Monthly Archives: April 2008

That Wednesday Feeling

Insomnia 2 I don’t know if you will know this feeling, but it struck me tonight. The “getting home at the end of after another blah day at work and realise you are committed to writing a blog post but lack any inspiration or inclination” feeling.

I’ve got that.

So I am sitting at my keyboard, flicking through the bits’n’bobs folder of draft posts, happy with none of them, and I have two options as I see them.

1) Screw it. I posted some fiction last night. That can count as my mid-week post.
or
2) Throw something up that is rushed and not ready because I am obliged to post today as I said I would post each Wednesday and it’s barely been a month of this new resolution and I can’t give up so soon.

Neither appeals to me. I could have set yesterdays fiction to be posted today, but somehow my occasional fiction posts are outside of the normal blog framework for me. This blog is personal (or commentary depending on how you look at it) and, whilst my fiction is intensely personal, it is NOT blogging. The stories are an extra.

Gar. So what am I going to talk about this Wednesday?

The new 9rules? Nah. Exciting though this topic is, there’s nothing I can say that hasn’t already been said much, much better elsewhere. Though huge, massive congratulations to the lovely Esther for gaing her leaf whilst we’re on the topic. Clearly I have the best people commenting on Bright Meadow 😉

Anything else?

Well, there’s always the post I wrote in the midst of a lovely bout of insomnia on Sunday night/Monday morning, but when writing something has you in tears it is probably a good sign that it is a bit too personal to be blogged straight away. The insuing mental upheaval did have me starting to sketch again, which is a change. I have always doodled but I tend to get exasperated that my ability with the pen isn’t enough to translate what I see so clearly in my mind – I guess that is what I write; people’s own imaginations can fill in the blanks I lack the skill to describe – and that exasperation leads me to stop drawing. I like to be good at everything I do, and if I can’t do something well, I just don’t do it even if I enjoy it. So I rarely sketch, but something about Sunday night/Monday morning had me doodling away whilst I thought through some stuff.

But none of it was blog-worthy stuff, so that still leaves me with a Wednesday post and nothing to talk about.

Um. I finally caved and brought a new mattress? No. That’s really not worth blogging about. Talk about scraping the barrel!

I think we shall have to face it. This Wednesday, there really is no point in visiting Bright Meadow. I look back and realise I have taken over 600 words to say I can’t think of anything to say, but that is not new. C’est la vie.

Go, play with better content than mine while I go try and find my inspiration and writing ability. I think they might be stuck down the back of the sofa along with my mojo. Either that or I broke them dancing on Saturday night 😕

To the different ones

She sat at the computer and stared at the screen in front of her. Who to make the hero this time, who the villain? What meagre aspect of her normal life could she twist out of all resemblance to reality. What curl of drudgery could she wow them with this time? She was fed up with it, sick and bone tired, of being always expected to come out with something new. Or with something old, just dressed over to look different. How much of her life could she stand to see put down in print on a page, how much of her past pain would these people swallow before they realised that it was all false?

There was only so many times she could see the look in her friend’s eyes as they read her words. She didn’t want to watch any more. The thrill of seeing tears brim had faded quickly to revolt that she was shaming them so. What right did she, to tell of the pain so publicly? The days of wishing she could stand and scream on the rooftops had gone, along with the days of waiting on a miracle to end it all.

She did it by stealth, let little bits of her truth filter out, hidden in a flood of fiction. Those that cared, knew; knew what she did. She shamed them by revealing in public all those little failures that had built up into the biggest of all. Her failure to be what they had wanted her to be.

She didn’t want it any more, that knowledge of what she was doing to them, those she loved. She couldn’t even love them enough to stop, because she kept going. After all, her public expected it, waited for it. The days when she could be silent for months at a time, her fingers moving over the keyboard for nothing but work were gone. This was her work now. Now she spent her days using her pen to dig away at the scabs of normalcy, till her full strangeness lay revealed for those who chose to see it.

What had turned her down this path? No therapy had spawned this version. No guidance counsellor suggested the pen as alternative to the razor. When had the sweet girl become bitter? Her cynicism – British humour, or neurochemical glitch? Whatever had happened, this wasn’t the truth or the reality, no matter how many journalists she told it was.

It was a fine line, the distinction between author-public, and suicide-private, but it was there if you took the care, and just enough people were left to know where to look. In the past she’d tried for a full-scale abandonment, but one or two had clung on, like so many barnacles. Unnoticeable till she tried to run, and then they caused enough drag to make the difference between clear get away, and guilt-ridden confrontation.

She kept saying to them, telling them to back away, that she didn’t want them around. But still, no matter what her desires, they knew best. It actually made them proud to read her latest work. Thrilled them a little bit when they could trace the arc of reality through the space-battles, or relate a minor character to some mundane feature of a life she no longer wanted.

Tell me what to do to make it right. Tell me what to do to make the voices stop, to make the pain go away, to make it all clear.

She was tired, shattered, beaten, worn down, and they didn’t even see. Those who professed to love her best didn’t see that she was being slowly buried alive under their expectations. She knew what they wanted for her, and it was so simple, which made it so much worse. She couldn’t even live up to their one simple request. Be happy. Two words, three syllables, a rush of endorphins…

The crucial switch in her head was stuck on “off”.

Long ago she had taken to writing it down because, on the page, or on the screen, something of the incomprehensibility faded, and she was able to see patterns. She had discovered her gift at the same time as the assorted transmitters in her brain had decided to take a few decades in vacation. Her gift, when she chose to look at it like that, was that she could also make other people see the patterns. There was something wonderfully gothic about the way that she could make other people understand what was going on in her head better than she herself could.

All they had ever wanted for her and she’d failed at it. But she was good at things, good at this. So she somehow managed to translate the randomness in her head into prose people enjoyed, but that wasn’t living. She made money, but so did street-sweepers. Not everyone could write the shit they saw behind their eyes, and not, it seemed, everyone, could be happy.

Tell me what to say and I will say it to you, I will do it for you, I will burn this house down. I will burn us to the ground.

Sunday Roast: I’m going to go crazy and I’m taking you with me

Doesn’t it feel good to be back where we all belong here on BrightMeadow.co.uk? I feel good about it and as I’m moderately hungover, it’s a miracle I can feel good about anything. Before I forget, everyone wish happy (ever so slightly belated) birthday to Neko and Bibby and say hello to fulnic who promised me last night that he would start reading again. He also mentioned being awe of me, but sadly it turns out that awe can’t survive rocking out to Bon Jovi. C’est la vie.

What else is new in the world of Cas? Well, I have short hair again. Properly short. I haven’t taken any pictures yet but when I do, rest assured that I shall share. Why cut it all off? I got bored. The last time I got it bobbed it didn’t work properly and I just got so fed up with it I booked an emergency appointment on Saturday. I probably won’t keep it this short, though it is so ridiculously easy to manage right now, but it is nice not to have to worry about it getting in my eyes and I can legitimately fiddle with it because it’s called “styling”. Felt weird dancing last night though. No hair to head-bang!

It turns out Penguin don’t want me *sniff* I lack the experience they require. It does make you wonder how the frack you are supposed to get the experience in the first place, but hey, I wasn’t expecting this to be easy. The next round of applications are being prepared even now.

Which brings us in our usual circuitous fashion to the roast for this week. Yummy linky goodness.

Got a piece of technology designed for a kid to use? Why not be novel and let the kids review it

Sadly rebooting Bright Meadow has lost me my stats history so I can’t share all the weird and wacky search terms that have brought people to this blog (though Christian Chiropractors does stick in the memory). What are your oddest search terms?

I gave up on my dream of being an astronaut a long time ago (health issues disqualify me if nothing else) but I still secretly cherish the belief that one day I will be in space. Have you got the right stuff, seeing as how there is a shortage of astronauts in the EU.

It has been a little over four months since I sat on my first Razr, necessitating a replacement. At the time, I had only had it a week and I loved it – it was so slim, it fit in my wallet, it had a satisfying cthliunk when you closed it, the keypad was all sci-fi-y. Now I’ve lived with it and I loathe the bloody thing. Yes, it still fits in my wallet and has a satisfying cthliunk, but that sci-fi-y keypad gets up my nose. It has no memory so it is stupidly sluggish to run, when it wants to run at all. It randomly decides to change things (like a whole week where it didn’t let me know when I had a missed call or voicemail – I was wondering why no one seemed to love me that week, till I checked my messages!) and the menu system is just the most unintuitive thing this side of the Fasthosts control panel! But I can’t get rid of the damn thing because there is no phone out there that does all that I want it to (and that I can afford). Not that the Razr does what I want it to either, but it (more or less) lets me make calls and texts. So I totally agree with this article. Completely and wholeheartedly.

I get a bit of schtick at work because I rely on my paper to-do lists at the same time as banning post-it notes and insisting that people email phone messages and jobs to do. I just know that I plan my day better on paper, whilst if people keep giving me things to do on scraps of paper, they get lost. The blend of electronic and paper works for me. Could it work for you too?

I remember the day the CCM brought two of these beauties home. Yes, two! And you could join them with a cable to duel at Tetris! Talking of Tetris, does anyone know if you can get it on the newer Nintendo models? My mum is a Tetris fiend, but she can’t use our old Gameboy (yes, it still works) any more because it is too heavy and big for her RSI.

JK Rowling is wrong – a decent analysis the lawsuit Rowling brought against the print version of the online Potter Lexicon.

Their stupidity at not hiring me withstanding, Penguin are doing some pretty sexy things at the moment playing with the idea of literature on the internet. The last “We Tell Stories” story, ‘The (Former) General’ by Mohsin Hamid is probably my favourite. Not strictly for the story itself, but for the approach. I have this really exciting idea to take the week 1 idea with Google maps, and mash it up with the multi-linearity of week 6, bringing in other multimedia (pictures, video, external websites, etc). Sadly I lack the technical skill or time to do this, but is there anyone out there who might take the challenge up? Please?

If you could get OSX on non-proprietary hardware, would you ditch Windows? Yes. In a heartbeat. I love the look of my PocketCalculator, but it is getting to the end of its life, and I just can’t afford to get a new Mac. I refuse to go back to Windows so I’m in a bit of a fix!

Mac Slocum has hit the nail on the head when he calls for ergonomic design of ebook readers. Note Scoble’s rant at the “flappy paddle thingies” for how irritating bad design can be.

Confused with all the different sorts of ebook formats and readers? I know I frelling am! Here’s a handy guide

The other week I twittered my sheer exasperation that I couldn’t find any good new blogs. I was trying to step outside the 9rules family because I don’t want to the run the risk of getting a blinkered view of what’s out there, but found I was drowning in the sheer amount of crap that is out there.
Steve Lawson jumped right in with some great suggestions including –
David Byrne’s Journal
Where Did It All Go Right? by Andrew Collins
Thanks Steve!

I could bang on for hours for the reasons behind the work I do, but I won’t because this isn’t the time or the place. This article should give you some context though

Just two trailers this time, so Abi, try and ration them 😉
Henry Poole is Here
War Inc

Which brings me to the end of the rag bag of links I have found this week. I am off to drown my hangover in endless cups of tea – you sit back, have a lovely weekend, and why not share fun stuff you’ve found in the comments as well?

It flies, phoenix like!

BrightMeadow.co.uk has risen, like a mythic-creature, from the rubble of what turned out to be a hack.

Yes, someone thought that Bright Meadow was worthy of hacking! (For the intrigued, it turns out that this was the problem).

Anyway, thanks to the sheer glory of that marvelous personage known as karmatosed, who spent this morning fingertip deep in sql databases, order has been restored to my blogging universe. I cannot begin to tell you how great that feels! Plus, I am now running WP2.5 on that domain (about bloody time too) so have access to all sorts of shiny new stuff and features. The one I am currently loving is the ability to tinker with my template from within the admin panel. No need to mess around with ftp!

Yay!

There are lots of other lovely benefits, but before I totally geek out, just take this as notification that life is back where it belongs at Bright Meadow. I will be posting there/here from now on, letting brightmeadow.wordpress.com retire into the background (though I expect I might have to return to it if/when my server gets wiggy again!). I have done sneaky things with the feeds once more, so if you read through RSS, you shouldn’t notice any change.

If, however, you aren’t sure, the correct feed is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/BrightMeadowFull and this is the correct comments feed.

At some point I am going to see if I can merge the databases so posts from wordpress.com will be folded into the archives here. If I can’t do it automatically, I’ll do it the old fashioned way and copy/past across!

That’s it! Thank you SO much everyone for sticking with me through this debacle (yes, it rates being called a debacle)