notes & things | 3/16/2025

 

A cluttered mind makes slow progress on all the things, but progress is being made nevertheless in terms of writing assignments and press work and (thank god)  even creative projects.  Its rough going, with every wiggle or scroll of the mouse bringing the usual nonsense. I try to avoid socials for the first couple hours of the day, but then I am steeped in them the rest of the day, not only for creative things but so much image sourcing and DIY tutorial hunting finds me on them when I am doing other kinds of writing. If I'm not careful, I lose an hour or more to doomscrolling. My Facebook is pretty well-cleaned out of nonsense and carefully friend-walled, but I occasionally stumble into things on Bluesky or Threads like headlines and op/ed pieces I'd wish I hadn't seen and started obsessing over in the middle of the day. IG's reels, when I get a chance to idly scroll, may be the one place with some levity and hope amid the craziness, though its still there. If not, at least I can distract myself with animal videos and I feel a little better.

I am taking all the dopamine hits I can. Today, its a day devoted solely to writing things. J was away overnight (late night karaoke and early morning DJ gig at a party downtown before the river dyeing and the parade had him catching some sleep in his car instead of driving all the way back to the northside after loading and unloading gear all night.) I slept in, made coffee, and started working on edits on some poem efforts from last weekend, fueled by Cadbury caramel eggs, which are frightfully cheaper than actual eggs this year.. Since my days are feeling cumbersome and prone to distractions, I've switched from daily poems to more chunky groups of poems on certain days. Right now, this works for the more sci-fi project underway (you can see some bits at IG in the past couple weeks.) I don't know how long they will keep going, but I am giving them some space to grow..

Every March I contemplate NAPOWRIMO and usually decide to do it, but I may sit it out this year. This clustering approach to writing is yielding nice results and the month of April is always a morass with things like taxes and my birthday anyway. I've also noted before how lonely it all feels...when I am just writing and posting normally I don't feel it or mind if it feels like poems get shot out into the universe with no response, but it feels especially lonely in a month that is supposed to be devoted to poems. 

We got out this week to see a couple films (an Eraserhead screening at Alamo and The Rule of Jenny Pen, which looks more like horror but is actually more like creepy bullying story in a care facility, which is perhaps more terrifying than expected.) We also went to see the Beetlejuice musical for the second go, this time with friends and non-nosebleed seats, which was made even more enjoyable since I know the entire soundtrack by heart. 

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