Travel hopefully in life.

I traveled up to my sister's for the Thanksgiving holiday and got back the night before last. It was very nice to see my 7-year-old nephew, who's a little ray of sunshine and bonded with my old, crabby, attention-seeking dog because he was happy to let her lick his face as much as she wanted. Hanging out with my sister's in-laws was a little weird, as I don't know them very well and am very much the "artsy, eccentric, liberal sister" in their eyes. (It's true, but I hate feeling like it's something I have to defend instead of being able to just be.) I only had to endure two thoughtless racist comments, though, so it wasn't all bad. (Though, admittedly, that could be because I spent most of my time out in the yard playing with my nephew.) I didn't bother engaging with the racist commenters, because nobody in that room was going to have a legitimate discussion about their bigotry, which always makes me feel like a shit person, but I'd rather save my energy for things I think might actually effect some sort of change. At one point, my brother-in-law set up a small caliber target shooting rifle, which I got to try out. I'm surprisingly not terrible, as long as I have the time to get myself really set up. Still not the type to ever own a gun and probably won't go out skeet shooting anytime soon, but it was fun and interesting.

I didn't go to church this weekend, as I was a) peopled out from spending three-ish days at my sister's and b) am not feeling great. I've got a little bit of a sinus thing going on, though I'm hoping it's just allergies and not anything more serious. Fingers crossed that an early night tonight will help assuage it.

I got a decent amount of research and writing done for this upcoming week's bee post. It's not finished yet, but it's heading in a direction I'm very happy with, which is nice. And I'm learning a bunch about a bee I was super unfamiliar with, which I always enjoy.

Haven't started on my Yuletide properly yet but have an outline for a more manageable story I should be able to finish to a very satisfactory point by the due date. It's a plot on a smaller scale than I was originally planning, but there's challenging yourself and then there's taking on a fool's errand, and I think this sits comfortably in "challenge" without edging into foolishness, like the previous iteration was probably doing.

I watched Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls tonight. It was really fun, with surprisingly solid emotional beats, a stellar cast (including Jeffrey Combs of Re-Animator fame), and fantastic practical effects. It also included a dream sequence that made me shriek with laughter. It's definitely a particular flavor of campy comedy horror that may not be to everyone's taste, but it's more about the camp than the horror. If you're at all interested in classic style practical effects and like a really silly premise approached from a place of sincerity, it's worth a watch. It really spoke to the high school kid in me who wanted to be a cool, mean goth but wasn't cool, mean, or goth enough to pull it off. It also features a badass nonbinary character in a prominent role which is super fun to see. Their style game is on point and I want to steal their whole wardrobe.

I haven't done any fiction writing in the last week or so, largely due to catching up on day job deadlines and holiday travel shenanigans, but I hope to get back into it this week, starting with my Yuletide and picking at the Kidnapped Lost Boys!AU in between, for flavor. I'll be hosting a writing weekend on my HBO war Discord server, Heavy Artillery, this weekend (December 1-3), if anyone is interested in joining regular, hour long sprints. (You don't have to be writing HBO war fic, it's just planned to help out those folks participating in the Holiday Exchange currently running on the server.) I ran sign-ups through AO3 this year, and it went better than last time I tried but I definitely have some notes for myself for next time vis-à-vis tag sets and building the actual form.

I went mattress shopping today and am planning to go back tomorrow to purchase and set up delivery for a new mattress and box spring. It'll be so wonderful to not be sleeping on an air mattress anymore, I can't even tell you. My air mattress is very nice and I really enjoy it, generally speaking, but my mid-thirties bones are not designed to spend several consecutive months sleeping on an air mattress and I don't mind saying so.

I bought a handful of new plants this weekend, because I've finally gotten my furniture set up so I have a place that gets decent sunlight for them indoors. It's not like I really needed anymore, but I'm happy to have them. Will share pics sometime this week, after my little plant shelf arrives and I can get it properly set up.

I hope everyone else has been well!

So, I turned in my first "essay" to my spiritual nonfiction class this past weekend. It's not really an essay, inasmuch as a series of vaguely connected scenes, though I plan to revise and expand it going forward. I haven't decided if I want to take the true essay route or if I want to go in a more memoir direction, but I thought I might share it here in case anyone cares to read/offer feedback. (No obligation, or anything, but what use is a journal if you don't throw your own weird personal shit out there every once in awhile, y'dig?)

As it's spiritual nonfiction, you can probably guess that it mostly deals with God stuff. Largely with the slow departure of my faith and my background growing up as a member of a Pentecostal Charismatic congregation.

( Behind a cut for space reasons. )

This is going to get a little faith-y at points, so scroll on if that's not your thing.

The Intermediate Fiction class I signed up for that was supposed to kick off June 1st didn't have enough participants enrolled and got moved to an August start date. The guy who runs the workshops offered to let me swap to a class with a sooner start date or take a refund if I didn't want to wait that long and after a great deal of consideration I took him up on a swap. I had waffled between Intermediate Fiction and a workshop on Spiritual Nonfiction, so I jumped into that one instead and will start it on June 22nd.

I'm very excited about it. Faith and that sort of whole greater spiritual meaning existentialism thing are two topics which occupy my mind pretty steadily, and I think it'll be great not only to read a selection of essays on the topic of spirituality from a variety of authors with different faith backgrounds, but it will be cool to figure out how to write about that stuff since it does take up so much of my brainspace at any given time.

I'm doing a little preparatory reading, through some of the spiritual nonfiction I own that I either haven't read in a while or meant to pick up but never did and through some of the works by Johnathon Malesic, the guy who'll be teaching the class. This article about the nature of work-based culture in America ("When Work and Meaning Part Ways") is very good, if anyone is interested.

Likewise I'm revisiting some of the Thomas Merton books I purchased a couple of years back and have flipped through but not sat down to really engage with. This passage in particular really spoke to me when I came across it this morning, and I figure there are some of you out there who might enjoy it:

"We have to remember the principle that certain desires and certain pleasures are willed for us by God. We cannot live in the truth if we automatically suspect all desires and all pleasures. It is humility to accept our humanity, pride to reject it.

Von Hügel, in one of his letters, writes of W.G. Ward ("Ideal Ward") as an "eager, one-sided, great, unintentionally unjust soul" who on his deathbed saw the mischief of his life—he had consistently demanded that all others be like himself!

This is the root of inhumanity!

It is often more perfect to do what is simply normal and human than to try to act like an angel when God does not will it. That is, when there is no need for it, except in the stubborn passion of our own impatience within ourselves.

It is not practical, it is not honest, it is not Christian to fly from "every desire" and "every pleasure" that is not explicitly pious.

For others who are human enough to be ascetics without losing any of their humanity, it is all right to risk things that seem inhuman. For one as deficient and self-conscious as I am, the ordinary ways are safer. Thay are not just an evasion to be tolerated; they are a more perfect way."

- Thomas Merton, from 'Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander'