The Wayfaring Wordhack

 (Kifkon = Levantine Arabic for how are [plural] you doing?)

I am fine but in an odd limbo-mode with the return to Lebanon.  The mode isn't necessarily bad, just business as usual* with a helping of sliding back into a home after three months' absence.  I don't really recall this sensation upon my returns to Egypt after extended stays in France, but I think the difference boils down to the fact that in those other stays, I was not at my own home.  As much as I appreciate many things about my mother-in-law,** living with her for months at a time was seriously draining in a way that made it a relief to get back to Egypt and my own place, however hot, polluted, and noisy it was.

In addition to having my Color course at the end of this month, I have an overwhelming desire for a bit more structure and repartition of my creative forces.  Make that my "forces" tout court.

I haven't written in so long, and I want to be writing.  I find this talk pretty motivational:


I took the art courses to get better at illustration (knowing the courses are NOT geared to that, but any skills are good skills and many things translate between fine art and illustration), but I haven't worked at all on my picture books.

I was pretty single-minded with the course, and I feel like I wasn't present enough with the kids. That needs to change and I need to do better during the next module.

I want to get in better shape. There is nothing good about the shape I am in now.  I am not genetically predisposed to thinness, nor do I have what would be considered a good metabolism, suffering instead from hormonal imbalances that make attaining/maintaining a healthy weight more difficult.   Aside from being in my late forties now, I have been dealing with a two-year-long bout of tendinitis in my left shoulder (and I am a lefty), which was preceded with a knee-injury that also came and went with varying degrees of fierceness for a two year period (and I still get flare-ups when something else is out of whack).  All that to say, I've found it too painful for too long to be active.  And any claim to good muscle mass I once had disappeared in a scarily fast way as a result of my inability to function normally in my body.  I am fed up with it, though---and a bit scared that it is getting too late--and want to do something about it, even if it is just simple stretches every morning.  I may not be a waif, but I am (or was) a lot more flexible than many waifs I know, and even my flexibility is going, making me feel so old and stove up all the time.  So baby steps, but STEPS instead of just "waiting for the pain to pass."

I am at the "I have to get started making changes" stage but don't want to shoot myself in the foot or take on more than I can handle.  I am considering how all of these desires can be addressed with a "one degree of change" mentality.  I heard someone giving an analogy about how trying to affect permanent change à la New Year's Resolutions is synonymous to stretching out a rubber band. It does change, but when you release the unsustainable force of keeping it stretched, it returns to its normal shape.  I don't want to be the rubber band; there are only so many of those stretches and rebounds one can do before cracks start appearing in the rubber and the inevitable happens. By stretching the band just a bit at a time, you can more easily coax it into a new shape.  There are problems with the analogy but the point resonates with me.

We are probably going to take a short trip for my birthday, which means that any schedule I get going will temporarily be set aside again. But that is precisely the kind of thing I need to learn to deal with.  I ALWAYS get thrown off track by something not being the way it usually is, but as I have said before, we have constant disrupts to our everyday normal with J's work and our educational choices.

What works for you in trying to form new habits or keep habits going in the face of uncertainty and frequent change?  Do you track things, use daily lists, time slots, project files ...?  Ugh, my brain is still a bit jet-lagged; I can't think of proper terms.  Just tell me whatcha got, if you've got anything. :P

Enough about how I am.   How are you, and what are you up to?

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* You know, trying to judge when we actually have city water by listening for a pump to come on and praying we can get enough water into our tank not to have to pay a private company to come and fill it for us; not being able to drink from the faucets, dealing with cockroaches everywhere, neighbors afflicted with hearing loss, drivers who think everyone in the village needs to hear how loud their hotrods can be...  On the power front, things are better; e have constant electricity "switches" or micro-cuts (from generator to gov't elec) but so far only one 30 minute cut.

** An unfortunate incident happened in the extended family at the beginning of summer that doesn't involve me, husband, or kids (thankfully) that really brought home to me the depth of difference between me and my mother-in-law.  I already knew much about our differences, but oh my, her brain and analysis of situations and the way to proceed, does not AT ALL align with my own.  I like to think I am the one living in the margins of normal.

... except we don't have anywhere to go yet.

Let me back up a little:  We need to find a new flat.  This apartment has issues which are not going away and the ones that should have been settled after 7 months of living here do not seem to be within the power of the landlord to fix (ie. have hot water to do dishes without letting 20L flow down the drain first; have a shower that is not either boiling hot or freezing cold).

So the past week has been a whirlwind of apartment hunting.

Before that, I fell off the face of DW because I was so engulfed with the teaching that I was asked to do at the two different churches we attend.  I just wasn't able to keep up my art or writing at the same time.

Aside from teaching this coming Saturday night, I think I am going to have a bit more time in the next few weeks.  If the flat hunting doesn't eat it--and my energy--first.

And then it will (maybe) be time to go home to France for a couple of weeks.  I so need to be able to roll with all the different "routine busters" that come my way, but I think I just need to face the fact that whenever these things happen, I just can't do all the things, all the time. :-/

However, I can't help feeling a twinge of ARGH to note that 7 months have passed since we moved here and I had such high hopes of writing and illustrating a children's book and finish up at least 1 (but aiming for 2) middle grade books while on this contract.  And, yeah, I even thought I could finish up my trilogy.   Reassessing might be in order.  But I would rather just be able to get done what I want to get done. 

/rant

 After the post about electricity here in Lebanon, I was going to write about our water situation, but I don't have the energy (seriously, no pun intended) for that right now.  Instead, here is a peek into this week's creative endeavors.

I know I did some stuff, but I did not do all the stuff I wanted to.  Let's call it forward motion, albeit by half-steps.

I got back to my Dynamic Sketching. 

Pounce:




Gotcha:





After two more scorpion studies and one final illustration of an orb-weaver spider, I will begin the segment on"Automobiles."  As you might imagine, if you know me at all, the "Bugs" section was very interesting, and the automobiles...well, I have never really wanted to draw a car. :P However, I do see the benefit of the studies and know I will learn a lot and improve further.

I have not made much forward progress on the writing exactly where I thought I would, but I realized an earlier chapter could use some tweaking to make my protag front and center and have written a couple more pages on that.  It's writing; it will make the story stronger; I declare it a win!

This week, I let the Dynamic Sketching slide, but I was otherwise good on working on all the other types of artwork I set for myself to do, and since I am aiming for 2 out of 3, I am right on target. Hooray.

I also started typing up my picture book text. It is a story I have told many times, but I have to consider what the images will tell and what I need to portray in prose. And, "a story from my mouth" is not exactly page-worthy and must be made so.

Voilà, a smattering of the art from this week:( watercolor and sketches this way )








I really must get out and take some more photos to use for the composition project.

 ultra-short version of lost post:

Since Mar 1, I am doing my own session of novel_in_90, the old 750word/day challenge from LJ.

Go, me.

Not motivated or inspired to work on my story because I don't have the central mystery squared away.

/pout

We've been having a very wet and windy week, actually almost two weeks.  After such a dry summer, it feels both good and strange to have this weather.*  I could do without the wind, though the rain is very welcome, and we are so chufffed with our rain-catchment system.  We have been able to pump at least 18,000L (5400 gallons) into the ponds we created in our pasturs. That sounds like a lot, but like I said, it has been soooooo dry that the water doesn't last long. The ponds are not waterproofed, and the soil is just drinking it up. That is OK, the aquifers need recharging, and with the mild winter they are once again predicting, we won't have much snow this year. Snow is what really helps raise the water levels.

And the weather has made staying in and writing a reasonable-seeming thing to do.  :P

I have rewritten and edited the first thirteen chapters of the first volume of my Witherwild trilogy.  It would be great to get the whole thing revised by year's end, so I can move on with book two, which is about halfway done.  I make myself no promises, though. Life is too full of surprises, both nasty and good.

______________________

( Health stuff )

Ah, the joys of unexplained health conundrums.

Now that fall is approaching and the weather is slowing turning my thoughts and occupations away from the garden, I have started writing a bit.

The other day, while trying to find some notes on a manuscript I am trying to finish, I came across an opening to a story I had forgotten that I had started. I knew I had posted a snippet from it on my blog, so I went back through my writing tags to find it. It dated all the way back to 1 December 2014. And sadly, there were very few writing-tagged entries that I had to scroll back through to get to it. I bemoaned the fact before that my entries have little to do with writing these days/years just last year.

I have finally finished something, though: the NaNo middle-grade book I wrote back in 2016, working title The Golden Apple.  I had two friends beta read it for me, and I read it to Sprout, who loved it and insisted I write more books about these characters. Yeah, I know one's own kids are not the best judges, but it was gratifying to have her say, "I can't believe my mom wrote a book, and it was awesome." My friends liked it, too. Now I have to decide if I want to try to publish it, which was never my intention; it was supposed to be a "throw-away" story to get me back into writing.

Finally finishing that project made me itch to complete something else, so I have pulled out a MS that I vowed to put an ending on back in 2011. (To Be Undone, if you remember, asakiyume . It might come your way THIS YEAR instead of 2013 like I thought! rofl) Oh, how I make myself laugh with my vows and plans. (yeah, that is NOT laughing you hear).  Hey, it's ONLY nine years later.

Anyhow, little by little, I am trying to fit in things that I think will make it a more well-rounded story without breaking the momentum I had with it.  And the ending... still trying to figure out some of that.  I am closer than ever, though, closer than ever.

After I put a wrap on it, I will see if I have enough brain-power to get back to my Witherwilds trilogy or if I do something crazy like try to write that idea from 2014 for this year's NaNo.

I have been thinking lately of how my handle here doesn't really reflect my life at the moment. I still have stories in me, I am sure. I just don't spend a lot of time with that part of myself these days.

( herein lies some rambling rambles )

OK, completed NaNo.

I have a first draft of my MG fantasy novel now. It needs some details but is complete at 51708 words.

Yay, me.

Will be setting it aside until February, I think.

Or shall we just call it, "The State of Things." Forgive me, LJ, for it has been awhile since my last post.

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I've never tried to put a cut under a cut, so be warned that when I say something vile happened, there should be an additional cut there to keep it out of public view unless you want to read it. If there is not a cut, don't read on, there's nothing more to see. :)
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( In which you can read about the State of Things )( Vile Thing )

Anyhow. Did not mean to end on a tirade.SaveSaveSaveSave