So.

In the usual conversation of "Wah, my boyfriend" with Mom, I finally found out that she asked him what they were and he said "friends." She also thinks he mis-texted her some message that sounded more affectionate than he's been sending her lately.

By god, THE CHRIS TRAEGER BREAKUP HAS OCCURRED! It's a shame Mom hates Parks and Recreation, because explaining this to her flies over her head, but... yeah, that totally happened.

So anyway, she is depressed, and realizing that she tries to buy guys' love (she said as much to pseudo-boyfriend M, who said, "You knew I was spoken for and I wasn't going to marry you."), and she feels like crap. Sigh. Really, people in my gene pool should apparently not date. Maybe Mom had the right idea when she settled for Dad, come to think of it, because her picker isn't great. Obviously that's inherited too.

In other news, I am debating the nature of reality.

You see, I am writing a non-fiction book for Camp NaNoWriMo. This is somewhat going well and somewhat not. Mostly I am extremely behind (I am at 34k, should be at 41k today) because I have had little time to write for the last week and a half. I am getting less than an hour to write during lunch (laptop setup, finding a table, blah blah) and that's mostly about it, hence why I'm behind. I am quoting like a fiend, which I was going to do anyway, but even I am starting to think, "You know, I'm not even writing this so much as I am just showing off buttloads of research." I think it's also coming out shorter than I thought it would, which is odd but probably fixable. I don't think I'd do Camp NaNoWriMo again. Not that it's bad, but it does pretty much feel like I am doing it all alone, and I don't much like spending my summer hours thinking, "I should be on the laptop. How much charge is left in this puppy again?" Plus for some bizarre reason idiots seem to think that a girl typing away on a laptop with the iPod on equals "Hey, come talk to me, I am totally bored and doing NOTHING right now and would love to answer your questions and sign your petitions." I actually pretty much ripped the petition guy a new one because he wouldn't take a polite "I'm not registered to vote here" lie for an answer and finally ended up screaming, "I DON'T WANNA SIGN A PETITION, OKAY?!?" Rreally, it doesn't matter what the hell the cause is, any random stranger coming up to bug me is going to annoy the crap out of me. But especially when I only have like 40 minutes to attempt to hit word count for the day.

Okay, that wandered off into a rant. I'll come back. Anyway, since my book is on tree-hugging hippie issues, i.e. having a calling and wtf to do about it, it has widely ranging sources from psychology to philosophy to at one point quoting one of the dudes in Insane Clown Posse (I'm serious, he said something relevant to the topic!). And at one point I thought, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if I got God's perspective on this?", then remembered that I got a copy of Conversations with God (one of 'em) at a thrift store one time... So anyway, I read through the whole trilogy, which you can *cough* find posted online for free for some reason, not sure if that was legal or not. And it's...interesting. (To explain the concept: the dude who wrote the books does automatic writing and much to his surprise, started getting mental responses to his bitchrant to God that he was writing one day.) Some stuff sounds right, some stuff is shocking. For example, I don't think God likes parents too much-- he'd definitely agree with Phillip Larkin AND at one point he flat out says that parents are too immature to be raising children and the job should be left to the grandparents. (This makes me think, "Uh, then why do humans have prime breeding years when they are still clueless gits? Wouldn't it have been better design to have us not get fertile until age 60?" I still want an explanation for that one.)

Anyway, to some degree these books pretty much piss all over the entire concept of my book idea, WHICH IS IRRITATING, but other bits totally support it, so at some point I am just going to have to have a giant debate with myself about whether or not this trilogy is going into the book. But God's big thought with regards to callings boils down to "I don't really care what you do, I just want you to be the most you you can be." I personally disagree with this because in my experience and in a hell of a lot of experiences I've read about in my research, it kinda seems like otherwise, but this might just be a difference in phrasing or in how you think about the situation. But God goes on quite a lot about how you should believe what you want to believe, which is something I have issues about.

I am generally walking a fine line between sanity and crazy. Look at my dealings with Mom, for example. I am usually the one who is dropping the Anvil of Reality on her head every week. I am usually everyone's Anvil of Reality, which usually gets some nods and some "I know you're right, but... I luuuuuuv him" sorts of reactions. I am using to playing this role, 'cause someone has to be the sane one around here. But on the other hand, I have weird shit happen to me on a semi-regular basis that I can't exactly explain via science (though I keep looking) and leads me to think that stuff that isn't 100% brutal reality happens too. Hence why I'm writing this book and all that. You have this irritating out-of-the-blue feeling about doing SOMETHING (like moving to LA in my case), it won't go away no matter what the hell you do for years, so how does it work? My book basically says that (a) this is what it is, (b) this is not going away, no, really, (c) consequences of not caving in and doing it eventually (this is why I disagree with God on the "I don't really care what you do" thing), (d) how do you cope with it? While working on the last section there, I am going through tons of research for suggestions, and a LOT of my research basically says to have the end idea in mind, the mental picture, and not worry so fucking much about how you get there. Yes, that's the whole "The Secret" thing, I suppose.

But I am naturally inclined to realism, and the weird shit I do believe is because I had personal direct experience with it. So being all airy-fairy about "oh, I will BELIEVE WITH ALL MY WITTLE HEART that I will make it to LA in a year" is kind of something that brings out my inner eye-roll and makes me mutter, "what about acting in accord?" Realistically, you need to be DOING SHIT in order to make stuff happen, because most of us don't get the magical job fairy offering us a new job, or whatever your "I wanna manifest that" situation is. Yeah, sure, the magical job fairy might show up, but how likely is that? Probably not very, y'all. So this "just BELIEVE" thing bothers the shit out of me. And in my book, I am trying to come up with other things for people to do in the meantime even if they can't immediately quit their jobs and move and become a whatever, or have no idea what to do to become a whatever.

But in the meantime, which I am way in right now, in a period of total doubting my own sanity and ability to do anything beyond data entry and craft projects in life, uh....what the fuck do I do? Or think? Or believe?

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