Today is destined to be horrid so I'm going to talk about yesterday before i forget anything because it was great and beautiful and everything. SO, this Wednesday my coworker Heather asked us to come down to her's to deliver some of the stuff she bought in the big box truck, and pick up some donations from about a block away in exchange. My managers were really pissed about it for some reason, but I honestly loved the whole thing even if we had to go out of our way. She lives in a small town about 30 minutes out from ours and the second we got there I fell in LOVE with the place. It makes me think of the town from Gilmore Girls--it just seems like everyone knows each other and helps each other out, you know?
A lot of that vibe might just be owed to the fact that my coworker Heather lives there and she's incredible. She's always helping someone out with something! She knows her neighbors and does favors for them! She repainted the front of the museum and remodeled the flower shop that she works at for her other job! It seems like a dream, and I'm so amazed by the sense of community she's built, because it's not like she's lived here long--it's just something she does wherever she goes. She also only recently got a smartphone solely so she could take higher quality pictures of her daughter and is sort of my role model when it comes to technology. Many many things to adore and aspire to about her.
Anyway, while we were at her place I saw this dusty scooter in her car park, and I sorta became enamored with it, and then I did something I've never really done before and asked her, "hey, do you have plans for that thing?" It made me feel very obnoxious, but she IMMEDIATELY asked if I wanted it: It turns out she's been trying to get rid of the thing! She said she'd had two other people offer to take it and they just hadn't come and gotten it. It felt too much like kismet for me to Not Get It, right?
(impulse buying a new guitar and now this........que horror)
So I coordinated with my dad about it and yesterday we went to pick the thing up. We had to get a lot of help from my coworkers to get vehicles sorted out for transporting it into town, and once again I am full of awe and gratitude at this sense of community!! I love the world and the world loves me!!! etc. I was kind of terrified to get on it because I haven't been on a bike since the motorcycle course, but after taking it around the block a few times,, MANN is that thing fun!! I'm planning on making it my grocery vehicle and Hopefully finding a way to drive it to work without getting on the highway. I just wanna be on that thing all the time..
It's in really great shape, too, and the Features..!! Honestly my favorite thing is the little helmet storage compartment underneath the seat. It feels weird not to have footpegs, but not needing to change gears is really nice. I still feel like reflexively scared of stalling it at stop signs www. The keys come with a "love kills slowly" keychain, and there's a racing sticker on the front that Heather says she put on because she used to be in the pit crew for a friend?? This bike can store so much love.
Heather was really sad to get rid of it--she said she just can't drive it anymore, because she's a single mom and basically always has her kid with her. When we were loading it up she was standing aside all wistful and she said, "Holden, that's my first baby!" I kind-of-jokingly-but-also-for-real asked her if she needed a moment alone with it, and she laughed and pointed at her backyard where her daughter was forcing one of the chickens to go down the slide with her and said, "No, I've got that kid now. You never know what the world is gonna give you."
The concert this weekend made me think of this quote:
Opera has the power to warn you that you have wasted your life. You haven't acted on your desires. You've suffered a stunted, vicarious existence. You've silenced your passions. The volume, height, depth, lushness, and excess of operatic utterance reveal, by contrast, how small your gestures have been until now, how impoverished your physicality; you have only used a fraction of your bodily endowment, and your throat is closed.
There are so so so so many things I want to say about Mei Semones that I think I'll fail to say any of them!! John Roseboro opened for her and gave me the exact same feeling Goodness Gracious. I guess I can get this in a specific way with guitarists that I can't replicate with other art forms or even most other musicians because I do technically Know how to play the guitar, at least enough to recognize how unbelievably skilled these people are and how hard they had to work to get that good. I wish I could recognize that effort in everything!!
This is the thing about Mei's music, though, and the biggest reason why it makes me Feel So Much: I feel like it's very rare in general, but especially with people my age, to find someone who has a Thing--a raison d'etre, or a north star, or whatever you wanna call it, but this singular passion that shapes all their choices. The more time I spend with people older than me, the more I come to terms with the fact that most people Don't have that. Which isn't really a big deal; It's not like anyone needs that thing to have a full life. It's also not like having that thing makes you any different in any witnessable way, because caring about something for a long time doesn't mean you're especially good at it.
But I felt so alienated from my peers as a kid because of this--like, no one knew what they wanted! I was surrounded by people who were objectively much more skilled and intelligent than I was in every single aspect and wouldn't put any of it to use because they just didn't care about any singular thing enough to do so. Like, when I was in middle school, I had a friend sign up for a poetry contest just so I wouldn't have to do it by myself, and she placed second while I placed third--obviously that killed me, but the worst part of the whole thing was that she didn't care at all, even a little, and she would Not go on to write or want to, despite this provable evidence that she could! So admitting to wanting something specific, or caring about it deeply, or working for it intensely--alllll of those things came to feel taboo and embarrassing. I mean, clearly wanting it doesn't mean you'll get it! Why bother!
Which is why Mei's music is so refreshing to me--she is a certified Wanter. It is so clear from her lyrics how her passion for her music shapes every single thing she does. My favorite display of this is the repeated refusal to separate love for a person from love for her art in her lyrics:
i love you like my guitar / i love you like no other
there's nothing i miss / except for the way we played / that tune by jaco / and your lovely guitar
Almost any lyric of hers that could be read as romantic could just as easily be read as being about music itself. Like, is I Can Do What I Want about having the courage to confess, or the courage to perform? Is Sasayaku Sakebu about going back to someone who hurt you, or redirecting that love toward the "melody"? In most cases I think the answer is kinda a little bit Both, but in general I just adore that her music is about itself--about how much she cares about it.
It's pretty amazing with Mei specifically, because you can tell from any stage footage of her that she isn't a very expressive person--she practically whispers into the mic whenever she talks and there's very little audience interaction--but the moment she starts playing, that passion is undeniable. You can imagine how much work it takes a person without "stage presence" to captivate an entire audience through skill alone and it's breathtaking. I kind of stopped blinking during this concert. I figure this is how the audiences in Akane-Banashi are supposed to feel.
Anyway...................... So AWESOME for me to say all this bullshit when I've been avoiding that "north star" for several days now. I got two rejections this morning and I'm kinda bummed about it, but I haven't read the actual emails yet--I doubt the soft rejection joy is something that persists past the first instance, though. There's truly nothing to do but keep doing it!
There's a transition I really really don't like in Rule 4 which is the whole reason I've been sitting on it, and that's just stupid--I outta get it out, because 5-7 are garbo hot messes that need wayyy more attention. I've been thinking about my personal mark of difference between drafts a lot, because I haven't really been able to define it before, but I can definitely Feel the moment that 1 becomes 2. I'm actually going from what I think of as a 0 draft to the 2nd for this, and you'd think that wouldn't work because each draft has to be a distinct product, but there is definitely a feeling between them!!! If 0 is 10%, 1 is 25-33%, and I think 2 is 50-60%. So that's what I'm aiming for here: 50-60% "ready for print." Basically, it doesn't have to be great yet, just good. (3 is probably around 75-80%, and after feedback, 4 and 5 might get you to 90%? I figure the feeling of 100% never actually comes, but we move!)
I really did mean to send it out last night, but I laid down for a 30 minute nap that became 12 hours of sleep. I guess that was needed? After work this afernoon I'll put Kino Kickstart to use. Honestly, I'm still very much in a "everything I've ever made is absolute garbage" mentality at the moment. It's all stupid and it will never Not be stupid. But I have to keep doing it forever, despite how provably stupid it is. Miles Edgeworth noise.
I'm starting to feel better physically today, which in retrospect is making me feel a lot less shitty about how little I've done over the past week! Twas a humbling experience! I'm still not 100% but at least my neck is better, and I think my brain is Less Bad. Not that it was ever that serious, but it was still, like, a Little serious, and I found it pretty discouraging how Unseriously everyone around me was taking it?
It was really refreshing that Sophie came over this weekend, because she actually seemed a little worried. And it's not like it helps the situation at all to be fussed over, but at least it made me feel less insane. Honestly makes me think of this bit from the Scholomance trilogy:
And it was all stupid and transparently obvious, and hearing him say it shouldn't have made the slightest difference. I knew he hadn't really cared, and it didn't cost him anything to say a few nice words. But it was still the few nice words you did say, the ordinary unprofound bit of decency you felt obliged to offer another human being, and he'd given it.
Takeaway from it all is that I have to be better about giving small kindnesses and demonstrations of care out loud even when they DO seem stupid and obvious. This has been on my mind in general because like--whoosh embarrassing moment now!--sometimes things happen with Crushgate 2026 that make me feel like I really get the whole Hayao Miyazaki definition of love in a whole new way. It's only natural that you give so much attention to someone when infatuation is in the mix, and you can really see how a person lights up under the sorts of kindnesses that genuinely cost nothing to give. Because they're so cheap, we forget to give them at all, despite how unbelievably valuable they are to the people we love. It's ultimately selfish, but the bit of this process I actually enjoy is getting to see myself through someone else's eyes as a Loving, Caring, Thoughtful Individual, because I so often fail to be any of those things for the people I'm closest to. It does sort of feel like laying an evil trick--like wowww I am misrepresenting myself. But we enter an Infinite Compassionate Action loop where a person gets their ego rewarded by getting acknowledged for doing a kind thing, causing them to do even more kind things, etc etc etc........I just need to trigger this with everyone I have ever loved!!
This actually ties into something from Liar Game that I WILL put in a blog eventually but I've been yapping about this long enough so we'll save it for now. The point is.... Apathy is the enemy of love!!!!
And also bonking your head on the ground is the enemy of getting stuff done. Can we PLEASE appreciate as a community how funny it is that I set the site status to what it currently is like a day and a half before falling down evil style? I've been unwilling to change it for the week because that's just so so so funny to meee
Anyway...I guess I still feel pretty awful about the hole I've continued digging--every day trying to tackle my todo list feels like a one step forward three steps back situation, and I've just completely lost the reins of my own attention. I wish I had something new and cool to say about this so I could justify saying it at all, but it's just kind of a normal thing that we all will deal with all the time forever. Instead of talking about that feeling more and cursing myself to dwell in it longer, I should just do the thing I Know will fix it, and Get Stuff Done!! A tiny little bit at a time!!!!
Today is astoundingly, indefensibly beautiful. I always treat the time around April like a reset, in part because it's my birthday month, but also because this is when the world Wakes Up. A few weeks back my boss looked out the car window and said, "this is Kansas at its ugliest. It's so bad, you forget how pretty spring gets." I don't totally agree with the sentiment--my favorite season is whichever one is happening right now, so I'm pretty enamored by our winters--but it's hard not to see what he means when green starts popping up the way it does. I even got my first taste of henbit for the year, which is not honeysuckle even though that's what I call it in my head. I know it grows literally everywhere, and I also know the little honey taste wouldn't survive this process, but I always get the urge to press it and send it to people. It's just so pretty! Gah!!
For about a month now we've been printing out a "poem of the week" at work, and by we I mean me. Today I couldn't think of anything so I asked my coworker Heather, and she said her favorite poem is Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. It's SUCH a good one, and I'm sure you know it, but I'm going to put the beginning here anyhow:
You do not have to be good.She said she thinks of it as a spring poem, because that's when the geese come back. Well, now I do too!
I could go on forever, but this post does have a point. I've purged the site for the quarter like I said I was going to, and now I wanna go back to my Blog Basics and do a goal post, because I feel like I'm at a nice transitional point right now--I've completely reorganized my white board, for one, and I've also reached that tipping point where goals from the beginning of the year stop feeling like they line up with my current priorities.
To start with, Pactbound isn't off the table, but it's definitely not the priority for a bit; I'm going to see House Rules through to the end, which in my head right now means finishing the second draft by the start of May, spending some time on a 3rd draft that's as tight as I can get, and then finding some beta reader to trade with me and send it off somewhere by the end of the year. I don't actually think it's a sellable project in a lot of ways--I'm told novellas suck, and I don't think this project is especially skillful or interesting in a way that would make it all that appealing anyway, even though I love it to death with my rose-colored glasses on. So it's probably a shitty career move to query something that I don't have complete faith in, but I feel as if what I need, more than anything, is to push myself forward instead of waiting for a sense of "readiness." If by the end of the year I've gone through the querying and submission process, then I'll at least have some of the experience I need to put toward other projects in the future.
Pactbound is almost impossible for this because my feelings toward it are So Big. I still take the act of it incredibly seriously, but ultimately House Rules is something I can be flippant toward; Having a brand new project to put myself through the gauntlet with feels important. That said, I'm still going to be taking major breaks from House Rules in between drafts, and I'm excited to go back to other projects in the meantime mwahaha.....
The other major difference is I don't plan on quitting my job anymore. Turns out that reducing my hours fixed LITERALLY every single problem I have with the place. It's actually insane to me how much of a difference this makes in my mood, and the worst part is, I'm a better employee because of it! Like, wow, we should all be working this much, it's literally better from an economic perspective on top of a mental health one!
Sooo now with that said, here are the things I want to be focusing on in Q2 2026:
After doing a bit of the akane-banashi reread, i've been thinking a lot about Guriko and how much I miss him, and everything he represents! This is kinda how I feel right now after getting so behind on things-
It's not as if I need to do everything in the world, of course, and it is a bit Vienna--very typical for a guy in his 20s to go Oh No I'm Getting Behind!!! after 3 unideal months. All the same, I hope to live up to myself a little more by the midpoint of this year. Wiehoo!