#they keep giving him these little one liners and short paragraphs in the middle of other shit as scraps every 5 chapters

[yourqueenb]

I sincerely hope they don’t think this is enough because this still barely scratches the surface

[seenashwrite]

Dearest Nash, I've touched on this before in (I believe) in a discussion re: why some mainstream fics get oodles of notes while more original ones do not, *but* I wanted to get a bit more specific here. There are certain writers here whose writing has a definite vibe to it (if you will) that separates their work from others, and your name is one of the first that comes to mind. Bear with me, because trying to detail what makes your writing stand out is difficult while trying to articulate a Q

^ this is a gif with parts 2 - 4, just FYI

Hmmm… this is a bit of a brain buster. But I can answer it, and I think succinctly, maybe with a touch of that Spidey sense you mention:

Thank you for your inquiry, hope that helps! 

I kid. But this is a brain-turner. And a characteristic which, like you say, ain’t limited to me. I’d honestly throw comedians under this umbrella, too, not because I’m necessarily gunning for a laugh every time, but because it’s pretty much their job to take a “basic” (a tenet or fact of life or present reality or whatever) and present the observation with a twist. I think of storyteller comedians specifically, your Patton Oswalt-s, Maria Bamford-s, Kathy Griffin-s, and John Mulaney-s.

So if I can sum up, assuming I’m tracking with you, what you’re more or less driving at with the “how” is this –> Is there anything beyond simply personality, or an auto-pilot thought cascade (for lack of better terminology) that contributes? Are there things someone could do/be proactive about, to perhaps cause this same sort of reaction to happen in their brain?

I think there just might be.

Folks reading this, let me ask you a question, and you cannot look it up:

What was the name of the Sherpa guide who led Sir Edmund Hillary up Mount Everest?

.

.

.

His name was Tenzing Norgay.

Nash, what in the name of the frozen corpse of George Mallory does this have to do with Lion’s question?

I shall tell you.

My father told me that fact when I was quite young, so young I legit couldn’t even ballpark my age for you. The context was that having little facts tucked away in your brain may come in handy. Not in a Jeopardy kind of way, more in a conversational way. I’ve no idea why the man thought the Sherpa guide who led Hillary up Mt. Everest would ever come up during a conversation with enough regularity to justify my knowing that fact (aside from him randomly quizzing me throughout my life) but hey, I guess it just did.

But speaking of Lil’ Nash, the situation for her was that she was the eldest of all the Nash litter by miles… like seven or eight years, I’m not bothering to check. So I had a lot of alone time, and my grandmother was my chief babysitter, so prior to kindergarten and then til I was in about second grade (so: all day long during the week, then every weekday after she picked me up from school), I was pretty much always at her house. Yeah, there were toys, but not a lot to do. And I’d read. I’d been reading on my own for a decent while, not because I was some prodigy but because my dad read to me *constantly* when Lil’ Nash was Itty-Bitty Nash, and it “took”. My mom also, every time she went to the grocery store always - and I mean always - brought back a book for me. It might’ve been an Archie comic—-

Mandatory #fuck the CW’s Riverdale tag

—-or a Babysitter’s Club, or Sweet Valley High, Judy Blume, Madeleine L’Engle, Zilpha Keatley Snyder, you get my point. Some small paperback. It would piss Dad off because he’s a cheap bastard and two buck books once or twice a month were really gonna cut into the savings [eyeroll] but also, in a way, because I’d kill it in a half day/a day. Wouldn’t put it down. After awhile, I started writing my own silly little kid stories, then - and this is where the creative writing love came about -  I started writing soap operas for my Barbies. (When I was older - like, 5th grade? 6th grade, maybe? - none of my peers were still playing with Barbies, and I got made fun of when, at a sleepover, they saw my stash. And I was like - No, no, no. Those aren’t for playing. That’s my cast.)

Time went on, and when I was bored at post-church lunch/dinners, I would also read the old encyclopedias at my grandmother’s, the ones from the late ‘60s/early ‘70s that she had for my mom and my aunt. As I got even older and became fascinated with rooting through the boxes in gran’s basement, looking at all the cool old clothes, I stumbled upon my aunt’s collection of Whoa-Hooooo Shit There’s No Way My Grandparents Knew You Read These books. Those kinda Harlequin-esque ones, except my aunt’s tastes run close to mine, none were the same shtick with different covers, shmultzy-sappy romance, there was always some sort of intrigue along with the sexy times, and she also had, like, every legit V. C. Andrews (meaning: not the ones from the ghostwriter, this was way before her death) book.

What is my point? I read a LOT. Now-a-days, other than fanfic (which… straight up: I don’t read a lot of that, either. I peace out on probs 80% of it before the third-to-fifth paragraph. It’s gotta sell me fast, yo) I haven’t read fiction in probably, oh…. 12 years? I think the last ones were the first couple Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Wait, no! I lie! I read the 50 Shades books when I was traveling 2x/wk for a job about 4 years ago, and I needed the laughs. It worked. Oh my days, that woman can’t write. The screenplay might’ve been worse, it goes her, then Buckleming, then everyone else. It’s bad. In any event, past decade or so, it’s more historical stuff and true crime and science stuff and all that old fart jazz.

Okay, so that’s #1: Read. And not just anything, be well-read, and that doesn’t mean developing some level of expertise, by “well” I’m saying to cover the spread. You’re building your tool kit, is all. You won’t use most of it, but it’s nice to have options. You also don’t always have to get this stuff from reading now-a-days, because podcasts. Cover the spread there, too. Lemme look at my bookmarks…. 

[Spongebob narrator voice: A few moments later]

I’m back. Science - Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe; General current stuff without being news - CGP Grey’s Hello Internet; current events with shittons of pop culture, past and present - Greg Proops’ Smartest Man in the World; fun history stuff - The Dollop; entertainment stuff - How Did This Get Made.

#2: Keep a notebook with you and jot down turns-of-phrase that spark something in your brain - things you read on websites, on twitter, in articles, things you hear people say (real life, TV, movies, podcasts), and write it. Don’t snap a pic with your phone or make a note in your phone. There are studies behind this, I’m not hunting them down, you’ll just have to trust me, but there are, and it goes to being reflexive, a brain “muscle memory” thing, if you will. You’re not doing it to plagiarize, you’re doing it to dissect it, kind’ve like you did with the example you gave on me —> went from punch action to punch spiked with booze to a punch with a spiked gauntlet.

Which leads to #3: Mental dictionary. I have a large vocab repository, and it stems from the tons of reading - I stop and look up stuff if I either don’t know it, or it’s used in such a way that I think they’ve got it wrong and want to double-check that maybe there’s another usage I don’t know - and also stems from a drive to combat the (still fairly thick) deep South drawl I can’t kick, and not for lack of trying. But see, I couldn’t have whipped out that progression if I weren’t aware that one definition of “spike” is “to add alcohol to”, or of the common shtick in stories of spiked punch like at high school proms typically, or knew about the existence of spiked gauntlets / old school armor. 

And I guarantee you that a good chunk of people didn’t really “get it”, and just thought “Nash Be Nashin’, that nutty gal”. So they “get it” on that level, but don’t Get. It., if you see what I’m saying. And that’s fine. Maybe it got something cranking in the back of their mind and it’ll hit ‘em in the middle of the night, or they’ll be watching Game of Thrones or something, see a gauntlet and be like “Oh goddamnit, I just got a throw-a-way one-liner from three years ago” and have a chuckle.

Related, re: looking stuff up and things that people “get”? I didn’t know fuck-all about Twilight, but it seemed of import to the folks around 5 years younger than me, the Nashlings wouldn’t shut up about it, so I got a good working knowledge of it. Same with Harry Potter, and through it I got to “know” J.K. Rowling, who I find to be an exceptional writer, so that was great, and I’ve watched the movies for the most part over the years at Christmastime, and I don’t give the first shit about what “house” I’m in, nor do I care about what Patronus I’d fart, but I have a working knowledge of what those are, and horcruxes and who Snape and Voldie are, you get my point. I can keep up. But to do it, I had to take the time to look it up. One thing I would not trade for gold is Michael Sheen chewing the goddamn scenery in that battle segment from the last Twilight movie. Have I watched the movie? No. But that scene is the shit. And that baby CGI is horrific on several subtle levels. And not-so-subtle. I’ve digressed.

Back to those notes: So if you’ve got these notes jotted, you might see something else and think “I feel like that could’ve been snappier…. why do I think that….” And you’ve got a resource at your disposal, that little notebook. Hell, jot that thing down - things you think could be done better. I have in many documents a highlight around chunks of scenes for my big dog story where it says in bold above or below “DO BETTER”. Meaning: there’s a better way to get from A to B, but I’m just not quite there yet. I’m pretty quick on the uptake and can crank out something snappy on the fly (like say, in CASPN chat or when banging out a short reply or thank you note) but there’s definitely times I gotta slap a DO BETTER on it and walk away til that snappy something-or-other light bulb goes off. 

Here’s a recent one where I backtracked, matter of fact - that noir spoof thing I wrote? Along with my co-writer, Moscato? There was a line that I couldn’t hit with a good zinger, so I just said moments were going by like a fat hamster on a wheel, which is cute, but not really grooving with the setting/the vibe. Less tipsy, when I was correcting some inelegant formatting and a misspelling [sigh], I went “Oh! Why didn’t this occur to me last night? Right. Wine.” So the line is now about moments dragging like a rolling donut with a copper on its tail. Get it? The cop’s a fat ass. The donut-cop stereotype.

…….Fine, it ain’t my best, but it fits better. Moving on.

And this leads nicely into #4, and a specific tip I can impart - assuming you’ve got a passable-to-high level of vocabulary in your tool belt, practice messing around with making nouns into verbs, and twisting random stuff into descriptors and using bizarre words/things in metaphors/analogies. Like, I say “adulting” quite a bit. Ali - @littlegreenplasticsoldier - I thiiiink was writing recently about Sam being drunk, and he’s a tall wobbly Jenga tower on his last Jenga. Going back to the noir, pulpy detective style, try messing with the whole “S/he was like a ___ that ____”. Add on to stuff that’s well known - He was like a dog with a bone, if the bone was a ____ and he was a ____ and we were in a ____. (I have *nothing* in mind to fill those blanks, by the way, feel free to twist it into sumpin’)

What else…. okay, here’s a #5: In drafts, let yourself wander, and see what kicks out. It can be fueled by silliness or anger, but I don’t reckon you’re gonna get the “snappy” you’re aiming for if you’re down in the dumps and going full-court-press angst. The best stuff, IMO, comes from the space in between goofy and pissed, and that is The Land Of Snark. You can always re-style it to bend more dry or wistful should you need to, certainly, depending on the situation.

Have a sample of a primo Nash Digression that was fueled by ire in a recap from Season 12 (episode 19). I had said - RE: the random inclusion of the character Joshua, which still pisses me off because they burned a character that held massive potential for future stuff as he’d been shown to be the only angel with direct access to Chuck, so, y’know, that could never come in handy, like ever again in the series, right? - the following.

Mandatory pre-emptive #fuck Dabb

[Spongebob narrator voice] A few moments later —> 

On god, I have no idea where that came from, and here’s where we go back to ol’ Spidey up there, because end of the day?

All that other stuff’s the foundation, sure, but there’s always gonna be the weird iggy, the thing that can’t be learned or taught, whatever the quirky synapse is that fires off in my/our brains. In my experience, it’s an ADD-ish sort of jam mixed with the Nostradamus effect. Meaning, (A) we’re at Level 10, rapid fire thought processing >50% of the time, and (B) throw out enough stuff for long enough, some of it’s going to stick. And I whiff it plenty. Multiple times in CASPN chat I’ve been like “Whoo, tough room” when something falls flat.

A specific example: @mrswhozeewhatsis - and I think you saw this, but anyone else seeing this may not have - gave probably the most fantastic analogy I’ve seen regarding the whole “getting it” thing, and while it was on the topic of meaty plots that get too far into the weeds (my specialty) and how it can lessen appeal to a broader audience, it still applies here. 

She said “Sometimes, when I’m reading something of yours, I feel like there’s a joke I’m missing. It’s like watching Spaceballs without having seen Star Wars.” I say that to say - nobody’s gonna land references that cover the spread 100% of the time. And, y’know, fine. I figure maybe it’ll prompt someone to do a quick google for - well, let’s use Spaceballs. Most folks will no doubt get the Star Wars part, but maybe not Spaceballs. Maybe they’ll check it out, find something they enjoy. Or learn a new word. Or get a brainstorm for a story. Who knows?

Last tip: Don’t actively mimic anyone’s style. Much fail. And I don’t only mean because if they’re on a social Venn diagram with you, would likely recognize themselves in your stuff——

Takes a moment to wave to the peeps still trying with me! #bless your hearts

—–but because it’s fucking hard. I did it broadly on the noir thing, that’s not a hard thing, to homage generalities, but the way I’m messing with doing this on that silly Princess Bride series? Purposefully styling it like Goldman? It’s good  challenging and all, and it is making it feel more in the groove with the book/movie, but I have to be in the right frame of mind or it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard, and when I have pushed it, then gone back, it’s sloggy, soggy garbage.

I say all that to say: it’s an amalgam of brain-wiring/personality, and world/life perspective(s), and knowledge acquired over time. The first just is; the second will evolve in myriad ways, maybe for the better, maybe for the worse; the last is the one where you/we have control, we can fill bucket after bucket of information, and the well won’t ever run dry.

Sorry this took so long. I kept adding and subtracting. This is the edited version, if you can believe it. Welcome to Nash Brain. 😉

[kendrixtermina]

5w4 Gothic

- You drop a 3 word latin sentence in causual conversation. At the prompt of your mildly confused co-worker, you try and translate it to english, and it becomes seven words, except, you realize, those couldn’t possibly suffice to precisely encapsulate what the sentence means in its original contexts, how exactly it fits into your conversation and how much thought you put into picking out the most fitting description for the subject matter. They ask you to explain in your own words; You paraphrase, and suddenly, the sentence becomes an entire paragraph. You try to say “hammer”, but out comes “manual, multidirectional short-term pressure device”. Your co-worker gives you a long, silent look whose meaning you can’t discern. You wish faces were as easy to read as latin.

- You’re never sure if you’re hungry, having a sad, or dying of cancer. You assign each possibility percentages and keep them updated through your day. 

- Over time, you have found that you absorb information best when it’s presented to you as a logical, self-contained explanation. Some things are often explained that way; Other topics, not so much. For example, how to talk to people without somehow pissing them off. You’re getting a little frustrated - Why don’t people just explain these things to you? More importantly: Where is everyone else getting this information from, since they don’t seem to have that problem? This might merit further investigation. 

- “We only remember 30% of a given text” . You remember your teacher saying it, and you’ve read articles than confirm it; At the time, you speculated that your rate must be subtly higher, and that it may have been a ploy to get you to put up with all the boring repetition. Only during your last introspection session did the true horror dawn on you; You thought that the more you read, the more you absorbed, the more you would know, but that is not so. Time eats on your precious reserves, every night, bits and pieces are sorted out by some arcane algorithm; Even without counting the horrors of sleep and the odd drunken blackout, you probably do not recall most of your life. Yet, your neurotic habit of feeding yourself with random trivia does not cease, but you are now aware of the futile, consumerist nature of your endeavors. You take a scientific magazine, shove it in one ear, and wait to it to come out the other. You are torn between chiding yourself for that gross violation of anatomy and admiring the beauty of that metaphor. 

- You heard your boyfriend making noise in the living room, walking back and forth, grabbing what sounds like china and also the door hinge. Is he grabbing the leftovers, or making something for himself? Is he not satisfied with the quality of your cooking? Does he wish that it be served at more regular frequencies? You want to leave him his freedom because you believe in retaining yours, but you’re forced to stifle the stupid irrational displeasure over the sense that one of your skills is being questioned. You want to offer to cook, to prove that you can do it right, but you also really don’t feel like cleaning up the kitchen first; But giving up a duty that you took upon yourself seems like admitting incompetence. He suggests getting a dishwasher; You say that it seems to be overkill for two people, but as you have no rational reason to protest, you end it with, “Well, it’s your money.” You hope he will not demand that you talk to you again today

- You live in a hamster cage. You think it is elegant and functional and like how the water tube looks sciencey. The first time someone said it, it could be dismissed as a fluke, but by now, you’re forced to conclude that your appartment is considered “small”. You do not think it is small. You think it’s just large enough. Why do they think you would want a larger one? You never nagged them with such a demand and in fact made sure to assure them that you are perfectly satisfied, though perhaps not enthusiastically; Then again, it’s not like such enthusiasm would have been warranted over a simple room.

- One day, you realize that you have never cried at a movie. That schocks you, albeit mildly and vaguely. You fear for your Angsty Deep Person credentials. You do not understand. After all, you care a lot about fictional universes. You spend all day analyzing their brilliance and playing out fanfic scenarion in your head.  Eventually, you slightly tear up as you rewatching an episode of your favorite Sci Fi schow in the middle of the night, in your room, by yourself.  You consider that a sucess. 

- As a child, you were nicknamed as the “walking Dictionary” on at least three separate occasions. What they do not realize is that every time they said that, it drove a sharp icicle into your fragile little heart. Yet, some warped sort of pride keeps you bringing up this incident. Perhaps it might be relevant or useful to someone? Or so you delude yourself. 

- You change your current obsession to “enneagram”. It’s almost like one of these edutainment games that combines something hard(peopling) with something fun (theoriring.) You furrow your brow as you read the description.  do not think you’re a minimalist; There is, after all, a poster of the periodic system on your wall and an anime figurine next to your laptop. 

- You once spent sixty full minutes rambling to your classmates about some awesome thing related to your curent obsession. There are stars in your eyes, and there is life in your animated gestures. You move with confidence because you know exactly what to do. You feel as if that is one of those moments where you are most yourself.   Later, your teacher informs you that no one was listening or caring,  and that you are selfish for speaking about rambling on about that no one else is interested in. You do not talk to your classmates again. 

- You don’t know why that is, but people just don’t like you. Wherever you go, you stand out. You don’t now what causes it or how to prevent it. “Oh, do you suddenly have feelings too?” says one person. “Yeah you have a lot up here, but nothing here *points at chest*” says another.  You’re confused and uncertain. You only wanted to share something that you loved. You only wanted to inform others of something you would want to know. You’re supposed to treat others as you want to be treated, right? Besides, to have a place in this world, you must be useful somehow, right? You want very bad to be useful. You are bad at many things, and doing the one thing you can do apparently makes you arrogant. You wonder what else you are supposed to do. You are good for nothing else. 

- You join the local theatre group and attach yourself to the subset of it that is planning to do a satre play. You always wanted to do Satre, the philosophy and concepts interest you, and it has a nice, deep intellectual touch to it, basically your jam. You don’t look into any of the other groups as you don’t feel that interested in a romcom and are very certain that you want to be in this one.  A few weeks in, the group leader pulls you aside-  “Your style of acting does not match my vision”, he says. “Besides, I don’t think you really felt at home in our group, I’ve noticed that you always sit a little apart. Perhaps, maybe you’ll feel better in a different group?” You did not feel unwelcome.  You really liked the group. Your opinion of everyone in it is vaguely positive. You had no opinion on “group dynamics” at all because you were focussed on theater.   You respect his decision as it is based on objective fact and loyalty to his artistic vision. You just wish he had just told you that you suck without making it sound like he was doing you a favor. You want to tell him that you enjoyed your time with the group, but the words won’t come out in your mouth and you are frozen solid in the doorway.

- But hell is others

- You don’t want to be one of these clingy girlfriends everyone complains of, but unfortunately, he’s a social-first ESFJ and this is before you knew typology.  You’ve read that men have to have enough free space. He asks you to write and talk more, and you try, but you don’t know what about. You attempted long, deep-onversation letters earlier, but he responded with vague one-liners, even when you tried to referrence the topics you saw him discussing on his facebooks and the radio shows he listens to. You wonder if you are annoying him. Your feeble efforts matter little as he accuses you of not caring about him and tells you that he never had such problems with a girl before. He doesn’t say “freak” but the world is there. You conclude that the golden rule is bullshit.

- You don’t understands why he keeps e-mailing you after the breakup. It makes no logical sense. You broke up for good reasons, and its not like those will magically dissapear because you take him beck. You are puzzled. What could his objective be? You delete all the emails. He probably tells all his friends. 

- Even your best relationship involved you once being compared to a robot at least once. Illuminated by the eerie light of your computer screen in the darkened, you turn back to look at him from under the tangle of cables and wires poking out of your skin and reply “Does not compute.” He’s not sure if you replied to him, or to whoever you were currently talking with in cyberspace.

- You would argue that you have a lot of feelings, but then, there come those rare occasions when you actualy talk to people. The documentary you’re watching includes a shot of a decapitated corpse, mudered by her jealous ex-husband amid a mix of very interesting socipolitical factors. “Fascinating.” you mumble. The 1w9 beside you is audibly gagging. 

- You mostly eat or sleep when your hunger or tiredness reach a level that impacts your concentration. You have not seen the sun in days. You begin to wonder if it even still exists and concoct an elaborate esoteric theory to explain its dissapearance.

- You are lowkey jealous of people who have calloused hands from their work or specific patterns of muscles from their favorite sport. Not because you remotely like sport, but because it’s evidence of their dedication and devotion. to their passion.  The evidence of your dedication is all in your head, and you wonder if that is also true in the figuratice sense. You phantasize at lenght about being an outwardly human-looking cyborg.

- On TV, everyone who talks like you turns out to be an alien or an android. You read through forum discussions where everyone calls them “plot devices” with “no personality”. You would apparently do better to like a “real girl”, like that super-atractive popular 3w4 teen prodigy for example. You delight in the knowledge that you are apparently imaginary, and ponder the philosophical implications of that. 

- Your mind is like a sieve - not a regular sieve, but a molecular one, the kind that only allows passage to certain substances and selectively retains others. When you can’t remember your appointments or the names of your classmates, you tell them you have a bad memory, but how are you going to explain how you manage to remember all that random trivia? Far too late, it dawns on you that people think you do not care. You do not precisely grasp what you ability to remember a few words or numbers has to do with caring. You

- At least your cacti understand you. 

- You think, therefore you are. You try to explain to people that if you did sports, or small talk, or watch a romcom, or do everything else they keep nagging you to do, you would dissapear. Despite your flawless logical reasoning, people do not seem to believe you. Then, someone disrupts your cncentration, and you scatter into a cloud of Sea Foam, little mermaid style

- You seem to have misplaced your body. You’re not sure where it was when it happened, but you’re certain that your mind was drifting about the edge of the galaxy at the time, or perhaps in that book about ancient athens. If only you could make it back to a time and place where your friends existed, you might possess one of them and write them a note, but they’d only think that you’re an useless child who can’t handle their shit, so it’s probably good that you don’t have any friends. 

- You cannot make a sound, and you must scream. Your mouth works perfectly fine, but the are now as distant to you as the stars, and your memory of when this wasn’t so is just as far back as their time-shifted illusions that you once saw in the sky. But since you can think the sound, actually making it is clearly optional

- Clearly, you see only two logical possibilities here: Either Cthulhu is real and you have just fulfilled your life-long dream of meeting him, or you have gone fully and completely bonkers for perfectly ordinary reasons like severe trauma or an oopsie-daisy in your brain chemistry. You hope it was Cthulhu.  Your only regret is that you will never find out the truth.

- Where did you come from, and where are you going? You do not know, and because you don’t know, you cannot understand. You have no framework with which to decide where you are now - You might as well be curled up in an old abandoned fallout shelter, drifting at sea in an abadoned ship, or deep undergound in a glacial ravine, with nothing but ice and rock in every direction. You cower all alone, in the endless vastness of time and space, and the flimsy, ephemeral chunk of soul canned in your stinky, decaying flesh is awash with awe of the merciless void, so filled with the magnitude of your own insignifance that you cannot think or feel anything else; There’s not even enough room for that little, distant voice that usually watches and comments on your misadventures with surprising rationality. Whatever lies outside your frail, enclosed chysalis, you finally realize in full just how badly you are terrified of it. Your entire soul consists of nothing else. What were you, originally, before you tried to contain the horrors of the universe in your tiny little head? What are you now, that it refused to fit inside, what are you but this single, naked consciousness?

[conservative-eclectic]

RESOLVE



I’m not going to look it up but I assume the root is the same, resolve, resolution etc. Today is the real start of the accident-of-the-(Roman)-calendar New Year. (Rosh Hashanah, feels more like a new year, but it’s nice having two re-starts). I was asked only a few days ago what my goals are, and like my resolve, goals made me nostalgic. For I remember when I had the resolve to accomplish my goals. I remember that I was a good teacher, and I just get better and better in my memory as  time goes on. I remember that i was good at making ideas happen. I remember my resolve. Like Niles and Fraiser taking a consumer auto-repair class, I realize people can’t be motivated toward everything. But what choice do I have? I must love, joyously, the work of home-maker, and get faster at it, and better at it, and become a productive member of this mini-society. My time playing the social game was short, but it’s over. I’m now a mauna, whether any of us likes it or not. And, the word sacrifice comes to mind, something I also used to be good at. I know, for all intents and purposes, that if I joyously make a home, then my life in that home can return me to the old resolve ⎻ one way or another. I have no more institution, people, or money. But what I can get back ⎻ I think ⎻ is my resolve, and there are many projects to take on. There will never be a shortage of those.

 But, as the old story goes, we resolve and we lose heart. I am in that category ⎻ big time.  Once I get organized, once I finish the house, etc. Year after year. But now, it might sound familiar, I find myself more motivated. But now, and this is truly new, there is a camera that can keep me accountable ⎻ at least a little. At this ripe middle-age, and nadir of the old resolve I am resigned this year, just enough to help my psychology focus on the present. And this year I’m writing ⎻ so far ⎻ and that should do wonders for my psychology. 



Before I was resigned and I was clinging to my past, I resolved to get a certain job, when that failed I kept resolving, to at least apply for jobs. It was nice when M.K used to text me, but enough is enough of these job leads now. He must know that now, maybe figured it out only a little later than I did. I almost resolved to get one of these, but I learned to resolve only for the application. My little brother thought I was knee deep in this job somehow. That was an interesting story to relive ⎻ with his four kids ⎻ full of life ⎻ screaming and laughing and living life in the background. Then I came up with other resolves for my fake job offers, my imaginary interviews: $18.81 an hour was one, give me $66,666 a year, or nothing was the other main one. And of course there was my creating whole new departments at Navient for myself to run (really just a variation on the $66k thing). All the while I tried to resolve toward being a good home-maker. I think part of the reason, at least part of the reason, if not the full reason, behind my failure at this was that I thought there should be something else. That’s the beauty of resignation. Why should there be something else? The old saw is “what is there to live for?,” but how about “what is there to participate for?”

If you were to tell me about the time my professional life fell apart in 2014 that Donald Trump would be president in 2017, what 2016 would cause, or what these past 2 or more years would be in public life, I would have chosen exactly the life I have now. I’m lost to a world that would do this, and no wonder I have been all along. The run-up has been disgusting, despite our couple of public actions despite ourselves. I guess the Kardashian-culture should have warned me/us. But it was easy enough to ignore it. I guess the apprentice warned us. Maybe twitter was a warning, but again, all so easy to ignore. There were bigger warnings, of course. But the point is, if given the choice (and in one way I was and I did) I would sit out those years ⎻ these years. Why contribute to the larger society when it behaves this way. And whose to say I didn’t subconsciously/unconsciously see it coming?  If in 2014 anybody was told, well, anyone in the mainstream was told, that latent white supremacists would resent a black president so much that they would elect anyone that promised to undo everything Obama had done, to erase him, to turn him into a token, then I think it might have made more sense. Maybe we would have had taken it more seriously. It was hard to imagine these foreign mindsets until now. Well, maybe for white people it was. But then, why was the black turnout so bad? Why when canvassing did I run into so many black people that said they wouldn’t even vote? If in 2014 you told any of us that the hate machine would be cranked so hard on Hillary that despite her most-qualified-person-in-the-history-of the-United-States bonafides that anyone could be elected opposed to her, would we have believed that too? That one we would hear many times during the election. I didn’t believe it. Again, when there’s no basis in fact for the hate, it’s hard to believe it exists.

Of course the easiest of these is for us to go back and nominate Bernie I guess. As much as I wanted to see Hillary do what she always does in office, the alternative is what we have now. What if we went back farther and in 2008 said, look, in 2016 we’re gonna need Barack much more than 2008, and Hillary can set the table, and this will save us from something as unthinkable as a Donald Trump presidency? What would Bernie v. Obama looked like? I’m certain of very little, but what I’ve observed in our unthinkable present/future I would be certain that new candidate Obama would have trounced Trump in 2016. And to think there are people with the title of “political strategist.” How can that be a job without time travel? Give me $66,666 and I’m on it!



I wrote for this tumblr back in 2015 or 16, or 14. A few postings, maybe two? A bunch of other titles and germs and one-liners and beginnings of paragraphs to continue till the 2016 election. I was going to do it weekly. I didn’t post at all - never finished the multitude started, the rest never revised at least. I’m going to use them as filler (well, that’s not being fair to myself I think, it connects to this last paragraph here first of all, and maybe it will give me the courage to write further on the subject…) next here ⎻ to see what I said ⎻ to check in on my past self ⎻ that lacked whatever resolve I have now for posting on my ghost-town tumblr.