031: Only Happy When It Rains

AN EMAIL IN SEVERAL PARTS RESEMBLING THE LAYERS THAT BOTH ONIONS AND OGRES HAVE

First, THA NEWS.
Okay, okay. It's barely news. I was gifted a massage this past Monday and dear lord I almost cried when she worked on my clavicles. I often joke about my posture, but it is genuinely pretty bad, even though I usually make a conscious effort to sit straighter, stand straighter, etc. The problem is that I unconsciously tend to hunch and collapse my shoulders approximately 98% of the time in an effort to a) not be noticed by randos, and b) take up less space as a person presenting vaguely femme (but not built that way) most of the time. The fact that I work on a computer when I'm not doing physical labor means that I end up resmebling a king prawn more than a person. When I was getting dressed again, my left shoulder made a really sickening crack. That wasn't even the one that was hurting when I went in, but boy was it tight. So. Yeah. Two years since the last one. I don't think I'm gonna go quite that long on the next one.

Overall, though, not much has happened over the past week or so. I went to a Magic tournament up in Fargo, I guess, and did fantastically poorly. Yesterday I did a fairly intensive weeding of the garden. (It wasn't actually that intense. I was just very strategic about what hacked out.) Today I was going to mow the yard, but the air is basically soup broth outside and the grass will probably be damp all day, so that's out.

Honestly, when I sit down to write these, I don't usually have that much of an idea what I'm going to write and where I'm going with them. It's very much like my therapy sessions in that way. And, I guess, my life. But really what I'm setting up to say here is that remarkably little "writing" work has happened this week. I sent out CONFESSIONS FROM A DRAINAGE DITCH to a few readers for waters-testing, and I did do some podcast stuff, and I'll get to that below, but overall... it's been a very fatigued period of time.

Second, INTERLUDE.

Third, CONSUMPTION.
- Finished up GBBO, which was... I dunno. This was, as I said last time, this was the first season where every contestant seemed likeable and I was sad when they left. But on the other hand, there was very little that seemed to be absolute home runs when it came to individual bakes. There were a couple that seemed like good candidates for things to make here at home in the later few episodes, but overall I just... wasn't terribly interested in the food. Still entertaining, but less mouth-watering than previous seasons.
- I am up to the first proper chapter in Jerusalem. It's actually a much quicker read than I thought it would be, and went from 0 to 3 percent read in effectively a single sitting. Though considering it looks like this next chapter jumps back in time 150 years, I'll have to relearn a whole bunch of characters and their relationships. I am, however, happy to say that I might better learn the street names and geography. Because, of course, that's what the book is about: the city of Northampton.
- Just this morning, p*rn star (and author, and dancer, and gymnast, et al.) Stoya posted a very interesting essay on performance, and archetypes, and the interconnected process of creating a persona and photoshoot. It's a fantastic read, and the accompanying photography itself is wonderfully shot (albeit mildly--but not overly--not work safe.)
- Speaking of This Just in: Kate Leth literally just posted this great post inre - living life as a trans person through the past year.

Fourth, HUSTLE.
The podcast (that I'm now co-producer of!) is now up on Youtube. We're between seasons right now, working on preproduction of season two, and so we decided to whack the whole shebang as it is now onto the 'tube. (Also, this is a bit of hustling for the partner/co-producer, Elle Billing was on Andrew Gurza's Disability After Dark podcast as a guest, and that episode went live this week. You can grab that at all the podcast places)

Normally, I'd also be trying to tell you to get my book here, but I have some plans happening there, and can't in good conscience suggest that.

If you're liking this whole project and want to support directly, here is my Patreon. There are lots of little benefits you can get there, from access to a subscriber-only Discord to poems written to your specifications to subcriber-only limited-edition chapbooks.

Finally, THE OUTRO.
I mentioned my therapy sessions above, and how I often don't know how to start them. Part of that is due to one of the biggest issues I struggle with. It's indeed part of what THE FAILURE EXPERIMENT is about. It's part of what I find so fascinating about the Stoya piece I mentioned earlier. The fact is that I have no idea what actually constitutes the Self. I don't know who I am. I don't know what I'm for. I told my therapist last week that I often feel like who I am, who I try to be, who other people see me as, and who other people try to make me be are largely, and wildly, different people. And, like, obviously some people have that struggle, too. But I feel like so many other people are either so well thought-out or so impassive that they simply are who they are. Like everything is obvious for them. And lil ol me is trying to be and do everything. I think it's why I'm so turned off or saddened by songs that seem genuinely happy, like today's INTERLUDE, or happy in sad songs, like U2's "One". I can't remember if I've mentioned this before. In any case, I'm just so confused by people that demonstrably have their shit together. I don't know how we aren't all falling apart all the time.

I know I feel like it an awful lot. And honestly, that's why I do what I do. I think a lot of writers probably do. We're just trying to figure out why we're the weirdos and why everyone else seems to just get a normal-ass job and be content with the real world real-world-ing. As much as I don't think there's anything more than this, sometimes I wonder. Maybe that's what makes the Tommy Westphall theory so interesting to me. Maybe I don't actually believe in the cosmology of gnosticism, but maybe there is a demiurge that is the great middleman between divinity and ourselves, and that demiurge is just another version of us.

I dunno. I think I'm gonna go steal a Reese's mini cup and try to sort out the rest of the day.