wyste

wyste @ 2021-06-15T15:14:00

2021-06-15T19:15:02Z

Two weeks into my summer internship. Going well so far, anxiety aside.

Feeling lucky and tired.

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wyste @ 2020-11-08T09:56:00

2020-11-08T14:57:02Z

I am feeling deeply excellent this morning. The US election was Tuesday, with results called yesterday. I've been walking on air since then, dancing in the hallway and singing to myself. The cats are confused. School is a giant wave of finals that is going to start crashing down on me, but I have energy and good cheer.

I think I should buy myself something nice. Maybe socks, which are nice but not extravagant. I've only been buying takeout so far. I've been playing Stardew Valley, which is a fun little farming game, and reading silly books on Kindle Unlimited.

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Space Royalty 5

2020-06-06T10:49:58Z

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Space Royalty 4

2020-06-03T11:36:34Z

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Space Royalty 3

2020-05-31T11:17:03Z

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Space Royalty 2

2020-05-27T22:31:25Z

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Space Royalty 1

2020-05-27T11:26:55Z

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President's Day

2020-02-17T11:31:29Z

Life keeps speeding up. Got an online dating profile set up, having coffee with friends, doing mock trial. Putting in the time at school. My brother got another dog.

Various stresses, of course. Counseling meeting Friday. Accidentally went to a job fair I was nooot the target market of, Saturday. But life keeps going. I didn't realize how much my habit of turning social interactions over in my head was because I had time to do that. If they just keep coming, you don't have time to obsess over each one before you have to catch the next wave.

It's nice. It's tiring. It's not boring.

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Monday Monday

2020-02-10T21:26:05Z

Finished the paper. Not super happy with how it turned out, but onwards and upwards, I guess.

Working on my mock trial stuff now. Keeping busy. Tired.

Pretty good times on social interaction with my classmates. Casual friendship is go.

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Indulgence

2019-05-13T00:57:54Z

( Fun kinky prompts )

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Hey, May

2019-05-02T10:57:25Z

Lots of stuff rolling around in my brain this morning. First, aikido notes. My swordwork is improving, but I need to work on hand and shoulder flexibility and strength in order to level it up and not collapse mid-class with a shoulder sprain. I need to make sure not to get too tense and to stretch during work, too. I took lots of good dojo pictures and I am going to put them on Yelp and Facebook.

I've been poking gently at my social media presence, mostly by pre-scheduling things. Grad school is going to eat all my time, and I want to keep up with the things I want to do for fun/writing, not just disappear for a few years. So far I have 6 months of content scheduled in my Patreon. I want at least a year and preferably three years, because I am really serious about not enjoying inflicting my creative cycles on innocent bystanders. It's fine to focus on different things or have writer's block occasionally, but that just means one needs to set things aside to fill the gaps.

I can't really reschedule something interactive like Vampire Quest, but it's forgiving. I just have to remember it's the most optional thing in my schedule. Other stuff has to come first.

On gardening, I found out that mulching in bulk is not something to do in this area in May. Better to do other garden tasks, and mulch once the ground finishes warming up. So I'll just be weeding, I guess. Forever. I might need to dig out my ipod and audiobooks, weeding doesn't turn off my brain the way shoveling things does.

I'm halfway through a lot of books and need to make a concerted effort to finish them. Read books, book lady.

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Truly terrible poetry, I Want song style

2018-11-17T21:13:01Z

But I did defeat a tiny slime in Cal's writing game, so there's that.
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Being female

2018-10-13T20:24:35Z

What does femininity mean to me? It means tribeswomen who gather nuts while their men are out hunting charismatic fauna, so that whether or not the men succeed, the tribe will have food. It means women telling girls not to be scared of menstruation and childbirth. It's putting in the boring, repetitive, thankless work of building a home for your people. And, sure, making it look beautiful and effortless is a plus, any art or craft can be made to look beautiful and effortless, but what matters to me is people putting the work in. That's the tradition I want to be a part of. Care, empathy, emotional labor, hospitality.

Masculinity is far less relevant to my life.

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Writing about writing

2018-10-05T22:20:58Z

Things I want my fiction to include, in no particular order:

Introspection about morality
Characters that are good, honorable, and ethical
Humor
Wit
Action
Love
Friendship
Power
Bitterness
Evil
Greed
Selfishness and selflessness
Optimism beating pessimism
Happy endings
Sweeping descriptions - sights, sounds, smells, touches; settings you can fall in love with
Swords
Mysteries
Plants and animals
Cooking and spices
Science fiction: ecology, terraforming, cool tech solutions, galactic politics
Fantasy: neat magic systems, dragons and magical ecology
Xanatos gambits
Good characters being as badass and sneaky as evil characters
Politics
Characters with families, not orphans: parents, children; families of choice, like good teachers/mentors

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Meditation: Zita and swords

2018-10-04T02:20:15Z

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Dungeon mechanics

2018-09-20T00:12:06Z

Level 1:
Mana crystal, color dependent on alignment. Alignment dependent on setting.
Probable alignments: earth, nature/life. Rarer alignments: death, fire, water, air. Combo alignments like lightning, ice, holy, demonic. It's possible to learn them all or focus on unattuned mana, but rarer. Dungeons can either Resurrect or Raise the Dead.
Combat mechanics: the system streamlines learning, but it's still more like a real fight than a dice roll.
Human/dungeon combos: the interest thing about this dual-classing is that they can learn human skills (crafting, magic skill trees) as well as dungeon skill trees (creature evolutions, room/trap templates).

If I ever finish the litrpg system for this world, I'll actually write some stuff set in it.

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Freewriting: Dungeon

2018-09-16T10:55:36Z

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An outline of a dream

2018-07-30T11:07:22Z

During a revolt in a city, a bonded omega/slave is separated from his owner/alpha and runs away. Time passes, his alpha becomes the confidant of the king-in-waiting and they nearly enter a romantic relationship, and then his alpha is exiled from court by regent (chief council member, prime minister?) who wants the prince to marry his daughter. Alpha is exiled to (former) border city X, where omega tentatively inserts himself into their circle of friends under cover of pretending to be a free man, not someone magically enslaved during the conquest. Alpha and omega grow close with no hint of omega's role, until omega grows to trust him enough to ask a leading question at a dinner party with their mutual friends. Cue leaving the conversation in a panic, but not realizing how thoroughly his cover is blown. He continues with life as he knows it, but alpha is now aware and trying subtly to lure him back. A mutual friend, meanwhile, tells omega that his parent's financial situation has stabilized, and that duke N. could now buy the (magical slave contract?) if omega wanted. Omega points out this would destabilize royal politics, as he is secretly the heir to the formerly-conquered kingdom due to duke N.'s marriage.

Which is where the dream ends, but it's the start of an epic threesome+magic slavery high fantasy romance novel.

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Poison kisses

2018-07-25T13:20:08Z

Fae-apoc snippet, with murder.
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A/B/O character studies

2018-07-17T21:10:13Z

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Royal affair, cont.

2018-05-07T15:19:54Z

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Warm-up doodle

2018-05-06T20:06:48Z

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Freewriting: Vampire

2018-04-26T23:48:50Z

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Some medical things, and anxiety

2018-04-17T11:39:20Z

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Week 3

2018-04-15T12:42:33Z

I'm studying for LSATs, June 11th. Mum and I came up with the idea on a long drive down to DC for an Asian Studies conference and the March For Our Lives, so that would have been March 22nd. That first weekend was spent attempting the March and conference, and reading "A Trail Guide to Careers in Environmental Law." The following week was a mess of unpacking from the conference, trying to get my ducks in a row and my head on after travel, which always throws me badly. (I think I could solve that with an ironclad travel routine, but I haven't yet.)

I took a free online practice exam on Saturday afternoon, and since then have been following a brisk study schedule of an hour a day, currently with a day off on Sunday, and a practice exam every Saturday afternoon. Yesterday was my third practice exam, which makes this the start of Week Three of LSAT prep.

I really hadn't thought about the law or law school as a career option before. Now I keep running into people saying, 'oh, that sounds like you,' or finding out other people don't read Supreme Court opinions for fun. It makes me feel tentatively optimistic about the way my life hasn't really run to plan the last decade, if it led me to someplace, finally, where things feel like they're coming together. When I've had other career ideas - forestry grad school, engineering, just to name a few - I haven't really wanted to research or talk about them, or figure out how I'd fund graduate school or if it would be worthwhile. Law school feels like a (very expensive) present I could give myself. Even studying for the LSATs feels like a present. I really enjoyed the constitutional law and logic classes I took in summer camp as a kid. (Shouldn't my focus on the humanities track at summer camp have told me something? It didn't.) LSAT logic problems, and even the reading comprehension questions which are my least favorite, feel like climbing the mountains of human reason, to reach the icy, pristine peaks of pure thought. The baby versions of the sort of writing you see in a really good Supreme Court decision.

I've had friends who told me they didn't like politics, which translates to me as not really liking people, humanity, very much. Perhaps it's the same part of me that loves cats that likes people. We're awful, cruel animals, and we build such amazing things. Out of instinct and chaos we build cathedrals and democracies and really funny comic novels. From constant imperfection we build beauty. I love it. I love watching laws being made, the sausage, as some people call it. Compromise, lack of compromise, conflict, honor and deceit.... Glory.

I've gotten myself off on a tangent! What else has been going on? I've been catching up at work with the help of How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life, which I just finished, and Getting Things Done, which I've just started. I'm going to need to take a few levels in willpower and time management if I'm going to succeed at law school. I've been doing a lot of aikido, and my bokken just arrived from the woodworking shop and it is the most beautiful thing. My very own wooden sword! I never thought I'd see the day. Two things come to mind immediately, maybe three: I am going to take such good care of it, one step closer to preparing for the zombie apocalypse, and one step closer to being able to write a fight scene in my fiction without cringing at my lack of expertise. I've also been swimming a lot, and even went to a swim meet on Friday for an hour. The local swimming coach is also my childhood swimming instructor, and he is the best. I have been thinking of him as my swimming sensei, because I am beginning to parse the meaning of sensei outside of the literal translation as teacher.

I've been using a lot of new metaphors for my ongoing mental organization and life reorganization, but a few include the RPG version, taking points in Intelligence and Willpower from studying and sticking to my commitments and Strength, Constitution and Dexterity from aikido. Charisma's an open question, but I've been trying to brush up on my appearance and be more confident and open in my speech. One thing at a time. Another metaphor I've been using is of myself at work as an exercise in riding, with me and a pony version of me. The pony version of me is a Shetland pony, and doesn't like surprises and needs to be handled in order to get work out of her. A third is having a mental office where I keep my project data, including the worries and all, in neat folders and shelves, so that they don't just fall in a mental heap of yelling. Previously I've just had a treasure room, which is for memory and skills and religious purposes, but I need a bit of a more practical metaphor. It's all very well to have your memories and plans stored on papyrus scrolls, but it's hard to visualize working on them.

I'm beginning to replace some of my common recurring thoughts with more useful or intelligible ones. For instance, I now have 'am I making the best use of my time?' Another example is 'I can't be here,' which I've translated into the verbal version of an emotion, and that emotion is feeling overwhelmed. Closing my eyes and doing things to reduce stimulation make the emotion less intrusive. It feels a little strange, like suddenly wearing shoes with support after wearing ancient worn-out shoes for a few years, or getting new glasses. Things are coming into focus. It's not bad - it's the opposite of bad - but it is different, and more than occasionally weird.

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