Sorry. ::bats eyelashes::

Didn't know we were related.

hahaha

OK, so I seem to be writing a campaign-themed rom-com, even though my life has more com than rom. Basically, I've got a character whose high school bf resurfaced in a fit of nostalgia...she has a new boyfriend, so she lied about it...it was just my instinct that she would, but I'm not sure why...

That sounds fun, erika

You think? That's good to read, because it started as a combination of "write what you know," and something to think about when I am upset.

I wrote a poem this week. [link]

I miss my old writers group. I found it through RWA when I was living near Syracuse, and it was a few of the women from that chapter meeting I think it was twice monthly to talk and critique. We had a lot of fun, but we also really provided not only support but great critique on ideas and works in progress.

And right now, I am struggling to get writing again. I've been wrestling with one idea for too long, and I've started and restarted it about a dozen times now, and I can't get anywhere. But I feel like I'm in a bell jar. S. was a terrible husband but he was a great sounding board, and I used to bounce ideas off him all the time, and even talk through plot points.

Mostly I'm just whining, I guess. And trying to figure out how/if I want to start some kind of local group. Not that it's going to make writing any easier, but at least I'd have some company?

If you're writing something, um, erotic and need a euphemism for genitalia, here are some that have been used in fan fiction.

My mother loves me, but her feedback? Not so great. I entered a contest about "meeting challenges"

Prepare For Struggle: My Secret of "Success"

I have to tell you that, ironically, I faced the theme of "meeting challenges" with some trepidation, not because, as a disabled person who's lived life in a wheelchair, I haven't faced them. I hesitate because I'm not the paragon of disability that climbs mountains in her chair while smiling and coming up with a great idea to revolutionize disability access at the same time. I'm not sure that I am a role model, given the American myth of cheerful barrier-busting that characterizes the dominant image of an "overcoming" disabled person. Maybe nobody is, at least not always, but my failure to measure up to this exalted-yet-manufactured standard is a secondary challenge that I struggle to resolve. Sometimes, my life seems hard and gets me down, and I don't hide it as well as some of the mythically inspiring disabled people do.

However, as someone once said, it's not getting down that defeats you, but staying there. Living in a world designed for abled people, aside from all the exploring I can't do and the limitations of a budget hampered by government assistance, the greatest hurdle I face is isolation. I speak of both literal isolations, involving limitations in actual real-life human contact, and a subtler kind that comes from not feeling that people that I do contact know what I have gone through or share my frames of reference. All is not lost, however. Technology, whatever its failings or privacy concerns, has expanded my view of the world (even given the heightened stress of the 24-hour news cycle that sometimes leaves me feeling like a grain of sand on a crowded beach) and has given me a way to reach out to others.

Online life, in over twenty years of being a part of it, has been a great supplement to neighborhood and family activities for me. The internet has increased my participation in political and civic life, which gave me more of a chance to understand the issues facing me as a working-class disabled person. More to the point, jokes, personal stories, funny hashtags and action items got swapped throughout the country and the world. It was the first time since college that I really enjoyed fellowship on equal terms with other disabled people and it really has helped me put some of the stranger, disability-centered experiences that maybe I didn't share with my abled family into some perspective. This could be as large as a benefits rule change or the assault on the ACA, we need to mobilize to fight, or as small and silly as a weird encounter with a stranger outside the grocery store. Some days, it really helps, even if you don't really know the person that posts "I understand! Isn't it awful?" to know that someone understood what you meant without much explanation or trying to save their feelings. (Not that I blame my mother for getting tired of living with me sometimes during my Trump-era "Nebraska" period. Sorry, Mom, I'll try to take it one day at a time more often.)

Trying to think too far ahead doesn't work out too well for me most of the time. I may have a list of goals, but my body sometimes has other ideas. Sometimes I wonder if I'd been better off living with a disability in a country less obsessed by personal responsibility and individual control. Much as I love this country and long for increased accessibility and the like, I think I might have a less-difficult time in a society more comfortable with randomness and/or loss of control. At the very least, maybe I wouldn't have spent so much time absorbing images designed to sell soap and snack food at least as much as at was to tell a story or teach my budding personality about itself. Someday, I'd like to establish more connections with people with disabilities in other countries so I can see if there are any universal disability experiences and how much life with a disability is influenced by cultural prejudices. I suspect it would be illuminating, (continued...)