorie-wise, but content-wise), and I'm gradually losing the extra padding I put on. So far, I have lost about ten pounds of fluff and my clothes are fitting much better again. I'm still about twenty pounds heavier than I was when I was competing regularly five years ago, but I have faith that my body will continue to get healthier as I work hard to take care of it.

I had every intention of writing up applications for a travel writing scholarship yesterday, but life and massage therapy got in the way. I hope to be able to get the applications done tomorrow while I'm on the train and killing time in coffee shops in Toronto. If I get the scholarship, I'll be travelling through southeastern Europe (eg. Kosovo, Croatia, Montenegro, etc.).

What if I get accepted for the ocean expedition AND the scholarship? I'll be travelling all over the freaking world this year! Eeeee....
shanmonster: (Purple mohawk)
I learned recently that I've created my own personal Pavlovian response. I've been using asthma inhalers for over twenty years, now. In case you've never used one, it goes kinda like this:

1. Shake inhaler.
2. Exhale fully.
3. Raise it to your mouth.
4. Spray it in your mouth as you simultaneously inhale.

I also have been using a steroidal spray to help counter post-nasal drip, which is a big trigger for asthma. It goes like this:

1. Shake bottle.
2. Exhale fully.
3. Raise it to your nose.
4. Spray it in your nose as you simultaneously inhale.

I've recently started taking Vitamin B12 supplements in the form of an oral spray. Whenever I go to use it, I do the first two steps every time. There's no need to exhale. I drink the stuff; I don't breathe the stuff. Yet it takes a major conscious effort to avoid exhaling. Not that exhaling makes a difference, one way or the other. It's just fascinating to me how I've formed this habit.

Conditioning is "a behavioral process whereby a response becomes more frequent or more predictable in a given environment as a result of reinforcement, with reinforcement typically being a stimulus or reward for a desired response" (Encyclopedia Britannica). I'm not even getting a reward for my reinforcement. Well, not an immediate, perceivable reward, at least. So I guess it isn't conditioning, after all, but ritual, instead: "A ritual is...any act done regularly, usually without thinking about it" (Cambridge English Dictionary).

What are your rituals and conditioning?

(Elder Squirrel Demon Ritual Summoning Circle)

shanmonster: (On the stairs)
Yesterday, with some amount of trepidation, I attended a handstand workshop. My energy levels have been generally waning over the past year or so, and my endurance has been getting pretty shitty. Nevertheless, I've been working hard at improving my endurance, and I was able to make it through the entire workshop without needing to take numerous breaks. Despite not having done a handstand in ~8-9 months, I did quite well. My strength, range of motion, and flexibility were up to the challenge, and I believe that if I can practice regularly, I will have an unsupported handstand within a few weeks.

I did have one major whoops. While doing a partner exercise, I kicked off too hard, overbalanced, and came down on my head and shoulder. I didn't damage myself, but it was a reminder that being klutzy hurts. My next kick-off was much better.

......

Over the past year, combined with my fatigue issues, I've also gained a fair amount of weight. At the beginning of the year, I was the heaviest I've ever been, and it did not feel good. Over the past two months, I became proactive and have been monitoring my diet, doing daily exercise (burpees and regular strength training), and taking some vitamin supplements to help with general health and sleep issues. I'm feeling a gradual change, and two days ago, for the first time in many months, I noticed muscle definition again. I knew the muscles were still there, but it feels good to see them peeking out at me again. Hi there, guns.

(Self-portrait circa 1997. Pencil crayons on textured paper.)
shanmonster: (Purple mohawk)
I remember when I had no difficulties learning how to use devices and software. I was a quick study, and could do complex combinations after being shown them. As an example, when I was volunteering at a charity shop, I was able to do a complicated return on the glitchy, tricksy retail software months after having it demoed to me. No one else at the shop knew how to do that, but had to consult with the manual every single time.

Just a couple of years later, I was put on propranolol for my chronic migraine headaches, and my ability to comprehend multi-step procedures vanished. I could no longer do certain things I'd always taken for granted, and my abilities to comprehend continued to dwindle as my dosage increased. During the height (depth?) of this, I was working at a radio station. I hosted a weekly show, and was supposed to record each show so that it could be rebroadcasted later in the week. I was never able to figure out how to do this despite being shown how on an almost weekly basis. For years, I had been a sound technician for theatre and radio. I had once created radio commercials, teched shows, and multi-tasked like a pro. Now I couldn't operate the machinery to record my own radio show. I often couldn't even follow a simple conversation because of the mental fog in which I was mired. I was fully aware that my IQ had dropped precipitously.

I felt like I was in a Flowers For Algernon situation. This decline in my cognitive abilities distressed me. I was terrified I'd continue to descend in a dull, mental fog. It was made even worse by some of my co-workers who berated me for what they perceived as willful stupidity. I tried to explain that my migraines and the medication I was on made it impossible for me to do what I'd once been able to do quickly and efficiently, but my words fell on deaf ears. While they touted the importance of affirmative action, they made it apparent that my particular circumstances didn't count. I had become disabled, but the people around me did not recognize this because I didn't look any different than before.

In the years since, I have made a full recovery from the physical debilitations. Although the mental fog abated, I don't have mental sunshiny days. I have not regained my prior mental acumen, but this does not stop me from making the attempt to get it back. I keep my brain active. I regularly take classes on a wide variety of topics. The material in scientific and technical courses continues to confound me, but I sign up for them anyhow.

While some abilities have diminished, others have increased just as dramatically. My dexterity and hand-eye coordination continues to improve. I went to a juggling workshop on the weekend as a rank newbie, and the instructor was shocked at how quickly I picked up the rudiments of basic 3-ball juggling. Apparently, I caught on far more quickly than the average Joe. For years, I was unable to learn choreography. This inability has been leaving, although I don't think I'll be giving up improvisation any time soon. My artistic abilities continue to improve, as well, and I catch on to new techniques in new media much more adroitly than ever before. I guess my neural pathways are rerouting stuff. I may be weaker in some areas, but I'm far stronger in others.

This gives me hope.
shanmonster: (Purple mohawk)
Two years ago, I was in the best shape of my life. Since then, due to a variety of medical issues, my fitness level has dipped. This is not to say I am in poor physical condition. I am still able to do a lot of things I could never do before (eg. glute-ham raises, pull-ups, pistol squats), but my stamina has taken a nosedive. I can't afford to stay in this state of half-assed fitness. I have endurance events and races coming up, and I want to be able to complete them and be able to walk normally the next day.

I started training regularly again as of last week. It's been rough. I feel like I'm starting over from scratch, even though I'm not. I don't recover from workouts as quickly as I once did, but I know I will soon. Yesterday, I did a lot of leg training, and although walking afterwards was difficult, my legs are not sore today. This is progress. Last week's big leg day left me with major DOMS for the next two days.

I can feel progress in my shoulder from when I started doing physiotherapy for it. I was worried that holding the bar across my shoulders for squats yesterday would be too much pressure, but it isn't aching today. Although I'm avoiding explosive movements for my shoulders at the moment, this does not mean I'm avoiding other exercises which use my shoulders. I think my next big fitness goal is to be able to do unassisted tricep ring dips. I'll start with static tricep dips, working on the negatives.

I will do it. Oh yes, I shall.
shanmonster: (Zombie ShanMonster)
I got up at 6 on Saturday, stumbled out of bed, and looked out the window at a cold, wet, grey day. I put on my workout gear and had a big breakfast. Today was going to be brutal.

I was signed up for the O Course, which is a training course run by an ex-Marine drill sergeant. Today's course was a fund-raiser for young women diagnosed with breast cancer. Many of the participants were taking part as a symbolic gesture of solidarity for people going through breast cancer treatment, or in memory of those who had succumbed to it. I was participating to prove to myself I could. My own cancer surgery was just last year. I got off lucky. I wasn't sure what to expect today other than a rough go. I got that right.

My CrossFit training buddy Ahmed picked me up and we drove off to Burlington where the event was being held. The weather didn't improve. It got worse. There were times on the 401 when it felt like we should've been in a boat instead of a car. We arrived at the venue, confirmed our registration, and then sat in the car until it was time to do our warm-up. It was freezing out, and I was shivering.

Sgt. Tony mustered us up, and we took a knee while he explained what we'd be doing. The cold distracted me from what he was saying, but then we all grabbed a long block of wood and ran to the beach. The shore was a morass. Young people surrounded me. I think I was the oldest participant. I saw a lot of university students, including a team of cheerleaders decked out in matching pink hair ribbons. I overheard one say she didn't bother putting on makeup or doing her hair today.

The warm-up was a blur. The drill sergeant and his helpers barked orders, and we struggled to comply as quickly as possible. Get down into pushup position! Get up! Too slow. Get down. TOO SLOW! Get up! TOO SLOW!!! We moved faster and faster until all 60 or so of us were moving fast enough to meet his expectations, and then we did another speed drill. We carried the blocks of wood overhead and ran through the quagmire back and forth to the tree line. We backed out into the lake, wood held high overhead. Shoulders screamed from the effort of holding the stick overhead so long. Feet got stuck in the mud. People fell. People helped one another up. Shoes disappeared and were recovered with much effort. The blocks of wood never touched the water. They mustn't touch the water. KEEP IT OVERHEAD!

We rolled in the mud, belly crawled through slick brown stinking dirt with bits of grit jamming into forearms and elbows and bellies and knees. We through fistfuls of mud at one another. I never realized how many tiny plants grow in the mud until I was pressed into it for the better part of an hour.

Read more... )
shanmonster: (Tiger claw)
This Saturday, I'm participating in a crazy fitness event--the Pink O Course--which includes a 10-km run followed by an obstacle course. I've never run a 10-km course before. I hope I'm up to it.

I'm also hoping to raise at least $200 for a charity which helps young women diagnosed with breast cancer. I know how scary a cancer diagnosis is. I've experienced it from both sides. I was lucky to have a kind that was removed easily (though not painlessly, no, not by a long shot). I am lucky that I can still run and climb and do shit like this.

If you can spare some money, my pledge page is here.

Drop It

Apr. 9th, 2013 11:02 pm
shanmonster: (Purple mohawk)
Today I'm a bit grumpy because it was cold and rainy out, and I wanted to bike, but knew if I did, I'd be absolutely drenched for my aerial silks class. My shoulder/neck has been overly tight for a while now, and my tendinitis has been tweaking for two days. I have a dance workshop with Louise Lecavalier in three days, and I don't want to have to worry about my neck and ankle slowing me down.

*cue sound of needle being scratched along a record*

Wait a minute. How about some perspective, Shan?

Three months ago, I wasn't sure I'd be able to walk on anything but level ground again without a limp. Any time my foot skidded out on a bit of ice, or I took a step with anything more than a mincing nature, it felt like someone had taken a potato peeler to the inside of my hip joint.

My hip has improved drastically. My worries from not so long ago have already dissipated.

These sore bits are nowhere near as scary as the hip issue was. I'm hoping a tune-up with an RMT tomorrow will do the trick.

In the meantime, here's something I did today, which my hip would NOT have allowed me to do even a month ago. )

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