I learned that people other than me are being creative over at 15 Minute Ficlets, which is so friggin’ cool. I LOVE reading these!

I learned that the fantasy of being thin is more about being a different person internally than it is losing weight externally.

I learned that maybe loving your fears instead of hating and fighting them (PDF) is a better way to go. (Non-PDF link.)

I learned that Dungeons & Dragons offers some great insight on what makes humans act, which can actually be applied to marketing.

I learned the difference between blind and authentic trust, and that authentic trust is more than just sincerity.

I found some amazing, fearlessly original, awesome music.

I learned that I am not the only one who gets maddened by the thaw smell when spring feels like it’s so close.

I learned that experimenting with gratitude, daily, can change your life for the so-much-better.

I learned that saying “I don’t know” is a great practice in mindfulness.

I was reminded that that life never actually lacks a purpose.

I learned how penguins solve everything– er, I mean, how niches are more effective than homeopathy– er, um… oh, just click the link.

And now, a Friday photo from my archives:

I think I would like to start sharing some of the amazing things I learn from The Internet and its denizens. Perhaps even weekly. Who knows?

I learned how sexualization replaces opportunity with obligation; how girls and young women are so pressured to be sexy according to mainstream standards that they struggle to discover their own personal sexuality.

I learned that the things we’re afraid of are nowhere near as damaging as the fear itself.

I learned that being a writer is like being a lesbian sometimes, but it is worth it to stand up, stand out, and stop hiding.

I learned to observe without judgment – to witness my thoughts, emotions, and actions without placing them on a value scale of good-to-bad.

I learned that dueling cellists playing Smooth Criminal are pretty much the coolest people ever.

I learned that writers are people, not things – and there are certain pro-personhood measures that writers can take to preserve their already-questionable sanity.

I learned that there is now a free-range social media movement to support no cages (existing beyond simple categories), no copying (crediting the source), and no cruelty (respect and tact when debating).

I learned about the 11 best decisions someone made for their website, which were atypical in that they didn’t stick to the book and did have room for error and play.

I learned to folk the rules – er, I mean, I learned the “rules” of folksinging.

I learned that it’s okay for writers to not write about writing and that writers can write about writing if they want to.

I learned that there are free occupation-tailored marketing courses that are both informative and entertaining.

What did you learn this week? Share your discoveries and shinies in the comments!

In an effort to write more, connect more, and have more fun, I am raising @15minfic from the dead. (Cue the chanting, incense, and gothic candle-holders. Mmm, incense.)

In essence, 15 Minute Ficlets is prompt-based spontaneous writing. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I’ll post a prompt – a word, an image, a quote, some lyrics – and as soon as you see the prompt, you start writing. You only get fifteen minutes to put words down. The prompt will be posted on the forum and on Twitter.

From there, you can do whatever you want. I suggest posting your ficlet in a reply to the original prompt on the forum and/or share it wherever you live on the internet – Twitter (hashtag: #15minfic), Facebook, your blog, etc. I want to help both of us write more often and more freely, and this is my favorite method of doing it.

Wanna play? Check out today’s image prompt!

I’m a bit of an odd duck. I don’t celebrate the Gregorian calendar’s new year.

I am, in fact, so self-centric that I celebrate the new year on my new year – on my birthday. It’s conveniently close to the Gregorian version – January 15th. Every year, I have this two-week period of in-between, where everyone’s new years have started and mine is still on the way.

I also don’t make resolutions for the new year – I set goals. I started doing this as a teenager, asking myself the all-important question: “Next year, when you turn n years old, who do you want to be?” And so I would figure that out, and then determine my goals based on where I wanted to go with my self-cultivation. It’s turned out to be an incredibly useful way of passing the years, and I plan on continuing the tradition indefinitely.

With that in mind, I am welcoming the new year – a little early, of course, but that’s okay. I am looking ahead, questioning where I am and where I’m going, and playing connect-the-dots.

This year will be a red year. Last year was, as well, but I didn’t choose it, so it rode roughshod over me while I was trying to play by yellow’s rules; this year, I choose the red and all that comes with it. It’s the color of the mother’s fur, dark and rusty and brick-red. It is the color of hearth embers, the red you see behind your eyes. It’s a color with passion and power, fierceness and strength – it can protect the weak spots while they strengthen, the hurt places while they heal. It can stretch the scar tissue past the initial pain to regain functionality. It is independence without solitude, might without hostility, anger without malice, peace without vulnerability.

I am not a red person. I have been magnetized to red influences in my life, both as people and as concepts; myself, I am made of cooler colors and water, not brightness and fire. I understand, on an instinctual level, what I lack and what complements me. Much like the human body needs salt to survive but cannot create it, I need aspects of red to be balanced, but must seek it outside of myself and continually consume it.

This year will be about correcting my deficit of red and learning how to take action.

What will you do this year?

PS~ About half of this post is written in the language of me; I rely heavily on elemental and color symbolism. If something confuses you, please do ask and I’ll be more than happy to translate!

Me

I call myself genderfunky. Other words could also work: genderqueer, bigendered, gender-full, agendered, genderless, genderfluid.

I love when people have no idea what my gender or sex is. I love being mistaken for the opposite sex by someone in person. When I was growing up – yes, all the way up to and through adulthood – my primary preoccupation with my physical appearance was how well I could pass for the opposite sex if I wanted to.

I have no urge to physically transition my body to the opposite sex. It wouldn’t fit me any better than the body I have now – which is to say that I like both, not that I don’t like either.

Gender vs. Sex

I understand “sex” as anatomical, genetic, and hormonal characteristics of male/female/intersex/what have you.

I understand “gender” as the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex.

Me vs. The World

I do not associate characteristics of mind, heart, or body (outside of genitalia) with a given sex, which means that, inside my head, there is no gender.

The world around me has gendered almost everything: tones of voice, attitudes, levels of a given emotion, gestures, gaits, colors, clothing style, types of material possessions, living spaces, standards of beauty, strengths, weaknesses, likes, dislikes, hobbies, professions. This culture is inclined towards binaries, so its common interpretations of gender are also binaried: boy, girl.

Since I do not exist solely in my own little world, despite my best efforts, I perceive people in general as having genderiffic stereotypes, expectations, and opinions. When I consider what other people think or feel, in any situation or scenario, I always add the gender-filter while looking through their eyes. (Disclaimer: I’m aware that people have different types of and intensities of gender-filters; I am generalizing for sake of brevity right now.)

Aspects vs. Labels

I train in martial arts. I have a motorcycle and a mohawk. I wear earrings in only one ear. I carry at least one knife on me at all times. I wear button-down collared shirts and flannel shirts at work, and boxers and long wool socks all the time. I try to divorce myself from anything associated with negative immaturity or physical or emotional weakness. Most of my rolemodels, both present and past, could be described with the word “warrior.” I am broad-shouldered and solidly-built. I lift weights. I love Metallica and Godsmack and 80s rock’n roll.

I get misty-eyed over sappy moments, in music or movies or my own life. I watch childhood movies and will never stop loving Disney and Pixar. My hands are graceful and long-fingered and sharp-nailed. There are stuffed animals scattered everywhere in my home, including a few that stay on the bed; I still have the teddy bear that was my first ever plushie, given to me right after I was born. I have a dustmop-dog that is smaller than each of the cats, who fit into the palm of my hand when she was six weeks old. I’m easily susceptible to my emotional environment, so I’m careful with the places I go, the people I hang around, and the media I consume. I love Ani Difranco and Melissa Etheridge.

If someone read only one paragraph or the other, they would likely slap a label of masculine or feminine on me. But both sets of traits are true; both are me. I’m not just masculine or feminine; I’m a person that cannot be categorized in binaries.

Hence “person,” not “computer.”

My Problem

I don’t rest easy with (what I think are) other people’s perceptions of me.

I don’t want to appear feminine, because in the culture around me, femininity (not women themselves, but girliness as a quality) is associated with weakness. I also don’t want to appear excessively masculine, because in the culture around me, “macho” is associated with insensitivity. And I prize both my strength and my sensitivity.

Ideally, I ignore gender labels. I let people draw their own conclusions, and I focus on being true to myself, in each little aspect, no matter what gender label someone else might slap on it.

But in 2010, I slipped up pretty badly. I fell into the throttling grips of my I-must-not-appear-weak compulsion, and my personal expression of genderfunky drifted into the decidedly masculine. I wound up suppressing the aspects of me that could be considered feminine, lest I as a person be considered feminine and thus weak. And this suppression thing is Not Okay.

My Solution

I wrote this post. It took me days and several drafts. But I wrote it.

I am telling you, straight-up, that I am genderfunky. I am masculine and feminine, neither and both, something else entirely. All of it. None of it.

And I am recommitting myself to myself, to all the aspects of me, and to the truth of them, not the commonest labels they wear.

I’m just me, in my own space, doing my thing. The world and everyone in it can form their own opinions; I know where my truths lie, and that’s the important thing for me.

I am grateful for this year, and as the last grains of sand slip through the hourglass’s slender waist, I want to give 2010 a thankful farewell.

More than any other year, 2010 taught me how to care for myself. How to recognize my weak spots and my ruts and my downwards spirals, and what to do – to improve my headspace, or to simply survive with the least amount of damage and misery. I have learned so much about myself and my processing patterns this year; it’s amazing.

2010 taught me to appreciate, deeply and fondly, the feeling of being welcomed when I walk into a space that is not mine.

2010 showed me that I have a family in J’s family.

2010 helped me learn how to edit my own fiction and how to outline plots in great detail.

2010 forcefully cracked open my understanding and empathy and compassion, widening it more than I ever expected.

2010 gave me a blessing that I have wanted all my life – the knack for making my own music.

2010 let me prove that I can handle things, for myself and for other people who need me.

2010 provoked the realization that I am strong when I need to be and relaxed otherwise, and that vulnerability is not weakness.

2010 led me into new, dazzling depths of my relationship with and love for my partner, my mate, my beloved J.

2010 introduced me to Havi and SJ Tucker, who have both changed my life for the so-much-better.

2010 midwifed several brilliant new experiences and events, Tai Kai (martial arts training camp) in March and Strowler Nights on Halloween two of the best; attending and participating was a challenge and a joy.

2010 gave me the opportunity to learn how to do and be so much more.

And as 2010 passes its last breath to 2011, who will take its first, I salute the old year and welcome the new. I hope this one is full of peace, joy, and growth.

A few years back, when I was living in Colorado, Pat and I played host to two of our British friends for the first time. On a long car ride to see the local sights, they introduced to us a game called The Parsons’ Cat. You take turns calling out adjectives for the Parsons’ cat, in alphabetical order; each person can have a letter, or everyone has to do each letter without duplicating the others.

Tonight, I found myself playing the game again, centering around our fifth houseguest cat, Kali, aka Deathcat, aka Bitty. She’s been here four months with no official departure date, so she’s sort of ours until her mama can receive her. Then, just to contrast, I played the game with my dog.

Dianne Sylvan did a random 30 Things About Me meme, and I’ve decided to join in. Why the hell not?

1) I’m not actually sure what color my eyes are. I usually say blue, as that is the most popular consensus, but I’ve heard green, grey, and combinations of all of those before. I like to think they’re teal.

2) I love dinosaurs and have since the first grade, when our teacher helped the class make a life-size Protoceratops out of paper maché; up until the 6th grade, I pretended to be a raptor. Utahraptors are my favorite dinosaurs.

3) Snakes are my favorite animal, followed by spotted hyenas as a close second.

4) I grew up reading Conan the Barbarian novels, which may explain a lot about my worldview. (Never messed with the comics; hate the movies.)

5) I took five years of French through school, and while my vocabulary has decayed to a rusty skeleton at this point, I still can’t pronounce the Americanized versions of French words; I have to ask J how to say them like everyone else. (Crêpes are not crapes. Aaaugh.)

6) One of my birthday traditions is to mark down what song is playing on the exact minute (7h58 AM) of my birth as a light-hearted indicator as to how the year will go.

7) L’impossible by Jules Laforgue is my favorite poem. It had such an impact on me when I first read it that l’impossible is an entire metaphor/concept in my paradigm.

8) I really, really want a hedgehog. This is due to a summer babysitting my high school’s bio lab’s hedgehog. I named her Riyan.

9) I am infamous among my friends for crazy roadtrips; the longest one so far was Nevada to West Virginia and back again with J, a 40-hour drive each way with no stops to sleep.

10) I had a pony as a child. Her name was Ginger, and she was an ex-carnie pony. The kids down the street had her and poked one of her eyes out with a stick, so my mom went up to the parents and told them, very firmly, that she was taking the pony. “But she’s not for sale–” “Yes. She. Is.” And so I got a very patient, very mild-mannered brown pony when I was… 7 or 8. I used to take running leaps onto her to ride bareback, and she never tried to kill me. :D There was also one time, trotting down my dirt-and-gravel road, the saddle started to slide because I hadn’t tightened the straps enough; I wound up underneath the pony in a loud thud. Ginger looked between her forelegs at me, snorted, and waited for me to pick myself up before she moved.

11) I helped my parents build our new five-bedroom, three-bathroom house when I was 10-11. It was just us. We didn’t hire any contractors or have much help; Dad designed the floorplans, and we built it over the course of a couple years on an acre of land. (Yes, I actually helped. I painted, put up insulation, wired outlets, nailed boards and drywall…) I later colonized the two rooms that encompassed the entire second story, as well as its little bathroom, as my own. (I also had a bedroom downstairs with a benchless bay window.)

12) I hate having to wear socks, slippers, and/or shoes in a home. I greatly prefer the feel of my own feet on the carpet/flooring, and when it’s cold enough to demand I wear socks, I resent the necessity.

13) While I was growing up (all the way through adolescence, too), my biggest preoccupation with my physical appearance was how easily I could pass as the other sex if I wanted/needed to.

14) Before I was 16 or 17, I refused to swear at all, despite its social prevalence everywhere I went, including my own home. In high school, I scolded a health teacher for swearing in class when there was no need for it. Now, I cuss in about six different languages/dialects at various times.

15) I’m synesthetic; I see sounds. Everything I perceive has a color, a texture, usually a shape, sometimes motion, and sometimes a temperature (which is usually color-linked). This makes listening to music an awesome experience.

16) I’m not a movie or TV person; I haven’t had TV for years, and I like it that way. I have favorite movies that I will rewatch to the point of memorization, but it’s damnably hard to get me to watch new things, barring the occasional ooh, shiny movie.

17) I’m ADD and have never taken medication for it; I often refer to it as spidermind. It makes some things easier and some things harder, and while I don’t consider it a Bad Thing overall, it does make for a very different way of processing the world.

18) I regularly write on my hand in Kalash, one of my conlangs. See? I’ve used this script since high school and recently extrapolated it into a rune set.

19) I feed sashimi to a brown shoulder-dragon quite often. Occasionally minced chicken or steak is added to the menu.

20) My favorite part about living in Colorado was how absolutely, magically beautiful the sky was every single day.

21) I’ve lived in the mountains all my life. I was born and raised in the Appalachians, moved to the Rockies as a young adult, and then transferred to the Sierra Nevada range to be with my partner.

22) I love scribbling doodles on post-its or half-sized notebooks. Trying to draw on a full-sized sheet of paper normally kills the natural flow of my sketch, and I have to work a lot harder to make it look okay. This is why I have a 6″ sketchbook to replace my old full-size.

23) I love math (said the writer). I love putting my brain into gear and sitting back to watch it work through a problem; it’s like observing a computer from the inside. That said, I’m also mildly dyscalculic and can really struggle with keeping the numbers straight. I’m much better at algebraic mathematics than I am at base arithmetic, simply because the former has more letters and is easier to keep straight than a bunch of raw numbers.

24) I draw Korats on the office whiteboard. The current one has been there for months; it’s bright green with red stripes and a red mane. I also write Kalash (see #18) in the corner for good mojo.

25) I abhor most types of bottled water. Aquafina in particular has such a revolting taste that I can barely drink it without literally gagging, and will only do so when it’s the sole alternative to dehydration. Arrowhead is the only bottled water that doesn’t make me cringe to any extent; I drink unfiltered tap water in most places.

26) If I were rich and/or famous, I would revive and fund the Atlas Lion Project. (It was an effort to determine Barbary lion genetics in captive lions and start a breeding program in hopes of reintroducing Barbaries to the Atlas Mountains in northern Africa, where they once went extinct in the wild, but it ran out of funds a while ago and never got off the ground.)

27) I recently fell in love with Avatar: The Last Airbender. Through it, I discovered baguazhang, which I would now love to study (for its own sake, not for its link to the series).

28) If I were unable to wear contacts or glasses, I would be legally blind. However, I do wear contacts now and have worn glasses as a kid; my terrible eyesight means I grew up as non-sight-based as a human can. This makes my visual synesthesia kind of unexpected, and my pixel-perfect graphic design judgment amusing in its irony.

29) If I could choose a super-power/mutant ability, it would be shapeshifting.

30) I am a water person. Not astrologically – my astrology is about as non-me as it could possibly be, except for the ‘fickle’ and ‘stubborn’ bits – but in every sense of the word, symbolically and motion-ly and spiritually, I am a water person. And I like being this way.

Over this glorious four-day weekend, I decided to try my long-awaited 50k/24hr challenge. That means writing 50,000 words in 24 timed, not necessarily consecutive, hours. I can type 119 wpm accurately, and I can write 700 to 800 words of fiction in a 15 minute sprint; that means, with an average of 3k an hour, it would only take me 17 hours, not 24, to finish the challenge. Simple, right? For me, the test would be endurance, not speed.

I started the weekend with 13,644 on my NaNoWriMo novel (yes, being so far behind is nothing new for me). I intended to write on Wednesday and Thursday evenings, then all day on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I even had the entire story outlined, something I rarely do, something that would really help in speed-writing. It was going to be easy.

It wasn’t easy. I didn’t write on Wednesday or Thursday. I doubled my wordcount and crossed 25k on the story’s total on Friday. On Saturday, I struggled to reach the halfway point of 8.5 timed hours, 25k new words as of that weekend. Sunday saw me write an hour before the burn-out was complete and I threw my hands in the air. My writing had deteriorated from “not bad for how fast I’m going!” to “still revisable without a total rewrite!” to “man, this is total junk.”

I resolved to just hit 50k on the story, rather than 50k written over the weekend, and even that didn’t happen. I stopped trying to force it, and I stopped writing. I kept thinking about my novel, chewing over the next scenes, getting myself accustomed to the idea of forging on. But I didn’t start writing again.

I didn’t expect to fail this challenge, not when a dozen other 50k/weekend writers were zipping into the 250k range for their month’s total and making 50k on the weekend on the second day. But my brain is not wired to work with this kind of singlemindedness (yes, I’m ADD), and I haven’t built up the conscious discipline that’s needed to keep myself on track. I tried, and I couldn’t do it. I failed.

And that’s okay.

I still tried, and starting was hard enough to be a victory in and of itself. I still got over 40k on my NaNoWriMo novel, making it a cinch to finish over today and tomorrow, before November ends. I stopped, acknowledging my own limits, before I could be so burnt-out that I never wanted to see my novel again, and before I could write so much junk that I’d have to excise entire chapters to get rid of the dross.

So, I failed, and I’m alright with that. It was a good run, I didn’t go completely crazy, and I made a lot of worthwhile progress on my novel. I don’t regret the attempt, and I’m not beating myself up for not crossing the finish line with arms upraised in triumph. It’s okay.

Enough about me. How was your weekend? Do anything fun?

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

These brilliant words are courtesy Maryanne Williamson and were used in Nelson Mandela’s inaugural speech in 1994.

And they are true.

Whatever you consider the purpose of life – whether it’s to illuminate the darkness, or to balance between light and shadow, or to simply exist – we have spirits that can shine. In living our own lives, on our terms, in our own ways, we stand as examples that it can be done. We are living proof that we can be ourselves and succeed, whatever “success” may mean to each of us.

Brilliance is not reserved for a chosen few; it lives in all of us, waiting to wake up and stretch into the world through you.