Search Results for: "school"

June 22 2023

June 22, 2023

Checking In

Just wanted to let you all know I’m still alive and up to creative mischief. The new meds are working, and I’m pretty much back to my old self (whoever that is @_@).

We got a surprise leak in our garbage disposal, water in the basement, and my reactions were… fine. Allergy fine, not mast cells over reacting and making my entire existence miserable. Although I got a big whiff of smoke yesterday evening, and that caused the other reaction, and it was pretty shit for a bit.

It’s such a contrast — one I had no idea was even possible. Because I guess for most people allergies are just, you know, a runny nose and feeling kind of sleepy, a little fuzzy. Not the insanity I’ve gone through all these years. There was a difference, but my ignorance shouldn’t have made those who treat allergies so ignorant, yeah? Like, I was really good at communicating my symptoms, but the medical world just didn’t understand what those symptoms fit into then.

Text based games

Anywho, I’m back to coding up the database, currently looking at the interactive novels and text based game side of things. Because my eyes are so much better, I think I could handle at least fighting with an AI art program for a bit to get art backgrounds for the text based games I want to make. I don’t think they’re sophisticated enough for character art — consistent character art that will look like the same character. But backgrounds? Sure. They’re easy enough to edit if things don’t look quite right.

The main thing is I’m looking for writing that doesn’t ask me to edit extensively the way my current writing does. A script is visually easier for me to handle because of how it’s naturally broken up, as well as far less focused on certain elements of a story, such as building an atmosphere. The imagery can take some of the burden — the whole “a picture says a 1000 words” thing. And it’s not that I don’t enjoy building atmosphere and such, so much as, editing is shit on my eyes still. Editing this is shit on my eyes. Reading glasses might change that, but it’s not happening soon, and that’s okay. I’m looking at options instead of passively waiting.

Coming to terms with my ever changing limits has really pushed me to find smarter solutions to things. Affording reading glasses with prism lenses is a long way off after years of being ill, so I need to get back into this writing thing, accepting these limits and looking for ways to navigate as I am, instead of how I used to be. There’s also just so much life I’m trying to get back to. A decade of illness interrupting — actually, far longer. It’s been since a teen living in my adoptive family’s moldy basement, wondering why it felt like my brain was on fire.

There is very little “stable” that I’ve experienced that I know to get back to. When I look back, it’s PTSD from a traumatic home life, followed by years of foster families, and then recovering when adopted… then becoming ill from this condition and watching my adoptive parents both die, my mom right after I graduated high school, and my dad a handful of years later, most of those years me taking care of him while he had dementia. All those years after that were panic, homeless, working to survive without a degree because I couldn’t take care of a parent and finish college, and there was no safety net once they were gone. Not when this condition was 100% active with no one knowing what it was or how to deal with it (but very good at gaslighting a young person who was doing everything to try and get healthy and stable.)

A new pace to life

My relationship with time has to change. It already has with space — I’m doing well getting the years of exhaustion out of my house, cleaning up the piles that have been waiting to be addressed.

I actually took down the backroom cleanroom this week. I plan on painting it next month — getting a big 5 gallons of paint and tackling the hallway and 2 walls of the kitchen as well. I had done some nice decorating of half the kitchen last year after I had built my art storage cupboards, but the old dingy blue paint on the other walls has been here through a lot of renters. It’s the same paint in some of the closets, revealing it was some version of original before other people came in and painted.

That back room will likely never be my bedroom again, not with the way the air flows in this house, but it can at least be a great space for art storage and painting large canvases. I want to make some tables for the kitchen the way I did for my bedroom, just a simple desk/counter thing that forms an L on one of the corners of the room. It’s such a small space, but the design would give more surface area as well as more walking space compared to the big table we have in there now that takes over everything (even though it’s too small to actually eat in the kitchen.)

Sawdust is absolutely one of the triggers that sets of this condition, the same way smoke is, and ammonia, heat — the summer weather turns me rosy cheeked and straining to breathe. Oh, and I discovered the scent of cedar is a trigger. Fuck well-made furniture for storing clothes, because it is all cedar and kills me. It means getting these supposedly simple projects done isn’t actually that simple. Even if cut to size, I need to sand and seal anything wood that comes into the house, and that means sawdust. And if the sealer is shit, or worn down from cleaning, I have to go through the process again cuz the raw wood does come through and the scent triggers the condition (learned this firsthand with my desk).

But… my reactions are better. They stop now, instead of going on for weeks to months of misery. The meds work, and as long as I don’t become allergic to the meds (something unfortunately very common with MCAS) it should be good. I can’t wait for things to maybe go bad again. This is the time I have now, and there is so much I want to do.

Making time for arting

It’s kinda weird to talk about art on this site. It used to be my thing before the illness knocked me down and I started writing to cope. I went to school for art and music. College was to help me recover from my adoptive mother passing and trying to figure out what I was going to do after spending so much time thinking of her health and aligning everything I did around it. But… there was a lot of mold in the college classrooms. The calculus room and history, in particular, I remember always getting sick…

But yeah, art held a lot of healing for me, especially therapeutically in regards to PTSD. The same with writing — there are a few ways to hack into the subconscious of the mind without needing to be dreaming, and writing and making art can put you into that trance like state. Something happens in the nervous system while there, and then when you come out of it, not only do you get those benefits, but you have something to show for your efforts that can be shared. A bit of the hero’s journey as you delve into the dark, deep woods of the psyche.

I’ve been playing with UV resin and mixing my own watercolor paints. I always wanted to make my own watercolors, but just never did… Chronic illness makes everything so much harder than it needs to be. It makes you need to do things immediately, or know it will likely never happen, which makes the pace of life even more difficult. Rushing, bursting the little energy you can all at once before the inevitable breaking and crash. It’s a destructive pattern, but it’s required when it’s all you can do. So I’m enjoying relearning what it means to rest instead of being broken, to pace and remember what time actually is, how to experience it, how to experience being in a body not suffering all the damn time.

They’re mostly pearlescent colors. Metallics, and some that have little bits of glitter. It’s kind of a big deal for me, not only because I’m finally making the watercolors (and doing it in a far cheaper way than buying them), but I’m making shiny, sparkly things that just a month ago would have been impossible on my eyes.

I saved a lot of things out of stubbornness. I didn’t think I was going to actually get to this place of getting better, but I refused to give up… And, if I’m being brutally honest, it takes a lot of energy to throw away your dreams when you’re already tired all the time. Most of the art stuff I have stored in the back room is expired, especially paint mediums and such. I’m going to be throwing out a lot still, but now it feels okay because it’s to make room for new. It’s not about holding on, stagnant, but growing into the person I get to finally become after all this.

At some point, my life is just going to be about living it. I won’t be focused on the past because all I had was the past when ill in the moment. I had given up on the future completely, and was doing everything to escape the now of being in an pained, exhausted body. Now there’s room for something else when I look forward.

I don’t know what I’m going to want to write as I grow into who I’m becoming. There are some stories that I need to finish telling. I just don’t know if I want to live in such unhappy moments just to create contrast to the happy ones in some of these stories. Because my writing is so connected to exploring trauma, there’s a bit of a war happening inside me about what’s allowed to change, what needs to be honored, etc. So I’m glad for this pause, for this chance to really look at what I want out of writing now that it’s less about surviving the misery of the past or of chronic illness, and more about creating something new to think about.

It’s time to have fun again with writing. Editing isn’t fun — although developmental draft editing is probably the most fun. You ever stumble across a story someone else has made, or a show, etc, and just want to tweak it into something so much better? That’s developmental draft editing, but it’s with your own work. Where you make a rough draft and poke and prod and tear it to pieces and move things around until you’ve developed the potential instead of what was there.

It’s a great creative process my brain adores. And I think that’s why I like the idea of text based games with multiple paths; you get to lean into that process and reward yourself and the reader/player with all these different, interesting stories born from one set inspiration.

I think that’s probably enough of my rambling for now. How funny to think I didn’t have anything to say, yet here are all the words claiming otherwise.

Lowering Histamines and Looking For Balance

May 17, 2023

So, I was able to get connected to a MCAS specialist in my area, but it’s going to be months to actually have an appointment. And if I’m going by the timeline of what it took for them to properly figure out and treat my adrenal insufficiency, the initial appointment will only be an assessment, and it will take more months of waiting for a diagnosis, treatment plan, figuring out what works, etc. So what to do while waiting…?

I have a bad habit of self treatment, but really, considering the symptoms I’ve been battling, it was either suffer indefinitely while no one knew what to do, or try and help myself. Right now, after some research, I’m trying a few things to help me deal with the symptoms — and I stress symptoms because I don’t truly know if it’s MCAS or not. It’s a good fit, but that doesn’t mean it’s the answer. It just means it looks good on paper until proper testing can be done.

The thing is, treating the symptoms is basically treating the array of allergic responses my body is going through daily. Some I didn’t even recognize as allergies because they’ve just been there so long, my normal. This last week has been a fresh hell. I had foolishly gone through one of those big tubs of coconut yogurt, thinking that it had been dairy alone that had made yogurt intolerable to me. Only to end up with burning stomach acid and a burning tongue and mouth since. It’s just this constant dragon breath, and with it, bouts of severe agitation.

For whatever reason, when my gut goes bad, everything goes bad. If I’m getting any sensory data from my gut, it feels like insanity, twitching, agitated madness on a sensory level I can’t really explain — and it’s not something I would want anyone to experience to understand. Outside of the screaming face pain, this has been my most alarming issue. The fatigue, cognitive drops and inability to hold my head up for hours on end might have felt like I was dying, but the agitation makes you want to die to stop it. It’s just not a thing a body should experience, ever.

This, obviously, wears on the psyche the longer it goes on. And because it seems to be connected to the gut, it also has a huge impact on mood. In the same way the gut creates the majority of our neurotransmitters (aka, happy chemicals that keep one functioning), when your gut is at war, inflamed, in pain, and potentially experiencing a die off of one type of bacteria with the introduction of a new one, toxins are released and there can be extra or less neurotransmitters as everything is unbalanced. The gut is kind of like a train station in that way, systematized to distribute what shows up to the proper destinations. But it has terrible security, and the bad can flow with the good, inflaming everything along the way and throwing it all off, including the gut-brain axis.

It’s been difficult.

I’m starting up H2 blockers again, aka, pepcid ac, to help deal with the constant stomach acid. Looking at liquid Benadryl for the burning mouth. And I’m trying a histamine-blocking probiotic for the first time that I’m really hopeful about.

Probiotics have been intolerable to me for years now. I used to think I had gotten an allergy to them because I would always take them when my immune system was targeting everything, usually after months of antibiotics. I had no idea that probiotics could add histamines into the system.

I don’t know why I don’t usually think of histamines when I think of allergies. They’ve been on my radar for some time, but I never really thought I was a histamine problem, partially because a lot of the gut symptoms I had experienced in the past, I had solved — or had seemed to solve. Histamines was a hive thing, right? Everyone knows that… but no, what I thought I knew about a lot of things is really just only pieces of a larger image.

This week, after that yogurt had a chance to set in and build some happy, histamine filled probiotics in my gut, I became aware of histamines doing their thing without allergies being involved. And yes, through hives (because hives were the only association I have with histamines.)

They’re just one offs, here and there, nothing tragic or particularly interesting. But when I ate an almond filled chocolate and had a hive immediately form on my upper lip, it was enough to make me stop everything and figure out wtf was happening. Which was when I learned about probiotics usually having histamine contributing bacteria that can make histamine intolerance worse. And as my skin itched, stomach burned, and I was overwhelmed with the frustrating anxiety that comes with my pulse racing and blood pressure dropping over having eaten the wrong thing without knowing it was the wrong thing, I knew I had to deal with it. Because at this point, any food was setting me off. Whatever my histamine tolerance was in the past, the damn yogurt had tipped the scales, and my gut was having none of it.

I am… better??? now. I still need to take the pepcid ac, and I know when it’s wearing off because that heartburn is right there, waiting to turn my insides into fire without something to stop it. I’m on day 3 of the histamine blocking probiotics, and I’m not sure if they’re helping, or if I’m just desperate so I think they’re helping. It’s difficult, because eating is so impossible right now that any probiotic is failing to get a food source that’s going to help it grow and sustain. And it is the war stage as these new probiotics come in to take out the histamine producing ones, meaning die off, toxins. Agitation.

Dealing with neurosis

I’m really talking about this because I’m thinking about how my OCD tendencies kind of fuck off when my health is good, and flare up when my allergies and/or gut are bad. Definitely when my gut is bad — it was a lifetime of having a bad gut before I finally figured some of this out. I don’t understand how I got through school, usually hunched over with stomach cramps and full of agitation for years while trying to focus on work. It was misery, and it was my “normal”, the same way as obsessively counting and adding numbers up in my head and bringing them down to a single digit — until it was the *right* digit — had been my normal. It was another thing I didn’t know how to ask for help with, because I was surviving and thought that was enough. Because trauma.

Anyways… (it’s always fucking trauma >_>), I’ve been trying to think of how I can edit my work without triggering the obsessive pattern compulsions my brain will default into as it turns everything to shit. I had thought I had a plan with going minimalistic, but I never tried it, partially because I knew the moment I had decided on it, it was a flawed solution. Going minimalistic would require me to create a rigid structure of writing I would then force everything to comply with. It would require hours of work deciding what was right and what would be cut, and would need to fit into a very restrained word count — bad fucking idea.

Of course, my patternistic brain wanted this plan. It feeds its obsessive nature, making my life harder while it plays its meaningless, exhausting games. It even gave some great justifications for the game — less words means less time writing, right? Not when I’m spending hours trying to turn a short story into a haiku. But it would give my brain something distinct to focus on so it wouldn’t get overwhelmed with choices, right? Also a lie, because it would become so systematic in its thinking about writing, that it would need to question every word to ensure if it belonged or not.

The only solution is to minimize what I choose to edit, and the time I allow myself to do the task. It needs to be in small batches so that I’m not allowed to hyperfocus and get lost in the task. It needs to be broken up with other things happening during my day so that I can’t default over and over into doing the one task.

Like, fuck, I have been coding every single day for weeks now and it is war to get me to not just open up my script and work on it as a default. I have to force myself to turn on the tv so that it prevents full immersion into my work. I have to stop and give in to these moments where I write something — anything — so I’m doing something beyond the same pattern of activity again and again. And it’s still going to be a war to get my thinking to change when I finish this code and get back to writing… It’s going to be like killing off bad bacteria and growing fresh, healthy stuff, except with my brain, every new activity can just grow those grooves too deep, becoming a pattern, a system of thought that wants to continue itself because it’s just so calming to always know what you’re supposed to do and how to do it…

 

Art as transference problem solving

I’ve been arting. It’s an experiment. A different medium to try and see if I can tackle a project without triggering the obsessiveness. I had to stop after I created the initial pencil outline because I could see the problem with the mediums I was using. They were too clean, too perfect, and in that was the promise that if I were to work with paints that could dry perfectly even, without any variation, I would automatically lean into that and obsessively try to make the image look photorealistic. I can’t help it. If the ability is there, that is where my brain is going to take me, to that mountain. I have to block the path completely.

Like a couple of days ago, I was able to make myself paint lines with my left hand, to ensure it was messy, ensure it couldn’t be perfect, and just let go, and that was a win. I mean, I was still looking for the pattern that would allow me to step away and say it was done, complete, and that had to be found to break free… But it wasn’t as bad as being on the computer for days, killing my eyes because blinking isn’t allowed, unable to pull away until everything is perfect.

I don’t know. Maybe this is everyone’s normal when it comes to making things, and for some reason, it’s a problem in me. Certain tasks absolutely require the ability to focus for long stretches. They require a mind that is capable of making the task interesting to avoid the boredom of doing the same thing, day in and day out. I mean, why are humans so content with sitting in front of a screen all day without something to reinforce such a damn dull, meaningless activity? From the outside, we all look mad, staring at screens, maybe typing, maybe bursting into laughter or anger — for HOURS. Fucking hours doing absolutely nothing as we convince ourselves it’s important. So maybe the kind of crazy required to get a human to sit their ass down and do nothing, yet manage to feel like they did something important, is just always going to be crazy feeling, no matter what.

Or because it’s so easy for it to become a problem as I obsess over getting everything perfect (or just patternistic to shut my brain up) I can’t navigate these simple things the same way as others can. It’s all booby-trapped right now, where my joy of getting lost in a project can lead to insomnia and forgetting to eat, refusing to do much of anything beyond hyperfocusing, and hating everything once it’s done because I have to let go of the pattern and be a person again.

I can do amazing fucking things when I’m in my creative state… but I can’t bounce back from the consequences the same way I could before. And I see how selfish it was to just check out of the world and out of my relationships to hide away in the discovery of creation. I can’t get that time back, those connections back. It’s something that requires attention, time and a full desire to want to grow with people. And I can’t do that when I’m lost in my head making things. I have to be able to find a balance, one that leaves room for life, and for self care, the other major thing I neglect when I’m lost in my brain making a world.

All of this to say I have nothing to show for my work on this problem — beyond a squiggly flower — but that I am working on it. The problem has been driving everything for so long, so solutions aren’t readily available until I’m truly looking at the scale of the problem, but I’m doing the work, looking for escape from these self made bars.

Will I read this page repeatedly, editing all the mistakes I missed, and then read again, and again, and again, even though I have a headache and my eyes are extra dry from the antihistamines, but my brain insists that it has to have the right flow, has to say things the right way, and won’t let me stop until that’s been achieved? I really fucking hope not.

May 6 2023

May 6, 2023

Lamenting A Life Not Lived Is A Fucking Waste

So today was pretty shit. After a few days of unprecedented calm with my immune system — and I’m still not sure what calmed it. If it was something I added or didn’t add to my diet, the rain that had washed out all the pollen, the fact that the new cat litter doesn’t track like the old stuff, hormones — I don’t know, and that’s frustrating as fuck. Because it’s back to before, and I’m just feeling how shit this is. Feeling it after having this surreal, beautiful vacation from my body overreacting to everything and making everything feel like death.

Which isn’t really an exaggeration; that’s what the adrenal insufficiency basically is. Low cortisol means high adrenaline as the body tries to compensate to keep the heart pumping without enough cortisol. And for whatever reason — maybe just plain old stress on the body — the allergies cause my already low cortisol to drop and my heart to race… Whatever. Anyways.

I’m here to ramble about how, in all this frustration of noticing how little I got done today — because my brain was in inflammation la-la-land by the time I woke to this allergy riddled, low oxygenated body — that’s all I ever notice. I notice my failures. I notice the life I’m trying to get back to, instead of the life I’m forced to live. And yeah, that makes sense — I don’t want to be in this body when it’s suffering like this. It’s dumb brain, agitation, racing pulse, low blood pressure, dizzy spells, pain bullshit. It makes sense to not want to be present for this… but it’s been fucking years now. Years of trying to get to a point of living while not wanting to feel the very uncomfortable life I do have, and yeah, where’s it going? What am I doing if all I’m doing is trying to get to something instead of experiencing the life I have?

My sister-in-law is dying. I’m not going to get into it, because it’s still in the process (with hope, but really, the kind of all you have is hope hope, because facts aren’t there to offer an actual substantial path through as it all crashes and burns.) And this is really about me and my feelings about shit — and my fuck, no one who is going through what she is going through and/or is close to her should hear my random emotional spewing as I cope with the news while thinking about my own selfish shit. So the less I connect me and my rambling to her and her family’s personal experiences, the better.

So yeah, dying. I get the latest “this isn’t us saying she’s dying, but shit just got worse and it’s obvious she doesn’t have long” news, while my body is going through its resurgence of fucking misery as I’m thrown back into the fear of if this is going to be forever. Is this all my life is but this damn allergic reaction and weakness and can’t breathe or sleep or think from racing heart, etc, etc? And it’s like, ten years now. Ten fucking years, and what’s waiting for me is what’s waiting for everyone, and this has been how I’ve been forced to spend the last decade.

I am not experiencing my life. I’m waiting for shit to get better. I’m still waiting for shit to get better, and I’m just losing years. And who knows what the toll is, right? PTSD alone is physical damage to the brain and body as it’s left unchecked and courses all these survival chemicals through you day after day, wearing out the organs until your body can’t do it anymore. My adrenal insufficiency is secondary; my adrenals still function for now. But my pituitary fucked off at some point, and without it communicating to the adrenals, my body can’t produce a safe stress response during times of crisis. Simple shit can drop me, and I saw it when the allergies were so bad I needed far more hydrocortisone to maintain. This allergy thing isn’t just stealing my time, and the things I do, but also my health. And I’m just, I dunno, done with it all. Like done, done.

That whole thing of life is what you do while you’re busy making plans? My entire life revolves around a condition that doctors still haven’t figured the fuck out. Because it’s not just allergies; if it were just allergies, the allergy shots would be enough. A freaking 24 hour anti-histamine would do the job. But it doesn’t. Certain scents — scents that don’t contain a protein source, aka, nothing for my immune system to react to — set off this cascade of insanity through my system, and nothing has been done to solve it. To even diagnose it.

It’s the specialist issue. Every doctor only knows one thing, and they don’t know where that thing connects with other things (aka, the human body), so I’m left going to one doctor for neurological symptoms (without a neurological source), another for adrenal issues (for a pituitary problem source) another for allergies (but not for the allergic responses to scents), and nothing is getting solved. Yes, pieces have been patched, but I still can’t go a breath near a damn litterbox without my heart feeling like it’s going to burst out of my chest, a migraine forming, and my brain trying to drip out of my ears.

I lost my 30s to this shit. Missed time with my partner and the people in my life I can’t get back. I’m missing people — life is happening around me, and I am missing out because every day is still this fucking issue, just a little less life altering. Destructive enough that I’m lying to myself thinking I can just jump right back into writing, but not so destructive that I can’t believably lie to myself. Oh, I can lie to me just fine.

I am ten years in this broken body and brain, trying to get back to the person I damn well know I am… while defined by ten years of this to everyone on the outside. If I lose that inner image of me, this is all that’s left. This. Sick, broken, every day a battle that I don’t want to have to fight anymore. When do I get to start being again? Or is it just going to always be this, battling this thing not interesting enough for the medical world to solve, but debilitating to me until it wins. Is this all it’s going to be, just running from suffering until my body just can’t do it anymore and dies?

I’ve lost me. I don’t like who I’ve become as a result of years of this. Fight. Defiance. Running on rage and bitterness and feelings of loss. The joy and enthusiasm and just pure optimism stripped from me as this damn thing keeps going. I’m sick of having to be wise, understanding of the things most people don’t spend a second thinking about because it scares the fuck out of them to even consider that they’re going to die one day. I was thinking about that since small, an abused foster kid knowing death was inevitable and the fleeting flicker of self was going to gust out. And so everything after was in defiance of that. Because fuck death and fuck anyone who would dare think they could cross boundaries and ignore others autonomy. I am running on embers from fighting to survive against this dumb fuck illness, and I don’t know how to fuel myself any other way.

This is who I’ve become while waiting to get back to myself…

Ten years a reaction. How the fuck am I supposed to know how to live a life now? Seriously? This thing has trained me back into a base animal surviving, and I see it, I fight with it, but until I can figure out what the pattern is I’m supposed to be slipping into, it’s just always going to be this default. This lack of living as time passes by and I’m left reacting.

It took my fucking vision. Fuck. There was so much art I wanted to make. So much I was waiting to do, and then it took that too. Like, what the fuck was I waiting for when at least then my eyes weren’t screaming in migraine pain or unable to focus? How was that somehow worse than this, and do I really think that I can still wait? That somehow it’s going to magically get better as this body keeps aging and breaking down from each reaction? Like, what does the pain matter in the face of that, of knowing that this could be my last chance?

Why do I have to keep counting all the shit I’m not doing, all the time being spent on things not getting done, instead of feeling any aspect of pride for the things I am doing? For the life I am living? Why does it always have to be a chase, the taste of dissatisfaction forever haunting me, fighting a clock as I add up all the hours not lived the way I want? If it hadn’t gone down this way, would I be searching for the elusive — I mean, it’s whoever I thought I was a decade ago, right? Like, is that what I’m looking for, trying to get back to who I thought I was before sickness interrupted me? Or was it before — who I could have been if not for PTSD and a fucked up start at the earliest of ages? Even then, if I had everything I think I wanted, could there be any satisfaction for this vicious brain that just wants to think all the thoughts and to know more?

Why the fuck does this version of me have to be so fucking cynical, and bitter, and so dissatisfied with all I’ve built, like all it can see is “what could have been” bullshit. I hate time travel stories. Absolutely hate them because it literally couldn’t have been. That’s just our dumb fuck brains insisting that “if this, then this” so that what, we can hate ourselves a little more for not having had a choice with our past? Or thinking we had a choice and blaming ourselves for not taking it? Why is being human this damn stupid and needlessly painful?

Lament of the fallen.

Dissatisfaction is self victimization at the base psyche level. To have so much, but then to let it sour as that thought crosses “if only…” It is so fucking worthless an endeavor to waste ones thoughts on, and I don’t really even think about it — actual thinking on “what if” is me shutting it down with “don’t be stupid”. But I failed to notice that I have been living that feeling every day while thinking I was safe, because the thoughts weren’t there.

No, the thoughts I have are… just wait. If you can only get past this, find an answer, things can change. If you can solve this, you can start living your life. This is too hard right now, but wait, heal — surely we can heal — and it’ll get easier.

10 years waiting for a different life because I couldn’t let myself enjoy the one I have. And yes, it sounds reasonable at some level — it sounded reasonable AF when in pain and fighting for every moment — but it’s all I know now. I don’t know what to do next or how to do it. I’m just stuck with this feeling that something was supposed to have changed, and shit was supposed to be easier — something that isn’t this is still needed — and it’s not here.

But there’s nothing left. It’s just me not here. I’m not living yet, still waiting for something that’s never going to come.

When every moment of every day beyond @ a 4 hour window was pure exhaustion and the pull of sleep, I couldn’t let myself sleep. I was fighting for so long, I didn’t know how to let myself sleep when I needed to sleep. And that’s been this illness for years now. This desperate need to measure my life being lived, only knowing I was alive by how I battled with everything, instead of just living. Instead of resting when tired like a being that didn’t define sleep as death.

But no, I was doing all the things and saying it was nothing while waiting to be allowed to do anything else. There was no meaning to anything because it was me sick, me interrupted, in the waiting room of life furiously scribbling notes instead of where I thought I was supposed to be and what I was supposed to be doing. And now, it doesn’t matter what I do; that feeling is who I am. Dissatisfaction and waiting to get to the place — wherever the fuck I’m supposed to be that means I’m finally there instead of here, and can finally get on with living.

It is such a waste of a life. Not illness — illness is just a part of life. Death is a part of life. But not appreciating the one life I’m living? That’s the fucking atrocity. And I don’t know how to change. It is so deeply ingrained, needing to know I’m doing something “worthwhile” based on a metric system I’m never going to be allowed to win, partially because it’s not mine. It’s trauma. The conceptual world I built around this illness and who I am at the center of it needs to break, the way it did for the PTSD of early years. But I have been so stubborn to even acknowledge that the illness was fresh trauma on top of me treating old trauma. I just wanted to be elsewhere already, not having to do all the fucking work all the time just to enjoy a simple moment.

I’m tired of being me, whoever this reaction has become. I had a really shitty day, got some very devastating news, and have still managed to find a way to beat myself up for not being whatever the fuck my judgmental brain thinks I’m supposed to be to be okay right now. There is no winning in here. I can’t even let myself feel bad without trying to make me a “better person” by pointing out how I’m currently experiencing life wrong — seriously, what a fucking monster of a brain I have…

The thing is… My adoptive mother was sick all the time. Cancer. She didn’t tell us until we hit high school, so she just seemed, you know, tired a lot. All the time. Missing out on the things we did. Barely doing things for herself as it progressed.

I think at some level, I feel like I’ve failed her that I could ever get sick and let it interfere with my life. Because I owed it to her to live what she couldn’t.

That’s what surviving is, right? When you lose someone, but you need to hold onto them. So you carry them with you, no matter how heavy the weight, because that proves love. We are so primal, we still instinctually believe the pain of love is proof of love. So we carry that pain. We hope to be forged by it, changed by it, so that we never lose the ones we love.

My mother had such big expectations for me, and a will of steel. And if she hadn’t died before I started college, I’m sure I would have been on the path she wanted, the one she could never tell me, could never prepare me for, because the cancer got her brain by the end. But my fuck, I was going to be someone for her, she loved me that much. I loved her that much.

So maybe I remember tonight why it’s never going to be enough, whatever I do. A part of me is still waiting for her to tell me how to become the person who proves that I still have her with me, and it’s going to be a long wait…

I guess survivor’s guilt increases the older one gets, and the more you’re left surviving while others don’t… I dunno. This is life. Fucked up, mundane, human. Forever coping with being alive.

Taking on Impossible Projects

April 2, 2023

How to take on a project when you don’t know if you can complete the project

As I reach the end of the creation process of my story reference database — finally — I thought it might be nice to talk about how I got here. To the end. The same end as one might find at the end of a book, or the end of a trilogy, or of a series. The end of a project that was too large to fully conceptualize, now actually completed.

This is a project I didn’t know how to do on all levels. I knew a little HTML from running the website, but that was it. I didn’t know the language. I didn’t know the syntax or what form anything was going to be within these foreign computer languages to give me the results I wanted. I didn’t know the limits of what I was asking for, and therefore didn’t know the right questions to ask. I didn’t know the path to start on, to branch to, or if I needed multiple paths to get to my destination.

The only thing I knew was that if I was ever going to write again, I needed to take this journey, because my brain was too broken to be able to write without the correct support system.

That might seem huge, unrelatable, but it’s not. This is where I come from when it comes to tackling an impossible task — you have to believe it’s impossible for whatever reason. It’s for everything I haven’t done before, and therefore I don’t know if I can do. I don’t know how to do something until I do it, and I certainly don’t know how to do it well until I mess it up enough times. This is how things that feel impossible get done — by doing.

When I decided to make this database, it was when facing the largest psychological hurdle I had ever faced. I was very aware that my brain was the most broken it had ever been, and that I couldn’t write anymore (among other things.) In that reality was not only the impossible goal I wanted to reach, but during a time when my brain was struggling the most. It should have been impossible.

Why wasn’t it?

In some ways, I truly don’t know. Because it was impossible. How could I have gotten here when I couldn’t remember the names of my characters anymore? Where I had no visual concept of what they looked like in the scene, or what the scene looked like… But the thing is, these weren’t new problems. My brain had always struggled with visualizing what I was writing, it was just worse now. Yeah, I couldn’t remember my plot arcs, or how to stay focused to form proper ideas out of my rambling sentences… but again, not new problems. They were just presenting in new, more difficult to overcome ways. And I could see that without some foundation of support — without a brain outside my flawed brain — I was far too overwhelmed to be able to juggle all these aspects to move forward.

ADHD and Executive Dysfunction

I’ve always had ADHD, but I first truly understood it to impact my life in high school. I had been an obsessive reader, reading a book a day, then something had changed in my brain and I couldn’t focus on reading anymore. I changed my values at the same time, told myself that if I wanted to be effective and change my life, I needed to be present for it. But that was how I coped with having the thing that I did — my identity as a reader — stolen for me so completely. I adapted and pivoted so well, I could pretend I hadn’t lost a piece of me.

ADHD defined me after that point, the executive dysfunctions and cognitive fog becoming my identity when I wasn’t lost to impulse and novelty. It wasn’t until the end of my 30s that I even had an inkling that I had ADHD. When I started this database, I didn’t know of my ADHD and autism, and the many executive dysfunctions that go hand in hand with the way my brain works. I learned as part of the journey of building this database and getting back to writing. It helped me understand how my brain works, why what was happening was happening. And this knowledge gave me a much more useful perspective on my path going forward.

A Lifetime of Impossible Tasks

None of it was new. I had been adapting around my executive dysfunction since my teens. The most prevalent was my poor working memory, and difficulty in storing short term memory into longterm. I was blessed with a level of intelligence that allowed me to deduce in the moment answers that others could memorize. If I studied the hours before, I could hold answers that would be long gone a week later. I passed complex math classes that way, only to realize I had no memory of formulas later. And it got worse when my immune system was flaring from living in black mold, my cognition dropping. But in those moments I was blessed with a superhuman level of neurosis that I substituted for my broken motivational system.

Even as I say blessed for both these supposed “positives” that got me through, I understand they were also completely self destructive. Neurosis is such a painful mental illness — no one asked if I had OCD back then; no one noticed that the thing I was relying on to get through what everyone else seemed to do with ease was so damn destructive. And intelligence — there is no harder prison to escape from than from an intelligent mind. Especially when mental illness comes rearing from the chemical imbalance of a raging immune system.

I needed self awareness to break out of these two gifts turned curses — and to be fair, I would say self-awareness is the sharpest double-edged sword out there. But I did gain it in my 30’s, at the same time my body failed along with my brain.

Self-Awareness: The Prison Breaker

Self awareness allowed me to see that what I thought was me failing impossible tasks up until that point, was me looking from the wrong vantage. And when my body failed and my brain was inflamed, and I was the sickest I had ever been, I took on the first impossible task that I knew was impossible, and I decided to become a writer.

And I did it. Sick as fuck, barely able to lift my arms for hours upon hours every day as I was struck by weird, mysterious glitches. Having maybe 4 hours a day of mental clarity, of my body suddenly moving like nothing had happened at all. During this time — when broken and well — I wrote stories I didn’t know how to write. And I kept writing, and self publishing, and at some point it wasn’t about me becoming a writer. I was a writer.

I had done the impossible. And then the impossible decided to double down in my late 30’s. Something in my brain broke differently, bigger than ever before, and I found myself staring at the walls most days, unable to get my brain to focus long enough to collect a thought, never mind do a thing. I couldn’t write. My executive functioning had failed so greatly that I couldn’t remember to do most anything. I was completely defined by the walls around me because my object permanence was gone, and I couldn’t remember there were rooms on the other side of doors.

So I did it again. The impossible task to become “functioning” was met and conquered.

I didn’t magically overcome the impossible, but instead built an executive functioning board along half of a wall, using words and symbols on dry erase notecards to spark my memory. Putting items in a To-Do and Done column so that I could stay on track. And as long as I could remember to look at that board before and after each task, I could do things again.

Eventually, I was able to combine those tasks into routines, my brain growing back, reconnecting. And when it glitched, the board was there, waiting to help.

And then I didn’t need the board at all… but I was still broken. My brain couldn’t adapt to my limits like it did before. I still couldn’t write.

Looking at the Impossible from a Fresh Vantage

Pinpointing my mental deficits and learning the term executive functioning were the pieces to the puzzle I needed to eventually realize I had ADHD and find a doctor to help. It led me to understand the role hormones play in ADHD as we age. And when they finally noticed my adrenals weren’t producing enough cortisol and that I had adrenal insufficiency, I learned how the adrenals play a role in hormone production.

I’d say it took at least a year with the appropriate cortisol supplementation for me to fully heal from the severe cognitive decline I had been living in from the untreated adrenal insufficiency. I’ve gotten a lot of my brain back, and the ADHD treatment has given me much more executive functionality than I’ve ever had before. Now, when I look back to when I started writing, and when I started making this database, I am truly left in wonder and absolute awe as to how the fuck I actually got here.

Because I can see from this perspective just how broken I was. When before, while living in such a struggling brain and body, all I could see was the tunnel vision of task after task, goal after goal, step after step. In that place I never allowed myself to believe I couldn’t do something. My only question was how?

Self Doubt Cannot Exist When Doing Impossible Things

You can cry. You can rail at the universe for what it has done to you for making shit so unfair. You can fight reality all you like. But if you want to do what feels like the impossible, you can never doubt yourself. It cannot be part of your identity. You can never doubt that you are going to reach the goal you’re reaching for.

The reality is, you could drop dead tomorrow having never reached your goal. But that’s not how living beings get things done. We need to be oblivious to reality when it comes to these tasks that seem so impossible. We need to be blind to the time it takes, to sacrifices made, and to our emotions when something inside of us screams ‘I’m done and I don’t want to do this anymore.’

When it comes to impossible tasks, we do not start out being the person who can complete the task. We start out being the person who will be changed by the process of trying to complete the task. And even though this is everything in life, not many are aware of how this is just the way things are.

The Motivation Has To Be Bigger Than The Goal

When I decided to become a writer, it wasn’t any easier for me to read. I had stopped reading for years, and had only come back to it because I had gotten so sick that my body would freeze and refuse to move for hours on end. Chronic fatigue isn’t sleeping all the time. It’s being in a body that refuses to move, bored out of your mind, demanding an escape. All you have left is your imagination to see you through, to remind you what living is, and that impossible task to start a business when I could barely lift my arms didn’t actually feel impossible. It just felt like the only thing to do to get through the moment.

Making this database was the only thing that I could do to be able to be a writer again. I did not write during the time I was making this database, because I couldn’t write. Making this database didn’t actually give me back the part of my brain I needed to be able to be a writer again. But what it did do was keep me focused on my goal — my impossible goal — of being able to write again while my brain was broken. It gave me hope when I saw that I could learn a new skill, a new language. And even when my cognition would drop and I would lose it all, it reminded me that I could get it back again when it came back and the code would work.

It gave me something to measure my achievements, small as they might be, while going through the process of my brain healing. While distancing me enough from my written works that I wouldn’t put my failures on to them. Because that was something that I was seeing as well. I was so focused thinking I couldn’t write, that I was going to ruin what I already created, instead of seeing that my brain was broken. It was easily promising to become a complex, and I knew that was detrimental to being able to go forward as a writer if it was allowed to sink in and take root. I didn’t want something else growing to trap me in this prison of a brain.

Taking the impossible journey was as simple as breathing. It promised something more when there was nothing. Taking on these tasks has to mean everything, otherwise why would anyone take on the impossible?

Preserving You During The Impossible Failures

Self awareness showed me where I was self destructing once again. I had learned by now, could see clearer each failure.

I transferred my end goal of being able to write, into the goal of being able to create a support system to write. The goal was the same, but when failure inevitably would strike, it was about the failure to create the needed support system instead of a failure to write.

Dealing with my vision disorder, and having my insurance provide the worst coating on what was supposed to be vision support screen glasses, was a failure of the support to help me see, not a failure of my vision. It was a failure of capitalism, of a society that thought any sort of glasses wasn’t automatically a vision aid, not on my failing sight.

It might sound so small, these little distinctions. These little transferences of where to place the pain and blame when things don’t go the way we need them to go. But it’s essential on this journey. It maintains mental well-being and self-esteem. In science, no one ever says your vision failed because you can’t see a virus with your bare eye; it’s that you failed to use or obtain the correct tools, and therefore couldn’t see what was there.

It’s a shifting of expectation and pressure that one places on oneself when we try to be accountable for everything we can’t control. It removes the question of if one is good enough, and again brings you to the how does one do something no matter abilities or talents. We’re brought to how to achieve the goal, instead of asking why all these parts of you aren’t good enough to let you reach that goal.

It’s not about owning the limitations, but about owning the solutions.

The Journey is the Goal, Not the Goal

I learned a new language and pattern of thought when my cognition was at its weakest. I held onto motivation when I literally had a failure of motivation as a result of ADHD. I was able to create the support tool I needed when my brain was at its weakest. And if I’m brutally honest, even with this support tool, at that point of my health I don’t know that I would have been able to write. I would have, because the tunnel vision would have allowed it, but without a healthier vantage, I’m not sure I would have been able to get past my perfectionist neurosis. But it would’ve given me hope and sent me looking for the answers that would help. And that is everything about taking on the impossible.

You need hope that it’s not truly impossible.

Our experiences don’t always change us into the person we need to be for the goal we’re chasing after. Sometimes they reveal that we want to be someone else. That the goal isn’t right. And that’s okay. Self-actualization is not an A+ B always = C formula. What we put in might define or shape the results, but that doesn’t mean we understand why our results are so unique and different to what we imagined.

Just like we can’t know the book we’re going to write until it’s written, wanting to be a form, a career, a completed task, an achieved goal doesn’t mean we know who we are going to be on that journey. So we have to be kind and forgiving, instead of trying to be that goal. Because if we are cruel and unaccepting of reality, fighting ourselves, filled with dissatisfaction and hate on the journey, that is the form we’re left in. The goal won’t define us; we define the goal.

So not only can you not doubt that you can do the impossible task, but you have to realize it’s not about the task at all, it’s not about the goal. It’s about you on the journey, because that’s what’s going to fuel and sustain as you do the impossible. It’s going to be why you show up. It’s going to be why you decided to take on the impossible in the first place when you have never done anything like it before. And it’s going to show you that you’re not as smart as you think you are when you look at something that seems impossible.

What we think is impossible is just our limits of imagination and experience. We haven’t become the people yet who know that it’s not impossible. It’s only in taking on the journey of the impossible that we ever get to discover the truth: impossible is just a concept, one we create. Our belief isn’t truth, isn’t fact, but just another limit we place to hold us back from meeting reality.

We’re a collection of scattered atoms with consciousness defining something we haven’t even attempted as impossible. It’s pretty nonsense the longer one even thinks of it. We have no idea what is actually impossible or not.

What New Writers Don’t Understand About Writing…

February 25, 2023

Writing to solve the problem, not supply the answer

I’ve been thinking about the writing process a lot as I get back into writing. I went into writing sprints previously because that was what I was focused on then. Now I’m focused on developmental drafts, the place where questions are found and problem solving happens. There are multiple stories I’m dealing with that are just waiting for me to show up to this stage, and I’m going through the thought experiment of what that actually means.

The thing is, writing is problem solving. Creativity is the act of solving problems, and if you don’t have a problem to solve, you have nothing to do. It’s why I dislike writing systems so much — you know; pre made, packaged systems sold to writers to get them making a story. Writing systems provide an answer without understanding that the answer isn’t what creativity is about. It’s about the problem solving. The answer, alone, is nothing. It doesn’t reflect the journey, the stress factors, the issues that need resolving. It’s just an answer— literally, no one asked for that. Why are they going to read it?

Preplanned answers to questions not asked

Writing systems are about looking at a finished book and promising a writer that if they sit down and follow their steps, they will get their book written. But a book doesn’t exist before it’s written, and it is the process itself that creates that book. If that process is restricted to limits — limits designed with a very simplified mindset in regard to everything — the end result will be limited to the writing system.

A writing system doesn’t teach someone how to think like a creative; it teaches them how to follow a plan, one they’re taking on faith because they themselves did not have the experience to make a plan of their own. It’s training wheels to get a writer going, but you’re not learning how to craft a story, or even look for what you need to look for to make a story good. You’re just shown one limited path, a path designed to be as accessible as possible, without an understanding of the real problems a story holds. It doesn’t explain how the creative process is in solving those problems, or how important it is to create new problems to keep a story interesting.

So, let’s talk about what limits a new writer, or even a veteran who is stuck to the point they might think answers for questions not asked looks good. Let’s talk about the biggest problem of the would-be-writer.

Expectations

Do you think you know the story you’re going to write? Your expectations are already unrealistic.

A concept is only ever that; a concept. You can’t know what doesn’t exist. If you sit down thinking you’re going to write the story you’ve been kicking around in your head for a week or for 10 years, you are never going to meet that story on the page. The “what it’s going to be” version of your story will never exist, and when people fail to realize this, they can get stuck and never write their story at all.

Do you think that the first draft of your story is your story? Again, your expectations are set to unrealistic. That’s still stuck in expectations, defined more by what the writer wants it to be and less by what it will actually become.

What about your characters? If you were to write a bio of your characters for the story when you first start it, will that bio change by the time you get to the end of your story? If it doesn’t, if nothing of importance has changed your characters by the end of your writing process, you haven’t written a dimensional character.

You can’t know a character you haven’t written. You can’t know a character you haven’t met, which means until your character has gone through enough experiences within your writing, you cannot predict their actions or know them as a fleshed out being. You can’t know the world you’re creating and settings these characters are in until you’ve written it and have them interact within it.

The process of writing should reveal the fullness of your characters in the same way it reveals the true form of your story. You can’t reverse engineer this like a writing system tries to do. You can’t start at the end. There is no shortcut. You have to go through the process.

There is a lot of putting the cart before the horse when it comes to expectations of writing, and it is all unrealistic. It asks for cookie-cutter, two-dimensional answers to complex questions because people are expecting to base their worlds and their characters on something they haven’t even explored yet.

Draft writing

This is why I subscribe to draft writing. And when I say draft writing, understand I’m not referring to any kind of writing system that might be called that. I’m referring to the act of writing multiple drafts of a story until, through the process of making these drafts, you have a finished piece.

You might not know your character until you’ve written a first draft and seen bits of them shining through. You might not know the world your characters are in until that first draft and you see nothing is there. And when you start writing your world into the second draft, you see everything must change because the world is an environment that has defined so many different actions, created so many problems that need solving that the first draft didn’t. You might not know your plot until you’ve written your first draft and you see that the characters aren’t growing, their talents and abilities are not being stretched to have them shine in any way.

What’s the point of having a character with *insert ideal magical power* if they’re not tested? Why have a highly empathetic character if there’s nothing for them to react to? Why have a shut-in character who isn’t being forced out into the real world? Why define a character with traits if those traits aren’t going to come into play?

If you write character centric stories, your plot needs to be about growing that character. Otherwise, it’s not character centric. Then it’s just plot centric with a character jumping through hoops that an author has set up, completely disconnected as to why any of the elements of the story are there.

Exploration without expectation

Draft writing allows for exploration without expectation. It allows you to find the problems in your story and start problem-solving. It’s where you get to develop something off of the foundation of your initial draft without demanding you use that original writing.

But the thing is, without going through that first draft, you can never get to this point. You can’t develop something that doesn’t exist. You need a jumble that creates a form — even if it’s not the final form — so that you can start sculpting from there.

Questions, problems, and crossroads

Every time you have a question in your story, you are developing it. Every time you identify a problem that needs solving, it’s developing. Every time you end up at a crossroads with a path to choose, you are developing the story. This is everything in the creative writing process.

I was talking to my partner about Star Trek because he’s been rewatching Voyager lately, and their closets came up, and we just started hypothesizing what would the living space of a futuristic society on a spaceship really look like? The ship would set huge limits because of a lack of space, and there being limits on weight. Most of the space on that ship would be for functionality to allow it to move, store fuel and water, and to have life support. What energy/fuel could really be put into the luxury of people not working, and how would the replicators play a function in it all? Would people be less materialistic when they realize they don’t have to hold onto anything; it can be replicated as needed? Or would that drive them to want more and more and more, because there are no limits; you can have anything? What does a hoarder look like with a replicator? This is a culture that has technology to make people look like entirely different species, sometimes changing them completely genetically. Would that mean body modifications would be far more normalized because replicating the latest clothing trend would be so easy that it wouldn’t feel unique? Would it be an educational thing to be genetically modified for a certain amount of time to understand other alien cultures before going out into space? How would humanity direct their current innate drives when put in a future that allows for so much with so few consequences?

All of the above questions come from interacting with a preexisting source. Star Trek has been out there for decades. We’ve seen some of their tech enough to have questions about it, but we haven’t really seen the answers to these particular questions (at least, I haven’t. It may be out there.) If the writers of Star Trek asked these questions, we might actually see entire episodes focused on the answers, because in each question could be an entire world to explore, a path to take, a problem to solve as we ask how it could work, and how to make it interesting AF.

When you see the generic spy gadgets being brought up in a spy thriller, if there isn’t a situation where they’re used, has a problem been solved? If the watch with a sleeping dart never trips a sensor, do we believe the threat the hero is walking into is really that high tech, advanced, and cunning? How do you solve the problem of having one organization developing amazing tech to surveillance another organization that does the very same thing without under powering and making one side look far weaker and not an actual threat?

Or, how can you have a David and Goliath situation when the physics of a slingshot could never bring down a giant? How would you do it better, make it believable, and make it in a way where the character grows? Could the slingshot represent getting into someone’s heads with words until the bully self destructs and gives up? How would you portray that? What sort of world would that happen in, and would you need a media presence to be involved to really spread that rumor/gossip? Maybe we take a path where it’s the court of a dictator, and your main character is low in a system trying to take out an enemy that has been keeping them stuck in the worst situation, and the entire book is about using psychological warfare to take down the greatest of foes. Or maybe the path to take is about kids at recess, where one puts a pebble in the bully’s shoe after the bully made fun of them. But the pebble has a rare bacteria on it, and the bully dies.

If you don’t ask the questions — if you don’t identify the problems and choose a path — you can’t create something new. And if you don’t know that writing is problem solving, you can’t understand what you’re doing in the first place.

There is no magic to creativity

Too many talk about creativity like it’s something only certain people have. Or worse, like it’s something the fickle muses gift, something that must be waited on to strike, and can’t be honed or grown. But it’s just problem solving. Most people go to work or school every week and solve problems in their day to day life, not realizing that they’re being creative.

Writing a book is the same thing. You’re showing up to learn a craft and then do it. But while school and work will tell you the problems that need solving, and limit how you can solve them, creative work is different. You aren’t handed the answers; you have to solve it yourself. You have to find the problems, figure out why they’re problems, and then generate solutions that will bring you to your most ideal goal.

It requires experiencing the problems first hand, not through someone else’s structure. A writing system can’t teach someone how to think creatively — aka, how to think in a way to problem solve (unless that is literally the system). It hands an answer while not teaching the would-be-writer how to look for the problems they supplied those answers for.

To problem solve, you need to actually solve problems. You learn through doing — you learn best through failing, experimenting, and eventually solving. If your problem is you’re afraid to start, you can solve that problem by starting right now. If your problem is you don’t feel like you have any opportunity to problem solve in your life to get better at it for writing, that is a problem you can work on solving too — by writing a book.

You can try writing a book and see what it’s like to solve a whole bunch of problems. And then you can choose to create more problems in that story, because those problems — the limits found in a story — are needed to decide its form. When a book can be anything at all, limits decide what it will be. It’s the paths taken instead of the ones closed off. It’s the problems solved instead of the ones ignored. It’s the questions answered while others have no importance. Answering no to a question as simple as “does the world have gravity?” can decide so much to the shape of a story, and it’s up to you as a writer to see which questions are worth asking.

Curiosity before certainty

All those questions are idea generation. Not even the answers; the questions are the source of where those ideas are coming from. First drafts to stories are about laying a foundation to ask questions about. Developing a story is about taking a jumble of interesting ideas and taking paths to explore those ideas, and then, eventually, pinning them each down to form the final shape of the story. And that pathing and pinning down process can take multiple drafts as you decide what works and what doesn’t. What works will depend on the problems you have in the moment and the questions you ask to solve it.

If you can allow it all to be malleable, all to adapt to a better change, a better path, a better question, you’re giving your story the best opportunity to be its best version. But that’s on you and how comfortable you are with writing something and then cutting it up, moving the pieces around, deleting pieces, and building something completely new. How you feel about fucking up something that could be super important to you, that you might have spent years on, on the off-chance that this version might actually be the one people want to read. How you feel about letting go of expectations to instead experiment and explore.

Getting comfortable being uncomfortable

You don’t know the story you’re writing. Even as a plotter. I am lying to myself every time I make an outline and sit down to flesh it out. You don’t know what’s going to end up on the page because it hasn’t happened yet, and you don’t know how it’s going to change, just that it will. You need to get comfortable here not knowing what you’re writing, and still writing anyways.

If you can embrace that and become the daredevil who rushes to the cliff to see the spikes they’re going to be leaping over next, this can be a lot of fun. But if you’re someone who needs to read the finished book before you start writing it, it won’t be fun. It can leave people lost and angry and hating themselves because they think they’re failing at manifesting a book into existence. But it’s not manifesting; it’s a process that creates the end result. There is no joy being on a journey of discovery when you expect the answer to be handed to you. You have to stop expecting the wrong things.

Fostering a creative mindset

I’m not here to tell people how to do this; I’m just here to say you need to. You need to be creative with how you deal with the things you’re doing that hold you back. This can’t just start and end in a book. Your attitude and how you see the world is reflected in everything you do, and if you’re wasting your energy creating problems that keep you from creating solutions, that’s on you.

If you find a writing system helps you, you need to understand that the limits placed don’t have to be there if they’re holding you back — and they will hold you back. Training wheels only help to a certain point, and then they slow you down and prevent tight turns. Being comfortable can only get you so far. Whatever your frustrations on the first, third — fiftieth — draft as you fail to get closer to where you want to be, is more likely about how you think about writing and your level of comfort, than the piece you’re working on.

Because you could solve your book if you were willing to slice it into a brand new form that doesn’t have the problems you’re stuck on. You could solve it if you’re willing to let go of what you’re clinging to, throw away the safety net, and see what you pull out of the dark woods of creativity. Experimentation is how we solve problems. You have to allow yourself to fuck up or you’re not going to gain experience solving anything.

You need to go down the wrong path to see that a problem is there. You need to write the wrong book first to see that it’s not the book you want to write. And then you solve that book as many times as it takes to get to the results you want — while understanding that what you want is absolutely part of the problem, part of the limits that form the final shape of the book.

Every time you write and don’t write a book, you haven’t failed. You have experimented, practiced problem solving, and gotten comfortable not know what you’re doing. You’re solving problems, and hopefully finding new ones, bigger ones, as your mind expands to the possibilities.

There is a mountain to climb, and it shouldn’t feel daunting when you get to the top and see another one to reach. It should be exciting. Every challenge is another high to reach, something to learn, something to understand about the world, humanity, and yourself. All things you can put into your writing, taking on a fresh challenge of how to do it.

The creative mind creates problems, useful and not

If you’re drawn to creative work, a part of you is a problem solver forever asking “how can I do that?” You have to remember you’re participating in the creative process, not being led by it. You’re accountable for showing up, for if you’re discouraged by a setback or see it as your guide to what to try next. You have to be creative for your mindset just as much as for your craft, otherwise the problem solving mind can start making problems for itself just to keep shit interesting.

There is no inspiration to wait for; that’s a lie people tell themselves. There is no system that will shortcut through this. It’s work. It’s practice and experience. It’s showing up and leaning in to being bored until you create something to make it interesting. It’s accepting that you’re going to work on something and be BAD at it, for ages, and that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be. You are going to write a collection of terrible books until you’re good at this — and people might still say your books are shit when they can’t even write a paragraph for a negative review — but none of that can happen if you don’t do the work to write anything at all.

You have to see failure as your guide to the next problem to solve, and the emotions you feel when you want to give up as a warning that you have a problem that’s not solved when it comes to why you’re writing, what you want out of all this.

Being creative is a way of life, but for some minds it forms our very reality. You’re allowed to acknowledge how much something sucks, but if all you’re doing is wasting time bitching instead of running toward that next challenge, you’re harming yourself, refusing to solve the problem of why you don’t want to show up and love what you do. If you’re stuck creating a concrete concept of the problem holding you back, you’re not putting that energy into finding the solution — a solution which can be as simple as realizing it’s not actually a problem in the first place. It just looked like one because you wanted an excuse to not go forward.

At the end of the day, everything in the story you’ve written — everything you’re battling with — is you. Your limits will decide the final shape of your story, and that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be. If your expectations are limiting you, they’re limiting your story. If your fears and self doubts — or self hate — is limiting you, the same is limiting your story.

Give yourself permission to get out of your own way when it comes to writing, and if you can’t, you’re going to have to problem solve that shit. No one else can, the same way no one else can go through the writing process and hand you a cheat sheet that you’ll have the experience to utilize. You need to become comfortable with being a work in progress. If you can, you can become comfortable solving the story you’re working on and reveal the final version waiting.

Writing When All Plans Fail

February 22, 2023

The Best Laid Plans Of Labrats…

So… nothing this week has gone to plan. Second week of getting back into writing, and after the way last week ended early, I was dealing with a lot of hard truth moments in regards to my neurosis and my inability to really compromise with it. I went into this week with a plan, one that looked really good on paper.

The main idea is to switch to a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule so that I could use Tuesday, Thursday, and the weekend as buffer days to prevent me from falling into my obsessive patterns. And that I would need to fill those buffer days with non-work related tasks, creating a schedule or a list of these safe projects that I know don’t trigger this pattern centric aspect of my brain. If I can find a way to ensure that I can’t work the second I wake up after falling asleep working, I thought I could break the dangerous cycle and force myself to return to the waking world.

There are some other things, probably just as important. Giving myself a task shut off time, and a bed time. Locking my laptop in a different room so I couldn’t just grab it and start working in the middle of the night (as I do.) I know that if I’m doing a task when I start to get tired, it’s so much harder for me to pull away, especially if I’ve been doing that task all day. (6am writing this — 7 am editing — so as we can all see, my task shut off time and bedtime have both failed tonight, and I sure as fuck didn’t lock my laptop away.) But the hope was if I could stop myself before my brain became stronger than my will, I could prevent the cycle from repeating.

Shit Went Wrong

To be fair, it’s still a good goal, it just didn’t happen this week.

Monday I realized the fabric covered cardboard storage chest I bought about a month ago didn’t actually get rid of the dust mites it was filled with when I steam cleaned it the day before, and after having an amazing allergy attack, I spent the day washing all my linens and spray painting the chest, hoping that might seal the little buggers away. And then, after some thinking on it, I started to wonder if I should be treating for dust mites or considering mold, seeing as out of the two infesting cardboard, mold was the most likely culprit.

Frustrated, and not wanting to lose the day completely, I thought I might check out AI art between coats of paint. It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot as my vision issues get worse and making digital art becomes so destructive to my eyes. AI art seems like this bridge, this tool that could give me something back. I could edit and filter art into a book cover if it’s a high enough quality starting out… maybe. >_> But when I went to try the discord one, midjourney, I ran into a problem beyond the horrible scrolling that was such a strain on my eyes.

The addictive pattern part of my brain was triggered as I kept feeding prompts in trying to get results. It was gambling combined with problem solving, and peeps, if you don’t understand that the most dangerous aspect of my brain is that its default is a sharp toothed predator of problems looking to tear them to pieces and build a beautiful, blood soaked answer out of the bones, this fucking system sure did. Everything about making art is problem solving, and adding in AI gambling to spit out random images that may or may not fit the goal didn’t change this for me. It just made the cause and effect for bigger issues faster, not allowing me to focus on an end goal since there was no process to follow and close poor paths off like one does with making art by hand.

There were too many paths, and my brain needs to map everything before it can map a single point. That’s a big issue with my default type of learning; I need more data to see the big picture, which then allows me to see the details. Yeah, it’s helpful to get multiple vantages and understand a topic fully, in context with so much more. But when the data is too great to take in all at once, it’s overwhelm, and a problem solving loop of misery as I try to talk myself into figuring out how to have it not be overwhelm, creating more overwhelm.

Needless to say, after starting multiple accounts to play with the free version for hours straight, I knew it was too dangerous for me, another possibility of getting back into making digital art cut off because of this neurotic fuck of a brain of mine. And yeah, it’s crushing. My vision issues are in a lot of ways a product of how I abuse my eyes when it comes to the shit I obsess over — I am never going to win this.

So Tuesday, I woke up planning to get my allergy shots — you know, fill my day with things that aren’t business focused so I am a full human being instead of defaulting into the last task I did — but because I was up so late fucking around with the AI art, I couldn’t go. My car was needed for someone who actually works a job consistently, and it was getting too dark anyways for me to be able to drive safely. Because my night vision is done now. The lights in the dark make me nauseous and I spend most of my time with my eyes closed and hands covering them when in a car at night.

I felt really defeated. I didn’t have a plan. Honestly, I didn’t want to do the plan I made because there was a mess of a painted chest I couldn’t use reminding me of cash poorly spent, I couldn’t get my new eye glasses — they came in apparently last Friday and I missed the call. Not that it mattered because even though I can mostly drive during the day, I struggle with areas I’m unfamiliar with because of the lack of muscle memory. I was just feeling really shit about myself and having to face these really difficult limits.

Giving In

So I opened up my laptop, turned to the last story I had been working on, and just started writing. No sprints, no fucks to give on proper editing or anything. I just needed something to throw myself into so I didn’t have to think about all the fucking shit I really don’t want to think about.

It’s why I started writing all those years ago when I first got sick. I had a lot of shit I didn’t want to think about then too.

And yeah, I started feeling better. Because that’s part of the draw of the things that change my thought patterns into simple, restricted designs. There’s no room for doubts or negative emotions. There’s just the task and completing it. Hours slip away, meals are skipped, all social interactions completely neglected. Everything is so much simpler when the human doesn’t get in the way and there’s only the thing to focus on.

Task Addiction Isn’t Trending

I can’t find a proper name for what I have — oh, there are trendy names, you know, the ones that fit nicely into search algorithms like productivity addiction or the old school workaholism, maybe a task completion addiction here and there. But these terms aren’t really helpful because they don’t come with a diagnosis or even a damn handbook. It’s just a weird flex most days, some trope in a story about the executive who keeps giving himself a heart attack because he works too much. There’s very few practical steps to take when you’re trying to find a balance with something that for most abled people just means not working past a 9-5.

There is one part of it I had found a name for some years back and have since forgotten, and it had to do with a faulty kill switch when it came to giving up. I guess most people, when faced with an impossible task or a big challenge, will naturally stop after a certain amount of failed attempts to overcome it. And it’s quaint how people talk about it like it’s a choice, like it’s self awareness to either “try harder” when challenged, or “let go” when never giving up. But I am very fucking aware when I can’t walk away from a task I’m trapped in. My wiring doesn’t care. It’s getting whatever high it’s getting from it, and I am fighting my biology every time I manage to pull away.

The little I found was of the productivity addiction stuff and it’s what I used to build my plan for a new week. I was cautiously hopeful… but not deeply invested in it working. Because it involves my willpower being greater than my neurosis, and I’m pretty sure by definition, neurosis is going to fucking win. And yeah, part of me loves the addiction, especially since it happens over basic shit that leads to a better way of thinking.

Changing is asking me to be something I’m not, sooner rather than later as the way my brain works pushes me to break every damn time. And the depression sure as fuck isn’t adding anything useful into the mix. That’s been something coming on strong, in waves, month in and out, since about… fuck, it started after my teeth were pulled and the meds had an impact on my adrenals. But I don’t think the low cortisol is the cause at this point, just a lot of different things all leaving the same unhappy chemical result…

The Point? Brains are stupid.

I don’t even know why I’m writing this. Maybe just to show that yeah, I had a shit couple of days, was feeling really low, yet still managed to write about 4500 words in the story I was working on today and I didn’t have to solve all the deep fucking issues of my brain, disabilities, and situation to be allowed to do it.

And maybe the consequences aren’t that dire — fuck, I’m going to drop dead eventually. Who really cares if I ate chips for dinner? I dunno. I’m too extreme with everything, from fasting months over the summer and then carbing through the winter, to always fighting my sleep cycle that naturally believes morning is the best time to be unconscious, and instead of just accepting that I’m never going to fit whatever fucking ideal I keep thinking is the thing I need to be to get through this, I keep fighting reality.

I’m not okay, and I can still write. And that’s probably going to be most days going forward. It was most days getting to this point before the multi year long break. I just kept expecting something different.

I thought getting past the weird chronic fatigue and brain fog was going to be everything I needed, and then the mold took over the house. Then I thought getting over the screaming face pain was everything I was going to need, and then my brain just flatlined. Now I got my brain back, and hey, it’s still a fucking neurotic mess and I still have to get up and live this imperfect life.

Shit has never gone how I planned, and that shouldn’t be the reason I’m upset. This illusion of control has always been bullshit anyways; I’m just too stubborn to admit it when I’m stuck fighting my brain. The illusion is just so damn tempting, easy, that one single answer in the sea of chaos that my problem solving brain craves.

Would nihilism be better for it? Sure fucking would, but no, it doesn’t want to do that kind of work. There’s no pattern to obsess over in nihilism. It wants the illusion of control with steps to follow when things get difficult, like the dumb fuck it is.

It’s too late to pretend any of this is legible… comprehensible? Whatever words. Tired. Just remember: don’t believe that your brain decides your decisions. Most behavior happens and then the brain swoops in to justify and explain it away like the smug, dumb fuck it is. The brain isn’t the control center; it just plays pilot like a little kid pressing buttons that don’t do anything while the body goes about its routines, uncaring of the steady, usually unkind critique only a superior intellect can so foolishly rationalize spewing.

Also, if you’re not an asshole to yourself, carry on.

mocha reading

January 27, 2023
sins-mocha-rose-120x103
DEMON BONDED: COVEN SAGA
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EPISODE #12
ep 12: Scene 2 last updated 8/10/20

EPISODE 11 null
DEMON BONDED

Audio Version

SCENE #The realm within Glover House

Ky returned to the world in a flare of fire and blinding light. Panic slammed in his chest as he spun. Green flames licked at his coat, and he instinctively curled inward and tried to pat them out before they could burn him alive. The bright, green flame evaporated under his touch, leaving his fingers unscathed. Ky stared at his coat, pulling at the edges, but no char or holes were there to find. He lifted his head and grabbed at the links on his collar as his mind ticked.

“Where the hell am I?” Ky muttered, his eyes scanning the cramped, dusty room, counters, shelves and wooden furniture dotting the creaking floorboards. It was empty of life, and Ky’s gaze fixed on a small, square window where daylight streamed in and turned the dusty air into a golden ray of glitter. He took sure steps to the door, his boots clunking loud on the bare boards, and he wrenched the handle open. Hesitating, Ky slowly stepped out onto the porch smelling of fresh paint and stared out into the dazzling morning.

The world outside, if possible, was just as empty and void as the room he arrived in. A field of tall green grass spread out before him, with only a few sparse trees to break up the landscape. A worn, dirt path cut a wandering trail along the landscape, the only thing that passed for a road as far as his eyes could see. Ky pursed his lips as he approached the wooden steps that led down, but the new vantage revealed only more grass, dirt, and clear, unmarred sky—nothing to tell him where the hell he was.

It was disturbingly mundane considering just how he traveled there. With a final, suspicious glare to the picturesque scenery, Ky turned back to the door he passed through and studied it closely. The porch, much like the room inside, was choked with the dust coming off the unpaved road, but also held the clinging odor of barely dried paint. The banister was a deep green, its fresh coat of gloss already marred by the fine cloud of dirt in the air. The boards beneath his feet were a faded white, creating a path leading to the door tinted with the sandy color of the road that had come in with the steps of all who entered. The black door also had a sheen to it, the high gloss looking out of place with the rest of the worn setting. Ky’s eyes narrowed, and he peered closer to read the dull bronze plaque fixed on the wall next to the door.

Glover House

Built in 1814 by the Aeternum Committee, this structure replaces the original standing house built in 1639 by Blackstone Falls founder, Edmund James Glover. It is the oldest standing building in Blackstone Falls, and is home to the Blackstone Falls Historical Society and Museum.

Ky’s mouth gaped open in outrage, and he whirled to glare at the unchanging scenery. “Is this a joke? The Aeternum is the town’s fucking historical society?”

Shaking his head sharply, Ky turned back and pushed the door open wide, truly seeing the inside of the room he landed in. The dim light was mostly from the ambient daylight fighting to be seen through the dust streaked windows. The back wall was lined with stately, floor length curtains, where a long counter stretched the width, and an unoccupied cash register rested to the side. There were glass displays throughout the room filled with random objects and mementos of a time long past in the town. Ky’s teeth grit tight as he stalked the length of the nearest display and took in the yellowed note cards hand penned in neat cursive, arranged to give additional information of the contents within. His anger grew as he glared at the black and white photos on the wall in understated frames, the well preserved writing desk that’s surface held multiple different brochures, the post card display that rotated at his touch, and the plastic key chains with the Blackstone Falls Historical Society emblem emblazoned on each.

He picked up one of the key chains, the metal cold beneath his fingers, and glared at the emblem. “Fuckers,” he snarled under his breath. No magic, no collars, no spells or even that stupid wand museum Moore mentioned. Nothing. There was only dust and the same old historical shit you’d find in any little town not full of slave trading, murderous sorcerers. His dark stare lingering on a stuffed raven with beady glass eyes, Ky shoved the tacky key chain into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone to check the time.

Were they fucking with him? Moore handed him a magical card while claiming that they were going to come and drag him out of his house if he doesn’t show for this hearing thing, and this is where it dropped him? Where the fuck was everyone?

Ky’s expression grew grim as another thought struck. What if Stewart Moore just wanted him out of his house at a certain time so he could try to steal the wands?

Ky’s hand patted down to the pocked in his coat, his breath coming out in a rush when he felt Anselm’s wand there. His boot was stiff with Tobias’s wand tucked up against his leg. He might not know how to use them, but he understood the horror that could happen to the relics if he lost them. There was a flash of movement across the room, and Ky fixed on where the curtains behind the counter ruffled slightly from a breeze. His eyes narrowed when he realized there must be a door on the other side. Outside of a bathroom sign and the outer door that led to the empty fields, there was no other exit or entrance into the room.

His patience was wearing thin with his growing anxiety— he was already five minutes late for a hearing so important no one had bothered to actually greet him after all the threats of death and embarrassment. Ky strode toward the glass display case and leaped over the counter in a swift move, his coat snapping around his legs in a rush.

He found the divide in the wall of fabric and brashly pushed the dark curtains wide open, revealing a hidden door. A generic sign said ‘No Admittance. Employees Only.’ A snarl curling his lips, Ky grabbed the door handle, which readily turned at his touch, and pushed it forward.

Ky sensed the change in the air immediately. The doorway was charged with magic, and it felt like he was pushing through more than air as he swung the surprisingly heavy door open and stepped through the entry. It didn’t just feel different; looking around, Ky was certain he had entered into a completely different building.

The color of the air was different, tinted and disorientating in a way he couldn’t explain. Ky’s nostrils flared as he took in the new, foreign scents, something acrid, possibly a cleaner mixed with old dust and a strange, unfamiliar greenery scent that he couldn’t pinpoint. Ky turned to look behind him from where he came and found the entryway tall and arched at the top, although the handle grasped in his tight fingers was still connected to the same ordinary rectangular door with the sign telling him not to enter. The curtains behind him looked as if they were in a fishbowl, miles away even though he knew if he stepped back just a few inches, surely he would touch them. The morning light of the dusty room on the other side of the curtains looked dimmer than it should, as if it were twisting in on itself and filtered through a noxious green sap.

Ky’s stomach clenched as he forced himself into the large, impossible hallway, and his footsteps echoed in distortions of sound all around him. His senses were telling him this was a place he didn’t want to be, a place that wasn’t supposed to exist. He was somewhere that wasn’t real, in something unnaturally made, including the pocket of universe that contained it.

Ky scanned around him warily, his hand resting on Anselm’s wand inside his coat as he stepped. The strange distortion lifted the further he moved into the room, his body and mind starting to adjust enough for him to place the items around him into context with the space.

It was a hotel lobby of some sort, everything about it confusing as much as Ky was confused to be there. The decor was a muddle of modern, contemporary architecture combined with archways from a long past century, and perfectly preserved furniture from different points in time, ranging from a loveseat that looked straight from the Victorian era, a desk that suited more the 1920’s, including a bright red rotary style telephone that he was sure was a knockoff made to look much older than it was. The curtains couldn’t have existed in the current world at all, the fabric free of dyes and processing, and weaved by a machine that had long been replaced with modern textile technology.

The floor was tiled in hard marble, and the chunky heels of his boots clunked with each step. Ky’s eyes were drawn to thin carpets with elaborate designs that looked like they might suck a person into another realm, a place of color and pattern, if they strayed on the wavering threads. Lush, green plants potted in giant kiln glazed pots decorated the arch ways, the gold leaf glinting of wealth and luxury in a space that didn’t quite know what it was. A large wall on the other side of the hallway was split in two, half of the space filled with shelves of books arranged like a piece of artwork, while the other half displayed a clock larger than Ky was tall, surrounded by smaller clocks that each revealed different times.

Ky stopped his cautious steps and glanced behind him, his eyes seeking out the doorway he deliberately left open. The entrance had changed as he moved away from it, and the door now fit in the tall archway that housed it. Ky could see there were two handles, two doors to complete the large entrance, the one he left open looking into a green tinted room that appeared upside down now, like someone had placed a rounded glass between him and the other side.

Ky had never felt more like a small, insignificant bug than in that moment. His breath was stuck in his chest as he looked around the lobby, feeling the weight of magic in the air with every inhale. He wanted to pass it off as wards, but stepping into Tobias’s manor hadn’t felt remotely the same as this, and those wards were powerful enough to keep out the sorcerers he was there to meet. All Ky knew for certain was that he didn’t want to get lost here, and not just in the room. He didn’t want to get lost from where his home was—where Earth was—because the longer he stood in the strange lobby, the more certain he was that he wasn’t in Blackstone Falls anymore.

‘Ky?’

Ky jolted and grabbed his collar, his heart hammering in his chest. His fingertips skimmed over the white-pink jewel that thrummed with familiar power. “Lovely?”

‘Yes, I… I just wanted to make sure you were okay.’ Lovely’s inner voice was like leaves drifting over pavement, barely there and sounding further away than Ky remembered it ever sounding before. ‘You feel odd in my senses,’ Lovely continued anxiously. ‘Like I can’t quite reach you.’

Ky’s lips pursed as he tried to understand what that might mean. He had lost track of all of them when he crossed Tobias’s wards, something in the magic cutting the relics from his senses. Were the wards different here… or was he different now that his relic genes were turned on?

The question was on the tip of his tongue, but Ky stopped himself, his head rising as he searched the lobby to make sure he was alone. He didn’t see anyone, no sign of cameras or ears listening, but he couldn’t shake the uncomfortable feeling of being watched.

“I’m fine, Lovely. Well, so far,” Ky said grimly. “I passed through some sort of… I dunno.” He faltered for words, his body growing more and more tense when he realized he had no way to explain just where he was and why he was certain Lovely would not be able to reach him if he tried to jump through the bond. “I think it’s warded with some sort of magic,” Ky finally got out, certain at least that was true. “But I can’t talk at the moment. Just promise me you won’t jump here, Lovely. It’s not… It’s not safe.”

That, Ky also knew, was true, even if he couldn’t explain it. The lobby with it’s weird decor and strange distorted door wasn’t anywhere he wanted the relics to be. It felt like a space that wasn’t just a destination, but an entity that twisted magic into it, pulling objects and beings into place and never releasing them from its warped walls.

Ky inhaled sharply and stared out at the walls as dread pricked up his spine.

Lovely sighed in his head, every fear, every anxiety the catboy held swiftly flooding into Ky’s senses. ‘Ky, just remember you have options. Don’t just—’

“Lovely, I need to focus,” Ky said tightly. His relief to know he was still connected to the relics even in this strange place was quickly evaporating as Lovely’s fears bled into him. “I’m late, and I haven’t found anyone yet. You’ll…” Ky growled under his breath and his glare sharpened on a staircase that blended into the wall of books and clocks. “You’ll know if things go wrong. I have to go.”

Lovely’s emotions swirled but soon withdrew, and the silence in Ky’s mind wasn’t interrupted again. Hating that he had to shut the beautiful relic out, Ky forged forward toward his new goal. This was to save them all. He couldn’t let his fear slow him down from the task at hand. They were all relying on him.

Ky passed a lounge area to the right of him, retro 1950’s style chairs in colorful leather spread out among coffee tables and tall fronds of greenery in the elegantly tiled space. It was empty, as was the library area that had seats to read in and a large ledger to keep track of who was borrowing which book.

That he wasn’t attacked immediately once the enchanted card deposited Ky there was small relief as he made his way to the massive staircase. He was being ignored. It felt calculated instead of a mistake or even a cruel slight. They wanted to set him off balance. They wanted to let the fear grow in him as he walked around this fucked up building and his mind was left to wonder on all the ways he might fail today and die at the hands of the Aeternum.

Ky already knew that there would be no winning in a power fight against these sorcerers. The Aeternum had crafted some sort of pocket of reality out of nothing, while he barely understood how to write with a wand.

Ky’s gaze followed the flow of the staircase, and he peered up, scanning for the telltale signs of people on the second floor from his limited vantage. There was a wooden banister that stretched along the second floor’s edge, gleaming in the light from a wide skylight that turned the entire ceiling into a prism of bright daylight. He squared his shoulders, his jaw clenched tight as he moved determinedly up the stairs, his ears picking up the sounds of voices reverberating in the distance. Ky’s eyes refused to stay still, seeking whatever telltale signs of life he could find and the danger it held as he moved and the upper floor came into view.

Glass displays were up here, far more modern and secure than the ones found behind the curtain in the historical society storefront. Ky’s steps slowed as he approached a case a little taller than him. Displayed inside was a faceless mannequin wearing a chain-mailed vest of what looked like blue and gold metal scales, combined with a long coat very similar in style to the one Ky was wearing. He squinted at the plaque attached to the wooden base, and his breath blasted out in a loud hiss when he read the small, engraved text.

Draquer’s Scales

Discovered by Abbott Burr Pemberton. When touched with flame these relic scales repel all heat, magic, and physical attack. When combined with a properly warded cloak, the wearer is rendered invulnerable.

Donated to the Aeternum Coven in 1822 by the Pemberton Estate.

The fuckers had taken the scales off of a relic and used it to make a magic vest. And then displayed it—like it was some fucking awesome thing they did instead of the act of complete barbarism it was.

Rage heated through him in a hot wave, and Ky turned from the display, his eyes moving around the upper floor to truly take in the objects around him. Books lined the back wall, the sunlight from above sparkling off the specks of dust that floated in the air. There were cases in long rows, some broken up by more shelves of books. Ky stepped warily onto the thin carpet, his eyes glued to the glass table tops where beneath the clear crystal surface, pieces of relics were arranged on black velvet. Ky’s vision dimmed dark at the edges as he picked out thin claws, dazzling scales, long, spiraled horns and shorter curled ones, and an array of tails, some so old, it was a wonder they hadn’t disintegrated.

His throat felt tight as he lifted his head toward the glass displays that contained what couldn’t be kept flat. One mannequin was swathed in long, crimson colored locks, but it wasn’t a wig. Someone had scalped a relic for some reason and put it on display. Another large, glass case held a complete relic skeleton, its tail, wings, and horns still attached, bones dark and stained.

Ky kept his lips pursed tight to prevent the snarl pulling at his muscles that would surely reveal the fangs he could feel itching to break free. Most of the other display cases held wings—so many different wings. The summoners must have been obsessed with the feathered type because they were the majority in display, from long, elegant wings that were three times the size of him, to small, feathery puffs that would have fit a child.

They were sick. These fucking people were sick, and no matter what happened, he needed to make sure they never got ahold of his wands. If he had to die to keep these sick freaks away from the relics, then it was a price worth paying.

Resolve formed in him like a hot flame, and Ky swept down the tiled area. The long banister gleamed to his right with the lobby beneath, and the rows of scientific displays to his left as he sought out the sounds of voices. There was a crash of glass up ahead followed by a pained cry, and Ky sneered, his anger moving through his face and breaking the impassive mask he desperately needed to keep intact.

He had to hide his heart. Feral’s warning echoed in his mind even as he stalked toward the sounds of whimpering and glass scraping on tile. These people would find a way to turn his heart against him, the same way Liem did.

Ky fought his emotions back and slowed as he reached the bend where a wall of books divided the next area from sight. As if his dark thoughts summoned him, Ky growled low in his chest when he stepped around the bookcase and found the other occupants of the upper floor, Liem standing among them.

SCENE #Meeting the apprentices

It was a battle to school his expression back to something remotely neutral as Ky took in the scene unfolding yards away, his gaze fixed on the movement of flesh half hidden by the individuals standing. A single display case was shattered, its glass everywhere, including coating the relic who was huddled on the ground. He was holding his bleeding arm tight to his chest, his long, brilliant blue strands of hair hiding his face from view. Ky looked around, trying to see if there was a story to be told in the group of young men standing there in matching uniforms, staring down at the fallen relic with grim expressions on their faces.

Glass cracked under a heavy boot as Stewart Moore came into view from the other side of the relic where the room expanded into a large study area. He was dressed similar to when he broke into Ky’s house, his formal coat and neat hair at odds with the man’s unruly eyebrows and almost comically large beak of a nose. Stewart held his cane up and moved the instrument in a sweeping gesture. Wind swirled up and the glass clinked and sparkled as it was caught up in a wave of magic and brought to settle into the remains of the shattered display case. He failed to get them all, and small, slivered shards glittered from the carpet among the shoes of the motionless apprentices, and the bare legs and feet of the naked relic who was struggling to stand up singlehandedly.

Ky’s blood roared in his ears as he took slow, deliberate steps toward the group. He had no clue if he could run there in time and reach the relic before something horrible happened. Ky might not have seen what had caused the relic to end up smashed through the display case, but even from the distance, Ky could tell his wounds would be fatal if he wasn’t treated immediately. There was too much blood on the floor, too many large pieces of glass in his skin. The relic’s movements looked to be slow, weak, from one who had little energy and was succumbing to shock.

As Ky got closer, his view shifted and he could see one of the apprentices was red faced, pointing at the relic’s location as if in mid yell, but the young man was unnaturally still compared to his peers. Even the dustmotes floating around didn’t move where the red faced apprentice was. Ky realized with a start that the apprentice and everything directly around him had been spelled frozen.

“Mr. Scion, I was expecting you ten minutes ago,” Stewart called gruffly, his eyes fixed on the relic who was frantically sucking on his wounded wrist while pushing unsteadily to his feet.

Ky scowled and didn’t bother to respond. He needed to calm down or he was going to do something stupid, like heal that relic and show that he was the same, all in one go.

He kept his eyes glued to his feet while breathing around the stench of fresh blood and panicked whimpers. Ky’s steps stopped in front of a spray of glass where thin shards were coating a mounted animal that had fallen to the floor, knocked out of the display case when it broke. He peered down at it, his eyes narrowed as he tried to discern just exactly what he was looking at. Not much bigger than a cat, it had a face framed in long fur, obscuring its glass eyes and sharp teeth. It was half skin, its preservation either gone wrong, or the deep wrinkles all along its face and body natural. Four legged, its had fur from the top of its head down to its back haunches, the color a startling, unnatural blue against the more fleshy pinks and dark browns of the skin. Its prehensile tail was twisted around, posed to show its many joints.

Its arms were longer than its back legs, giving the creature a sort of monkey like slope in its death pose. At the end of its fingers, its claws were intact, long giant things that looked like metal. It had too many fingers, and Ky grimaced despite himself when he saw that the front paws were doubled at the wrist, splitting into two extra, clawless hands that had intricate joints very similar to a human’s.

It was completely bizarre, and Ky couldn’t shake the certainty that if the fur wasn’t in the way, the face of the creature might look just like a spider monkey or some other small primate. Except it wouldn’t be a primate from Earth; it would be one that originated on Realm with the relics.

“Please be careful with that. It’s priceless. The only one ever discovered.”

Ky glanced up, his eyebrow raised at Stewart incredulously as he fought the anger he was feeling in his chest. “I’m not the one who threw it on the floor,” he finally grunted.

Ky carefully stepped over the preserved creature and kept his eyes straight ahead on Stewart. It took everything in him not to look at the relic, not to pull him up and away from these crazy fucks, and heal the wounds that were currently gushing blood and dripping on the floor. Ky knew if he looked, there would be no hiding his emotions, no pretending his heart wasn’t breaking to see anyone so hurt and at the same time, so completely disregarded. In that moment, Ky couldn’t promise that his eyes wouldn’t glow blue just like the relic whose genes he was made from.

“Hey!” One of the apprentices cried out the same moment the relic hissed savagely. Ky gritted his teeth, daring a glance to the side, somewhat surprised to find the relic had his claws outstretched in aggression at the wall of apprentices as he backed away. He looked lopsided, Ky’s concern growing when he saw he had only one wing.

He was a catboy like Lovely, but even though he had the telltale black cat ears and slinky tail, that was where the similarities ended. The pale flesh of his form was interrupted by bright blue and black scales that dazzled along one arm, ending in a reptilian like claw with metallic talons that looked to be permanently extended. His other arm and the rest of his limbs lacked any scales at all, and when Ky glanced to his shoulder where his long, neon blue hair was kept to one side, he saw that the cat relic only had a wing connected to his scales, like someone had grafted another relic onto his right shoulder and arm.

He was about the strangest relic Ky had ever seen, his coloring familiar to the mounted animal on the floor, and Ky couldn’t help but seek out the collar on the relic’s throat as he tried to piece together just what the hell was going on. It wasn’t the collar normally seen on relics. No, this one was made of the same metal used for the chains on Magnificent Night that kept his power contained. For whatever reason, they collared this relic but hadn’t bonded him.

The relic hissed again, louder this time as he backed away, his eyes darting from the group of apprentices and then to Stewart. His fangs extended and silver eyes flecked with blue narrowed calculatingly as he suddenly whirled and threw himself across the room. Blood splattered and his bare feet streaked crimson as he escaped out an archway and into another part of the building.

No one followed. The apprentices all gaped at the door as if shocked the relic had fled, but they refused to chase after him.

“He seems to be as happy to be here as I am,” Ky muttered dryly as he stared down at the large puddle of blood the relic left behind.

“Hmm. It’s good you got here when you did,” Stewart said with a sharp tap of his cane. “I was just about to send someone to collect you.”

Ky met his piercing eyes and the disapproval he did nothing to hide. “That the best you got? You threaten my family after breaking into my house, have your stupid card drop me off in a place I’ve never been before without anyone to show me where to go, and you think I’m supposed to give a fuck if I’m late?” Ky shook his head and sighed. “You people are pathetic.”

“And yet, here you are.” Stewart stepped around Ky and stooped down to pick up the fallen mounted animal. Ky glared at his back, holding himself from the angry retort at the tip of his tongue. There wasn’t any point in arguing over something so trivial when had much bigger problems to deal with.

Stewart brushed the glass off the blue furred creature and walked it to the nearest table, careful to arrange its fur back in order. “Thank goodness. For a moment I thought we lost it.”

Ky glared at the apprentices who were silently watching Stewart, then at the sorcerer. “Your relic is bleeding out,” he said tightly.

“He’s a self healer. He’ll be fine,” Stewart said dismissively, his expression grave as he looked at Ky over the blue fur of the mounted animal. “You’re still alive, I see.”

“Trust me, you’re the only one surprised about that,” Ky said flatly. He couldn’t keep his tongue though, not after what he’d seen within moments of finally finding people in the building. “Is there a particular reason that relic is bleeding? Were you trying to take his scales to make another disgusting vest?”

Stewart straightened taller and glared down his nose at Ky. “Draquer’s scales are extremely rare. It is not a magical property that relic possesses.”

“Because you tested him, right?” Ky’s smirk was bitter as he twirled a finger to indicate the room. “And you have him live where there is a butchery of relics on display like some sick fuck slaughterhouse.”

Stewart stiffened at the accusation. “Mr. Scion, everything in this building is for the pursuit of knowledge in relation to demons and summoning them. Nothing is here to torment our links.”

Ky snorted in disbelief. “Are you that dead inside? You hunt these relics down, kill the ones you don’t want, and the ones you do enslave eventually end up in pieces on display. This is a fucking crypt full of pieces of slaves. For all you know, they’re dead relatives to the relics who pass through here.”

Although his expression was impassive, a new anger lit Stewart’s eyes. “Then that would be most unfortunate. Now, unless you have a point, Mr. Scion—”

Ky’s smile felt feral as he stalked over to the red faced apprentice who had failed to move since he got there. “My point is that even though you have a room full of books, and more than enough pieces of dead slaves all over the place to understand their anatomy, you still can’t seem to figure out that a self healing relic can only heal when he has enough energy. Your relic is starved, and his arm was gushing blood when he left. And all you can muster a single thought about is the welfare of a dead animal you didn’t have the decency to bury.”

Ky’s gaze strayed to the side to the painfully silent apprentices who were staring at him like he had three heads. He fixed on Liem, who was looking distinctly uncomfortable. “You do realize how sociopathic you are, right? Like on a scale of sane to fucked in the head, you’re all at the level of sick fuck rapists and slave traders.”

Liem paled under Ky’s unblinking scrutiny, and he turned his head away. Without saying a word, Liem broke away from the group and moved into the large nook created by the tall bookcases, heading to a counter at the back.

Rage felt like a pit in Ky’s chest, tensing all his muscles as he heard Stewart step toward him, his cane tapping on the floor. “Not all our apprentices become demon summoners, Mr. Scion. Some choose to research and expand the knowledge already discovered. Others to focus on magical arts, while others prefer to continue in service to a master sorcerer by keeping up their household and finances.” He turned his assessing gaze on the apprentices. “Not every sorcerer is cut out for the task of summoning and bonding a demon.”

“Is that supposed to make it better?” Ky asked coldly, his eyes taking in the half dozen apprentices who were still standing there, still waiting for some sort of command from Stewart to be allowed to speak, or be dismissed, or have a damn thought of their own. “You created an industry off the backs of kidnapped and enslaved beings. Do you really think by only cleaning the bloodstains off the floors, you’re any less of an accomplice?”

Stewart didn’t say anything for a long moment, but Ky wasn’t under the illusion he was actually listening. Even most of the apprentices, with their hard eyes and smug smiles, looked completely apathetic to anything that had to do with acknowledging their very profession was a crime against nature, no matter what planet that nature might have originated on.

“You have some very… different ideas of demon summoning, Mr. Scion. Perhaps you’d be interested in discussing them more with those who are training for the art?” Stewart suggested, sweeping his cane out to indicate the apprentices staring back at them. “As I said on our first meeting, we have a few openings in our mentoring program—”

“Pass.” Ky turned to face the sorcerer, his eyes narrowed on the twin red links glinting on Stewart’s collar a moment. He nodded sideways at the red faced apprentice who hadn’t taken a breath since he’d been spelled. “What did he do? How much did he have to piss you off for you to just take away his control over his body like that?”

Stewart smiled grimly and lifted his cane to rap sharply on the shoulder of the frozen apprentice. “He broke my favorite display, and damn near killed one of the rarest relics I have ever come across in the process. I would say a time out was the least that was due for our esteemed Mr. Glover.”

Ky pursed his lips, not sure he disagreed, given the circumstances. Stewart Moore might not have a heart beating in that chest of his, but he cared about the things he owned enough to punish those who broke them. It was almost something.

Ky glanced sideways when someone stepped close, and he quickly turned fully to meet the curious gaze of a brown haired, green eyed apprentice who was leaning into his space to stare at his collar. “Can I help you?” Ky gritted out.

“Uh, s-sorry.” Blinking rapidly, the apprentice quickly stepped back, his eyes jumping from Ky’s black painted lips, down to his links, then to the side. “You’re uh, you’re jeweled. I’ve never… Two of them.” He held up two fingers, a blush staining his cheeks as he flustered to find the right words.

“He’s dead,” the brown eyed teen next to him said, his voice razor sharp as he stared at Ky. “One shadow link is enough to kill. He’s got five.”

“Funny, cuz I feel fucking fine.” Ky looked the apprentice up and down, taking in his black blazer with red trim and matching buttons. He had an elaborate crest embroidered in red on the front pocket, something that was repeated on the blazers of all the apprentices. His dress shirt was gray, and his silk black tie was patterned with thin, red diagonal stripes. It might have looked rather posh, except for the uniform’s tight, charcoal gray shorts that didn’t reach past mid thigh, and the tall gray socks that stopped just below the knees. Even the wealthy looking, brightly polished black boots couldn’t disguise that the apprentices were wearing a uniform designed for children.

“I can’t help but notice you don’t have any links,” Ky remarked coolly. “You don’t even have a collar. Unless you’re hiding it under the pedo shorts they call a uniform here,” he added with a cruel smirk.

The apprentice scowled, and his hands clenched into fists at his sides. Ky merely raised an eyebrow when the scowl was mirrored by the other apprentices. “Hey, I didn’t dress you like that.”

“Uniforms keep things even around here,” Stewart spoke up from behind Ky. “Apprentices are less likely to confuse themselves as sorcerers when they’re in the correct uniform. It also makes it much harder to hide weapons or items that shouldn’t be in the possession of someone in training just yet.”

Ky realized he was talking about wands, and his eyebrows raised. None of the apprentices were wearing collars, including Liem. But Liem, unlike the others, had apparently graduated to pants. Ky suspected even if he was told not to, Liem had his wand stashed somewhere. He might have been a total asshole, but he wasn’t stupid.

“We’re not allowed to, uh, that is…” The green eyed apprentice glanced sideways, taking a step away from his scowling peers. “Apprentices can’t have demons. Not until the master mentoring them says they’re allowed. That is, um, the ones who want to have demons, anyways.”

Ky glanced his way briefly, unable to miss the red tie he was wearing that was polka dotted with small black mice. “You planning on having a demon?”

The green eyed apprentice shook his head rapidly. “Uh, no. I have enough magic without needing to… well, you know.” He coughed awkwardly, his eyes downcast to the side.

His face was expressive, and he seemed almost human compared to the others in the room. Ky shook his head in annoyance. “These fuckers are going to eat you alive.”

The apprentice shrugged meekly, his gaze straying back to Ky’s collar. “The jewels… Could you… How does someone get a jewel bond?” he asked in a rush. “Are the relics really rare, or is it something to do with the binding spell?”

Ky inhaled sharply, looking over to see that the other apprentices were just as clueless. His lips pursed in a thin line, Ky stepped forward, bending his head to speak into the curious teen’s ear while fixing his glare on the others. “It’s really fucking simple. When you go to bond, don’t rape your relic.”

Flinching at the venom in his words, the apprentice refused to meet his eyes when Ky stepped back. Ky smiled grimly, fixing on the others who were staring back with expressions of varying levels of tense indifference. “Funny that, huh? How much you wanna bet not a single sorcerer here has a jewel bond?” Bile burned at the back of his throat when Ky turned away, disgusted with it all, including the Aeternum that was creating more monsters to continue the sick practice.

“Are we done here?” Ky asked sharply when he found Stewart meticulously combing fingers through the stuffed creature’s fur, carefully pulling free shards of glass and specks of dirt.

“There’s no need to rush.” Stewart lifted his head to nod at the apprentices behind Ky. “Given your lack of background in demon summoning, I thought it would be good for you to meet the apprentices training to expand their magic. It would give you an opportunity to see the options the Aeternum has to offer—”

“Stop wasting my fucking time!” Ky snarled, his jacket crackling as he whipped his arm out to point to the display cases. “Do you seriously think I want to be here with pieces of thinking, feeling beings out on display as the trophies of serial killers? You people have no fucking clue how sick you are, do you?” he exclaimed when Stewart’s passive expression didn’t change. “You actually think this is normal.”

“Of course it’s normal,” Stewart said stiffly. “Those in pursuit of the answers to the universe must remove their emotions to maintain objectivity—”

“Your relic is bleeding out! He’s going to die unless he gets energy or medical attention, and you’re trying to give me a tour of your mentoring for psychopaths program.” Ky pointed again to the blood on the floor that no one seemed in a rush to clean up. “Where, exactly, is your fucking objectivity in that?”

“Master Moore,” one of the apprentices called. Ky whirled as he recognized the voice and glared at Liem, who had returned carrying a sturdy, black leather physician’s bag.

“If you’ll permit me, I can see to the relic,” Liem said quietly, his head turned deliberately to avoid looking at Ky.

Stewart’s gaze followed to where Ky had pointed, something in his eyes shifting for a moment. “It does seem he’s lost a substantial amount of blood. Alright, Mr. Kane. Remember to use caution; he’s killed before.”

Liem nodded silently and turned away with the bag in hand, walking toward the archway the relic had disappeared through. Ky watched him go as he tried to figure out what Liem’s angle was. He couldn’t believe he cared; Liem had shown time and time again just how little he was capable of caring about anyone but himself.

Ky’s shoulders lost some of their tension once he realized he had won. The relic might be doomed to live among these psychos, but at least it wasn’t going to bleed out just because he’d been unfortunate enough to be injured the same day Ky had a hearing.

“Were there anymore questions for Mr. Scion before he continues on with his business of the day?” Stewart addressed the apprentices as he leaned on his cane with elbows locked. Ky would have protested, except it meant that Stewart was finally ready to leave.

“Yeah,” a new apprentice spoke up, his blond hair in perfect order and dark eyes full of cruel mirth. “Did you write your will? If you care so much for your demons, who do you plan on giving them away to when they kill you?”

Ky glared, a dark smile curling at the edges of his lips as he stared the other down. “Do you think Tobias Godwin wrote a will?” Ky raised his hand to touch the five shadow links, four that connected him to the relics in Tobias’s manor and one to Magnificent Night. “When these relics tore the flesh from Tobias’s bones, hollowed out his ribcage, and ate what they found inside, do you really think he was worried about who was going to inherit them next?”

The apprentice’s jaw clenched defiantly, but his cheeks had paled and uncertainty shadowed his eyes. “Master Godwin got greedy,” he said tightly. “He tried to control too many at once.”

Ky snorted. “If he had a fucking brain in his head, Tobias would have been kind to his relics, and they wouldn’t have turned on him. He got everything he deserved for being a psychopathic monster.”

The apprentice looked like he wanted to say something but held back, his eyes eventually averting under Ky’s unblinking glare.

“Anyone else?” Ky asked sharply. “I’ve got shit to do today, and apparently your master thinks this is it.”

Inhaling sharply, the green eyed apprentice raised his hand hesitantly and dared a step close. “Uh… if, if you’re right and those links aren’t going to, uh, drain you… What are you going to do with it?” he mumbled, his cheeks flushed.

“It?” Ky repeated, having no idea what he was referring to.

“The, uh… the power. All that magic.” The apprentice looked away nervously, only to add in a stronger voice, “That’s the only reason a sorcerer bonds with too many demons. They try to get more power, and end up being drained by the demons they thought they were going to drain.”

Ky’s lips pursed in a thin line and he nodded slightly. “That’s the problem though, isn’t it?” He lifted one of the shadow links, Blood’s energy responding under his fingertips as he studied the apprentice’s face. “You sorcerers only want one thing. When your master bonds a relic, he’s trying to take away their will. The same way that friend of yours got frozen—there was no negotiating, no conversation or compromise. Moore just took what he wanted because that’s what you sorcerers do. Take.”

Ky ran his thumb along the shadow links, feeling the energy shift with each touch. “You don’t understand that just because these links can allow a relic to take my energy, it doesn’t mean they will. The same way I don’t go stealing the magic from the relics I’ve bonded with just because I’m linked. Unless the energy is freely given, I won’t touch it.”

“Oh.” His lower lip caught between his teeth, the apprentice dragged his stare up from Ky’s links as a look of realization flashed across his features. “Wait, so that means you can talk to them?”

Ky’s eyes widened slightly. “Of course I can. What the hell are they teaching you here?”

“Liar!” the brown eyed apprentice of before broke in. “Demons can’t speak.”

“Not the ones you spell silent,” Ky shot back. “Even then, they can speak in your head if you bond correctly. Relics have more languages than we do. Just because you’re too ignorant to understand them doesn’t make it any less true.”

“How do you get them to speak in your head—?”

“Enough,” Stewart ordered sharply, rapping his cane on the floor. The apprentices fell silent, the green eyed one bowing his head even as his gaze flickered to Ky’s jeweled links and his fingers flexed at his sides as he held back his questions.

“Gentlemen, I arranged this meeting for a reason,” Stewart said gravely, his piercing stare moving over each of the apprentices in turn. “As you can see for yourselves, Mr. Scion is a cautionary tale; one that will not end happily, by any means. In a few days time, Mr. Scion’s links will have drained the magic and life out of our untrained friend, leaving him dead and his relics free to wreck havoc on the innocent people out in the world who have no natural defenses against the hunger of a stray demon.”

Ky huffed, his annoyance growing with each pompous word. “You’re so full of shit. I got my first shadow link over a month ago.”

Stewart ignored him and continued on with his lecture for the apprentices. “There are consequences to jumping into summoning without training, and those consequences don’t end with you. If you’re drained by failing to overpower your demon in a bond, it won’t just be you who ends up dead—and it will be you no matter what our foolish Mr. Scion would like to believe,” he added with a pointed stare toward Ky. “It will also be your family members, your loved ones, your neighbors and classmates. Your careless mistake will haunt everyplace you have ever touched, bringing only death and pain. Your best hope if that occurs is that there will be a sorcerer trained and empowered enough to clean up your mess after you’ve died.”

“Hopefully not one who gets his jollies by dressing his apprentices up in hot pants,” Ky said flatly. “Are we done? For someone who made such a big deal about me showing up on time, you sure are interested in making me wait.”

His jaw clenching from Ky’s disrespectful tone, Stewart straightened taller as he turned his stern stare on him. “It was strategic. I wanted the apprentices to see how weak you are from being drained.”

Ky smiled savagely. “That fucking backfired, huh? Would you like to mention how Tobias had three red links—supposedly ‘overpowering his bond’ as you claim is the only safe way to bond—and still managed to end up dead?”

Stewart harrumphed and his eyebrows drew down the center. “It is too unusual to worth mentioning.”

“Fucking shit.” Ky shook his head, his smile bitter. “Tell that to his corpse.”

Moore’s steps cracked with the remains of broken glass as he paused at the apprentice frozen in his spell. “I want this mess cleaned up. Mr. Glover will remain here to think about the rules he’s broken and how his parents are going to take the news that he’s destroyed priceless Aeternum property. Understood?” he demanded, his grave expression once again sweeping over the apprentices.

Silent, the apprentices all nodded, a couple looking at their frozen peer nervously. When Ky looked closely, he could see that the teen’s eyes were moving slightly, suggesting he was completely conscious to what was happening around him. Ky felt no pity; the relic who ended up through that glass display had lost far too much blood for him to care if the apprentice who pushed him into it was suffering.

“Mr. Scion, the Aeternum awaits.” Stewart pointed his cane to the other side of the upper floor where a staircase was shrouded in shadows from the tall bookcases. Without waiting for him to answer, Stewart started long strides across the room.

Ky spared a glance back at the apprentices, many of them glaring at him. As young as they were, every single one of them was there to learn how to enslave relics or help those who already did. Ky frowned, his eyes hard as he left with a parting quip about the uniforms they clearly hated. “Watch your asses, kiddies. These creeps sure are.”

SCENE #A Coven of decadence

***

—Moore sends the apprentices away—they’re not a part of what’s to come—and leads Ky to a formal looking chamber. Ky is expecting a large group of people. Moore had mentioned the might of the Aeternum coven. It’s a shock to see so few waiting to hear his case.

—I want characters, not flat and boring. These are men and women with unquestioned power over the lives of others, and it has to have changed them in ways that normal people aren’t. They keep their relics with them, Ky offended by the fact they’re all nude. Moore notices and explains curtly that it is to prove none of the demons are female. Overseers are too dangerous, and all female demons are destroyed immediately to prevent the possibility of an overseer. There is something else there, not a relic but an animal from Realm. Ky is distracted by the strange beast, intros and tight conversation, until they finally get to the reason he’s there.

—Moore is in charge of the apprentice side of things, but he’s not running the meeting/trial. That’s a sorceress, and she has five demons on her collar. It’s a struggle for many summoners to be able to handle just one demon, and because of her five, it marks her as the most powerful in the room at the moment. Before things get fully underway, Moore asks all the demons to be removed from the room. His time with Liem has led him to believe Ky is dangerous among the relics, linked or not, and he doesn’t want any problems. Ky is relieved. He’s not sure how long he can control his own relic nature, and being revealed would be worse than death around these people.

***

SCENE #A stark revelation

***

—A tense conversation, Ky disgusted by the things stated as if they’re fact, about the ritual overshadowing basic human decency, the structure of the summoner’s league motos, etc. They care nothing of the relics, treat them as subhuman. Some act as if they’re giving them an opportunity to be among a more advanced society instead of the world they came from where they wear rags and know no language. Ky is fighting himself more than anything, trying to strategize around these insane people while feeling out of his depths. He isn’t the type of person he needs to be to win at this game. He’s brash and full of heart and he doesn’t know how to be any other way, just that how he is keeps fucking things over for the relics.

—The Aeternum keeps insisting he’s going to die, that the demons are draining him, etc, until Ky finally breaks away in anger to point out he is very much alive and fine, how else is he there at all? They don’t expect him to be alive much longer. They’re actually surprised he made it this long. Ky’s angered by that as well, frustrated, only to be distracted by a new voice in his head. It’s different, more faded because of the weaker shadow link, but he recognizes Brave. Brave explains that there are sorcerers outside the manor. A large group of them pushing at the wards.

—Ky is furious at the revelation and doesn’t bother to hide the fact he’s communicating with the relics in Tobias’s mansion. The Aeternum is surprised with the ability, but more focused on the cold, hard reality of it all. They will not allow Tobias’s demons to escape and reveal themselves to the humans, possibly go on a murdering spree, etc. No one can predict what the beasts might do. Disgusted, Ky goes to leave, only to find the door is warded and he is trapped inside the room. They’re not going to let him out. They’re going to wait there until he either gives up his relics to the Aeternum, or he dies from being drained through his links.

***

SCENE #Ky plots his options

***

—Ky’s first move is to talk to Lovely. It’s the same there. At least five sorcerers are outside the property boundaries, waiting. Ky wonders if they’re the apprentices, or if they’re the ones who belonged to the empty chairs in the trial room. He had foolishly thought the Aeternum was smaller than it was. Were they as powerful as the lead sorceress, or weaker? Would it matter given the numbers of them? Moore had walked right through his wards and he only had two links. Just what kind of magic did it take to get though his wards?

***

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EPISODE 11 null
DEMON BONDED

I’m Back! ? With ADHD. ?

January 19, 2021

Hey peeps

It has been a super long time. I never actually wanted it to go this long between newsletters, but the topic of this newsletter is basically also the explanation of why it took this long: ADHD. And with this topic comes a lot of emotions that need to be processed, and a lot of research I had to take on where I needed to understand exactly what it all meant. I can’t even claim that I am past this process, only that today I feel in a good enough place to be able to talk about it and face these really complicated feelings of vulnerability that come with it.

I’ve never been one to hide what I’m going through, or even just hide facets of myself. That’s not really who I am on any level. But I think partially that comes from this place of being happy with who I am; I’m proud of the things I’ve accomplished and overcome and how I’ve grown to be a better person as a result. These are not feelings that I remotely associate with learning that the struggles of my brain for so many years has to do with ADHD.

I’ve read a lot of people who are in a very positive mindset about it, are likely much further into their journey of processing their ADHD, and they talk about it as a gift as they focus on all the things they can do as a result. I am not there. Not remotely. I am angry with my brain for not working the way I want it to, and I’m angry with myself for not being able to make it work the way I want it to. I have lost so much time that I could have been putting toward writing or making art or building my business or just anything — living my life! — all because dopamine and norepinephrine aren’t getting into the exact parts of the brain they need to get into, resulting in these life disruptive symptoms.
 

for starters, my brain wasn’t working in the cleanroom…

So, I came to learn about my ADHD in a somewhat roundabout way. It was a couple of elements that honestly were built on a lifetime of how the fuck did I miss this. When I first realized I had a huge problem was actually this year after I completed building the cleanroom and I was no longer being bombarded with allergens. I was seeing huge improvements in so much of my health, but something was seriously wrong. I couldn’t focus or remember, I couldn’t keep my mind still on a subject long enough to pin it down. And when it came to writing, I couldn’t load the information in my brain of the books I was working on long enough to then take that information and creatively move forward into the story. My working memory was failing spectacularly, and I had no idea why.

I thought it was brain damage from the last mold attack, but I couldn’t understand it because my brain seemed to be working better during the time of mold hitting it compared to when now I was free of all allergens. I thought maybe there was a leak in the cleanroom or something, where allergens were still getting in — something I missed. But no. So I decided to deal with it, the way I always do, and problem solve and find a solution. The first thing I needed to do was figure out how to do basic tasks in my life. It took me hours to start my day, hours, and not just because I was fatigued all the time but also because I couldn’t remember to do simple shit. Couldn’t remember to take my meds or my supplements. Couldn’t remember to eat, never mind make food. Couldn’t remember to wash my face, or brush my teeth, or water the plants, or to get dressed, or to clean up around the house.

I ended up getting a smartwatch and set up all these notifications to remind me to do basic things. It worked for a bit, and then it didn’t work at all because I started to ignore the notifications. This thing that I literally set up to remind me to do things, my brain was now actively ignoring, and I couldn’t figure out why. So then I used these dry erase notecards and created tasks which I set up around my room as a visual reminder, because visuals were working for me as long as they were in my space. I couldn’t remember to look at my phone, or pay attention to my watch, but if this big card was right in front of my face I could remember to look and focus on it. But that wasn’t working much until I realized I needed to start writing down the times I did my tasks, to help me make time real to me. Because it was just slipping by. My brain wasn’t recording the minutes, and life/hours/days were just slipping by with me not getting basic shit done.

While struggling with this and attempting to create a structure that I could turn into a habit to just do basic things during the day, I was also looking for supplements to help. Brain boosters mostly, omega oils, neuron growers as I feared that this was some level of brain damage, and supplements to help with focus. I didn’t really have a name for anything that I was dealing with at the moment, ADHD wasn’t even on my radar, but I stumbled across a supplement that was used by individuals with ADHD who were trying to naturally deal with their ADHD symptoms after the stigmatization of their medication. The one I tried was specifically for focus and attention, and wasn’t really a supplement but a prescription drug in other countries but available in the US as a supplement. It seemed a little sketchy, but I was desperate, so I tried it — and it worked.
 

a little pill called aniracetam

It was like a light turned on my brain again, and I could write. Not only could I write, I did write; that was when I wrote the first two scenes of Demon Bonded Apprentices. And I thought this is it, this is the solution. I’ll just take this drug for the rest of my life, and my brain will work, and I’ll be able to write again. It had a very short half-life, which required three doses a day, and it was expensive, but it was still my answer and I was ecstatic.

Except this drug didn’t just do what it was supposed to do, it also impacted my serotonin levels. For whatever reason, this is not an aspect of my neurochemistry that can be raised without severe agitation and depression. SSRIs are extremely dangerous to me, and this particular focus drug didn’t just raise dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain, but also serotonin, making it unusable for me.

So the light in my brain turned off again. And my desperation and depression grew. I’d had the answer, but the side effects were too dangerous to pursue. And I couldn’t find anything else like it. I could learn enough about the drug to realize it was raising dopamine in the brain, but that was it. Then I came across a random YouTube video about executive function disorders connected to ADHD, and it all clicked into place.


 

executive dysfunction disorder courtesy of ADHD

In the video were explanations of what I was already doing to function in my life by creating the visual cues of the notecards around me to create a structure that I could rely on to remember to do things. As well as the focus on making time concrete through timers and writing it down to check in. The more I learned about what executive functions were, and what disorders in these functions look like, it was clear to me that this was exactly what I was struggling with. So I had found the names for the problems finally, and I had found the cure in regards to the need to get dopamine and norepinephrine into a certain part of my brain along with positive habits, and I also had a name for this condition, which was ADHD.
 

ADHD is highly heritable

The funny thing is, if it hadn’t been for me finding this video linking the very things I was doing to executive function disorders connected to ADHD, I wouldn’t have believed it. Because my twin brother has ADHD, and our behavior has never been the same. He was a hyperactive child, and I was not — well, I wasn’t hyperactive around other people. It’s apparently rather common for young women to repress hyperactivity as they follow social cues from the gender role they are placed in, while young men are not given those same social cues. And I also learned that ADHD doesn’t always present with hyperactivity. That ADHD can be overlooked in intelligent people because they’re very good at getting around the symptoms of their illness to a point. And it’s only once they reach the level where they can’t fake it anymore, that it all falls apart.

So how was I faking it? Well for one, I was writing term papers overnight and getting As on them. As long as I could get the work done, school wouldn’t notice HOW that was happening. And when I couldn’t get things done and school did notice, it always seemed to come back to the difficult childhood I’d had when in foster care. I wasn’t being held to the standards of my potential, which is why it was missed that my capabilities were limited in ways that matched the pattern of ADHD.

And honestly, being diagnosed at the same time as my brother when we were kids probably wouldn’t have done much. Our adoptive parents didn’t see his ADHD as something that should be medicated — our mom was afraid of the medication. And as my twin grew into adulthood, wondering why he couldn’t seem to feel or want things, he couldn’t motivate himself, he couldn’t focus on things outside of his hyperfocus of reading or video games, couldn’t seem to pull himself out of the depression that had followed him for so long, he never once connected it to his ADHD. And it’s only now, as I watched my emotions turn off, my motivation turn off, my spark for life and novelty and joy just disappear as dopamine failed to reach the correct part of my brain, that I can fully understand why everything was so much harder for him. Your brain is working against you, and everything is so much more effort than it should be, and eventually you just want to give in and stop trying.
 

the allergy link

There’s a bit of a dark irony in all this, as I came to understand why my symptoms were getting worse instead of better now that I was living in the cleanroom. The allergies were helping me focus. The overstimulation of my immune system as it was pushed into fight or flight mode every time I took a breath, was pushing my adrenals to flood chemicals which helped to transport dopamine into the brain. I grew up in a moldy basement from the years of 5 to 27, and when I left that house my immune system was set to critical as it had over targeted practically everything because of that long-term mold exposure. So even as my body was overreacting to everything and gaining huge amounts of inflammation and having these histamine responses that were draining dopamine from other parts of my body to give me Parkinson’s symptoms, the adrenals were using the stress response to get dopamine into the brain enough to get my executive functions to work.

This is why I didn’t become a writer until I was bed bound and sick from all these allergies. The only way I could overcome my ADHD enough to write books was by being in a body that was so overwhelmed and in a state of stress that it couldn’t move anymore. Before that point I could never stay/think still long enough to be a writer until in a body that was basically dying. It was the most horrifying realization, one that truly made me wonder if there would even be a future for me if ADHD treatment didn’t work.

I am currently in the middle of a 1 to 2 month long assessment by a psychologist who will decide if I have ADHD or not. At the same time I’m helping my brother get his health insurance finalized so that he too can start this process, get the assessment he needs, and finally get medication to treat what has completely interrupted his life. I am full of doubts and uncertainty, a lot of fear that at the end of this assessment this doctor will fail to see what is so clear to me after just the minimal amount of research — and I never stop at minimal when it comes to research. I’m scared that the medication won’t work, or that it’ll have a frustrating side effect like the other drug I tried that raised my serotonin levels. I’m scared of a lot of things because I see not just my life and future hanging on this diagnosis and getting access to appropriate treatment, but also a fair amount of my identity as a writer.

Writing was the first thing I’d ever been able to succeed at. I’ve been good at things before, but never consistent at them. Of course, now I see why — how ADHD has impacted so many facets of my life is almost impossible to count now that I can see it clearly. But that doesn’t mean these frustrations with myself, these feelings of failure to not do what I know I can do if only that damn switch will flip in my brain will suddenly evaporate just because I know about ADHD now. My nervous system still needs to believe it, and that is a much longer journey of processing.
 

estrogen is required to produce and transport dopamine to the brain

I’ve had one really amazing twist in all this, which was trying estrogen supplementation. Apparently as women age, their ADHD becomes more prominent as their estrogen levels lower. Hyperactivity can increase if there is an imbalance and testosterone is higher than estrogen, as well. I knew I was in perimenopause for some time now, at least for the last five years, but I didn’t think it was something that would be addressed until menopause itself. But after listening to a podcast directed at women with ADHD, I bought an OTC natural estrogen replacement cream from Amazon, and the changes have been amazing.

Not for my focus — I am possibly more distracted than before. But my working memory, my energy levels, my mood, and spark for life have all returned. I get up every morning feeling happy, and do all the things that I need to do, and I’m more aware of time and how it passes. And if things get a little complicated, I know how to just add in a visual cue to remind me of what to do that day, or set a timer or reminder for future events to keep me on track. And when my day is done I actually feel tired, and I can fall asleep for a change, and then actually sleep through the night. My back pain is mostly completely gone now. My quality of life has improved, even if certain aspects are still a struggle such as writing. That has been amazing, and I’m really grateful for this discovery.

I wish I didn’t live in this place of frustration with myself, and I know it’s going to be a while — maybe a lifetime to stop looking at this like some ridiculous failure. When I look back at the times I could write, I see the mad dash it was. The last book I wrote was in 10 days; for all the times I was telling myself that I could do this, I was missing the stress and anxiety that was fueling me as I ran for some arbitrary deadline just to be able to function. I’m hoping as I move forward that I will have a better relationship with myself about this. It’s funny, because I know I did this with PTSD; I learned to love myself after facing terrible trauma and the very natural survival instincts we have. I don’t know why it’s so hard to not feel betrayed by my brain, but that’s where I am right now. Even as I know that I have no control in this, I still blame myself for not having enough willpower to somehow overcome what is literally a structural disorder in the brain itself.
 

I hope you’re all dealing okay during this long pandemic, and if you’re in the US, the shitshow of watching a bunch of fascists try to take over the Capitol because half of them can’t understand that easily debunked conspiracy theories aren’t founded in reality. >_> Self care is extra important during stressful times, and I hope you’re all remembering to take care of yourself.

 

resources

If you find yourself interested in this and want to nerd out, here are some playlist — because reading is really difficult for me, even though I’m a writer, and videos/audio help:

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