Gamer Street Cred list

 Video games I've played more than just a little bit:

I took students to a special event on campus today and part of it was "mingle while eating" before the event started. Students were asking me what video games I had played in my life and honestly... I started thinking about it and it is a lot, but like... now I need a list. This probably won't be entirely chronological, but I might also hyperfixate and put it in some kind of order. We'll see. I may come back and update this as I play something, or remember something, too. But this is what I can think of right now. It's kind of a lot, and it doesn't count games that are ONLY phone games like those "make a pizza parlor" games.

So I got my first game system when I was about 13 years old in 1983, an Atari 2600. I had the basics: Pong, Space Invaders, Othello, Dig Dug, Pitfall, ET (not a great game.) Joust. Indiana Jones. I know I had others; I had like 50 cartridges at one time. The one I remember playing the most was Pitfall. There was a challenge where if you got a certain score, you could take a photo and send it to some address and get a special patch. I got that score, took the photo, but I never was able to talk my mom into taking me to the post office and getting me a stamp. Sad trombone noises. I played Mario, Donkey Kong. All the big 80s console games. All the "arcade games" too. I was BADASS at Street Fighter. Boys would stand near and watch this young looking skinny ass redheaded girl, mouths wide open, while I beat wave after wave. 

It was some time from the later 80s until I played many games again. My sister & I played the HECK out of the game Willow on my nephew's Nintendo in the early 90s. I also obsessively played a game that was Baby versions of Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck and stuff. I think there are a couple of other odd little games in that time frame too. 

Then I got married, went to college, moved around a bit. I did play a couple of games though. 

• Myst. (Stupid, pointless but intriguing still). 
• DOOM. 
• I totally beat it, and am still traumatized by the giant Hell Spider. It always made me vaguely carsick feeling too. 
• There was this odd game on the basic Windows PC that was a puzzle game, that you were supposed to save a code so you could restart levels. No one but me ever got on my computer, and I was HELLAfar on that game and my nephew restarted it. Silent Internal Screaming.  
• Some kind of Xanth related game-- there was a "the door is ajar" trick that I immediately got because I read all of those books in the 80s. I might look it up later. 
• Oregon Trail. Obviously. 
• Wolfenstein. But not much of it. I didn't like it.
  
• Space Quest 6-- a hilarious game I would totally love to play again. 
  

Then there was the game called "Grad School." Lol. There still are a couple of video games in there though.  

• This history based game where you kind of time traveled, and there was a thing where you solved some sort of Ghengis Khan puzzle. I actually still dream about this game. 
• The Sims. 
• I made Sims out of all my friends and once had a friend who was a baby of other friends get taken away from them cause I didn't know you could move the baby bed. Oopsie. I wrote a conference paper about this. Heh. 
• A Bladerunner game. 
• I'll look up the name and update it, but I also ended up being a replicant because of questionable game choices. Heh.
• American McGee's Alice
  
• History Time Travel game: 
• Some kind of game where one thing you did was inhale a fish scale thingy to breathe underwater. I don't really know what this was called. It might have been the same game as the Ghengis Khan one?
  
• A Wheel of Time game that didn't run correctly on my computer. 
• The Longest Journey
  

Then I had TWINS and finished an actual PHD. So there is a bit of a gaming break.

• SO MUCH FARMVILLE. Lol. Don't judge me. It was a weird time on the internet. 
• Life is Strange (I actually have played all of them, but the first one is hereish.
  
• Devil May Cry (one of the sequels.... I don't actually remember which one. It was fun but I never finished it). 
• The Puss in Boots game. 
• A lot of Just Dance
• A LOT of Skylanders with my kids. 
• (You can see that this is the "teaching my kids to be gamers" phase, right? 
• The Last of Us
• Bioshock
• Plants Vs. Zombies
• Plague Inc
  
• The Stanley Parable
  
• That game with the blobby oil thingy.... I don't remember what it's called. Phone games count, right

THEN I got this teaching job and we moved back to Texas and I was pretty much working ALL THE TIME and I didn't play video games when I was teaching. 

• I did play Skyrim a lot one summer. Turns out I am the Dragonborn. Heee.
  
• and Rock Band. 
• Zelda Breath of the Wild.  I didn't finish it though. I think I got about 3/4 done?
• Overwatch. I never played much of it though. I like being the pink haired Russian chick. TANK life! But I don't really like playing in teams.  
• The Outer Worlds (really enjoyed this!! I'd like more like it). 
• Night of the Rabbit
• More Longest Journey Games. All of them. 
  

Until COVID lockdown. Then we were all BORED and there were Switches. 

• Animal Crossing!! Thank goddess for it!
• Stardew Valley
• More Skyrim. 
• Went back and replayed Last of Us and Last of Us 2.
• Frostpunk. I got pretty far in this but then it just got depressing and I felt cold all the time.  
• There was this other apocalypse game where you built up a city and I kind of liked it but it was a little glitchy and then it got sort of too depressing when animals and stuff started attacking. It just got too grindy. 
• Terraria.
• Portal
  
• No Man's Sky
• Max Payne
  
• Fallout-- the one with Boston in it. I don't remember which one that is.  
• Subnautica
• Little Big Planet
  
• All of the Uncharted games. I started with the one that was sort of a spinoff, with the chick, though, and it was the best one.  
• This creepy game on Playstation where you're a pixelated serial killer and the goal is killing people at a party. I honestly kind of hate it but it's fascinating too. 
• Detroit Become Human (really great game, BTW)
• Assassin's Creed Valhalla (LOVED this. Except for the fishing.)
• Assassin's Creed Odyssey
• Murdered, Soul Suspect
  
• Firewatch
• What Remains of Edith Finch
• Stray (I didn't finish it; got stuck in one spot and rage quit)
• Horizon Forbidden Dawn &  Horizon Forbidden West 
• Control
• All the Just Dance games. 
  
• Potioncraft Alchemist Simulator
  
• Elder Scrolls Online LOT of time on this game. Sigh. I hear the platform has mostly died. Sad trombone again.  

VR Games

• Beat Saber 
• Supernatural
• Work Simulator
  
• This Space Pirate Game
• Maestro (like it, but they need more songs)
• Some other dance game
• Tennisy game. Bleh
• I don't really like many of the VR games yet

I have to not really play games during the school year because I get too hyperfixated and forget to actually do my job. And also, it hurts my carpal tunnel. Cause-- see long list of video games above. LOL. 

Romeo + Juliet: Tybalt, Prince of Cats

TYBALT: What, drawn, and talk of peace! I hate the word,
As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee... Romeo and Juliet Act 1 Scene 1. 

My students are watching the 1996 version of Romeo & Juliet in classes this week. I've loved this for a long, long time, but this week, something in that long term hate between Montague and Capulet has made some sense to me in a way that hasn't entirely resonated before. Like-- why does the red team fight the blue team and why do they hold onto that hate for so long that people don't even remember why they were mad in the first place? I've always thought John Leguizamo's performance in this movie was great, and I still do, but I've also always been more drawn to Mercutio, later. Cause I always considered myself a more unaligned, neutral party. Chaotic agent, maybe. And who wouldn't love this beauty?

 

But lately, I kind of understand Tybalt more. Mercutio is just-- messing with everybody. Tybalt has real reasons for things, reasons that make sense to him.

It's really hard to let go of that anger from things that you have no control over. Part of my lecture notes are about the Renaissance Great Chain of Being, about the way people couldn't figure out how to get out of their positions on that chain, in fact, couldn't even imagine it was possible. Until-- everything changed. Apocalyptic change, like the Black Plague, and the Reformation, and the Printing Press, and a Queen of England where there had always been Kings, and a fleet of Military might sunk because of a freak storm (and a little weird luck and unusual fighting style). 

Is it really all that different in the world today? We might not have the great chain of being, but we have these-- hierarchies. And rules. And ways things are supposed to work. Or at least we did. n

A lot of people who aren't in the US right now are saying "Why aren't you doing something about it?" Heck, even in this country, people are saying "why isn't the Democratic party doing something" or "Why isn't Kamala doing something" (like what would she do?) or "where is our HERO?" I think we've watched too many Superhero movies and expect Ironman to come bashing in and changing everything. But even in the moment, where there are obvious supervillains, (and I will argue that we are in an obvious supervillain phase) there are a lot of moments in the drama where regular folks, middle of the chain of being folks, who get smashed around, their cars tossed by the Hulk, their apartments destroyed, or whatever. Half the population snapped away. Sure, they come back in the sequel. But they don't ever really talk about that time period (five years) where that half of the people were gone. It's sort of handwaved in the sequels-- the people snapped away just come back in the middle of the next big battle, no time having passed, but the people left behind experienced all that time. The probably learned to not like the other side of the argument much. It would be hard to just get over it. 

What happens when, years and years later, you grew up with all that Capulets did this, Montagues did that?  I hate peace, hell, all Montagues, and thee. 

We're gonna need to work on that. After we get out of this five year snap, cause the alternative is not good at all, and not a place I want us to stay. I just realllllllllllly hope it doesn't actually take five years. Or lose us 50% of the living population.

Poetry & stuff

When I teach literature, it usually makes me need to write my own. I'm not even trying to claim that I can write even close to any of the poets or writers that I teach. Literally never. 

But still, it makes me feel like putting metaphors & similes & allusions down in my own little obsession filled ways. 

I'm supposed to be exercising, and grading student work, but I was logging into Microsoft Cloud and found a poem I had started I don't even know how long ago and was like OOOOO this is good and then I finished it and added more stuff allusion wise to it and I submitted it for potential publication somewhere. Which is both exciting and nausea causing and I'll totally forget all about it and maybe something will come from it eventually. We'll see. We'll see. Wish me luck. It's about a Greek figure that I've always been fascinated by and my kid is lucky she wasn't named after. (I mean. I did name her after a Greek goddess. Just not this Greek figure.) 

So now I'm gonna go exercise in a virtual reality landscape and grade some poetry mini zines (some of which are TOTALLY AWESOME btw). And then the week ahead includes MUCH SHAKESPEARE SO WOW SUCH JULIETROMEOMURDERMETAPHORTROPES. Many Baz Luhrmans. 

And yet, I'm also constantly on edge and terrified of my government. So there's that, too. Dear rest of the world: some of us didn't choose this, and we're just as outraged and ashamed and enraged. And a little afraid to say it out loud but it's not like they wouldn't have me with a big old "on that list anyway" so there's that. Anywaysssss.... Y'all know Gil Scott Heron said the reason the Revolution Would Not Be Televised was cause it had to come inside your own head, it was a "click moment" when you understand that the fight isn't about what's on TV? But yeah. These days, I think they'd probably try really hard to not put it on TV.

My Maslow is struggling

I imagine anyone who is somehow reading this blog knows what that title is alluding to (and I had something like 60 readers of my last post so "hi?"  I don't know if that clicking is mostly bots or friends who find me through social media or one person clicking reload 50 times or what. I am mostly just writing to figure out what I need to say, what needs to be posted, thinking about thinkin'. And right now, I'm thinking about bad stuff. 

Today, my Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is struggling. If you don't know, the basic details are that we need safety and food and friends and belonging before we can reach that top of the pyramid to self- actualization. The higher-order thinking things we need have to be grounded in the physical, the core of life that generations before us often had to fight to have. In the 1990s, in many of my English classes, we would talk about women writers not really being supported throughout history because they were the mad artists supporting the bottom of that pyramid for their families, and they didn't have time to do the tippy-top creative bits. It seemed, in that golden nostalgia for the past now kind of way, like a thing that was firmly in the past, and we were just headed into a great future where our rights to be actual human beings were guaranteed (you know. simply being a woman wasn't in question as to the rights. Don't even start thinking about intersectional issues yet cause those have been thrown even further out the window nowadays. Cue nervously hysterical laughter.) 

Last week, my students wrote an in-class essay detailing their favorite (or at least an important to them) song. It was a diagnostic essay to see where I needed to meet them and what they needed me to teach that they ought to already know. A pretty basic assignment for college students in their second writing and comp class and one that should be easy, and I can then move on to teaching them to write about literature.

I need to finish grading those today, and for the most part, they are quick grades, not a lot of comments needed. They will get the chance to make them better, revise and resubmit. I've gotten some pretty cool essays and am probably close to half done right now. I'll get them as done as I can. This is the English teacher's weekend battle, and I'm trying to be faster with it this semester. I always try. 

But I'm struggling. I'm struggling to see how to proceed with these discussions of literature, of writing essays, because right at this moment, the world that we live in doesn't promise those bottom levels of that triangle. In fact, there are people actively engaged in tearing every bit of those safeguards apart, and that poem that is supposed to be about a time firmly in the past is absolutely more relevant than I want it to be. 

I know all the arguments about art and critical thinking being important during hard times. I do. But empathy is absolutely NOT a sin, in spite of some people who try to argue that. And my empathy is all full up right now. So full it hurts. 

And so. What to do when you are a teacher who has to step into a classroom filled with young people who didn't get to have those 1990s classrooms where everything seemed to be moving into a better, more helpful, progressive world?  I will add that honestly, most of my bottom bases of the Maslow triangle are going to be okay as long as things don't go full apocalypse (which honestly, doesn't feel all that promising either at this moment.) But for a lot of people, already, that triangle is already smashed. And that hurts, too. 

And boy, for the people who are still saying, "you're overreacting." 

I think you're actually under-reacting. There's a story about how Emerson (19th century philosopher) went to visit Thoreau when he was put in jail for not paying his taxes as a protest against slavery. Emerson supposedly said "Henry, why are you in there?" And Thoreau said "why aren't you in here with me?" (Paraphrasing something that might not have really happened but is a good enough story anyway). 

We will all get to a point where we get it. And unfortunately, I think my own awakening was not nearly soon enough and some people were for sure there way before me even (like-- those 90s weren't as rosy as I like to think they were for a lot of people.)  But. 

Either some people out there are under-reacting to what's happening in the world right now, OR you like the way it's going, and if that's the case, then I'm not sure why you're reading my blog. 

Links: 

Elon Musk May Have Your Social Security Number  an article that explains what I'm making a fuss about.

An article about the unelected, young men that are making this coup happen is here. Honestly, they likely don't even realize what they're doing, and will be scapegoats regardless when this is all sorted. 

The Alt National Parks folks on BlueSky.  

Rebecca Hains, who writes about these issues.

Rebecca Solnit's new newsletter. 

Heather Cox Richardson on FB. A  historian who is reporting widely and with context about the government in the US. This might be a link that has to be updated but as of today, it's fine. 

How to prep a "go bag" so you can leave an unsafe location. This is for weather emergencies and this one is also for tr@ns people, but it applies to anyone who might feel singled out, so you might update it based on other kinds, but think about it now, before you need it. 

And how all of this ties right into the Project2025 plan that we warned people about before the election. 

About a Dad

My dad left us when I was four. I had two big sisters, both who were in their "teenaged rebellion" phase, and I was just a teeny baby. FOUR. My mom, who was studying to be an RN, and working in a temporary nursing job that required her to be a student to keep, had to quit both school and the nurse job. She got a job as a bartender-- a job that would be one of the things she did for many years after that. 

Incidentally, (I'm not sure I'm using that word right here. Maybe it's monumentally). He left us for my mom's best friend. Who had kids of her own, who he ended up raising. Which meant that, in the long ago days of the early 1970s, he didn't pay any child support. My mom was on her own supporting three daughters, who were all still schoolkids. This was, to put it mildly, hard to impossible. 

I have a vivid memory of a summer day I came back from my next-door bestie neighbor's house (my sisters were out doing teenagers-with-boyfriends-to-visit-and-pot-to-smoke things.) My mom was in the recliner chair that she always sat in, and she had thrown something (I think it was a coffee cup? But it had probably been full of alcohol) through the glass front door (not a screen door if it had glass. What do you call those?) The front porch was covered in shards of shattered broken glass, and my mother was sitting in the chair, her face dark and unreachable. I think I said something like "Mommy?" and she said, in a voice filled with dark places you don't want to go, "Go Away." 

I can't even imagine doing this. How and where was she that she told her four-year-old child to go away at night while she sat in a fugue state (I think. Something like that) in the living room? The four year old having to fend for themself, with no adults to help. Sheesh. I'm still kind of scared for little me. I send back into the time travel mind that it's okay. Kim. You'll get out of the dark, and you'll not let other people be in the dark in the future. In spite of the pain you feel. 

I myself have been in some dark places but if I had a child in the darkness, I think that would have pulled me out of the dark to help them. In fact, I'm pretty sure of it. Save your pain and your spiraling for another time. 

I was hungry. I was scared. It wasn't cold, but it was dark. Here, there be dragons.  

I hid on the front porch under a porch chair for hours. My oldest sister eventually came home, found me there, coaxed me out, and we went inside. I'm assuming things were cleaned up, my mother eventually came out of whatever depressed state she was in and things were hunky dory, right? 

This memory has haunted me for so long. I've written about it before; I've tried to write it into a fictionalized auto memoir. Back when she was still alive I thought I couldn't do it because it would hurt her, in spite of Anne Lamott's advice 

I've been mad at my dad, mad at my mom, mad at the world, before. We lived SUCH a hard life because my dad chose to follow his urges and leave us and then not take care of us. But he had done that before and abandoned his first family, some half-brothers I've never met and would kind of like to meet now that we're all old and can realize that it's not about them, but it could be about us. I imagine their mom did not have nice things to say about us, though. 

In between that day and today there were bouts of homelessness. Hunger. Some petty theft on the part of that one sister's boyfriend of the most amazing BBQ I've ever had and still long for. And there were mistakes of my own before being the mom to my smarter than I deserve eldest girlchild. She tells me that my mom was doing the best she could with some really bad situations and yeah. She's right. And she's awfully forgiving of that, in many ways. She has a distance and a kindness that I don't really have, even today, even now after it's been more than thirty years since I lived that life. That "I don't actually know where my next meal is coming from and I have to rely on strangers for help" place. 

I think my mom told me to go away that night because worse things were possible in her mind at that moment. She couldn't be a mom because she was a hurt animal. I wish she were still here today to talk to about that because I don't think we ever sat around as adults and discussed who she was then. 

But hey, this post started about my dad, and I have to circle back (Chekov's Dad, if you will). He was a complete deadbeat. MANY many many of the struggles of my childhood, and shit, even today (because I have awful teeth from not seeing a dentist for the first 22 years of my life and it STILL affects me at 55) are because he couldn't be assed to send us 100 bucks a month for food. 

I had a little bit of an epiphany this morning. I reached out to him when I got married and asked him to give me away. He did, and was really happy about it, and drove down to Florida to be there.  He brought the woman he left my mom for, actually, because even though they weren't still romantically together, they were weird roommates. My mother in law even asked me who that woman was and when I told her, said something along the lines of "your mother is a lot more forgiving than I would have been." And yeah. I think she was. To a point. 

My dad-- he failed. On so many levels. And one of them was having a sort of hands off approach to us. He seemed to only relate to us when we reached out to him. To respond when WE initiated it. But shit, ya'll. We were children. HIS children. And he had a responsibility to take care of us, in one way or another, a responsibility that he just bailed on. My sister never forgave him for that and when he died, I think it hit her way harder than it hit me because of that lack of forgiveness. She was a lot like him, in a lot of ways. 

The day he died, the day I heard about it, I was in a sort of brutal twist of fate, teaching the poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas to my intro to lit class in Louisiana. 

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

I had to read that out loud because it was in the days before we had computers in the classroom. That, my friends, was HARD. Still is. It's a poem I do not teach anymore. 

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Exercise in Virtual Environments

That title sounds serious and academic and I don't think this post is going to actually go there but let's see. Maybe it'll earn a colon: and a subtitle.  Hee hee. 

Because it's winter break still for a few days, I've been spending a lot of time 

1. going to doctor's appointments 

2. exercising by playing virtual reality games on my headset. This includes Beat Saber and Supernatural (which is unrelated to the TV show, and I'm not sure entirely why they picked that name because it's always confusing to people.)  This time around it also included a game called Maestro, which is pretty fun-- you are directing a symphonic orchestra to mostly classical music-- but that one is a lot lower key as far as the cardio goes. 

I've been doing virtual/at home workouts now since about 2021, when I started dancing to Just Dance. I kind of love almost everything about it because it's really convenient (I don't have to drive to a gym-- I just go upstairs to my game room and put on a headset). I think I need to add some kind of weight-training component to it, but that's a different post for a different day. 

This duality of time spent over my break is important because I'm trying, really hard, to get fit. I'm not really trying to get skinny, (although who is gonna lie that in the modern era, skinny equates in most people's head to fit and chonky cannot ever be fit, in spite of all kinds of lies and statistics about BMI and cardio and other things like middle-aged women and menopause and all that jazz). I would not HATE being skinny and fit. I'd really just like to LOOK to people like I work out as much as I do. 

Cause seriously. During the school year, most days, I get up at 5:30 AM so I can get a 30-minute cardio session before I go to work. That's pretty darn dedicated, and it's actually quite an intense workout if done correctly. To give a little data, my Apple Watch right now says my workout today burned 756 calories, and I've gotten in about 8,300 steps so far today (and yes, I know that the 10,000 steps guidance was created by a pedometer company to drive sales, but it's not the worst benchmark I've ever seen for fitness).   And before the day is over, I'll probably manage to get in about those 10,000 steps. 

And my heart rate ranged from 94 to 161 BPM. Which for a chonky middle-aged woman is right in the zone I want. It's going a little bit anaerobic there at the top, but that wasn't for very long, and it's perfect for interval training. 

So, where am I going with all of this? In 2021, when I first started this virtual fitness quest, I lost about 30 pounds. It was mostly pandemic gained weight from stress, chili cheese fries, and a lot of really good ice cream, so it came off pretty fast once I really started exercising. But then it STOPPED. Like seriously, nothing I did, from dropping the calorie count down really low (my husband, for example, lost 50 pounds on the same diet as mine and at first on that diet he wasn't even working out, like for the first 20 pounds or so it was just the food difference). I tried keto. I tried intermittent fasting. I got vitamin shots from a "diet doctor," and I went to TWO different nutritionists. They took my metabolic rate, gave me a plan that you could have gotten out of Women's Day Weekly (the January edition-- in other words, not all that different from something you could have gotten for 2.50 in the checkout counter). 

And no matter what I did for like two years I did not lose ANYTHING. And then, last year, it slowly started to creep back on. The weight. I was still working out, still have a great VO2 measurement on my Apple Watch and still can mostly run up stairs. But the weight started coming back, as it does. 

And I've been so frikkin' frustrated. I can say all I want that I'm just exercising for the fitness, and that's not untrue. But honestly, I want to LOOK fit, and I don't want doctors to write that really rude word on my chart that rhymes with shmobese. I don't want them to be surprised when they run my heart rate and it's good. Because they think I'm lying about how much I exercise. 

Anyway. The final tie in here is that I went to a new family practice doctor and instantly liked her. And she listens, and she did blood work, and she gave me a medication because I've been, for several years, slightly on the edge of having serious insulin resistance. Which means, as she said, that I've been "fighting with my genetics." THANK YOU. That's what I've been saying!!! I don't know why I haven't been given this medication before. 

I've taken it now for three days and even if it doesn't do anything metabolically (which I have to say I actually think it already is. There's a certain "tautness" to my skin when I've exercised productively, and I've been missing it for a long time.) 

But even if it doesn't actually mean much for the chemical balance in my body, my mental feelings at working out have radically changed the last three times. I feel GOOD about it. It's not a sludge slog that I don't think is going to work anyway. I've got so much energy and I feel like I could keep going, even though I'm tired and sweaty and need to take a long bubble bath. 

If that doesn't help in some way (placebo effect is fine with me if it placebos something) then I'll eat my hat. (I don't own very many hats, either, so it'll be a fuzzy winter one.) 

I want to say that I don't care about the weight loss but I'm gonna be totally honest that I do care. At least a little bit. I'm hopeful that I can just get to a place where I look like someone who plays volleyball or something. Who can pull a plow while holding several babies. Who can make a lot of pancakes and feed a whole army without getting too tired. Who knows the difference between dark clouds that are going nowhere and the ones that are gonna lead to the scent of petrichor soon cause there's a rain coming, and we need to get the laundry in. (I dunno. Farm girl stuff.) 

And if this medication works, and it's an old one, not a newfangled expensive thing that every Hollywood someone has been doing, then I'm going to have some strong words for the doctors that wouldn't listen to me in the last few years when I asked if there was something we could try. 

And I'm still gonna keep beat sabering those little triangles away, and whacking those balloons with baseball style bats. Cause fitness is fun, and I suddenly have a tiny little spark of hope. 

Time Travel in the Age of AI

This post is about time travel, DNA, and ghosts, and AI. Very sci-fi of me. Sort of. 

I got a text from a family member yesterday that required me to think back 30+ years to a time when I was very young, and very foolish at times, and thought I would be young forever (apparently) and thought I was way too smart for bad things to happen to me. HA! 

I had to think back to remember a couple of things (and by the way, I got a little bit of that wrong, in a "meet your own grandpa" kind of way that I'll have to try to remedy) and it made me realize JEZUS MARY AND CHEERUST it's been more than 30 years. I know this. I know this for sure; my hubster and I have been married significantly longer now than we were single without each other. And that's frikkin' weird. But in this particular moment & this series of text messages with said Fam I traveled to an ancient date. 

The early 1990s. THE 1990, in fact. This is where the DNA comes in. (See-- I'm getting that title into the text. This is what we writing teachers call a transition, and clever use of a hook.) Said fam was reacting to a DNA test his fam had gotten. And someone who we will call Cousin A was reached out to by Second Cousin B. So there's some family adoption and unknown relative distance (there's the time travel again) that's involved in this query. 

And again, I had to think back in time to a time when I was so young I had literally no wrinkles. No grey hair. I was actually skinny. Like annoyingly skinny, and said things like "I just have a fast metabolism" to people. NO. I JUST NEVER ATE FOOD thank you very much. And had a very active job and was seriously being neglected and needed to eat two sandwiches (thank you very much I did eat those sandwiches and hence am now a chonky middle aged who will slap skinny me for that "fast metabolism" curse.) Thinking back in time, I.E., time travel, is hard. There's a lot of water under that bridge and it makes the memories murky. 

This sentence, now, is where we work the ghosts into the story. I first realized that the idea of ghosts is often something we are just haunted by. A person, yes. A beloved pet was where I figured this one out-- Tituba, my black cat, my first kitty baby, would appear behind me sometimes after she was gone. I had to get more black cats to save and pamper to make up for losing her. She haunted me in the very best way. And then, after my father-in-law died, I would see men far in the distance wearing a shirt that he would have worn or standing with the slight stoop he had (as a very tall man, this was something of a defense mechanism, I think.) Or smelling whatever 1900s man cologne it was that he used to wear. A ghost. A person (or cat) that I missed in my life and wished I could really see again. THey also haunt you when you're sleeping, visiting in dreams, or those thoughts you have while you're trying to sleep, things you could have done differently, better, worse. Ghosts visit me a lot at about 3 AM, which is also (coincidentally?) when I have the most frequent sleep apnea drops in Oxygen. Those ghosts like to poke you awake, maybe? 

So. Back to the time travel and the DNA: this lost Cousin B. They might be someone who opens up a pathway that had previously closed, and that's a little scary butterflies in the stomach fear of "what if" but also kind of exciting in a way that I can't even relate but also a ghost of some previous timeline that I can see just out of the corner of my eye, if I look very carefully. I might update this with less obscure references in sometime future, time travelers from that future, let's see. 

And this is where the AI comes back into the conversation, and what we English teachers like to call the "reverse hook" where we go back to the beginning again and end up this clever post. I honestly don't know exactly where to fit the AI into this story.... but at least my narrative here is unlike anything that Ye Olde CHATEGPT is going to spit out. I think. (Look. I'm working on one cup of coffee here and also my left hand carpal tunnel is flaring AGAIN and I guess I'm gonna have to get that surgery after all. Dammit.) 

Dear future and past versions and alternate timeline versions of me: it's gonna be okay. Or it was okay. Or it wasn't okay for a bit but then we got over it. Love ya. Mean it. ~~ me. 

Evolution

This particular blog was created a few years ago as a place for me to post creative writing stuff. All of the energy was being put into promotion, talking with other writers, and trying to push myself into the whole "successful small press writer" niche that I know folks who have accomplished. (Ugh. that sentence construction sucks, but I'm not rewriting it). Because hey, we have FB and other social media, and we can have casual everyday conversations (kind of microblogs) there. Right? Right? 

Heck, I've been an early adopter of blog technology and stuff for a long time. I had a blog back in the mid-90s (shakes fist at the cloud to get off my lawn) that was so procrastinate-y that I managed to write thousands of words that could have been my dissertation.  It still kind of exists; it just got changed into a mommy blog and then abandoned. It's still cute. There are photos of my babies on there-- the babies who now are 19 and hogging up my couch and not paying income tax. 

Back in the late 90s, when The Matrix was still a cool movie franchise, and my friend group and I spent a whole day watching the Star Wars movies three times AT AN ACTUAL THEATER, sandwiched with cool restaurants and margaritas, we used to have bulletin boards where we would chat with "friends" we met there about random topics, unrelated to the ostensible subject the board was designed for. I had a good friend on the "David Bowie's pants" thread, and we would regularly team up to tease one other poster who was known for being sort of cranky (I can't remember their usernames.... it's been 20 years... but there was something about flames? or bombs? in his username, like he would be "explosive" woooo. So hence the teasing). And it was fun! 

And then, circa 2009 (ish?) FB was invading campuses across the nation. I was teaching in Louisiana, and students thought I was still cool (I had some fun RYP things back then. Even a hot pepper rating for a while 🌶️ and now we think that's kinda gross, even though as a chonky middle-aged woman I wouldn't mind qualifying for one again). And they begged me to sign up. It seemed sort of innocuous. Fun. I did learn a little too much personal info about a few of them and developed a policy of not being friends until after there was no chance they could be in one of my classes again......

And so. Almost 20 years later, we find the landscape of today. Right-wing fascists have absolutely taken over Twitter (I will deadname that site forever. They don't get to hide from me.) We know more about some people than we ever, ever wanted to know. For a while, FB was kind of holding firm, not being a total hellscape, even though it was definitely making me shop too much, but then, the algorithm decided I was really into conservative X-tian merch and probably guns, and also Celtic knot jewelry and started showing me random ads. One of those three is kind of true. So I started getting all these ads, and try as hard as possible, I couldn't stop them from showing up in my feed. 

It might be some kind of negging strategy, but JESUS I don't need that. So, since summer, I've been mostly avoiding it. I took it off of my phone, and only log in now periodically via laptop, like the Goddess intended. 

I went on there this past week, and immediately was upset by politics, (which granted, is rational right now, but sheesh; I already know these things are happening). I also almost immediately purchased something... which I have been kind of cutting back on after seeing the horrific documentary on Netflix called Buy Now..... where I immediately deleted all of my cheap Chinese product purchasing apps. So I binged, like a true Aholic does. You can't have one because it turns into more, and the next thing you know, you're waking up on a wet lawn covered in Twinkie wrappers, and packages from China will show up in a few weeks filled with fast fashion. 

And now cue the announcement from Mark Z. (who now looks a lot like the meme that was going around of him last year that someone had fancied up to look prettier. He took the advice of the world, and honestly, I kind of don't love that for some reason.) FB is rolling out AI "people" to chat with us. And no longer using fact-checkers, who were definitely the problem here. /s.  And more. So, I'm probably not going to post there anymore, and I probably won't full-scale delete my account forever, but my pop-ins are rare and getting rarer. Read the article above because honestly, it's even grosser than I realized. 

I'm also trying to wean myself off Instagram, because it also makes me shop, in spite of all the cute bird (and hippo!!) content. And because I love my VR headset workout and Beat Saber, I am still worried about the influence of certain companies on my life but also doggedly pretending it'll be ok. 

I do read too much Reddit, especially the Leopards Eating Faces group, which I am calling social media methadone, because it's not fun, but it keeps me from getting the DT shakes. I tried Bluesky for a hot minute, but then I accidentally agreed to follow like 100 people I didn't know, and my feed filled up with their content, and I don't really know how to extricate myself from that problem. And right now I'm not really motivated to do that on there. It gets a "meh" from me, dog. 

But also. It's a full 10 days away from the semester's start and I've already finished all of my syllabuses AND learning management platform prep and am almost done with the full first week of lesson plans. And I finished playing the newest Life is Strange game (mostly two thumbs up), and played enough Stardew Valley to get bored with it again. I might even read some actual printed books later. I have barely shopped, enough so that I suspect Paypal and Mastercard are going to start emailing me sad "Where are you?" emails. But like. Who knew not scrolling through hundreds of hours of doom and ads and people trying to stealth sell you candles was taking up too much time? 

Anyway. I'm about to start a new semester where I will be actively trying to stop students from writing with too much Chat GPT and doing a cool conference and committees and fun parts of my job, so I don't know how much I'll really write here, but I think our shunning of MySpace was probably premature and we should all navigate back to less actively chaotic evil platforms. So this particular blog is going to be where you can find me ranting in a non microblog way, as long as my carpal tunnel doesn't flare like it just did and make my left hand typing almost impossible.... 

Also-- Grammarly keeps trying to change things and sometimes it is right but sometimes HELL NO LEAVE ME ALONE. 

Anyway. One last meme I found when I was looking for the template to create my bad viral template of the above Anakin/Amadala post.

Come see me here sometimes. We don't need social media overlords who were creating that platform to diss hot chicks who were mean to him..... we can chat in other places too. Really. 

I miss y'all, so if you do stop by, leave a comment. Back the way we used to in the 90s. When a certain future world leader was just a TV show personality we could ignore. ::hysterical laughcry::

On the negative nagging voices

I've been a teacher for a really long time. And I know that sometimes, student people will lash out when they're mad about something, and usually, it's the people who are failing your class who are mad at you because you did something that they think made them fail and that they are the ones who didn't put in the effort and they will find whatever thing they think can hurt you to say because they are mostly mad at themselves. And they can almost always, always find that one thing, that thing you yourself know isn't how you are your best. They almost always latch onto the things you're not perfect at, knowing yourself, and the thing you even TOLD them you suck at, and they say, "YOU SUCK BECAUSE OF THIS," and then the rest of that day, the only thing your brain can think of is that one negative, mosquito buzzing in the room voice. 

I am aware of all of these things and yet, I still look. 

Why do we do this? Why does our very "evolved" human brain (for some of us, cause, some of us don't ever hear those voices because they always think they're great... apparently) just latch on to that one mosquito in the room buzzing around saying the mean things? 

I knew better than to look, and I did it anyway: Bluebeard's Bride. Now, my brain is full of one noisy mosquito. 

Yes. You win, person who just wanted to be mean. Now, next time, maybe do better on your work so you don't have to do that to someone who tried their freakin' best and is actually a human being.

Dear future students, future review people, future nice folks in the world: if you like something a teacher has done, go to the places and make the nice comments. They sometimes drown out the mean ones, and usually, the only people who do make comments are the mad ones. 

Comic for reference.  

Advice

I think about the power of laughter sometimes.
The joy that flows through the grief, the bubbling
forbidden hysteria of the laugh at the wrong moment. 

Once, when I was very young, in a symphonic band concert,
a friend and I caught that laughter, deep in our chests, swelling,
in danger of overflowing, rolling out over the clarinet rows, contagious.

We dared not look at each other, knowing that would be our end, the trigger
for no way back from all of that abundance of joy. Giggles stifled, choking, actually
painful. Her shoulders next to mine shook with the suppression, and I felt tears prickling.

The conductor, his thick mustache bristling, his eyes serious and focused, looked towards us,
there on the back row, the last row, the third chairs, the deep bass line of the clarinets,
and we knew we had to pull the pain into ourselves, keep that joy within, clutch it. 

Deep breaths now, focus on the music, think of things other than whatever was
tickling our minds to the abundance of deep taboo within, that sense of the
things you aren't allowed to feel. This was serious business, this music. I

think of how we stared, tearing up, deep to stop our joy. Remember
the sense of refusal to be broken, of never letting that joy go, of 
holding it within until it hurts, sharing the unshared moments. 

And I remember:

they don't like it when we laugh at them. 

So keep doing it. Don't let them win. 

Let the laughter roll out of you, until,

weak and spent, you have to sit down. 

Regroup. Gather within yourself

all of that old, held in taboo. All

of those emotions you weren't 

supposed to feel. And share

them until they know we know. 

Let it out. Let the years of

joy roll out of you until

your hope, your love,

your beauty —  is a weapon —  point it. 

At their weaknesses. 

KAW 2024

Art licensed through Adobe Stock & edited by me....

Losing a friend, ADHD and Grief

I think something we don't talk about, almost ever, is the life fact of losing a friend. Not to a dramatic event, necessarily, but sometimes even the slow loss of fading connections. In my life, I've lost a LOT of friends when I was young because we moved so often. I've lost a few to distance, and a few to dramatic events that had an impact both in the short and long term, as well. 

Sometimes when I get those security question that ask you things like "the street your first home was on" or "your first grade teacher's name" or especially "your childhood best friend" I think-- who knows those things? I know people do, but it's definitely not me. I moved regularly as a child, sometimes with some notice, often without any notice at all. My family's single mother, excessive poverty lifestyle was anything but stable in those ways. I always have to choose one or two of the "security questions" that have to do with things that are less about your early childhood..... It makes me a little sad to realize how many of those usually ten questions I can't even come close to answering. (Also this is part of a discussion I think I'll eventually write about CPTSD, as well, but not today). 

But back to the point-- losing a long term friendship. Sometimes it CAN be a dramatic thing-- a big fight, especially. In our culture, we talk about losing love a lot. You turn on Netflix alone and there are going to be entire categories of movies and TV shows that deal with this. (And this doesn't count the ones based on death, which isn't at all what I'm talking about). So culturally, I don't think we practice the thought of what happens when a friendship ends.  And part of you tells yourself that you're making too much of it. That you shouldn't be this upset. That you're over-reacting. But then part of you KNOWS you're over reacting and can't help it and knows that the over reaction might even make what you dread worse. 

It's hard. It's as brutal as the love relationships. Sometimes I think it's even more brutal because a part of you, at least at some level, expects those love relationships, romance, to not last forever. (And I don't mean marriage-- because that's a different topic entirely). 

So the point is-- being ghosted by someone who you care about, who you think of as a friend, and who you try to reach out to and connect with to let them know -- "hey, this feels really bad; what's going on?" is really, really rough. 

Image from article at this link.

I have a kind of emotional issue with my ADHD called RSD: Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria that makes this kind of thing even worse. Because look, I ALWAYS worry if you don't text me back right away. I can handle it if it's a few hours. But if you leave me on read for weeks at a time, and there's no real reason I can trace it to, I'm definitely certain you hate me and never want to talk to me again, and if I tentatively say "hi" trying to rekindle that chatting and you don't reply, or you reply that you're busy and will get back to me but then NEVER DO, be pretty sure that I am devastated and spending hours thinking about it in a way that would seem stupid to most people. There's a reason why ADHD is an actual disability. It makes life a lot harder in everything, but people will say "don't let it bother you so much; it's not as big of a deal as you think" but hey, look. I want you to know that it IS actually as big of a deal to some people as we think it is. Your neurodivergent friends are definitely upset. And we can't just stop being that way any more than a blind person can just think about it harder and see things better. 

A neurotypical response to something might say "ah well; I'll deal with that when I need to; they're busy; whatever" but trust me, even if it doesn't seem like that big of a deal to you, and even if maybe you think you not talking to them when they've reached out to you is just YOU being busy and not having time to respond-- a certain percentage of us are mourning, deeply, the loss of a friend we trusted. And we don't do trust deep friendships easily, by the way.  

So if you manage to work your way into a trust circle of a person who is very introverted and also has a neurodivergent mind-- please don't ghost them. And know that the amount of times they've reached out to you to try to connect and find out what's up are actually HUGE steps, and even a short "hi, I'll get back to you soon; I'm busy" would go a million miles to let us know it's not the worst case scenario we already have built up. 

Summer Thinking: Meet Your ADHD

I tend to neglect my writing in the summer, which is absurd, because during the school year, I always feel pressured and/or conflicted in my own personal writing. I am helping students write, usually, and the critiques of other writing tend to mean that it's hard to find space for me. And in the summer, I don't teach-- so I don't have those other critiques. So summer should be ultra writing productive. Right? Haha lolz. 

This summer, I am in the first summer where I have been full diagnosed with ADHD and have medication that helps me really, truly, productively FOCUS. It's amazing and infuriating at the same time. Amazing because I can accomplish so very much. Infuriating because I'm almost 55 years old and I've had this disability my entire life and was never diagnosed with it. All those years I struggled to focus on writing my dissertation, on finishing grad school before I had my kids, on my career productivity, on grading and creating things for teaching without doing it all in a rush at the last possible minute. I honestly always just thought I was inherently lazy and the way I am is just the way everyone else is but they just aren't lazy. 

This kind of thinking is incredibly common, turns out. It also turns out that thanks to us GenX moms getting help for our teens and going "hey, I do that too? Maybe I could use some help?" a LOT of moms (and probably dads too) are learning at midlife that they have this issue. That they've been walking in knee deep water their whole life, and that now, with a little help, they can actually walk ON DRY LAND LIKE EVERYONE ELSE. 

Menopause has been my trigger, I think. I think mostly I was able through most of my life to "mask" and be mostly on target. But the hormones and a fuzzy brain from that just made some things SO HARD that I finally admitted that perhaps I could take a look at talking to a psychiatrist, and he was pretty flabbergasted by how intense my issue was and how much I'd accomplished anyway and how much help I deserved to get. 

SO what does that all mean for me as a writer? This summer for me has been incredibly productive, just not for writing. I have done a LOT of spring cleaning (okay, summer cleaning) in my home. I've gotten a bunch of piles of stuff tossed away, cleared out, donated, organized. I "Marie Kondo'd" my house, like yes, yes, yes I did. I do still have ONE area that might not happen because right now my thoughts are turning away from the urgency of "sparking joy" with home decor. But it's still possible I'll get inspired and get the little closet under the stairs done. That might wait 'til Winter Break, though. 

Anyway. I kind of came here thinking I'd write something creative and it took me like 20 minutes to re-secure my account because it had somehow gotten rerouted to some other domain (which like-- how does that even happen? Hackers? And if so, to where? Cause it just seemed glitched, not rerouted and hacked). And then I lost steam and decided to just journal about this huge life issue. 

And now I'm probably done for the day on writing. The rest of summer is already filling up with a bunch of "human maintenance" appointments for me, my kids, and a family member I'm helping out so..... this might be all we get for Summer 24. And you know what? I feel fine with that. 

Trying to Keep Up With Spring

This is less of a creative post but it's kind of me thinking about what it takes to be creative so I'll put it here in the blog no one reads anymore. 

This time of the semester (close to finals) is always kind of tricky, especially in the Spring. I generally try to avoid teaching summer classes, mostly because our contract is for just those Fall to Spring 9 months and summer is "extra." I don't need the extra to live to support my life so if I can let other teachers who DO need the income have that time, then I will. And I'm also kind of happy to have the summer to regroup, to make my inner introvert happy and bored. Happy and bored makes me a much better, less burnt-out teacher again in the Fall. 

But Spring-- Spring we are all a bit tired. Students aren't "NEW" to this anymore, and they maybe aren't quite as rosy and enthusiastic about things like "learning to write a research paper with MLA sources!!" Now with parenthetical citations!! (To be fair, it's been parenthetical citations for a pretty long time, so it's not really a new thing, but I was going for a vibe there.) 

Not an eclipse. Kinda the night sky; Stars and Moon.  By LoFfofora Licensed via Adobe Stock. Please do not reproduce unless you pay them too. 

And so a week or so ago (it was longer than that really but who is counting) we did Total Eclipse of the Sun activities. Except in Texas, the clouds mostly came out to play and ruin our glimpse of the small dragon who occasionally comes out to take small bites out of our star. It did get a little chilly, the sun went dark for about 30 seconds, the birds caught zoomies and students, who had clustered around the quad and gotten snacks and eclipse glasses, milled about, not sure exactly what to do and a lot disappointed. 

My smallest offspring and I stood on a walkway up a bit higher and watched. A couple of the dual credit high schoolers were also up there and we all peered at the sky to see clouds part, which they did a teeeeeensy bit. Then the eclipse was officially over and we went back to our day. Pretty underwhelming for us, honestly. 

I did really like what my college's student life offices tried to do. They had music blasting, including "Total Eclipse of the Heart" (which we also looked at in my classes.) "New Moon on Monday." Other moon related songs. And when the sun briefly went dark, the campus lights came on and students dutifully "oooooh'd." 

Moving on into this coming week, we are moving into Research Projects. It could go well; it could be difficult. One never really knows. I will get some essays that make me smile and I will grade them and we will do Presentations and then a few weeks from now I will dress up in the cap n gown and traipse in to the cap n gown music and sit there smiling and clapping for the students who have passed their first two years of college and are moving up to the next couple. Some of them will have written Research Projects for me in the past. The dressing up in cap n gown and cheering for students in a milestone is still one of my Favorite Things™.

And so, it is Spring. We might want to fall backwards into piles of cherry blossoms (sort of a reference to this long loved sad poem) and melt into the landscape of our own sorrows. But this is Texas, and we don't have cherry blossoms. So I guess we're just gonna melt into the oncoming heat (coming soon to a small campus near you) and be glad it's not quite summer YET. 

April is National Poetry Month.

We read poems today.
Short ones. In my literature &
composition class. Students, stuck inside on a spring Tuesday,
a day a little mud-luscious, 
listened to Langston Hughes, ee cummings,
Dorothy Parker. Margaret Atwood. Marge Piercy. 

Well. At least some of them listened. Some of the we
focused instead on their phones. Look,
I'm not of the age of the "shakes fist at sky/ this blasted generation" type.
I'm good with the social media. And the dank memes & the culture wars.
But really. These are some good poems. Razzle AND dazzle. 

We
are supposed to be studying tone. As in "don't use that tone with me"
teens.

And also speaker. And voice. We
definitely read some Gwendolyn Brooks. And I told them how, when I
first learned that poem, in high school, I had never heard a real poet read a real poem. 

Not really. How would you even do that in 1987?

Can you imagine? 

And the revelation when I finally did hear Brooks emphasize that 

WE
at the end of every line. Jesus. What a voice. Singing sin and gin.

But, even then
I did get to hear music.
MTV, radio.
Oh I loved me a good pop song. Lived for it, really.
Cassette tapes carefully curated,
pause pressed to stop the DJ from talking over the song. (Why did they
do that? Anyway?) We
would scramble, and the DJ would talk anyway. 

I remember calling in, once, to dedicate "Keep on Loving You" by REO Speedwagon
to a boy with curly dirty-blonde hair. "To Scott from Kim." The thrill
when I heard the DJ read it out in a long list of

to xxxx

from xxxx's

(I don't even know
if he heard it.) I also did (not)
          keep on loving him. We
          were doomed from the start,
          I guess. 

So anyway. Back (as it always goes) to the students. 

The room is always a bit dim because the
PowerPoint you need to keep
(this generationanygenerationme) engaged
doesn't really show up in full light
using the ancient projector. Dim.  
And they're probably a little sleepy. 
And April is still (as far as I can tell)
the cruelest month. 

And they smiled when appropriate and eddieandbill and bettyandisbel 
are still always as charming as they've always been (which
if you ask Dorothy Parker was never). They
seemed sad at Piercy's Barbie Doll. 

And I ran out of lines of poetry to share. And I let them go early. 
How's that for a tone? 

KAW 4/2/24

I'm LITERALLY on the moon.

That title is not poor literary device use. We tried in January of 2024 but the second time in February was the charm and it worked!! My two creative anthologies I curated and my own short stories in other anthologies finally landed on the moon!!  

I honestly don't know which thing I'm more proud of-- the short story about space dragons, the shapeshifter story, or the two anthologies I curated to publish dozens of intersectional feminist writers, along with a dear friend. And I was also published in an anthology with a really weird and wonderful story about an undead cyborg girl... inspired by a James Tiptree story called "The Girl Who Was Plugged in." Regardless-- they are all on the moon in an incredible digital archive. SQUEAL!

Here is news about the project!