Challenge Day Ten

What day is it?

Well, it’s now after 2:00AM on Friday, and I am still up and working on my Thursday blog, because we are awake and watching a movie. I’ve basically switched to the sleep schedule of my dreams: stay up until the wee hours of the morning doing the best things (reading, watching movies, baking croissants) and then sleep until everyone else starts thinking about lunch. I wouldn’t mind it so much, but it’s disorienting when interacting with normal folks in the world. That’s cool, I needed another thing to make me feel like an outcast.

Daily Challenges

Stretching
1SE
Intimate Time
CookingToday’s Menu: for breakfast, Guy made toad in a hole/egg in a basket/eggy dunkus using bagel instead of sliced bread (he used a shot glass to cut out the middle and it left us with little mini bagels); if you guessed that we ate leftover meat pie for lunch, you would be correct; while I was in dance class, Guy roasted a chicken, so we had chicken and veggies for dinner. I’m ready for another flavor profile, but the plan is to have roasted chicken again for dinner tomorrow, so I guess I’ll have to wait until Saturday.
Reading (Poetry)Probable Poem for the Furious Infant” by Jaswinder Bolina captures the dazed and slightly garbled musings of a new parent, sleep-deprived and hopeful, decidedly melancholy. I liked the stream-of-consciousness feel to it, though the imagery didn’t totally resonate with me.
Reading (Fiction)I stayed up until about 3:30 this morning reading The Poisonwood Bible, and then it was the first thing I did after stretching and abs. I wish I could just spend the whole day reading (I mean, I suppose I could….)
Reading (Nonfiction)Today I read about mesh networks. Well, technically “reading” is what I did, but really Guy had to explain it to me like I’m a child. Everything I know about networking I learned from Guy; that’s what he did during undergrad and for several years after graduating. I understand the words on the page, but they don’t really go together in a sensical way for me. I gotta get to learning, though, because I think mesh networks are how my future world will share digital media and communications.
MusicI only plucked on my uke for about five minutes today, so I feel like I didn’t do anything at all musical, but I don’t know why I set some arbitrary bar for myself. I am doing so many different things, and my attention and energy are being pulled in so many directions, that I can’t do as much of everything as I want. Today I prioritized thinking about my fictional world for November, and I feel good about my progress there.
Postcard Poem
I wasn’t super interested in writing a poem today, so I kept it brief with a haiku. I started by brainstorming words around solitude and loneliness, which led me to books and reading. I like how the poem turned out being slightly ambiguous—it could mean sitting in seclusion while surrounded by friends, or being in seclusion and still surrounded by friends, because both work:
Trash PickupThis was another no-trash day; the one walk I went on with Howie, we were carrying things and I don’t have six hands. By the time I got home from dance class at 10:15PM, no one wanted to go for a walk.

Today’s Challenges

Like yesterday, I did my abs right out of the gates, after my morning stretching. The exercises did seem to be a little easier, but I still feel wrecked at the end. Maybe it’s one of those things that will never be “easy” for me, and maybe by the end of 14 days I won’t even feel it? I at least wasn’t too fatigued for dance class, which was fun; I got to see some new people dance, and also catch up with some old friends. I’ve taken class with the instructor before, but it’s been a minute. Overall, it left me physically tired but emotionally lifted.

For my Thursday Thing, I decided to continue my NaNoWriMo prep from yesterday, rather than write fiction based on the exercises from college. Mostly, I have been thinking about my future world intensely, trying to work out details that will shape the course of events and my characters. And I am nervous about being ready for November. There are a lot of things to consider, many answers I need to locate before I can begin my narrative. So for the rest of this month, my Thursday Thing will be to do NaNoWriMo prep that isn’t precisely in line with the NaNo Prep 101 packet.

For some inspiration, I watched Mad Max: Fury Road and considered how shortages of water and crude oil would shape society. Now, my world will not be steampunk, and there will not be a Doof Warrior wailing on a guitar, or people hung upside down as human blood bags, but I wanted to examine the way the resources are closely guarded and controlled. I was struck by the male-dominated space, as well, and the subjugation of women (who are held as milk sources and breeders, yuck). It’s a movie conceived as a chase scene, so the plot and details are naturally very thin.

As I write this blog, I am in the middle of The Postman, another post-apocalyptic film (underrated if overly cheesy, in my opinion). It’s closer to resembling the world I imagine, where resources are tainted and relatively rare, but still available, and everything is not completely destroyed. I learned that it is based on a book, and am considering reading it, because the movie definitely omits some essential explanations. One question I have is, why would people believe that a postal system would be in place before, say, taxation? Anyway.

Overall, I didn’t do a ton of writing, I mostly did a lot of thinking, Googling random topics, and making notes about things I want to think about for my world. I have a growing list of details I don’t want to forget, building slowly into a fully-realized world. I’m starting to get excited for my story, which is great, but also means my head is lost in the clouds. For today, chilling on the couch was a welcome break from the going-going-going of the last nine days.


Featured image © Budhiargomiko [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]

2 Comments

  1. Ladafi says:

    I have not seen The Postman, but I do know that the US Postal Office is completely self-sufficient/independently funded. I could imagine a world where the government has collapsed, but the post office keeps trucking along, or even takes on its own life/revolution. Though, I guess if it requires people like my dad and step-mom to revolt (two postal employees, though, my dad retired), I won’t hold my breath.

    1. Keep Right says:

      In the movie, Kevin Costner happens upon an abandoned USPS truck in a post-apocalyptic world where there is no government, puts on the uniform because he’s cold, and then delivers the mail he finds as a means to get a hot meal. Some gung-ho kids are so convinced by his farce that they end up re-establishing the USPS on their own, and ultimately Costner is forced to go along with them, or else admit that he’s a con artist. I wish the movie focused on the kids more, because they are clearly the ones getting shit done, but in the end they erect a statue to KC and he gets credit for everything; it’s like attributing the fall of Voldemort entirely to Harry Potter. Standard Costner fare, really: a good idea, taken too seriously and too far, and smashed into mediocrity.

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