Category: Random Author Babble

September 9

September 9, 2019

Hey

Thought I’d check in. I’ve been quiet the last few days, unraveling the emotional wiring that has frozen me in parts of my life. Had a big breakthrough; I finally got around to tackling the moldy room. Spent 2 days cleaning it up. It was looking nice. Got the old bedroom set up as a living room, and the old living room set up as an office for me. Bought some nice curtains, had shit organized, had even set up my graphics computer in there. I was really excited about it all. Then I woke up with my eyes crusted shut and my body in so much pain it felt like my muscles were trying to pull me into a ball.

So, yeah, that’s a no go. Fuck.

I’m feeling pretty demoralized about it all. It’s hard to work without a space of my own. I’ve been working out on the porch, but it’s not protected against the elements and the cold has crept up. I just want a quiet space where the messes of everyone else doesn’t reach me, metaphorically and physically. And I just want a space for me, at this point. Where I can be myself without being observed, judged, required to socialize, or respond. I want to be surrounded by the things that inspire me, not the things that inspire others, always feeling like I’m pushed into a corner taking up space in a place that isn’t mine. I’m still paying for the place, but with my room covered in mold, none of it feels like it’s mine.

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August 30

August 30, 2019

Stuff

Okay, so I’m using a cache again in the hopes of speeding things up, but… well, I’m not 100% sure how it’s going. It seems to be okay, but the subscription software and cache do not mix, so I’m always wary about this shit. Hit me up in the comments if you stumble on anything buggy.

I found myself skimming through Taken By Beasts, thinking, damn, I want to make another one of these! But that’s what Hellcat was supposed to be, just a short fic, and that ended up being 6 months and a novel looking for a sequel *sigh* I’m not sure if my weird writer’s block of late will let me just wip out a short fic. This inability to give in to impulse has been such shit. I’m working on it.

I’m thinking of just doing a section of outline/drafts of stories that I’ve been kicking around. Like a pre wip section… I dunno. I have a fair amount of short stories I wanted to poke at. So many ideas that have just been waiting, filling me with guilt because I’ve been feeling so slow on the writing front. I think just getting back into a creative spirit, looking at the old stuff and reminding myself that things don’t have to be perfect has been helping. I’m hoping one day it’s just going to clear, you know? That I’ll unstuck and it’ll just be in the past.

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Why sinning is essential to life

August 8, 2019

Feeling more myself

What religion has done to our ideas of pleasure and quality of life should be a crime. It’s all a sin. They have made enjoyment a sin and then normalized it in our society. Our disgust for everyday people has roots here, tearing us apart until we can’t even see the beauty of each of us but instead their hateful, repressive messaging.

Just look at the seven deadly sins:

  1. Confidence held by the lowly is pride, and how dare we ever lift our heads and feel good about ourselves. They will come to crush us when we do.
  2. Desiring wealth–you know, that thing we all need to survive–is greed because we want what they say isn’t ours to have.
  3. The whore for lust, objectified and shamed as if we all don’t have bodies that seek to feel good, to connect to others. Criminalizing our need to love and be social. Censored to be ‘appropriate’ until we must conform to their dress-codes of shame and their sexual codes of who can love who.
  4. The desire for better–to be raised above a station of shit and have control–is envy, because again, we’re not allowed to want what we did not inherit. Wealth belongs to the wealthy.
  5. To be fat is to be a glutton, and how we starve ourselves of nutrition, joy, simple pleasures and love as a result, keeping us week physically and spiritually.
  6. Anger–that perfectly rational, powerful strength each and every one of us has to utilize so we can say enough is ENOUGH–is the sin of wrath because they want us meek, cowed, obedient. Customer service instead of a revolution.
  7. To be relaxed, to sink into life and enjoy our time–our only time on this planet, and it is 100% ours to own–is to be sloth, lazy, unworthy of basic respect and dignity because they want us to die in the streets if we won’t lift a finger to work their factories. To trap us in a system that forces us from the day we are born to pay for our ability to live in a shelter, on a piece of land we will never own but always pay for, where we can grow food to live in the soil they polluted while they sell us cardboard and sand to starve on. Where they tell us that our endeavors are only valuable if it makes money, when it is in the creativity of art and play that we are finally free.

They take the human animal and strip us of the very tools we have to feel, to live, to love, to enjoy life, and to fight back, and they call them ‘sins.’ And this, my dears, is why Sadie Sins. Because fuck that repressive, heartless, hateful shit.

icon-heart Godless Shameless Fearless

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July 31

July 31, 2019

Checking In…

Hey, so I think the first episode of the PATB serial is officially ready. It won’t be available for purchase just yet though. This is my first book launch in a long time, and I need to think a lot about how I want to handle it. Not even along the lines of success–I need to figure out how to do this without bringing unneeded stress into my life that will harm me more than help.

While editing this episode, I was doing a lot of research into my condition and its relation to PTSD, and the correlation is really strong. The human body has built in defense mechanisms that shut it down when it feels required. The same way an animal might feign death when a predator is about to attack, the human body has the same kind of instinctual wiring deep within the nervous system. These systems can turn off dopamine production to stop the obsessive task orientation that can occur in trying to escape once danger has passed, which in turn disrupts motor skills and cognition. It can happen in learned helplessness, or when the body numbs to pain under stress. All these conditions from my emotional and physical numbing I experienced this summer, to the low dopamine symptoms of inability to lift my arms or hold my head up, the cognition loss, etc: these can all be a result of my body having been so ravaged by years of PTSD that it is shutting down as a defense mechanism.

I didn’t realize that just sitting, thinking I was relaxed, wasn’t actually me being relaxed. My body is tight, tense, my mind races, my thoughts hate to be still. I talk a lot about not knowing how to have fun, because, for real, I struggle with it so much. I can’t let myself just enjoy; I think everything I do needs a purpose. My mind knows it’s nonsense, but this is how I live my life. I rush everything–EVERYTHING–because I can’t feel comfortable in the stillness.

Peeps, I decided to start a business when I thought I was fucking dying! Not just the author stuff, either, btw. No, that was the ‘easy’ business. Before I got into writing, I was thinking of sculpting small figures, mass producing them, painting them with airbrushes, and selling them. My arms were so weak I could barely lift them, but I thought maybe I’d knit or crochet things to sell, or create a zillion of these beautiful tree of life necklaces I had designed. That might seem super cool ‘way to fight to live’ kinda bullshit, but that was me killing myself with stress when I needed more than anything to rest. I am fucked and never saw how damn bad it was.

When you read my first books, you’re looking through a brain of a traumatized individual who didn’t like to look around at the world, and therefore had difficulty describing it in words. Who was never really in her body, and therefore couldn’t convey the weight, the sensation, the depth of concrete imagery. I couldn’t write a complete sentence without rushing because a part of me is so uncomfortable being heard and sitting with my thoughts, that I just rush to the next idea, getting through it all instead of enjoying the experience. If you ever had a conversation with me in real life, whoo, it’s rough. I can’t finish my sentences without rushing through. I can’t handle being heard by others, partly because I don’t feel comfortable hearing myself.

I have been running on adrenaline for so long, I don’t know what calm actually is. But I need to figure it out because when I fail and I start rushing again, my body shuts down. It will hit me with a fever, or take the use of my arms away and force me to fall asleep, or will make it so I can’t focus, and I’ll get distracted by whatever, because ‘whatever’ isn’t stressing me out the way the other thing was I was trying to focus on. And it’s not like ‘things’ stress me out–I stress myself out over things. I’m the one doing this shit to myself. I strive to be perfect, controlled, useful, driven and exact instead of just letting myself exist.

I think I realized just why I like shifters so much, because my inner primitive animal is fighting me for control of my body, demanding I change or be knocked out of life for a while. Ha, and no, I didn’t see that when I started writing but it sure seems obvious now. It’s important I figure this out, and as a result, I need to slow down and see where I’m creating stress. I need to find the space between my thoughts and feel comfortable sitting with me. I’m practicing mindfulness lately, and looking at an interesting read about dystonia–dystonia is the movement disorder side of Parkinson’s, but is also traced to trauma wiring the nervous system. This particular doctor has a theory that movement can rewire the brain back to proper health by engaging and rewiring the nervous system. It’s been helping; just stretching when I feel certain muscles tighten and my energy start draining has given me my movement and energy back really quickly. I can see how my thoughts trigger the flares now, how stress does, how self doubt… It’s a lot to take in, and I’m being super slow with that too because I have a habit of jumping in to new health treatments and pushing to get results like I’m running a marathon instead of allowing myself to relax and heal.

I am so hard on myself, peeps, it feels impossible to put into words because I still can’t grasp it. It’s that aspect of my personality–this rigid, demanding drive to succeed at everything including healing–that is likely the source of so much of my problems. I am terrified of looking at myself, so I DO–I run around doing things, putting these value systems on the tasks I do to feel like I’m therefore a valuable person. But if I can’t value myself at rest, I am never actually valuing me, so the vicious cycle continues. I need to find that deep compassion I can find so easily for everyone I meet and actually turn it inward and let myself be okay existing.

It’s tough right now. It’s good to finally see this big link to it all, but whoo, it’s tough to face it at the same time. There are so many things I want to do, but because I let this get so bad, I need to pace myself and do the inner work. I’m waiting for the day I’ll finally sink into my body, sink into my life, and I won’t have to question it all, just experience.

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Minor Construction

June 8, 2019

I think it’s done… It was weirdly easy, so it’s hard to trust that I didn’t mess something up. XD Emails have been sent with passwords. Sign ups should work as expected now. I have rebuilt the shop (cuz it worked with the old software) and everything is back in there. I’ve only moved active members, aka, if you let your subscription lapse, you’ll have to create a new account, that’s all. For those who bought art and audiobooks and aren’t active, the old membership system is still in place. So if you want to download a backup, you can. You can reach your old content here.
~Sins

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

June 3

June 3, 2019

I’m Alive

Hey, I just wanted to check in with everyone. I had a few hectic weeks and I’ve been all over the place mentally– and a little physically. I ended up in North Carolina for a few days, which was actually really nice. Except for the airport and the racism; that just sucked. I’m pretty fucking disgusted with how acceptable racism is the further south I travel. It’s so common culturally, I don’t think people even realize they’re indoctrinated in it. :/

I’m working on the PATB Serial to get the first episode ready for publishing. My goal is to post some scenes from different short stories as I work on that, just to give you all something new to read, but without my brain needing to jump from past to future in the PATB series. Less confusion, less redundancy, less boredom.

I’m musing about a lot of shit lately. I might be slipping into (or squatted right down in the middle of) a midlife crisis of sorts. My birthday is on the 12th. I’m facing how I’m ‘healthy’ yet have lost a lot of passion and joy and drive in my life be it from the Parkinson’s or something else, maybe stagnation after being ill for so long? I’m not sure– maybe it’s everything. Maybe I’m just not good at sitting still, and I’m fighting a lot of guilt around that because I don’t know how to balance my life between work and living. Work has been my creative endeavors, always, and that is my passion. I’m not feeling the spark. I haven’t for months now.

It might be time to look into hiring help, writers who are willing to flesh out my outlines–outlining being where I feel most like the creative soul I am. But money has been difficult because my productivity has been down (fucking common sense there,) and it’s just a frustrating cycle right now. Because I don’t know if it’s the answer, and finding out if it’s the answer feels like this big leap of faith. I am very good in conflict, a grand procrastinator who writes term papers in an evening and gets A’s on that shit. And I worry that’s what I’m doing to myself now. Just looking for any old cliff I may fall off of, and waiting until it feels inevitable that I’m going to tumble until I finally act.

I don’t want to be that kind of person in life, especially when it comes to my work. But it’s honest to who I have been up to this point with mold toxicity and death seeming to loom just ahead as I wrote to keep from falling into that pit. I don’t know. It’s been long years only knowing how to live one way, that way full of anxiety and fight and flight at every turn. I am as I am, yet struggle in knowing how to be this way without trauma or illness. I took all this time just waiting to see if my chemistry/my love of life would kick in already and point me where I really want to go. It’s not happening. No sparks.

It might be a midlife/newbirth crisis. >_> It might be my surroundings. I am very isolated lately with little ability to go out into the world. My car needs repairs (finally have it in the shop now) and being ill has been very effective at cutting people out of my life. I miss being around different people and borrowing a bit of their energy to spark my creativity. I miss sharing art and being good at shit and not having to feel guilty–do you know how many times I apologize for being good at stuff because I know it’s not normal for others to just jump into a field and flourish? Ugh. Self awareness is the worst. Maybe I’ll avoid creativity all together. I don’t think I’m even seeking intellectual curiosity at this point but the basic chemical reactions that are part of being a social animal. I might be happy just to hear about other people’s lives and then go home and write a crazy story… I miss conversation. I wish people could fucking understand me and talk about more than the weather or the mundane, but fuck it, I’ll take what I can get.

There is so much shit I want to do that I don’t have the money for. That could be what’s crushing me a bit. Like, I seriously want to find a software where I can create 3D renders of my characters that look 2D (because I’m not a huge fan of hyper-realism for anime style art and I want to work with outlines) and then use that shit to make elaborate interactive novels. Sculpt, pose and repeat. I mean, legit, that would be fucking fun. But I totally bet that kind of software isn’t cheap — might not even be available unless I have some crazy computer set up. Maybe this is my brain fail lately. I definitely still have creative sparks, but the projects I want to do and the way to execute them feel beyond my means. I don’t want to waste time lining the same characters and coloring them, etc, etc, when my brain already sees such an obvious shortcut of ‘just get the right software so you can do other shit at the same time.’ It’s not a lack of passion, so much as, I see that the wrong path will waste the little energy and time I have, so if I’m going to do this shit, I want to take the most efficient path.

I have about 5 different interactive novels/mini video games in my head that I can’t fucking touch because I feel held back by a lack of knowledge, and more importantly, resources. What an ugly feeling frustration is– no wonder I’ve been ignoring it. If indie creators can create elaborate handheld minigames, the software has to be out there, right? I’ve found software for turning graphics and text into an actual game, but not how to render 3D characters–not quickly or efficiently while also cheap, at least. But it’s totally out there, just closer to the video game aspect instead of the interactive novel aspect. I bet I could find info when searching there instead…

This is a big, fucking spiel of whatever. Why do I feel so defeated when I haven’t even started? This just isn’t like me. Where did my beautiful, manic self go who didn’t believe anything could slow me down?

I don’t think I talked a lot about this here, but I’ve been researching into how gut biome affects mood/behavior/personality, and I wonder if this is a symptom of my new gut biome. I might have lost something essential without realizing it. We are in reality manifestations of our biology, psyche, and environment. In the same way we react to stressors in our environment, we act in ways programed by our biology and set by our psyche. PTSD might seem like a disorder of the psyche, but the psyche has only adapted to previous memories and the biological forces that are pushing it. It rationalizes but doesn’t necessarily define. So, what if in targeting the Candida that was producing neurotoxins that were destroying my dopamine transmitter genes, I wiped out something in the gut biome that allowed me to act on impulse, that allowed creativity to flow without giving self doubt time to flood in? It was easy to discover the bacteria that created dopamine and use that to cure my Parkinson’s, but what element leads to inspiration/creativity/impulse? Where did my inner daredevil go and is that as easily programmed back in?

I’m rambling, but eh. This is the part of me I miss. I want to find my fun mania again. It was never ‘out of control’ for me the way people would describe their creative genius. It was just a way to live without all the mundane shit overwhelming in and trying to pretend it had value. Who the fuck wants to be bored in life, really? What lie is that that being stable and in control means a lack of lust for life? Why wouldn’t you want every moment to be fun, a challenge, a new thing to learn and overcome? This weird apathy (which I fear is long term damage from the Parkinson’s) strips all the joy away until life is about going through the motions, mechanical and dull. That’s not real living; it’s fucking sociopathy when we take away our chemical reactions to stimuli. :/

How frustrating to see this as a far more difficult problem to overcome than the PTSD and mold induced Parkinson’s. Because when my lust for life dulls, my passion to problem solve fades as well, and it is so much harder to act… I guess I’ll look at the chemical byproducts of Candida. Maybe the answer is in the microbiome I cleared out.

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May 16

May 16, 2019

Catching Up

So I found myself with a numbing of emotions and sensation the last week or so directly after my PATB editing session. I have not been feeling talkative– haven’t been feeling much of anything, to be real about it XD but I thought I should check in as I narrow down potential sources and start to find myself again.

Firstly, I have a lineup of the covers I made for Wendy’s Foundling series to share now that they’re all complete. Expect to find them available sometime this summer. I’ll be linking when it happens. 😉

I’m really proud of how these came out. I can see my brain working when it comes to color and contrast again. These pushed me to be a better artist and I’m happy with the results of that challenge.

As for other things, such as a lack of emotion… I first suspected it was either Parkinson’s or mold related. I haven’t fully gotten free of my current moldy place, and it’s always my first suspect given the hell mold has put me through. But I think the end result might be drug related– supplement related for less of a sting. I have a damaged dopamine system from long term mold exposure, dopamine being the main neurotransmitter that is involved in Parkinson’s. My biggest worry was that I may have gained a level of apathy as a result of that being damaged even though I’ve reversed every other symptom. Apathy is a serious problem with Parkinson’s and it is one of those things where they know it correlates to the dopamine system but doesn’t always fix when dopamine levels are restored.

But just in case that wasn’t the issue, I started looking into the supplements I take daily, many to either repair that damaged dopamine system, support it, protect it, or clean the body of the neurotoxins the mold left in me. It looks like my high doses of NAC (cellular detoxifier) might be the problem after some research and experiments. It’s early, but so far so good. My feelings are returning and I’m starting to add in other supplements to see what happens.

What I find absolutely fascinating about all this is observing my behavior when I lose my emotions. It is so obvious how we are chemical beings who live off of pleasure and avoidance of pain, because when both were taken away from me, nothing was worth doing. I wasn’t burned by hot bath water, nor got any pleasure from completing tasks or interacting with people. It was chemical castration where I had to build habits because on a biological level, I had no incentive to do anything. No little thrill in creativity or touch of anxiety if a bill was looming. We are purely impulse to our environment (after being established biologically through our genetics, chemicals, and beliefs systems that dictate the conceptualization of the world that then affects those chemicals) and without chemical reaction to stimuli, we are lumps. Lumps that aren’t even necessarily motivated in not being lumps. @_@

I have literally been framing positive habits to live by because my internal motivation drive had been suffering for months now. I was once the type of person who would stay up until the wee hours of the morning, loving every moment of the creative process, reluctant to go to bed (mostly slept like the damned) and then would roll out of the blankets and get right back to the love of writing or arting or learning the moment I woke up. It is incomprehensible to suddenly lose that drive. I had to give myself a path to follow because I had no interest in doing anything, when before I loved every challenge, every new discovery just waiting for me to find.

I’m hoping that has now recovered, or will fully once I’m certain I’ve found the correct source of this issue. I miss who I am when I feel. I seriously hope it’s not related to the Parkinson’s given there are few treatments if it is. I suppose time will tell…

So a little note if you’re seeking escape from any kind of suffering. It’s good to remember full escape from suffering to the point you can’t perceive emotions is antithesis to being alive. Stress is positive — essential for motivation and drive and creation — as long as it’s in safe doses. We are reactionary beings of impulse. Even I, an introvert who can stimulate my cerebral cortex into action without needing external help, still needs chemical reactions to happen in my brain, otherwise there is no enjoyment of life.

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May 6

May 6, 2019

Neurotic writing: Clarity vs Flow

Okay, so I just spent the last 2 weeks getting Episode #1 to fit a more mainstream writing style. Short, concise sentences with a lot of adjectives removed. Direct simple sentences. And here we are. I fucking hate it.

I don’t like the flow. It’s gone. The flow is gone. But does it fucking matter if people can’t understand my long, run on sentences?

Am I fucking myself over by 1) deciding flow is more important or 2) deciding clarity of thought is? I spent days on each scene when I first wrote them to ensure that ideas were conveyed clearly with flow, and then spent a few hours for each scene to slice those sentences up to compromise with a style of writing that I don’t even subscribe to. But I’d be a fool to think my brain is anyway the judge of this shit, right?

I like decisions. I like basic answers that I can then go, okay, writing conform to this so I don’t have to overthink shit (like I am now.) I don’t even know if this is coming from a place of ‘artistic integrity’ so much as just plain fucking reality of I don’t like how I write when I write the way main stream books expect writing to be.

What wins?

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April 25

April 25, 2019

Wendy’s Latest Cover!

Did somebody say yellow? (No? Just me, I guess. >_>) OMF, I figured out how to use yellow in an image. It never happens, never. I think the mold toxicity seriously damaged some certain aspect of my brain, and color was in the mix. But no more. ♥♥♥ Something must have healed recently cuz not only do we have some lovely yellow shades in here, but it’s not covered in black either. Fucking winning. (My standards for winning, if you haven’t realized yet, are pretty fucking low. But still–Winning!!! XD)

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April 23

April 23, 2019

Disjointed for a bit

Hey babes, I just wanted to give you all a heads up. The writing flow might be a little sporadic this week. I have a book cover I’m making for the marvelous Wendy this week. She’s re-releasing a trilogy, and I want to make sure she has everything she needs sooner rather than later. And I’m also trying to get the first 50,000 words of PATB ready for the beta readers.

I feel a bit like my mother who (while with cancer) would clean the house before our super nice cleaning guy showed up. *sigh* But at the same time, I want to respect the beta’s time and energy and effort by giving them a format closest to finished. I didn’t go through and clean up my sentence structure like I wanted to the first time around. If I’m not careful, I will have these long, run on sentences that are difficult to read–big no-no in genre writing. It’s important things can be understood with ease. So, although I’ll be scheduling time in for everything, I think we’re all aware of how I fail at time management. >_< Because it’s Tuesday already. =_=

I’m currently deciding if I want to refer to the werewolf situation as a plague or an epidemic (or would it be classified as pandemic because it crossed onto another continent???) I think magical virus verse bacteria or parasite fits it best for the PATB world… unless I find a better term. Because it’s Tuesday and I got stuck trying to make sure I have the best fucking term for a fictional illness. Yeah, welcome to my insanity. Those poor betas.

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