005: Sweet Home Chicago (is a Cliché I am not Above Making)

Second, ADHD REALTALK
Specifically, that thing up there about choosing what to do with my time. Because it affects not just playtime, but all sorts of real world stuff. For example, I almost cried the day I got a countertop dishwasher, because that means I have to spend like 15 minutes tops on dishes, which is a fucking blessing. Handwashing dishes takes time, y'all, and even with a family of three that's enough dishes that it gets real tedious real fast. But knowing I have dishes to do, and in fact being upset that I haven't done them, is no motivation to do them. But if I can just zip over when my stupid brain decides it's Dish Time and get them done? Magical. Because the problem isn't that I can't keep sustained attention, it's that I don't get to choose what gets that attention. Between that, depression, and migraines, it's extremely difficult to function on anything resembling a schedule, which is part of why I'm a writer, and more specifically a writer of poetry.

And when you go back and look at your life after you start picking up on things like "holy shit I probably have ADHD," things make a lot more sense. Like why it took you 15 years to get through undergrad, but only the minimum to get through grad school. Why my biggest method of procrastination for years was cleaning. Why now it's just sort of doomscrolling. Why I had a major caffeine habit in 7th grade.

So anyway, the plan at this point is to get some kind of official diagnosis, maybe get some meds into me, and try to, like "grow" a "business" or something. (Mostly that just means sticking to a reading/writing schedule.)

Third, CONSUMPTION.
This isn't so much consumption as a list of received goods at the apartment from when I was in Idaho:
- Proof Something Happened, by my good friend and grad advisor Tony Trigilio, a book of documentary poetics based on the alien abduction case of Betty and Barney Hill
- We Slept the Animal, by my good friend and undergrad mentor George Kalamaras, and based on Richard Hugo's framework in his book 31 Letters and 13 Dreams, which has always fascinated me
- How Small the Sky Really Dreams, the first poetry collection by Mary Ann Cain, who I crossed paths with in my undergrad years, but didn't really get to know much about til the last few--interesting how that works out sometimes
- To Drown in Dark Water, by internet chummer Steve Toase, a collection of short stories featuring some of the best cover art I've ever seen; this book was actually outselling Stephen King in the UK at one point
- ILLVMINATE, by T3XTUR3 and Asthmatic Astronaut, the most recent full-length in Bram's dystopian Glaswegian hip-hop madness, fully produced by longtime collab Asthmatic Astronaut
- this split cassette featuring Awenden and Feminazgul, the latter of which now counts my friend and internet ne'er-do-well Meredith Yayanos as a member

Expect actual reviews of these in the future. Also, I should probably note that none of those links go to any sort of affiliate thing and especially not to Mr. Bezos' Space Fund. Do you have something you'd you've made and want to get in front of my eyeballs and the eyeballs of dozens of other people? Let me know!

Fourth, PROMOTION.
This is the part where I talk about my book, A Void and Cloudless Sky, which you can order here. I approved, with one typo fix, the second round of galleys yesterday. I have been informed by the publisher that the printers are indeed a few weeks behind, so if you preordered a copy, they won't ship until mid-August. I'm still working out dates and such for possible readings, and I really need to get the ball rolling on writing up press releases and stuff. (Yeah, here in indie-land they don't really do that for you. Nor do they line up any other major promo.) (Not this press, anyway.) 

And as usual, if you'd like to support this whole endeavor more directly, you can check out my Patreon, where I post poetry, notes to poems, the occasional essay, and whatnot. At upper tiers I even write poems FOR YOU!

Finally, THE OUTRO.
Back in the city. The first thing we did was order Mexican food. The second was walk a block to the walk-in clinic. Believe me, I love sunsets and green grass and tractors and stuff, but deep down I'll always be a city bitch, and I have been since I was tiny. I don't know how long society will hold, but I hope it's long enough that we don't have to get into water-access wars quite yet.