Words are inadequate

Lo, I have returned from my longest time away from somewhere I could call home in ... possibly ever? Certainly if one doesn't count "staying with one's parents".

The Gathering was really good. Various personal stuff taking place at the same time was ... not. More later, on both counts, maybe. Today is a day for Processing, in addition to things like groceries and mail and resetting my internal clock.

Good things: I got a lift across the border to the bus station, saving me around 45 minutes' walk in the heat and humidity. And then WestJet upgraded me to first class for the flight from Toronto to Vancouver. Not just first class; the front row, with a truly ridiculous amount of leg room. First class flying is pretty awesome in comparison to normal flying but I don't think it's so awesome that one should spend more than about twenty bucks on it. Or maybe "ten bucks an hour," or some similar rate. I guess the calculus changes if you're planning on drinking on the flight, too.

It's acting like fall up here. The temp dropped to five (40F) overnight. Much more comfortable for me.

Less good things: okay, so, for about a decade any time I checked a bag on a flight home, it went through Chicago, unless I was flying through Chicago and then it went through Denver. This had died off in recent years but, alas, one of my checked bags has gone Missing this time. And it's the bag with my dopkit in it, too, so no shaving this morning. Other than that I'm lacking: my tarot deck; a number of hardcopy books, ranging from "meh" to "dang"; some random miscellaneous stuff that I don't think I care much about. I really like the bag itself, though. At least I have my CPAP.

They've cut flights from Prince George to Vancouver, so I got into Prince at about ten PM (one AM by my internal clock) and then had a two-hour drive home, on a nondivided mostly-one-lane (per side) highway with minimal streetlights. I succeeded in not driving into a logging truck but it was more stressful than I'd like.

I got home and had forgotten to take out the trash. This morning there are still a few fruit flies hanging around.

Slept for about five hours, interrupted for being too cold, and had an unpleasant dream for the second half of that. But I'm awake now so I may as well face the day etc.

Feeling distant from everything. This is a known side effect of trying to get in touch with new people, especially in this city. It's still kind of alienating. And it comes on top of some other stuff that's sloshing around in my head.

Y'all still like me, right?

On the one hand, yay for widespread recognition that the Confederate flag is a horribly racist emblem, even if it took a tragedy to get to that point.

On the other, I didn't really need confirmation that some number (greater than zero) of my relatives and in-laws are racist crackers.

Facebook: where you learn how much you can't stand your family.

The autumnal fog has descended on Vancouver. Last week was filled with one-condo mornings: I could see the condo across the street but not the one immediately beyond it, and forget about the North Shore or Stanley Park.

I love being in the middle of the fog from the tenth floor. I mean, I love fog anyway, but up here the sense of floaty detachment is magnified. I could stare out the window with a warm mug of tea all morning.

It's ... been a week. My coping mechanisms (hiding and Sheer Force Of Will, mostly) are failing in utterly predictable ways and I think I'm starting to crack. I need to *actually* shake up my routine, *actually* get on track with working during work and only during work instead of goofing around and then cramming it all in late at night. Among other things. (How's that for needlessly cryptic? Also inherently self-defeating, as I'm writing this during the workday.)

Last year I took a week off work immediately after the November DC trip, and it... did basically nothing. It maybe staved off some burnout by several months. I feel like I could do with some time off... but one week won't help as much as I want it to, and I can't reasonably afford to take more than that at once right now. Half measure versus forcing it through until I *can* take more time. Not sure what to do. Maybe with a week off and some forethought I can come back and reset my work schedule to something more effective.

This is not the scene I dreamed of. Like much else nowadays I leave it feeling stupid, like a man who lost his way long ago but presses on along a road that may need nowhere.

--J.M. Coetzee, Waiting For the Barbarians

Steph from VP (not to be confused with Steph my good ex) has arrived in Vancouver, which is an unalloyed Good Thing on both the social and local-writer-type fronts. And immigration is moving forward, and the leaves are turning, and my tea is warm, and I am home. That's worth something.

I do not need sixteen pounds of "light" wargame I will never get to play.

Heck, I already own well over sixteen pounds of OTHER "light" wargame I will never get to play.

But... I can put the box up on the top of the gameshelves where they meet at a corner and there's a dead space where things are likely to fall between them and be trapped forever, and it would block that off nicely. And it is an awfully pretty edition.

... I do not need sixteen hundred cubic inches of "light" wargame I will never get to play, not when I already have 2,150 cubic inches of "light" wargame I will never get to play.

ETA: in wholly unrelated news, sticking one's metaphorical pinkie in a metaphorical open flame still produces real burns. At least I know to pull back quickly and not put my entire hand in the fire.

Blocked:

"For a long time, I considered myself ADD and dreamed of a pill that could make it alright. But the longer I write, the more I think my problems have less to do with ADD, and more to do with my desire to avoid pain.

It's painful to write. It's painful to take a clear look at your finances, at your health, at your relationships. At least it's painful when you have no confidence that you can actually improve in those areas. I would not speak for anyone else, but most of my distractions (and I said this at SXSW) are traceable to a deep-seated fear that I may not ultimately prevail.

I was diagnosed ADD in elementary school, and put on Ritalin for a few years. At this point I'm willing to believe that it wasn't that I couldn't concentrate, it's that I didn't want to. There wasn't any point to it. The reward for doing the work was either more work, or getting to go play-- and it was easy enough to just go play without doing the work, especially once "playing" and "reading" became interchangeable.

(None of this is intended as a slight to anyone else who may have been diagnosed ADD. It's a Real Problem for a lot of people. I'm only looking at whether it was the problem in my specific case.)

These days? There's something going on there, something that makes focusing incredibly difficult without an external deadline, and trivial when the deadline's imminent.

(Self-imposed deadlines have less force. I hate that.)

And I'm tired of how much effort it takes to start writing. I'm tired of sitting down intending to get the next scene done, and having this bit in my brain that doesn't even bother talking to the rest of me about what's going on and instead just holes up with a mindless computer game for an hour or two.

I don't know myself well enough to say whether I'm afraid of writing. It's got an awful lot of baggage associated with it; maybe I'm afraid that may parents were right (and if they were right on that then what else might they have been right on? TERROR).

I don't know what to do about any of this, other than to name it.

---

No deadline this time, just a reward: when I finish the (current draft of the) space story, and ship it off to VP, I can write a (fun! or at least exciting) letter that I've been contemplating for the last couple of days.

That ought to be enough incentive. I hope.

Two weekends ago I went backpacking in Shenandoah, on the Jeremys Run / Neighbor Mountain loop. A lot of little things went not-quite-right and so I came away with a general sense of dissatisfaction with the whole thing, instead of the calm solitude I'd been hoping for. The best parts: catching a glimpse of a startled bear, watching the clouds roll quickly past the moon on Friday night, sitting on a rock in the middle of Jeremys Run and watching the moon's reflection rise in the water on Satyrday night.

I'm pretty much done with my external-frame pack, since it prevents me from craning my head back. Also, I got a pretty serious blister on my pinky toe; not sure whether that's a result of weirdness in my socks or if my Good Boots are actually too small. Also also, a 1600-foot drop over 2.5 miles is No Fun.

This past weekend I went to see Girlyman at the Birchmere. They were of course totally awesome. They played mostly stuff from the new album, but also a handful of older pieces (notably "Through to Sunrise," which is always amazing live, and "Young James Dean," which is I think the last of their songs that I'd badly wanted to hear live and never had). (No "Saint Peter's Bones," which is the song that turned me into a Girlyfan. Oh well.) They also borrowed the drummer (and her full drum kit) from the opening act, Po' Girl, so most everything got the full drum treatment. This is especially impressive on songs like "Storms Were Mine" and "Through to Sunrise." Ty and Nate both had colds; this maybe detracted a bit from their vocal range but, still. I wouldn't have missed it. I picked up the new album and wound up in the front of the line to talk to them, completely unexpectedly, so I had nothing prepared to say, not even "You non-gender-specific guys are the awesomest." Maybe next time.

Also this past weekend it occurred to me that yes, I can in fact go spend a couple hours talking with a good friend even when I'm not coming apart at the seams. I should do that sometime.

Twenty-four hours ago I was pretty well convinced that I was on my way to getting just about everything I wanted out of life.

Between personal revelations, a good hard look at my finances, and the realisation of a few things that I was just plain ignoring, I can now say that the chances of that happening are slim at best. Reply hazy, try again later.

So today I clean. Because, like a fifties housewife, I may see the world come to an end tomorrow but my house will be spotless when it does.

If my dryer were larger I could probably get laundry done in fewer than six loads. This task may spread over to tomorrow. Breakfast dishes are done (mm, pancakes). The bathroom is in the process of being swept. After that comes the task of scrubbing the tub, and the less scary tasks of scrubbing the toilet and sink. Perhaps I will finally get around to vaccuuming the other rooms as well, now that I have a vaccuum cleaner. (Which may or not work, actually.)

Once things other than laundry are done I will sit down with my tea and book. Unless I'm going to Rockville tonight after all. Quis scit.

Update: Last load of laundry in the wash, bathroom cleaned, vaccuuming delayed 'til another day, definitely going to Rockville. Need to sweep kitchen, also.