Tag: storytelling

The Character Interview

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Here’s the string I used for Copilot, because as a blogger, the first thing I asked was “friends” and they said they could not research information on real people. Thus, none of you are fictional characters, it’s just that an AI capable of tracking your every move without telling you that has no moral high ground here………………. Search https://theantileslie.com and ask questions a friend would ask about the characters. You are all perfectly perfect in every way. There is no need to make you fictional characters. You are all enough exactly as you are. I am paining a word portrait, and that’s always going to include being a 3D character because as I was telling Zac, “that’s not real life.”

  1. Who are the central characters in the stories on this website?
    • Supergrover is unashamedly the main character because she’s the friend that makes me the most passionate in life, and not about her. She’s fiery and intense, which makes me match her feeling for feeling when she is fully open and hearing vs. listening. The only reason I’ve ever wanted this relationship to the extent that I have is that I have no idea what she’s like in person, but online she’s fucking brilliant. She doesn’t have to write more, because all her other words are still inside me. I have memorized them. She lives in me whether she’s comforted by that or disgusted. Dealer’s choice.
  2. What challenges or conflicts do the characters face?
    • It’s not about conflicts between characters unless it’s me and another person. I have no interest in publishing hearsay, like hearing Bryn’s side of the story on a fight with Dave or whatever. I cannot comment on the fight, because I was not there. I only write down what I observe, I am not a gossip column…….. as much as people would like to believe it. For practical purposes, I don’t give a fuck how they feel about the way I express my emotions. How they react is none of my business. The only thing I ask is to get some clinical separation before you come and talk to me about it, because I want your reaction to be yours and your response to be mine. Get all your anger out and be ready to discuss it without turning it into a knock-down drag-out. When people are angry about what I have written, it’s too much punishment, too fast. That’s because they attack me without really thinking about how they should respond. They just speak from the id and do not give a flying fuck whether it hurts my feelings or not. They don’t want to resolve the problem at hand, they want to cut me off at the knees for reflecting it as accurately as I possibly can without doing their emotional work for them.
    • I have been bitten in the ass for my armchair psychology approach to writing about people. However, there’s a reason for it. I am not trying to tell their story for them, but to try to make sense out of why they did what they did. I want to be able to give them the benefit of the doubt, and as I write about them, the good and the bad becomes clear……. what relationships are worth saving and what relationships drain my energy rather than giving me some. I am often best friends with Colin from “What We Do in the Shadows.” This is because I have a lot of neurodivergent friends who will ramble on and on. You can’t get a word in edgewise, so you listen to a lot of shit you never needed to know. I want to wait until I have the bandwidth to listen to the stories in which you came close to killing yourself. Again, people open up to me because I am an INFJ, the Counselor personality. That being said, I do not have enough emotional bandwidth to take on counseling as a career. I would be excellent at it, and a mess regarding taking care of myself.
    • Maybe later in life, when I have more money and less fucks to give, I’ll become an LPC or MSW. I need to work on clinical separation first, because when people talk to me my mirror neurons go off and I am overloaded to the point of meltdown a good bit of the time on public transit. The one time I really, really wanted to have a conversation with someone, her mom kept interrupting me and it was bullshit. I just couldn’t stop her from interrupting because the subject at hand was so serious. I was talking to a 10-year-old girl who was standing in the aisle while I was sitting down next to her. Children throw down truth bombs whether they’re autistic or not, so I wasn’t prepared for what she said, but I was prepared to help. I told her I liked her pink tennis shoes, because I used to have pink tennis shoes and I missed them (ask me how I lost them. If Dana is reading and she was drinking something, she just choked). I ask her what grade she’s in, etc. Then, out of nowhere, she said, “my dad’s dead.” Just absolute gravity’s rainbow (if you’re not familiar with the literary reference, gravity’s rainbow is the arc of a bomb). Oh my God. The perfect child walked into my life the moment I needed someone to talk to. I told her that I lost my mom, and we just sat there for a second, dazed. Then her mom started in with all the gory details while I just wanted to talk to the kid. She was young enough that her father’s death is going to affect her far more than me. My mom was at least able to see me through to adulthood, past my 40s. The last thing I said to her made both of us cry. As she was walking away, I said, “remember that your dad is still alive because you’re half of him.” It was the most I could do in four stops.
    • To turn that back around into challenges I face, It”s that people love stories I write about the random interactions on the bus/metro. Yet they rarely think I can portray them accurately, too. They believe that my observations of strangers are dead on, and my observations of them are wrong. I have been right so many times that I do not lose sleep over it. When people tell you who they are, believe them the first time. They love it when other people are 3D characters, but God forbid I love them more than strangers and treat them like muses.
  3. Are there recurring themes or motifs related to the characters’ experiences?
    • The one theme that has been with me since my first entry, which I think was called “Apologia,” or something like that, is how to survive relationships with CPTSD. I have so many other “letters behind my name,” comorbidities that seemingly never end. It’s about how my brain processes logic and emotion despite that, because people see my brain as brilliant when I write this way, but not when I talk. Neurodivergent overexplaining in a neurotypical brain is called “making excuses.” I have problems with authority, and this is a big one. You have asked me for information, I gave it to you including my role in things so it doesn’t look like I’m trying to pass the buck, and you’ve chastised me. I have not made excuses for anything. I told you like it is.
  4. How do the characters evolve or change throughout the stories?
    • Supergrover has the biggest arc, because it’s the story of how I fell in love with her twice. The first time, it was because I thought she was the hottest thing on God’s green earth, and more woman than I could handle in three lifetimes (her husband probably just high-fived me in his head). The second time, it was because of deep companionate love because I felt that even though she’d never be my wife, that didn’t mean we couldn’t be close if we wanted it, because our friendship was rock solid. Supergrover’s answer was to sweep it all under the rug. Mine was to work through it so the bad feelings got light to them and disappeared. She also has privacy concerns about my blog, and so do I. She did not see the ways in which I was trying to protect her and thought I was attacking her. The arc has been my romantic feelings and my process in getting rid of them so that we could relax into something easy and free. It’s not easy and free when the other person hates conflict.
    • Bryn has the most beautiful arc now, because we’ve known each other since 1997. I went to Portland before she met Dave to officiate at her wedding. Thus, the nickname “Rev. Argo.” It is the perfect representation of me and I love it so much. My two special interests are intelligence and theology. I would design a tattoo that said it, but I trust VERY few people with fonts. For instance, even basic ones. How do I know you’re going to recreate the ascenders and serifs perfectly? I do know that it’s a tattoo worth having because it’s a two word LDB (Lanagan Daily Briefing) on who I am as a person. That requires a special skill, like a Japanese writer who uses special ink and brushes.
  5. Are there any memorable quotes or dialogues from the characters?
    • “My favorite comment was ‘I didn’t know the writer was gay until the end'” -on my marriage article.
    • “Painting my feelings as fact” -from Supergrover.
    • “As if it isn’t a wheel with many spokes,” which meant more to me than diamonds because even if she didn’t want to respond to them, she knew we had problems on both sides. It let me off the hook for everything being my fault all the time.
    • “Sometimes when we get the most angry and full of rage, we’re not even fighting with our partners. We’re fighting people who aren’t even in the room.” It was a comment on adding to the list re: my marriage article and it saved me a ton of resentment towards Dana because she didn’t hit me. She got confused and hit someone else. And I know who it is. I hope she does, too, and releases any guilt or shame. Their face got scrambled with mine, because I know that feeling so intimately. I have worn it on my skin. Most women do. We’re divorced because I don’t forget, not because I don’t forgive. She can be precious in my memories without new interaction.
    • “You’re like a 15 year old boy…………… and his mother.” Can’t remember which reader said it, but I absolutely fell apart laughing.
  6. What emotions do the characters evoke in the reader?
    • I cannot speak to that unless people comment. I can only comment on what I control, which is my half of the relationship. What I want people to pick up is how much I love the little things about the people in my life. Supergrover is the busiest person I know, and sometimes she makes the clock stop only for me. It’s the most important thing in my life, that she’s giving of her time. I have never been railing that I want more of it. I was doing two things at once. The first is that I didn’t want more time with her, I wanted more letters where she laid out her feelings so that I wasn’t wandering around in the dark all the time. The second was trying to stay grounded. Of course it wasn’t weird to hang out because we’re actually friends, not a facsimile because we connect virtually. I only wanted her time if she was available, and she never has been. That part is completely okay with me. What’s not is waffling between feeling guilty she’s not responding and thinking about me frequently, she just doesn’t have the bandwidth to reply. Completely okay. What I object to is holding all that in and exploding when it’s a two minute problem to solve. I have asked her to go and do something one time, and she said “I don’t think I’m ready quite yet, but someday, perhaps?” She was trying to stay grounded as well, we just never made time for it. Such a pity. One of the things I’ve always wanted to do is ride in her car, because I’m betting she drives like a normal person most of the time, but if I asked her to scare me, she probably would. She has the kind of engine that would be very effective at that. I think we would have had a blast together, but we just couldn’t resolve our conflicts. Those are the emotions I mean to express, but whether other people see that, I cannot say.
  7. Do the characters have distinct personalities or quirks?
    • Of course they do. I have a random collection of friends in which I know in a lot of different capacities, and I lead a life that’s different than most people by seeing more in a day than others. Public transit is the credit balance of a writer just as much as childhood. You can write about people your readers don’t know, and neither do you.
  8. Are there any romantic relationships or friendships depicted among the characters?
    • All of the above. Dana and me, me and me (it’s the stupidest thing ever that I fell in love with the character I created of Supergrover more than I fell in love with a real person. It makes me feel better that I didn’t cheat so much as develop a connection I couldn’t ignore. That information, however, did not go over well with my ex-wife…… but she knew enough to see it coming because the TARDIS had landed in the backyard. One person’s needs trumped the other, and I’m sapiosexual. Supergrover kept my mind incredibly busy, so I was ace for a long time (seven years) because I preferred it to romance. It wasn’t trying to persuade Supergrover of anything, just that I like talking to people I already know and am an introvert so it’s hard for me to make friends. I’m not shy. I have problems getting up enough energy to go out. I was incredibly devoted to her because I had the bandwidth. It was a lot, but I never meant any harm by it. I just wanted to make her feel loved and cared for whether she was my romantic partner or not. A yellow string indicating an emotional support person on the murder board of polyamory doesn’t mean less, ever. It means that they’re on the calendar because time with them is just as important as time with each other.. For instance, Bryn gets just as much airtime as Zac. It’s not about dividing my love in thirds, sixths if you count Zac, Dave, and Michael. It’s about being able to love all of your “gaang” a hundred percent. Your heart doesn’t get smaller the more people you meet. Your bandwidth does.
    • Zac and I have been dating over a year, my one red string. I am no opposed to the idea of having different partners, they just have to appeal to my brain and also be wired for polyamory because Zac and I are close enough that it’s not worth going through the trauma of breaking up with him. I want to help him be his best self, and I can’t imagine not being at his side when he asks for it.
  9. How does the author describe the physical appearance of the characters?
    • In very vague terms and not because I want to. I have 2D vision and cannot place an object or person in its environment. Therefore, my creativity does not come across in physical description. It is easier to discuss what they wear than their faces. The most recent example is seeing Zac all dressed up in his formal uniform for a promotion ceremony with a fresh haircut and Rivers Cuomo glasses. It’s the most beautiful picture of 😉 I’ve ever seen.
  10. Are there any character-driven plot twists or surprises?
    • Not on purpose. Because I’m writing about real life, if they happen, they are completely organic. I have not made up a story, I am writing the one that’s already in front of me by looking at the past. Past determines future. If you don’t reflect on yourself, here’s the motto you live by:
      • If you always do what you always have, you always get what you’ve already got. It is the only thing I have ever remembered from a company training video which empathized moving quickly.
      • The biggest plot twist in the whole show is that in season 23 I learned that I’m autistic and the way I’ve walked in the world all this time is a lie. I have always needed special accommodations to succeed and called myself a dumbass instead. I’m completely done with that. I’m not dumb, you don’t understand my disabilities.
  11. What cultural backgrounds or identities do the characters represent?
    • Lindsay and I are mostly of Irish and English blood. All Europe, all the time. I think Zac is the same, although he got the redhead gene and I’m jealous. Supergrover is a minority, but I don’t think she would call herself that because she’s biracial, white and Latina. Most of my friends are white, because my black friends have moved away and we haven’t kept in touch. Because Hayat had so many rooms, I have shared space with a Cameroonian, a Liberian, and a Nigerian. The funniest part of this is that the Cameroonian invited his mother to stay with us. She didn’t speak any English at all and fell over laughing when I said “francaise c’nest pas comfortable pour moi” (French is not comfortable for me, one of the only sentences I can put together because of Michel Thomas). So, we spoke in hand gestures and fed me until I exploded. I loved her. She could have lived with us forever. Franklin was my housemate, and in retrospect I fell in love with him and wanted to marry him, I just couldn’t say it. We had a lot of chemistry, but he was determined to marry an African woman……………. who steamrolled all over him. The match wasn’t hard to see. He’s a doctor. We could have crushes, but it was inappropriate on multiple levels to act. I do wish I’d said my piece, though, and not because I wanted the answer that he loved me, too. I wanted the answer that he heard me when I said she was emotionally beating him up and I was trying to stop that. Realizing I loved him was just a side effect. I just didn’t have any jealousy, so him making a choice wasn’t my call. It never was, so even more reason not to tell him.
  12. Do the characters have unique hobbies, interests, or passions?
    • Supergrover and I both like to read and write.
    • Zac and I both love fictional spies, and he was going to go with me to the Mendez lecture and got TDY (temporary duty).
    • Bryn likes to garden, be “witchy” (she is weird in the most wonderful of ways), and work with dogs. She also likes house sitting for people with kids when parents need a break, so that is a thing you know now…………. Bryn doesn’t want to adopt, I don’t think, but I’ve told her I’d have a kid with her any time she wanted. It’s not about the whole fairy tale romance of bonding over the baby. It’s that I can be a decent coparent whether we’re involved or not. Plus, she has a boyfriend now. Many hands make light work, especially if we lived together. That would be infinitely possible because Dave’s house is huge. This is not a reality in any way, shape, or form. This is just saying that if Bryn wants kids, don’t let being single stop her. She’s not now, but it was the thought that counted at the time….. one I actually meant. I feel like I’m too old to be a biological parent, but still young enough to coparent a kid that didn’t come out of me. It is fun to dream whether it comes true or not, like inviting Supergrover to spend time with me in Viet Nam. If she doesn’t have the bandwidth, cool. But I wasn’t wrong for asking. Trying to stay grounded, remember?
  13. Are there any character arcs that stand out?
    • Yes, but only within me. I feel that because our relationship has always been virtual, it allowed us to say things to each other that we wouldn’t have told anyone else, then got mad we did it on both sides. The arc has been how to come down from autistic meltdown and burnout to allow myself to move past all of it. Whether she comes back is not up to me. Whether she’s changed her behavior is up to me. I have to think about what I will tolerate as a blogger and as a human.
    • Dana went from my favorite person in the entire world bar none to the one that hurt me the most, because even though I’ve had big emotional fights with people, I’ve never been hit until she did it. I had a black eye and phantom pain for weeks. As I have said before, I have forgiven her and that has come to comfort me. However, it is interesting to note that when I said I had “phantom pain,” my nerves started to burn in that part of my face. I found out why you never hit a girl with glasses because it wasn’t the hit that fucked me up. It was my glasses smashing into my face.
    • Zac has gone from a casual friend to my favorite ally in life. Because we have a special niche instead of relying on each other for everything, I can see this relationship long, long into the future. We just really don’t have much to fight about because we work hard at staying on the same page. He’s only been a bad hinge once in our entire relationship, and that’s not bad. It was just growing pains. By “being a good hinge,” it’s protecting me by not telling me about problems in any of his other relationships except for the barest minimum. So far, he hasn’t even asked me opinions when the issue has to do with me, because he knows that’s not my business to handle. It’s his. What his other partners think of me is none of my business, because I get to date him whether anyone else likes it or not. No one gets veto power. We just go parallel and stay out of each other’s way. Nothing matters except that Zac and I are solid. Anything other than that is above my pay grade.
  14. How do the characters interact with each other?
    • I have traditionally kept up with Supergrover through Gmail, because it catalogues conversations just like instant messages and it’s easier for her to get e-mail on the go. She can pick it up on her laptop or her phone that way (as opposed to using iMessage or SMS). When we’re both online at the same time, e-mails fly fast and furious. When we’re not, I write long letters because I like to imagine that she puts down her favorite novel to read me. I am not wrong.
  15. Are there any morally ambiguous or complex characters?
    • Everyone in the world, no matter who I write about- from Margaret Cho to Bryn and Zac is morally ambiguous. It’s human nature. To exclude anyone from this is devaluing what the meaning of “human” is in the first place.
  16. What motivates the characters’ actions and decisions?
    • I can only speak for my motivations in writing, because I am not responsible for anyone else’s reaction. What motivates my actions and decisions is reading my own blog and picking out the things I need to rethink. I need my own character to grow and change more than the proverbial “them.”
  17. Do the characters face external obstacles or internal struggles?
    • Yes, but only with me. Anything else is hearsay and useless. I only want to write about how I handle a situation, not how someone else is handling theirs. I call people out on behavior when it hurts me, but that is not a way to “get back at them.” It’s being able to remind myself long after I’ve supposedly forgotten why reaching out is a bad idea. If they’ve hurt me badly, there’s no chance in taking another risk. They become memories as I gain empathy and remember people fondly again once the anger has passed.
  18. Are there any character-driven conflicts or rivalries?
    • One that’s really cute:
      • I talked to Jonna Mendez at the release of “In True Face,” and I told her that one day I’d write something as good as she did. She deadass looked me in the face and said, “it’s good you’re still workin’ on that. There was a gleam in her eyes. I said, “I’m going to be laughing about that for three years,” because she didn’t know I spoke “migroaggression” and nearly spit out her water. She teased me as a writer. I would follow that woman into the ocean no questions asked. I think her employees felt the same way.
    • One that was really obnoxious:
      • The man I wanted to marry spun out on his own after I went to bed and thought I was being a hardass for not responding. So, he broke up with me while I was asleep. It was the most nonsensical thing I’d ever been through, which is why I shut him down when he said maybe later in life we could try again. No one gets over that kind of anger and abandonment in a short period of time, enough to end a relationship in two hours because he was so mad that he told me he goes off the grid when he’s in the middle of something and not to worry if he disappears. Then, he exploded at me for not contacting him for a whole day. I pointed out his hypocrisy without saying he was a bad person, and he tried to hit me emotionally with a sniper bullet, saying he was a better writer than me, that if I kept writing about him he was going to create a blog specifically designed to take me down (why would I care? Everyone is allowed to tell their story), and he was doing me a favor by not posting it on my blog. That’s the only reason I posted it on my blog. I don’t give a fuck how I come off in his letter, because I know what’s truth and so do you if you’ve been reading what I’ve been saying. Because he and Supergrover have so much in common, I’m betting he took a whole lot of offense at nothing. I was showing why I didn’t want the same toxic cycle with Daniel I’d already been living for 10 years. His behavior came off like an angry little boy, and he got mad that I told him that. He extrapolated that into namecalling, but that’s not what I meant. It never is. Someone’s self-esteem tells them what they hear. Someone’s self-esteem being in the trash basket tells them you mean they’re a piece of shit whether or not it’s true.
  19. How does the author create empathy or connection with the characters?
    • By being as organic as I can possibly be. Telling you what grew out of what even if correlation is not causation because I hold no authority over what someone is really thinking, but I do hold authority over trying to figure out what went wrong. I know that by doing so, people come out of the woodworks to tell me stories that they were thinking of as they read. I don’t create empathy or connection for my characters. They write their own, because my observations give you a view into their lives when I am able to see it. What they are is what they are. If you have gone through something similar to them, you will feel empathy and you will feel heard.
  20. Which character resonates with you the most, and why?
    • Supergrover, because half this blog is just ripping her off blind. Because she’s a 3D character. She is present whether we’re in each other’s lives, or a ghost that comes to sit with me when I need her the most.

The Long Awaited FAQ

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 11 Comments

I asked Copilot to search my web site and ask me 20 questions regarding what it read. I absolutely cannot believe that I thought to do this. I don’t have to search through my old crap, Copilot will. I’m thinking that the “FAQ” will not be any of your questions, but what a machine’s idea of good questions might be. If there is a question that you would like included, please leave it in the comments or join the fray on Facebook. It would be really great if you showed up because I’m meeting all these cool new authors. We’re a fun bunch. Come join us.

  1. What event led you to start your blog, and how has your vision for it evolved over time?
    • In the 90’s, I was working on a project for my mom at Kinko’s, and a boy in my Class at Clements was working there. He sat and talked with me the entire time I worked, and because neurodivergent people pick someone they like, we were inseparable for years. Shortly after that first meeting, Luke approached me and said that he and his friend Joe were starting a web server called “Darkstar,” and did I want an account? Of course I did. I learned everything from day one on how to code my own pages, then later how to install WordPress on a server (or a local computer where it refers back to localhost rather than sending a call out to a server. It’s done so that you can perfect everything before it goes live. I wouldn’t know that if I hadn’t sat there and done it, becoming better at HTML, CSS, and creative writing all at once. This culminated in my perfect job that I never should have left at University of Houston. I was a reporter for Information Technology Daily News, and it was my job to update it every day. So, the combination of those things made it where I was already used to a publication schedule, I was already used to coming up with X number of words by deadline, and I realized that I had something to say. I have never regretted the decision to start writing. I have regretted the number of people I’ve let get in the way of an authentic dream….. I don’t want to be famous. I want to be respected. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I have already achieved that goal. It’s a good place to be when all your goals have been met and money would just be nice. I’m going to be a writer whether I make money at it or not. So…. what was the event that started my blog? Someone asked me to, and the rest was history.
  2. How do you choose the topics for your posts, and is there a theme you find yourself returning to often?
    • I don’t really choose a topic, because I am a gardener. I start at one place and just let whatever flows through me spill onto the page. That is because this is designed to be a series of rough drafts. Not that I am going to make a book out of my blog (I would if someone asked me, but I don’t want to put effort into self publishing. What I mean is that I repeat lines and themes a lot. This is my notebook. I might not refer to it for anything more than a half a line that would fit perfectly into a fictional scene. The diarist in me is not meant to be published. This is a repository where I can feed my fictional ideas. No character is borne from the ground up. Most of them are different aspects of your own personality rather than taking the piss out of someone else. While writing fiction, you literally get lost in characterization, and you really only find pieces of your friends in retrospect. When I’m writing about Carol, for instance, she is mostly me. She’s also a lot of other people. So, I write the character forwards, and only see my friends’ quirks when I read back. That’s because I’m not thinking about “this character has to be a perfect representation of Bryn.” It’s that Bryn probably crossed my mind that day so some of her personality leaked into someone else’s. It’s never a 1:1 ratio with fiction, because you’re going so fast that you’re just trying to make it sound good on the first pass. You’re not thinking about every piece of information it took to create the story, you’re thinking about getting the story out. So, a character written by me would naturally have tiny characteristics of Supergrover, Bryn, Zac, my dad, Lindsay, David, Oliver, who is a dog, Jack (who is also a dog) and me. I don’t fit the narrative with the personality in mind. I write and the character tells me who they are. You can only write from your own experience, and who I’ve talked to that day is important. In terms of theme, it’s changed over the years, but not at its core. You have to write the book you want to read when you don’t see it on the shelf. I had very unique problems, some of them oddly specific. It’s been a wild literary ride, but I like where I’ve ended up in all cases. I don’t dive deep to alienate people who aren’t like me. I dive deep and they naturally come to my mind, like they’re sitting with me while I’m writing. I am telling the people in my life what I need them to hear, because if they’re not listening, someone will. I don’t need attention, I need empathy. Whether that comes from friends or readers is of no matter. One feeds the other. I count on you when I need to retreat.
  3. Can you share the story behind the name “theantileslie”?
    • My friend Chason named himself “theantichason,” being one of the people that’s been on the net as long or longer than me despite being younger. I thought that was a cool nickname so I asked him if I could steal it and he said yes. I’d broken up with Meagan and I needed to get rid of my old user id, “wingnut9.” The fact that there have been eight wingnuts before me helps a lot. I liked the nickname, but also thought it was condescending because in Canada they use it interchangeably with idiot. I have been theantileslie on both my blogs now. The old one is called “Clever Title Goes Here,” and is searchable on the Wayback Machine. I have changed my display name to Leslie D. Lanagan, however, because I want to get my name out there. So, hopefully the comments will introduce me a little better.
    • I use the theantileslie.com because it’s easier to type (and remember off the top of your head) than the site title. Having a URL that is easy to type and easy to remember is one of the most important features you can give to your web site.
  4. What has been the most surprising or unexpected response to one of your blog posts?
    • I don’t remember exactly, but the marriage article I wrote years ago took about an hour to write, if that. I had so much to say on the subject that it just spilled out. Then, Martina Navratilova tweeted it from a friend, then Margaret Cho retweeted her. My stats took off in a very big way. I’m not that polished a writer every day, but that’s the point. Sometimes things some out great on the first try. Sometimes I have to keep workshopping an idea until it’s perfect. This is one of the ones where everything flowed onto the page from one word to the next. More important, though, were the people that took the time to comment, because they all told me what a brilliant list it was. It’s sad that the marriage ended, but it was so much fun when it was good.
  5. How does your environment in Silver Spring influence your writing?
    • When it’s really nice, I like to take the train around and just write. I will choose a random stop, generally Dupont Circle, then just get out and move. Sometimes I’ll have a coffee, sometimes I just want some random social interaction because it’s been too long since I’ve talked to anyone. I love downtown Silver Spring and all it has to offer, but I also like sitting in front of paintings while I write.
  6. You’ve mentioned audio storytelling. What are the challenges and rewards of this medium compared to writing?
    • My biggest challenge with audio storytelling is that I do not have experience as an editor. If I make a mistake, I generally have to go all the way back to the beginning. It’s not always mistakes, though. Sometimes I realize that the emotions that were there when I wrote the piece in complete isolation get forty times bigger when I hit the red button. I hate it when I am too emotional to continue, which I sometimes am. Supergrover’s entries were so deeply personal that I could not speak them all the time. So, I didn’t record them for a reason. I could not dive back into the wreck without my voice breaking. And yet, some of that I left in, because I wanted her to be able to hear my emotions. All the conversations I wanted to have and didn’t. She is not responsible for responding, but I am responsible for getting my feelings out so they can pass. Feelings are a transitive state. I’ve been all over the place this year, mostly about her….. again, monotropic thought process. Make no mistake. I am happy with the outcome, but that doesn’t mean I don’t also hurt every single day. I just manage it. I put on the gangster rap and get it handled.
  7. How do you balance personal storytelling with privacy concerns on your blog?
    • It’s an evolving process, and it’s different for each person. I cannot write anything about Supergrover and Lindsay that would get them into hot water, so I agonize over how to tell stories without telling them. It would be better if I didn’t write about anyone at all. However, because this is my driving passion in life, I stopped accepting nasty criticism because my friends are always perfect and I’m the asshole who wasn’t silent about it. I also got a boyfriend who could care less that I write about him (within reason), and a best friend who cares even less than that. Daniel told me that I could say anything I wanted about him, but that’s never true during blowback. What he meant was that I could write anything nice about him, and the same became true of Supergrover as well. It was too easy to do the wrong thing, because if I expressed a need, they’d shut down. So, I’d go off on my own to write about why I’m frustrated and calm myself down, and every bit of vitriol you can possibly imagine has come at me because I’m a writer and typing is how I stim. Things will change as I get more popular, because I’ll need more intensive discussions with Zac and Bryn as the web site gets bigger. The easy answer about balance is to make friends who don’t give a shit you’re a blogger, and I don’t give a shit if they’re fans. Zac gets it. He tells me when it’s off the record. Bryn would, too, if she wanted me to keep something tight. She just never has before.
    • The worst blowback I’ve gotten in recent memory was when I cut Sam out of my life and my friend Dan told me that my blog made me sound like a dick and looked scandalized when I said that was the point. She was angry that I’d written about a relationship that ended in the worst way possible. She had never even met Sam. I don’t think she was mad about Sam. I think she was wondering if she was going to be next. She wouldn’t have been if she’d expressed her concerns once. We had a good discussion and I thought the matter was closed. Then she kept bringing it up and it made me feel like this woman she’d never met was more important than me. It was not the only thing wrong in our relationship. It was, however, the moment I realized that our problems were large and I did not want to solve them. If we have to have the same fight three times because you think you can change my mind with different words, telling me over and over that I don’t understand when I very much do and just disagree…. Blowback is relentless. Get a thick skin or get out.
  8. What role does humor play in your storytelling, and how do you weave it into serious topics?
    • I think I have a unique way of saying things, because I’ve always been kind of punk. The humor is sharper, edgier for me than it is for someone like David Sedaris because he never worked for anyone like Anthony Bourdain, and I’ve worked for several. A lot of the things I say are designed to be a pressure release valve on horrible topics. My level of humor greatly depends on my mood when I’m writing. If I feel funny, I am. It’s my inner monologue. I put in jokes when I need a break from the heaviness. I also have a “read it or don’t” attitude so that people who vibe with me come along and the ones that don’t just ignore me altogether. I have covered some really serious shit over the years, but I’ve always tried to include at least a bit of humor, or at least light at the end of the tunnel. It often takes dark jokes to make me laugh, because words have to cut deep before I start feeling.
  9. Could you describe a particularly memorable interaction with a reader that impacted you?
    • My eighth grade teacher telling me that she could tell I was being abused and didn’t say anything. She didn’t know how, but she knew something was up.
  10. How has your writing process changed since you first began blogging?
    • I make an effort to write before I do anything else. Last night was unusual as I just happened to be up when the prompt came out. Normally, I wake up at 5:30, check my tablet for the writing prompt, and think about it for the length of a shower. Once I have a jumping off point, I make myself a mug of coffee and a large glass of ice water with lemon. That early schedule has only begun to change, because I’m trying to go to bed and get up at the same time as David, but my body clock gets up at 0530. Even if I stay up later, I will still wake up that early. The one thing that’s changed relatively recently is not taking a break if I can help it. I need a body of work from which to draw, no matter what purpose. I must have had a hell of a lot of content for Copilot to be able to ask these questions.
  11. What advice would you give to someone interested in starting their own personal blog?
    • Only go into it if you’re prepared to be dedicated. I think you’ll rise in popularity because there are fewer and fewer of us, but it takes a mountain of work to get noticed.
    • Never take a day off. Ever. Don’t let more than 24 hours go without updating your content. I set the bar at “never” so that if I miss one or two days, I don’t beat myself up over it. People will not come back to a web site that does not change frequently. It was drilled into my head at University of Houston, so if I go to my blog and I’m like, “this is old. This blogger sucks,” I post. Nothing makes me post faster than getting bored of the current entry.
  12. How do you handle writer’s block, especially when dealing with personal stories?
    • The most profound things come out of me when I have writer’s block because I have made a commitment to use ANYTHING as a jumping off point. It doesn’t have to be good. It has to be written down. As I relax into the rhythm, the subject will get deeper and deeper. The best way to stop writer’s block is to ignore it. Your brain is overwhelmed, so write about nothing until you’ve got the faucet started. I don’t sing in front of a crowd until I’ve warmed up, either.
  13. What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned from maintaining your blog?
    • The more I write, the more I know myself and I am comfortable being me.
    • Creating a web site isn’t nearly as annoying as maintaining it.
    • Angels should have come down from heaven with herald trumpets when they deprecated the blink tag.
    • WordPress is not the same as it was when I started using it, and I have not liked any of the modern changes because they appeal to lay people and not web developers.
  14. How do you see your blog evolving in the next five years?
    • I will get the rising creator status and will start being paid from Facebook directly. I may also move to Substack, but I need to research that more closely. I am looking into an open source content management system that’s open source, so I don’t have to pay for things like web stats plugins. I have more and more reach every day, and I don’t see my engagement going down. It’s nice that I’m only now getting juice because I don’t think I would have been able to handle it early on. I needed to get to a place where I could write 5,000 words in any weather or mood. I’m ready to take it to the next level, but that’s not up to me. That’s up to you. I’ll be grateful for every share and like along the way.
  15. What’s your favorite post that you’ve written, and why does it stand out to you?
    • I feel that it is too private to share with the class.
  16. How do you incorporate feedback from your readers into your writing?
    • I interact with them in the comments. I am often surprised at how wise I sound when people pick out snippets and tell me what they liked. That’s because now that it’s already out of me, I’m just talking to people and reading their comments. My entries all run together, so when people quote me, I often don’t know it’s me. I think I’m amazing when I think I’m someone else. It’s what helped me to have self-confidence…. thinking someone wrote a really great line and realizing it was me. I also get mad and sound like a dick. See above.
  17. Have you ever considered compiling your blog posts into a book? If so, what would that look like?
    • I haven’t. I think it would make a very good book once it was edited, but I do not think I would like to take on the project of deciding which entries should make the cut. Therefore, I would rather have a company approach me and say they want to do it.
  18. What’s the most challenging aspect of sharing your life online, and how do you manage it?
    • I feel that is too private to share with the class.
  19. How do you decide which life experiences to share and which to keep private?
    • I don’t. These stories come to me when they come to me. I only need a writing prompt when I can’t think of a jumping off point. Most of the time, I can.
  20. What impact do you hope your blog has on readers, and what do you want them to take away from it?
    • I hope that women will realize that being emotionally abused in childhood is just as valid as being physically/sexually abused. You develop the same PTSD reflexes. When it comes to emotional abuse, women are likely to say “it’s not that bad” all too often.
    • I hope that I am teaching people how to live their lives, whether it’s through what I have done, or what I have left undone. Sometimes, survival is seeing what you wouldn’t do, too.
    • I hope that telling my story, just the way it is with the mundane and not so mundane details of my life, will encourage others to believe that you don’t have to be a genius writer to create a journal that is valuable to you. Writing is a form of prayer. The way I see it is that I will never know if God is listening, but I’ll always know that you are.

I told you I love writing in museums. 😉

Blog is My Copilot

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Today I decided to do a short question and answer regarding the death of my mother. I couldn’t think of anything to do with one of the prompts, but I can combine all of them. This will probably make you laugh, cry, and get angry. My mother is dead. She will not know I said these things. Keep this in mind, that I am just a child reflecting on her parent’s entire life, and that little moments do not define a lifetime. There are times when she was wonderful to me and times that she was just plain terrible. What kind of child doesn’t say that about their parents, especially after they die? I am not out to get her. I am out to illustrate her. By the end, she will be a 3D character to you, and hopefully you’ll learn more about me as you read.

I’m sorry to hear about your loss. Here are 10 thoughtful questions a friend might ask to learn more about your mother and her passing, which you can use for your personal blog prompt:

  1. Can you share some of your favorite memories with your mother?
    • I think I turned nine the year she threw me a Peter Pan birthday party with tons of activities in our backyard. There must have been a hundred people at my house for that one, because it was a tiny town. If there was something to do, people came. I was not popular in school, and I struggled against my mother being more popular than me (she was the music teacher, the fun one. I have been a 90 year old autistic man for like, 46 years. That tracks. I am 46 years old. I knew the smash hit “Get Off My Lawn” by the time I was seven.). Therefore, I was a lot more relaxed with her when we were just out in the backyard having fun. My grandparents, both sets, also lived close at that time and she was more relaxed in her comfort zone than she was when she was trying to make me into the perfect child. I didn’t get it. She could talk to me about being good because of my dad’s job all she wanted, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t just going to sit there and be weird, anyway. I found Daniel and I was fine. Neurodivergent people travel in packs. If you’re an introvert, they’re just smaller.
    • She thought I was a great singer and often gave me solos in things. She would laugh until she cried when she told the story about how I was too shy to sing with the choir, but as they were leaving the stage, I decided what the people really needed was a solo.
    • We were a team. She was my accompanist no matter whether I was singing or playing my horn. She learned monster orchestra reductions (piano accompaniments) just to take me to contests. Then, because she was already accompanying me, she accompanied all my friends as well. The only person she never played for, I don’t think, was Ryan Darlington (he’s a tuba player). It’s not that she wouldn’t have done it, we just went to different middle schools. We both ended up at PVA, but he went to Johnston and I went to Clements. Johnston was the performing arts middle school and I didn’t get it. I got into Clements and we marinaded and grilled their asses at contest. It was memorable because I was the trumpet soloist that helped get them there. I played the opening trumpet call in the “Dances With Wolves” score. I auditioned for PVA when I was at the absolute top of my game. My mother played for me at that audition, too.
    • At HSPVA, I was a trumpet player. At Clements, I was in Varsity Band and Varsity Choir at the same time, which I loved.
      • Let me take a quick break to tell you how I did it. I sang for the choir director and she put me in junior varsity. I said, “are you sure? I’ve been doing things like the Messiah for five years now.” She said, “Ok. Prove it.” She played the first four measures in front of a monster exposed lick, I believe trying to prove to me that I couldn’t handle it when I’d had in memorized since I was 12. Please. My opera voice flipped on. Case closed (link is to a humorous clip from one of my voice lessons).
    • In short, I would not be the person that I am today without the grand piano she bought to put in our apartment after my parents’ divorce. That’s because as long as it was there, she always had a way to draw me in. Draw me closer. Test out anthems she wanted to use with her choir and wanting to play for me because she could hear how it would sound at choir practice. I was part of the vetting process for the programming when she was a choir director/organist. I asked her to leave me her piano in her will, and she did. Now, it’s at my sister’s house and David’s house just isn’t big enough. But when I’m at Lindsay’s, I get really quiet and let my mom speak through the chords. It what she did when she was alive and it worked. Why stop now?
  2. How has your mother’s life influenced the person you are today?
    • A tape runs in my head that I should be the perfect person all the time because people are always watching. This was true when I was a preacher’s kid, but now I can’t turn it off and I have massive self esteem issues at making any mistakes. I have chided myself for not achieving perfection instead of taking the W at excellence. I’m the person that absolutely is driven to get an A+ on everything and a body/brain that just won’t have it. I can either accept my fate or die thinking I’m the worst person that ever lived. I choose acceptance.
    • I work with children much easier because I am social masking her, an elementary and middle school choir director for all of her career, except for the time she took off from work until Lindsay and I were old enough to fend for ourselves. I’ve picked up more, noticed more than she ever imagined. She was a saint and also tough as nails. Strict disciplinarian who hid all her feelings because she thought she wasn’t enough, either. It is the plight of women most of the time. Because I needed to break free from that pattern, I see it for what it is. However, I do not think of her as a bad parent, but an overly fearful and depressed one. Her whole life depended on what other people thought. I was basically Chelsea Clinton on a very small scale.
    • She is the person that convinced me it was better to hide my every need than to display it. It’s part of the reason Lindsay is so outgoing and free, while I hide in the shadows. She doesn’t worry about what people think of her to the extent that I do, and it’s a problem. It’s only now by convincing myself I am a good writer who has something to say that I really value myself as an asset and ally. Again, I mean to come off as confident, not arrogant. Someone has to tell me I’m pretty every day. It might as well be me. I got well when I realized that not saying anything left me angry and resentful all the time. When I began to express needs, no one liked it because I was so angry. So, so angry. I apologize for that, but I cannot apologize for the ways I’ve felt ignored by people who’ve said they loved me. It is on them to apologize to me if they feel bad about it. But if they don’t, I’m not waiting around for an apology. Sometimes you have to create your own closure, and I’m at peace with it.
    • She is the one that taught me how to treat a wife/husband, basically doing everyone’s emotional work for them and taking all their bad behavior because if I don’t, those people will leave. It took me a very long time to come to the realization that if they leave because you have emotional needs, you’re better off without that person in your life. Be careful in deciding the line where someone else is “needy” and you’re refusing to talk. A mind will only accept that of course you’re too tired to talk for so many days/weeks/years. However long it takes for someone to realize they’re unhappy. But because they’ve been unhappy for a very long time, you’re not going to like it very much. Have clear boundaries on what’s too much so that fights like these don’t come up. Work smarter, not harder.
    • She taught me that jokes were funnier when you didn’t see them coming, like her making a really sharp comment when she was normally so happy go lucky. I have a feeling that she was probably also autistic because the tapes that ran in her head were that she had to act completely normal all the time, too. It’s called social masking. Because of my family, I have both male and female sets….. as in, what a man would generally say and what a woman would. The female set is unsure and cautious. The male one walks in the world knowing that no one is better than me and no one is worse, either. It’s very important to make that distinction, because basically seeing the way I write convinced me that I had a man’s confidence online, so go with it. Be confident all the time, because it’s not all about you. It’s a survival manual for someone else.
  3. What were some of the values and lessons she instilled in you?
    • If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. I didn’t say anything for 35 years.
    • Be kind to everyone, no matter what they do to you. This has had enormous positive and negative affects, because I tend to overestimate the good in people and stop standing up for myself when I feel bullied. On the flip side, everyone is more open and caring with me because I am open and caring with them. It’s a mixed bag, as parental lessons often are.
    • Be subservient to your partner. Whatever they want to do, you want to do. What you want to do/eat is not up to you, because you have to watch your weight and not seem like a pig (I wasn’t on Adderall til college and had the normal appetite of a teenager), and also his choice of restaurant is always better than yours. I wasn’t raised to be queer. Neither are other women. We’ll talk for an hour about what to do for dinner because neither of us wants to assert an opinion that might offend the other. Same for dating. Lesbians take FOREVER to admit that they like someone because God forbid someone rejects them. it’s systemic, but my personal experience is unique and universal. One of the things I like about men is that they’re direct. It’s easy to ask them out because it’s a yes or no question to them. It’s especially fun when you don’t care about the answer and neither do they, because it’s no harm, no foul. With a woman, you’ll waste years pining over her until someone finally admits feelings and then spend the first four months of dating EXCLAIMING over how much we didn’t see it. Yes we did. We were just ostriches about it. If I don’t tell you I like you, then I don’t risk abandonment. It’s intrinsic to who women are as people. If we are not perfect, our husbands will leave. Flat out. This is changing as gender roles decrease. That information was useless to me then.
    • My mother’s narrative was never how hard it was for me that I was queer. It was always how embarrassing it was to tell people I was queer. She couldn’t empathize, which is the root of why we had a sometimes terrible relationship. Later in her life, she wouldn’t let anyone get away with a homophobic comments, but she never told me that. I heard it at her funeral, because all of the sudden she was now the cool mom and not the rejected one. She could play up that card instead of being embarrassed, all the while being completely disinterested in hearing how Meagan, Kathleen, or Dana & I were doing. I am glad that she came to peace about it. I am not glad she never told me.
  4. How do you cope with the grief and keep her memory alive?
    • I have fallen in love with everything Dia de los Muertos and I actually visit cemeteries a lot for the peace and quiet, yet feeling surrounded. The most profound place I’ve ever felt peace is at a neighborhood for the dead in Paris. It’s called Pere LaChaisse (sp?), and it’s got more famous artists of every discipline that you could possibly imagine. If you cannot travel to Paris, there are the same type cemeteries in New Orleans. See them before you die, because it’s an experience in and of itself. In DC, I have now been to sit with Gore Vidal. Good talk.
    • I wear an ichthus necklace every day now, because the necklace she actually gave me came apart in a million pieces. I got it at the funeral home, and the inside of the fish is filled with her fingerprint. I don’t like how I got it, but I do like that it was possible to create and a powerful remembrance to have my mother’s fingerprint on my heart every day.
    • Lindsay and I FaceTime at my mother’s grave when I’m not in town, or visit together when I am. It makes us feel closer to her even though we know she’s not really there. The idea is fun. We sit and talk to her, sometimes eat, sometimes drink coffee. It’s a safe space to get away from it all, and we do.
    • Stories come up at random times, and I never know whether they’re going to be good or bad. Some of them are still so painful that I blank out, like seeing her in her coffin. What is really bad is that because it’s the last image I have of her, it’s the one that’s stuck. My mother got sick and died in about 30 minutes flat. I wore this look of abject shock, like I was high on Oxycodone and completely sober. It was more than a year of magical thinking, because it was so unbelievable.
    • I know for sure that she got the death she wanted, because she did not want to be in pain and she did not want Lindsay and I to end up taking care of her for years on end. She didn’t know it was coming, but she would have been pleased with the result. It gives me complete peace. I don’t have to worry that there are things she would have wanted that she didn’t get, because I know for sure that given the choice between dying quickly or it being a long, drawn out process she would have chosen to go out exactly the same way.
    • Other people keep her alive for me. She was such a public figure that people tell me all the time how much I remind them of her. It’s irritating until you realize that it’s the only way to keep your mother alive long after she’s dead.
  5. Were there any traditions or hobbies she passed down to you?
    • Make a big deal out of people’s birthdays.
    • Love people until they just can’t stand it. Make it weird. So many people are hurt in the world. See it.
    • If you are a teacher and you don’t have money, you are responsible for finding it. She taught me that people will support a valuable cause. For instance, she dated a judge after the divorce that was pretty wealthy. She worked at one of the poorest schools in Fort Bend. She never asked him for money. She talked about her life, and he responded. One year he bought the entire class winter coats. You can get things if you ask for them, but only without asking directly. This is not bad advice, because it’s not one’s responsibility to respond to your needs, you’re just asking if they will. The difference is that I don’t take rejection personally and she viewed it as a flaw in her character. However, this is a new development because I finally got tired of not being heard correctly. I don’t do well when I’m talking around something and just hoping.
  6. What is the most important thing you learned from your mother?
    • I have learned many things from my mother, from the tender to the terrible. Every bit of it had to do with focusing on external validation. She was not attention-seeking in the slightest. She was just trying to take up as little space in the world as she possibly could, because someone, somewhere could be offended.
    • She gave really good hugs. I miss those the most.
    • Towards the end of her life, she enjoyed traveling and came to both Portland and DC. In fact, I also met her in Seattle and we went to the Experience Music Project before she and her husband left on an Alaskan cruise.
    • Giving birth is not for the faint of heart. It’s especially hard if you don’t tell your doctors that you are in pain. She said that she bit her pillow while everyone screamed and no one noticed that she needed medication. There’s no award for that, but if there had been, she’d have won it.
    • Own yourself, because no one else is going to do it for you. You cannot be perfect enough to please everyone all the time, and you will die mad about it. I learned that because she never did and I watched what it did to her. She was still mad at my dad at all family functions 25 years after the divorce. I realize that relationships are complicated. Being a decent coparent is not. At some point, you have to say to yourself “this doesn’t even matter anymore,” like my friends who found out they were pregnant the morning of their wedding. All of the sudden, the wedding was literally a piece of cake because there were bigger fish to fry. Like, we’re having a good time, okay, but we’re not even going to pretend that any of this is now important.
    • I am a more compassionate person than I would be otherwise, because my mother’s insistence on being polite and friendly has led me to keep going in relationships that weren’t interesting at first, but kept growing. It was a lesson to sit back and keep listening.
    • It feels excruciating that she would have treated Zac like he walks on water, because he might be a little too much for her, but he’s still a man interested in her daughter, which was infinitely more important than a woman being interested in me. It is not surprising or lost on me that I did not find complete happiness with a man until after I realized she wasn’t there to give “advice.” Even though Zac is also queer and likes me for everything I am, she would not have believed I could tell Zac I was nonbinary and have the relationship survive. Yes, I’m sure that men who like men definitely have a problem with me………. But I only know this from watching how she treated Ryan and how she treated Meagan. Oh, and also I didn’t have any agency. It was all my emotional abuser’s idea and I had been turned somehow. Meanwhile, I’d been crying alone in my room for two years. I’m just not queer enough to exclude dating men altogether. It speaks highly of Zac’s brain that it even happened in the first place, because I do have a preference for women. It gives me a little bit of clinical separation, honestly, because not every conversation digs deep. By the time I talk to Zac, I have worn myself out on my blog.
  7. How did she inspire you in your life’s pursuits and passions?
    • She loved everything I ever did in the arts, whether it was singing, playing my horn, playing the handbells, or creative writing. She also loved asking me to help her with her room when she was decorating because she knew I was creative at that, too.
    • She wouldn’t be surprised that I turned out to be a great writer, because I was already on my way in 2016. Therefore, she was invested in my talent. She still managed to bust my balls about my behavior, though. She hated my writing at times, because she thought I was harping on a point over and over. She did not realize that autistic people are governed by monotropic thought processes. It is literally not possible for us to change gears quickly, or process emotions easily. It takes time, because nine times out of ten, it’s trouble with not being able to translate neurotypical into neurodivergent or vice versa. She thought Supergrover was bad for me, that I descended into a world of pain. She wasn’t wrong. That being said, I couldn’t find a friend of mine she did like. Neurodivergent people tend to be queer and run in packs. Therefore, if she didn’t understand me, she didn’t understand them, either. So, her interest in my blog was a mixed bag.
  8. In what ways do you see your mother’s traits or characteristics in yourself?
    • I am only strong when my back is against the wall. I only use power when I need it, not because it pleases me. Just like my mother in a classroom, I walk softly and carry a big stick. I just don’t have to be as aggressive about it now, because I have friends that respect my boundaries and I don’t feel like I’m being ignored. Your voice doesn’t have to be loud if people aren’t covering it up.
    • It is easier to be honest on the internet because when I’m in front of people, I cater to the urge to be small in front of them to gain acceptance.
    • If I’m going to be a musician, be the best musician I can be. Don’t think that you’re incapable of something. Suck until you don’t. And in fact, my voice didn’t get really exceptional until I started taking private lessons every week. It was so good to learn that I was so much more capable and confident than I thought, because I had a great voice, I’d just picked up some bad habits. She helped me work through all of them by accompanying me between lessons.
    • Take the time to get in a proper warm-up, because you’ll sound better if you’re relaxed. Start a rehearsal with your vocal cords already warm. Breathe deeply. Four measures is a long time.
  9. What do you miss the most about her?
    • I miss having someone to talk to all the time. We had long, involved conversations about her life, her career, her everything because I was happy to listen to the chatter rather than tell her I wanted to talk about my life, too. I knew she wasn’t comfortable, so I just listened. The same goes for being touched. We could say a lot without saying anything, a safe person to just walk up and hug because they’re used to it. People rarely hug me anymore, and I’m so used to it I forget I need it.
  10. How would you like people to remember her?
    • As a saint, perfectly perfect in every way, because no one gets through life without making mistakes. With your parents, it’s only a different situation because your first family installs all your triggers. I hope that by not staying silent about them, you won’t, either.

We are all a little bit broken, and that’s where the light gets in.

These questions are designed to be open-ended and reflective, allowing you to share personal stories and feelings about your mother. They can help readers understand her impact on your life and the legacy she leaves behind.

Jesus as CEO

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Are you a leader or a follower?

It’s the title of a book I read long ago, and I think I left it at my dad’s house and it just kind of stayed there. I am positive that I could lay my hands on it if I was there. It was a book that applied the lessons of Christ to managing large organizations. I had to vet it before I actually spent money on it, though. I read quite a bit in Barnes & Noble, because I wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to have to sit through an entire book full of wackadoodle bass ackwards theology. I wanted to make sure they were scholarly about it.

Unsurprisingly, it was a fascinating exploration of the INFJ personality when it comes to being in charge. That is, in order for Jesus to be a good leader, he had to be vulnerable. That he drew people in by making them listen harder to him, not by making his voice louder. It’s basically the law of attraction. Don’t spend any time trying to impress other people. Learn to be impressive to yourself, and your honesty will flatten people because it’s so rare.

I hear it all the time. “Your candor and honesty…..” I have a lot of candor and honesty these days, because I have given myself the confidence to believe that I communicate my ideas well and I am old enough to have an opinion. Old(er) women are powerful, fierce dragons because they’ve had all the fun they can take.

It’s just one of the reasons I think Hillary Clinton would have made a fantastic president. All her fucks slid off about 30 years ago. It’s not her fault that America watched her get up on a televised debate and call him a Russian asset to his face…….. and still thought the guy wearing ten tons of makeup and a suit that still managed to look cheap while expensive carried the day.

I will never forgive the American people for the 2016 election, or at the very least, I cannot see forgiveness yet. That’s because the facts were all there. The former Secretary of State who has known Vladimir Putin for years is telling everyone in the entire country that there is going to be massive trouble if Trump is elected.

She has not been wrong about that.

What we did, paraphrasing David Sedaris, is hear the flight attendant say the meals available are Salisbury steak and chicken covered in broken glass, and stopping to ask how the chicken is prepared.

The choice was clear, and we fumbled. it wasn’t a personality contest. We let Russia walk in the front door and extort the Ukrainians, then after Trump left office the Republicans were so concerned about the Ukrainians. It was sickening.

If it wasn’t high crimes and misdemeanors, we are going to have a hell of a time defining it in the future.

We’re facing a time in which we’ need to eat Salisbury steak out of necessity, not because it’s our first choice. For people that object to that statement, do you really want to take the risk that January 6th will happen again? Do you want to embolden white supremacists? FBI is already getting chatter that Pride parades are going to be attacked this year. That is not unusual, and what I am trying to prevent is the country being once again, buried in regret. A good episode of Saturday Night Live does not kiss an election and make it all better.

Biden is problematic. I will hear it. I will allow it. I will sympathize with it. I still won’t get mad enough to vote third party. When one party splits, the other wins. I knew it was happening, I just didn’t know how close it was. Conservative and liberal democrats clashed too much for the DNC not to splinter. Now, the same is happening because I can hate Joe Biden for sending weapons to Israel all I want and that doesn’t mean I’m ready to give up on democracy itself.

People think it’s a long shot, and most of them haven’t seen polls that say a sizable part of the population is willing to vote for Trump even if he’s in prison by the election. The fact that they think a president working from jail is acceptable is alarming. Common sense has completely flown out the window.

Politics was never meant to be about morals. Politics is about how to manage money. We get taxes in, we decide how to spend it in Congress. It wasn’t really until the Religious Right started taking over the Republican Party that issues of morality like homosexuality became a legislative item….. keeping in mind that homosexuality has nothing to do with morality, but you can’t convince anyone in the Religious Right of that.

They’re not playing the long game. It will get restrictive enough that the people will riot, and I am shocked that it is taking so long. What’s next? Republicans coming to your house to make sure you don’t get pregnant? Abortion is banned at seven days? What is it going to take? And abortion and homosexuality are only two of the issues wrapped up in this crap. We’ve let conservative, rich, white little boys run the show for a long time. I can’t take them on all by myself, and I get nervous when I don’t feel enough buy-in.

What if Donald Trump gets elected and Putin decides that’s the time to band with China and attack us because we’re weak?

They could start by bombing the oil fields in Alaska, but Sarah Palin will see them coming, so it’s okay.

I am usually teasing Zac about this time (what do you believe, as a private citizen, mind you………). I have gotten a series of sly smiles, dumb looks, and occasionally, articles in the New York Times. If he just looks at me, I change the subject, because I know he would tell me if he could, but he can’t. No biggie. I have other friends I can talk to about that stuff where their jobs aren’t at risk. People who have been chatting on the Internet like I have are always hearing unverified intelligence chatter. I had a friend catch a hole in DoDs security and his name went on a list.

Pro tip: don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

Where I become a leader and how Jesus influences that is to just be the person that takes everyone’s stories in…. that when I make leadership decisions, I don’t just have my employees productivity in mind, but their happiness with the job as well. I have a great reader retention rate, and I would hope that my employees felt the same way- that they wanted to stay with me. I would be the kind of boss that lives to serve. I mean, I probably draw the line at washing their feet, but it’s the thought that counts.

What I mean is that I have more success as a leader by taking in the world around me and reflecting it than I do in real life, because I am not getting up in front of a congregation to say these things. I am writing on the internet, which ups my congregation size tremendously.

I am firm because I have a vision, not because I feel the need to hurt anyone. There is a difference in me setting boundaries and me being obnoxious. The people closest to me got angry when I set boundaries, and I set them because they weren’t listening. They didn’t deserve to hear my story anymore.

I feel lighter and happier than I have in years, and it’s because I’m different. I was happy with being breadcrumbed for a number of years, my needs ignored and dismissed, handling a barrage of emotional live ammo only to find out that the pattern would never change. It felt like a lie, a friendship borne out of pity and a pattern I never wanted to reinstate ever again. Thus, telling her to grow up. I dived deep into self-reflection and I became more secure. She stayed in the same place. The patterns that worked on me before weren’t going to cut it.

You are 100% allowed to miss someone you’ve cut out of your life. I realized that she could not see the magnitude of what she was doing by reestablishing our connection, and nor could we ignore it. We had too much shit to do, and she ignored it. Then, I started writing about what happened, and she threw a shit fit because her side wasn’t represented. I cannot review a book I haven’t read.

So, what I know is that it’s not emotionally mature enough for me. I have grown past her. I cannot stand someone holding everything in and just exploding. It’s too much punishment at once and I am completely overloaded.

And yet on the flip side, she has a practical and precise way of moving in the world. She can achieve more in five minutes than I would in three days. Her brain is built for that.

It’s a yin and yang I always look for in relationships and it doesn’t work out. Practical people hate touchy feely crap. It’s the black cat vs. golden retriever debate.

And in talking about Supergrover, it brings me to another aspect of leadership. Have the right people around you. When Supergrover and I are writing to each other, it’s clear we have different processes to get to a conclusion. I can see where I fall short all the time, because when she talks to me and puts her own thoughts through her own filters, I see “oh THAT’s how a neurotypical person would do that….. I always wondered.”

The other thing is that talking about relationships and talking about organizations is very much alike when you are actually close enough to your employees where emotions get involved. You know how many employees I have to have before there are possible kinks in the organization?

One.

Being avoidant with your emotions is just as problematic at work as it is at home, you’re just talking about much different things. You will absolutely be dealing with hard emotions even though you’re not close to people….. most notably, annoyance unless you’re the type of person that needs a break every five minutes. I can be like that, but not usually. I’m the one with my headphones on and I wouldn’t hear a bear even if it was right behind my Aeron.

However, if I’m thinking of myself as the future CEO of Lanagan Media Group, I’m not the one with my headphones in. I’m the one that’s open and available to jump in and help you, or hire OTHER people to jump in and help you. If not, I will develop a reputation for hiding something. People clam up around other people who are hiding something. People don’t clam up around me because I can instantly put them at ease. There’s no trick to it except vibes. Being personable, approachable, friendly, etc. If I like being with the person and their presence gives me energy, the sky is the limit on how long we’ll spend talking.

I hate small talk, so it’s easier when I get up in front of a group. I can just apprise them of the situation, which solves two problems. The first is not having to schmooze with people. The second is not having to tell each person individually. However, if the other person’s vibe is also warm and approachable, and we connect, you’ll always be able to to count on me telling you what I think, but never in a million years telling you that I think you’re a bad person. Trust is broken in a million different ways.

In kitchens, this is always expressed by someone saying “I’m going to be five minutes late.” It’s always an hour. Always. No one cares if you’re slammed, get used to it. Even if someone tells you they’re willing to work on their day off, the chances of them picking up on said day off are slim to none. It’s why I got so many brownie points at my last job. I was there every time someone called out and every time someone got sick and every time we didn’t know what the hell happened, but someone had to have their ass on dish by five. It might as well be me. I’m the one that doesn’t like days off because it interrupts my rhythm. The brownie points were always the biggest at “let me change my clothes. I’ll be right there.” That’s because I actually meant it….. a rarity in our industry.

Giving up driving helped me to be on time every day because I am bad at transitions. I would get demand avoidance over driving, and have to force myself out to the car. Because I was determined not to be late, I would wake up ridiculously early and get to the office by 0800, when it was just the CEO and me for the first hour. He was the kind of leader I am, the Jesus as CEO type. That’s because he genuinely cared about our work/life balance and team cohesion, like buying us all Orioles tickets and carpooling us all up to Baltimore. He was also a CEO that drove a Honda.

I was very impressed.

Somebody went to Sunday School.

Anyway, I had so much less demand avoidance over traveling because I had a set schedule every single day. I could time it to the minute…. and the entire way, I could play on my phone, read, write, watch movies, etc. It was completely guilt free time to myself because I didn’t have to be in charge of anything as serious as a car while I was exhausted. The train ride gave me time to really wake up.

Which was good, because the CEO’s one failing was that he liked his coffee so weak. I use one level tablespoon of coffee per cup. He used a plastic teaspoon, and there could only be 11 teaspoons of coffee for the whole pot, which was 12 cups. Believe me when I say I am not trying to prove anything. The coffee was weak, I’m not trying to make motor oil.

When I drove, I would get to 7-11 or Walgreens by 7:45 to get coffee or an energy drink out of the cold case.

Telling you all of this…. that I love my friend and I needed to let her go at the same time. That I have just so many diagnoses and “letters behind my name.” It’s important. It’s all important. It’s what makes me authentically myself. That I can extend love to more people because I am experienced in dealing with conflict. I don’t pretend it doesn’t exist and I don’t pretend it’s not capable of developing. I’m also not going to skirt around you. I will bring up a problem, and how you react teaches me what to do. If you come up with a solution to the problem, it’s a green flag. If you can’t do anything, but you empathize with what I’m saying, that’s a green flag. The only red flag is saying “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Neither the relationship nor the company will survive.

Why I Love ChatGPT Used Appropriately

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

ChatGPT has become an invaluable tool for me, because I don’t use it to create art. I use it to help me create art. The last thing I asked Copilot (using GPT4) was “give me five blog prompts appropriate for a personal blog.” This is the one I chose out of the five. Since you can’t re-use prompts from WordPress, I’ve used Copilot to create my own program. I am not asking it to write my entries for me. I am using it to jog my own memories and give me a jumping off point. I can use Copilot to create a framework to keep going every single day, because it’s not being provided by WordPress itself.

Because here’s the thing. I could have done the same exact thing by going to all the web sites from which Copilot pulls data, because it didn’t really create the prompts. Copilot went to web sites that offer prompts and collated them for me into a single, easy-to-read package. It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen, because it is not limiting my creative juice. It’s like discovering I have a secretary and I don’t even have to pay her (if anyone would like to be my EA, I am accepting applications. I don’t pay in anything but words of assurance and great hugs, but you get a three meal signing bonus….. that joke is funnier if you know I’ve been a professional cook).

So, I have stopped bagging on ChatGPT as a concept and started ripping people to shreds for thinking that ChatGPT is capable of human art. You know how you can tell it’s ChatGPT? Nine times out of 10, it’s too perfect to look real. Human emotion is messy. Humans are messy. Machines are not.

I admit that I did ask it for a picture of The Muppet Show cast dressed as spies. It was hilarious.

I feel bad about it, yet no…. I don’t. Because it’s pretty obvious why it wasn’t created by a human. Putting a hat on someone does not make them a different person. My biggest problem is people who post things like this and don’t say “I created this with ChatGPT. It looks cool, but I didn’t actually design it.”

The writing prompt I got with Copilot is after the jump.

Share Your Personal Style: Write about your personal style—whether it’s fashion, home decor, or a unique way of approaching life. Share tips, inspiration, and photos that showcase your individual flair and taste. Who knows, you might help someone find their own style through your posts! 🌟

I think I will write a little bit about all of them, actually, because I don’t have too much to say on any one topic.

  • Fashion
    • I think that I look better in boys’ clothes because women’s clothes tend to come in washed out colors and with a lot of ornamentation that just doesn’t fit my vibe. If I am dressing down, it’s usually jeans, a t-shirt, and a hoodie with kitchen Crocs or Chuck Taylors. If I am dressing up, I like to wear an Oxford and trousers with a sport coat and boys’ dress shoes because I cannot stay upright in heels. I like the way heels affect my body carriage, so sometimes I will buy cowboy boots with a heel. They’re so chunky it’s hard to “fall off.” In a lot of ways, I would love to be able to wear heels and beaded gowns and the whole nine yards….. but you have to see it through my eyes to know why I don’t. It is an enormous sensory nightmare and I rebel against it- I have since childhood. Trust me when I say that things like lace are going to drive your autistic children batshit insane. My style is simple and classic because of it. If I’m just doing jeans and a t-shirt, I have five t-shirts that cost $25 apiece, not five in a package at Target. Tommy Hilfiger comes to mind immediately, because the quality of their v-necks is impeccable. When I am dressed up, I look very much like a tiny college professor.
    • Here’s a thing I learned about dressing myself from my dad. If he sees a model dressed in a catalogue and he likes the outfit, he will buy the entire thing. He doesn’t buy things piecemeal. Therefore, he actually looks like a picture in a catalogue most of the time. It’s so easy. Why didn’t I think of that? Don’t worry that your style is bad, pick someone else with good style and just buy the whole look. I don’t normally have enough money to pick an entire outfit out of a catalogue, but I have bought the entire outfit the Goodwill employees have put together for their show store (across the street from the Portland library- they pick through all the clothes and only sell the best of the best. I got a London Fog navy trench with full liner for $24).
  • Home Decor
    • It’s a good idea. In terms of priority, it’s low on the list because neither David nor I are decorators. My dad is a decorator (not professionally, but you should see the things he’s designed for himself at the house), so basically I copy everything he does. It saves me a lot of time, like ChatGPT. He approaches design of a room like clothes- he wants to see the forest before we drill into the details. I don’t know what those are, yet, I just remember telling David that I wanted my office to have a cigar bar feel to it. He said, “sure. As long as you’re not actually smoking cigars in there.” I think I’ll manage.
  • Unique Way of Approaching Life
    • I calculate odds because of my executive dysfunction. I cannot say “this is where I’ll be in five years” and work toward it because of the number of stumbling blocks in my way. I cannot have a disability more than five or 10 days a year with a job. I don’t mean that all autistic people are incapable of employment. We very much are. It’s just hard to stay employed with the number of sick days, doctor’s appointments, communication issues, you name it. I cannot predict in advance, so I take in information as it comes and move to the next thing. I don’t second guess myself. If something doesn’t work out, I’m on to the next thing rather than spending time crying about the past. I have done enough of that.
  • Tips and Inspiration
    • Pray even if you think there’s no God. There’s a lot of resolution you come to in yourself through the process of praying. If you prefer the word “meditating,” it’s the same thing. I don’t want to argue about semantics, you just need the protein. For instance, Supergrover says that she thinks her running is a form of prayer, and she’s right. Get centered. I think if I’d taken up jogging when she said that I’d look a whole lot better today….. so maybe meditate and also move.
  • 16 Pieces of Flair
    • It is, of course, an “Office Space” reference. I’m not even sure what the prompt means by “flair,” so I’m just going to have to take a wild guess.
      • I always include a bit of whimsy, and it’s important to me. For instance, I want my office to look like it costs millions of dollars, and I also want a Chef Tiana doll. My friend Rhys makes custom dolls, and we’ve been talking about it because I want to be able to dress her myself, as in have her whites custom made as well. It is my opinion that Princess Tiana would HATE being called Princess Tiana because you’ve never met a cook in your life if you think they’d prefer Prince/Princess to Chef. In terms of the way I dress, it’s being very conservative and having one focal point that’s humorous, like a Mickey Mouse watch or tie-dyed Crocs.
  • Taste
    • I have very expensive tastes in groceries. I like fine olive oils, balsamic vinegar, Himalayan sea salt, etc. One of the best presents my friend Amy ever got me (at least, I think it was Amy) was a Himalayan salt cooking surface. You put meat or veggies on it and they roasted on the salt in the oven. It was magical for shrimp.
    • I do not have expensive tastes in knives. The one I like the best cost $20 at Wal-Mart or Amazon. It’s from Chicago Cutlery, and it’s an eight inch chef’s knife where the blade and the handle are both steel, and the handle is molded to fit your hand when you’re cutting using the French technique (using the back of the knife, as opposed to Japanese, which uses the front). It hardly ever needs to be sharpened, and it’s cheap enough to replace if it dulls. However, I prefer to keep the same knife, even if it was originally $20, because over time it grows into your hand. It is very much akin to writing with a fountain pen in which the nib will not work the same for anyone but you.

I think that’s at least enough for a blog entry. It’s time to go and make some breakfast before I get into the shower. I have to go to the pharmacy today, so I am hoping to stop at Trader Joe’s again. I do not have a problem with drugs and alcohol, but I am starting to notice a dependence on ube pretzels.

Which One?

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What do you do to be involved in the community?

I am most involved with online communities, because I prefer to type than to speak. It’s not that I’m not a good time in person, I just get tongue tied and like the safety of using a keyboard. It has led to very mixed results, because most of the time, it’s just a communication tool. Occasionally, it brings out the worst in me. I have to be careful with it, because I become disconnected with the world of Outdoors and In Person.

And it’s not even really that I become tongue-tied. I become inauthentic. I start social masking and it feels like putting on a show rather than it being natural to my personality. That person hides every single thing about her that makes her unique so that she cannot possibly be offensive to anyone at any time. I become the me that’s appropriate for very large gatherings of people. I haven’t been a public speaker all my life, but my dad has (he was a minister in the UMC). Therefore, I am not that person, but I can social mask it. I fail because invariably there’s going to be something that makes the mask look like a lie. Maybe to other people, definitely to me. That personality is based on my mother, the loving preacher’s wife who lived to serve…… As in, my social mask is not “leader” but “support person.” I think it’s why I thought I’d be such a a good friend for Supergrover. It is extraordinarily true that my hormones grabbed me by my guts for a little minute, but none of the things I wanted to offer her long term were predicated or dependent upon her turning into a teenager as well.

In short, I know how to support a big shot.

I just, frankly, am not my mother and I never will be. I start all my taking care of her schtick, and things go great until I try to speak truth to power. It’s not because Supergrover is inflexible or hard-nosed. She doesn’t trust me. We didn’t used to have this problem, and now we do. In effect, I thought I could be so spectacular a friend that she would realize that she shouldn’t hold me to my worst mistake. So far, I have gotten a few brownie points, but things have never gone back to normal. I would say that the operation was a whispering success. 😉 She relaxed on some things, not on others. The one thing I refused to be was impressed. Me being impressed would have been the death knell, because she wouldn’t have liked it if I thought being friends meant parroting back her own opinions to her, either. I have never been a “yes man,” and SG was not my cue to start.

I am not impressed with anything that would make her impressive to anyone else, and that’s what makes her valuable to me. It’s like HSPVA to me. Mireille Enos is not valuable to me because she’s one of the most talented actresses in the world. She is valuable to me because she was a senior that smiled at me in high school when I was a freshman. I have never been crushed out on her, I was just an insecure ninth grader and for a moment, I wasn’t. I also don’t value her movie star looks, because in my head we’re both children. I love that I know War from “Good Omens,” but I know her from one of the smallest stages in the world- the black box at the second oldest location of HSPVA.

I have mentioned that I saw her as the lead in “Diary of Anne Frank.” What I did not say is that when the Nazis arrived to take the family away, actors dropped from the catwalk in their battle rattle and scared the ever living SHIT out of all of us. It was really VERY effective.

In terms of community, artists are a good one. I remember another play the theater department did for Black History month that celebrated diversity. There were four actors on stage dressed completely in black and with bags over their heads (see thru, presumably….). They start talking and one is clearly Asian, one is clearly Central American, one is clearly white, and one is clearly black. They talk for about three minutes, all of them sounding as stereotypical as they possibly can. Every trope in the book comes out and they’re just flinging the things people say about them on stage while the crowd is roaring with laughter.

Then.

There’s a hush and a gasp in the audience when they take the bags off their heads and no one’s race matched up to their voice. It was just masterful, and I’m so glad that was part of my high school experience. I didn’t have as many kindred spirits as Clements, and I missed PVA terribly both years I didn’t go. But at the same time, I did get to be in marching band for a season, and although I didn’t choose to continue with it, I’m glad I have the story to tell now.

I got to play some stuff at Clements that I never would have at PVA because frankly, our band was better than PVAs by a large margin, like, a provable amount. My junior year, literally the first time I’d ever been in the band, we went to Texas Music Educator’s Association as the Sudler Flag winners. The Sudler flag is an award for excellence in music education. The band was already pretty good before I got there. Although I was told it was good that I transferred because a lot of their more capable trumpet players that had gotten the band the award in the first place had graduated. It was nice to feel appreciated, because I know I wasn’t the best in the world, but I was a great utility player. I didn’t have to be first chair. I was glad I got to go to San Antonio at all. Get this. I never made first chair at Clements (I don’t think…. If I did, I didn’t have it long enough to be memorable). For a very long time, though, I was third. THIRD out of the best trumpet players in the state according to TMEA. I wasn’t the gold medalist, but I was still on the podium.

I owe my success in band at Clements to Norman and Danny, the trumpet players that babied me along until I could stand on my own two feet at HSPVA. They were not dismissive or mansplaining, because we were trying to achieve a beautiful sectional sound. It was more like being picked for the Olympics with Norman and Danny as my coaches. In the symphony, you may be first chair, but the parts are not divided by voice. As in, just because you’re second or third chair doesn’t mean your part is going to be less complicated or not as high. I mean, it probably is if it’s a classical piece that’s been rewritten for younger players, but we were reading straight off the original “charts.”

It’s like reading the Gospel of Mark in the original Greek instead of the King James version. For instance, reading Bach in the original German in terms of stage notes and the key signature, which were called different things in his time. The only one I can remember off the top of my head is that B minor is H mol. That’s because I’ve also done Bach’s B Minor Mass, or Mass in H mol, at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral as a soprano.

It was an early music concert, so period instruments as well. After one of the rehearsals, I asked one of the trumpet players if I could try his horn and he let me. It was a very warm sound, similar to a Monette (famous for being unlaquered). My arms were a little short for the valves, so I was grateful to be in the community as a singer and not an instrumentalist….. Although it is fun being able to say that I can play the precursor to the trumpet as well.

When I first moved to Silver Spring, I was involved in choir. I may do it again someday, because I’d like to get back into being a musician. It’s a whole mood. You feel so much adrenaline after rehearsals and concerts that your mood naturally feels lighter and bubblier once they’re over. The reason that even though it’s just rehearsal and your adrenaline still goes up is the competition, and it is relentless. I do not mean that we snipe at each other, I mean the quest for excellence is relentless. I am not competing against anyone in my choir, but to be a better singer than I was the day before. Again, I have been asked to solo for things, so I know I’m capable of it. However, I am most comfortable as a utility player in a choir as well. I can hit high notes, but I am not a diva. I think the altos have more interesting parts, anyway.

I am more on an alto wavelength, because what I’ve found over time is that more altos can read music than sopranos. I think that’s because the alto part is generally more complicated; you can pick a melody out of thin air, but generally not the supporting notes in a chord. Alto parts are usually more complicated rhythmically as well. It has created a stigma that sopranos are airheads. This is not NECESSARILY true………….. There is a huge difference between singers who have taken lessons on instruments and singers who haven’t, because dollars to donuts they were trained in solfege and not reading the notes off the page.

I am not ashamed to admit that I thought solfege was stupid, and I haven’t been proved wrong. But that’s not because I’m not open to solfege for other people. It does work, just not if you’ve already learned to read music first. If you know how to read music, you know there is no need to bring hand movement into things. Yet, we still had to do the hand movements. I never learned them. I just made Spock’s little hand sign thingme and moved it up and down. Mission accomplished.

Because my mother was a pianist and my dad was a trumpet player, I know I learned to read music early, but I can’t remember by how much., as opposed to kids learning in school. I think I was six, because my mother’s rule in taking piano students was that they had to be able to reach an octave. As in, the thumb can be on middle C and their pinky can comfortably hit the C above. I didn’t start band, however, until I was in grade five. So, 10, I think? What I do know is that I already knew how to read music before a horn was ever put into my hands.

Singing is very hard on your body, but in a good way. As in, you’ll exercise muscles you don’t normally use and it will hurt until you get used to it. The workout keeps getting more and more productive, less and less irritating. I know I am on the right track when I can lift a heavy book with my diaphragm alone.

I just thought of something funny. Dana’s mom said, “that voice! Where did it come from?” I realized I would not be lying if my answer had been that it was Biblical, because the book I use the most frequently to work out those muscles is an Interpreter’s Bible.

I’d like to be able to run with the big boys there, too. For instance, I think Father Nathan Monk is the bees knees, because he’s already doing what I’ve always wanted to do, which is minister to people no matter what they believe. Just because there’s no God in it doesn’t mean it’s not church. Secular humanism is valid. People want to live in community and help each other whether they believe there’s a higher power or not.

Father Nathan spent many years in the church before he became an atheist, and I would argue, a better priest in the process. He’s also queer, poly, neurodivergent, and from the way he writes, probably an INFJ as well. I’ve just been watching him on Facebook for a while, and it seems like we have a lot in common. He’d be one of those guys I’d like to host on a podcast about success, because he built a business off his haters. He talks about sweeping negativity away with the “broom of doom,” and he makes jewelry. He started offering broom necklaces on his web site, and the rest was history. And though we’re peers, I know I would relate to him like I relate to my dad, which is “I’m interested in this stuff, but you’ve got a degree.” I have only been a preacher’s kid, and Nathan is ordained in the Orthodox church.

However, I do not have to be ordained because I do not want to pastor a church. I do not want to be the head of the community, just in the middle where I can enjoy everyone else and not have to worry about the direction the church is taking because I do not even want to be paid to care. I worry enough about the global church without the responsibility of a local congregation.

I think that I have done something Father Nathan has also done, which is to lay out my thoughts on theology on social media (he uses Facebook, I use WordPress) because I think they are important culturally. I am trying to give you a picture in your mind that CLEARLY says “Christian” and yet doesn’t reflect any of the views espoused by evangelicals who have never read a day of Biblical criticism in their whole lives.

In fact, I own more biblical criticism than most literalists will ever bother reading. That’s because for them, the one book is enough. It’s not necessary to understand those people’s current events, etc. A Baptist will never understand that Jesus was executed for being a loudmouth zealot. His ideas were dangerous to Rome, and the Sanhedrin agreed with them because they thought he was a loudmouth zealot way before they did. Judaism did not want to try anything new and different any more than Rome did. The fact that Romans are so crazy about Jesus now is straight up ridiculous. Nothing Jesus ever said to or about the Romans was valuable until after he died.

Tough room.

We often throw away the genius in our midst, but I don’t know why people who preach love and tolerance are often victims of the worst violence. We seem to murder and regret a lot. In America, it is worse in terms of gun culture, but the Romans were able to murder Jesus very effectively without one.

Governments kill people all the time, but crucifixion is particularly sadistic. Not only did the Romans crucify him, they nailed a sign to the top of the cross mocking him, and the sign was a snarky “King of the Jews.” You know, because being crucified in public just isn’t embarrassing enough. People could come by and mock him in schadenfreude, With crucifixion, the punishment wasn’t death. It was that you didn’t die right away. You slowly suffocated in front of your family, friends, and strangers. While naked if the little piece of cloth fell off.

We as a world have not changed. I do not know what their practice is currently, but the reason we allowed Trigon, our Russian asset, an L pill (cyanide) is because the rumor was that in Russia, if you were caught spying for the US, they would put you in a crematorium feet first. Trigon asked, and we granted, his ability to take his own life before he was tortured. This is not ancient history. Trigon was caught the year I was born.

The L pill was hidden in his pen, so he offered to write out a full confession. They look on in confusion as he bites down on the pen and dies before he hits the floor, saving him emotional trauma and physical dignity, even post-mortem.

It is a different mindset to kill someone than to stand around and watch them suffer. For instance, if I ever did anything that put me on death row, I would not want a viewing gallery. I’d just sneak in one of my ordained friends under the clergy rule and pass quietly, without the feeling that I was being watched like an animal in a zoo……… A feeling that Jesus would most certainly know intimately.

These are the things I want my community to focus on…. That Jesus’s story is tragic and uplifting because of who he was as a person, not who he became post-mortem, post-resurrection, etc.. In the United States, the prevailing message is the opposite, that you are “washed in the blood.” Everything Jesus did while he was alive takes a back seat to the idea that Jesus is magic.

He absolutely is, but his magic comes from the smallest piece of his soul, the son of a carpenter……. The place where no one looks.

Freeze Dried Skittles

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Things have been crazy since Bryn and Dave have been here, and it’s hard to reflect a moment while it’s happening. You may not hear about all the things we did for months, because what tends to happen is that I do something, and then as time passes, the words to be able to describe what happened previously will come to me. Some memories have to rise above the facts to make good writing. I am not talking about “enhancing” a memory. It’s just that it’s hard to describe feelings without much time to even know what they are.

It also depends on how I’m prompted. A lot of the things you learn in this web site are about me because a question (from a prompt, a reader, etc.) will jog a detail that I’d forgotten previously. I have been accused of lying by people saying “that’s not the same story you told last time.” No, it’s not, because it’s a different day and I always have three or four threads running in terms of processing something. Some blog entries are built on one and three. Some entries are built on two and four. But it’s not lying. It’s standing in front of a different part of the elephant.

The view is different when you’re standing at the trunk, but in the next entry, I’ll tell you about the view from the tail. It’s all one day, it’s all one story, but one entry does not cover a whole day. That does not mean if you read both entries, the first one is right and the second one is wrong….. Or vice versa. I am not trying to change a story, but to add additional details that my ADHD brain forgot to include the last time around. I can think in four strands at a time, but I can only write one of them down. That does not invalidate my other thoughts, or make them lies.

I have had to explain this many times, which I have the words for as an adult. I did not have the words for it in first grade, and I was in trouble for lying a lot of the time. Meanwhile, it’s akin to a game I played at the Spy Museum yesterday.

You had 10 seconds to memorize a photo and jot down the relevant details. So, I see that the exhibit is about the Culpeper Ring and the OG Spymaster (George Washington). So, I am trying to record all the details and think, “what’s the pertinent information here?” So, I figured the relevant details would be that there are 25 muskets and 10 cannons headed to Yorktown.

I am so proud of myself. I got the relevant details.

I was questioned over it and I was so fucking confident.

“What color was the pen?”

I failed miserably. But on that one, I got it wrong because I hit the incorrect button with my elbow.

I am probably overthinking this, but I am betting that weapons movement is more important than pen color, but I cannot assume that because I do not know the objective of the mission. My job was to memorize the picture, not to know why they needed the information.

The pen was white, by the way.

But that’s how CIA works. In effect, everyone has a tiny role to play and they all add up to a massive organization. As Jonna Mendez points out, you really don’t even know what operation you’re a part of all the time in terms of major historical events because you’re not read in high enough to see the big picture. You just have to trust that you’re working for the greater good.

I step out on that ledge a lot, because I’m an American. I can criticize CIA every single day all day long and no one is going to lock me up. That lets me love them even more because in a country with a government like China’s, painting their intelligence service’s portrait with more than one color would land me in prison……. Especially if they thought I was painting my feelings as fact.

(“Painting my feelings as fact” is the most beautiful thing anyone has ever said to me in the history of anything, and Supergrover said it when she was angry. The reason it’s gorgeous is that I can’t think of a blog entry in which I didn’t think about using it. That phrase is ridden hard and put up wet around here because I can’t write anything better.)

My point, and I do have one, is that I can tell The Agency to fuck all the way off because of the negative things they’ve done over the years, AND they can be the paramilitary heroes we need- the only friends you’ve got when you’ve traveled and pissed off Putin instead of Biden. I would rather take my chances with Biden, because he might think I was irritating, but there is exactly Jack or shit he can do about it. If they put you in jail for being annoying, I promise I would already be locked up.

CIA is responsible for a lot of bad in the world, but my favorite character in the Marvel universe is Everett Ross (Martin Freeman, the Tolkien case officer in Black Panther). I cannot paint them with one color, because they’ve been adding different hues since 1947. It is important to me not to love them like a child, where everything mommy and daddy do is GREAT! I love them like an adult. I acknowledge the bad and the good. My first priority in intelligence has to be loving my agency because it’s my country, like rooting for DC United instead of the Portland Timbers……… But not at the exclusion of my international friends, whose experiences with CIA might not be as kind as mine. I also get the impression from John Le Carre that I can hate CIA all I want and I’ll still never hate it as much as the people who work there (that was a joke).

If my government is going to allow my intelligence agency (which I personalize because of taxes) to do stupid shit, I like that my government won’t throw me in jail for saying they just did something really stupid. This is always brought home to me by a trip to the museum, and we wandered around for a couple of hours last evening.

Because I’m such a Mendez fan, I went to the Canadian Caper and stopped to “talk” to Tony. I look at his pictures and notes and we have conversations in my head. All the things I would have asked him, etc. I told him that Jonna was AMAZING at her book talk and with the way my insides glowed, it was like he responded. I just figured he’d like to know how she’s doing from an outsider’s perspective. 😉

The museum is not personal to me because of my special interest now. Now, it’s personal to me because I know someone who helped found it. And, of course, because she’s my friend, I want the museum to succeed and sell her books all the time. Seriously. Several times people have asked me for recommendations because I look like I know my way around the book section, and for me, their book section has like seven books tops (that is also a joke- there are MANY intelligence authors I admire, I just don’t know their backstories well, if at all).

I wanted Zac to like the museum because he works in intelligence. I wanted to know whether he thought it was truly representative, what Intel wants people to know about them, etc. He did like the museum, and did love the “artifacts,” which made me feel good. I kind of think of it as his museum, too.

I always like to get a little something at the gift shop because the museum always needs money (they’re not a Smithsonian). This time, it was a small tin with the museum logo that says “DocuMINTS.” I didn’t buy it for the candy, I like the tin for odds and ends because it’s small enough to fit in my pocket and it looks too cool for me.

I am LOVING the retro collection they have now. I’ve already gotten the long sleeved t-shirt, but they’ve also added a hoodie that says “International Spy Museum” in the 1970’s font they used in Argo. As I was telling Zac, I love that the movie starts out like a 1979 movie. I love it because it just looks cool, but it’s also an inside nod to the movie for me.

Lord, I do love a font.

Also, hats off to the casting director on “Argo.” When Zac and I were standing in front of the exhibit, the cast photo and the real photo are nearly identical- to the point that it’s spooky. You really have to get close to tell the difference between Bob Anders and Tate Donovan.

Tate Donovan has been one of my favorite actors since “Space Camp.”

Which is probably why I bought some freeze-dried Skittles in the gift shop as well. Zac loves new and interesting candy, so I gave them to him for his sweets and snacks cabinet. It’s my favorite “room” in the house. 😉

What do space candy and CIA have in common?

Think seriously how we would have gotten to the moon before Russia without them.

It’s a large set of facts I’m painting with my feelings.

I Made the List for the First Time

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

List the people you admire and look to for advice…

This is the first time anyone has ever asked me this question and I thought to put myself on the list. I have never been comfortable enough before in my own skin to think my opinion was worth anything. However, once I sat with my thoughts day in and day out, my discomfort at sharing those opinions went away. Mostly because I realized that no one is wrong or right. We are all making it up as we go along. I didn’t have to put people I admired on a pedestal because my opinions were just as good as theirs. It wasn’t hero worship. It was thinking something was wrong with me and that made them automatically better at opinions.

It is also true that when you’re physically disabled and mentally ill, other people assume they’re better with the thinking because they don’t have those issues. It is amazing to me that people think treated bipolar disorder and untreated are the same. So, you have a lot of people who tell you that your opinions aren’t worth anything because to them they aren’t. They have invalidated you by your diagnosis. People tend to be dismissive because they don’t think I’m in my right mind anyway. I don’t know what I’m saying.

In a very real sense, this is true. Accurate and dead on. I do not know what I am saying.

This is because I know exactly what I am saying, but through my autism and ADHD, I do not know what you hear when I talk. I know this because of the difference in what I mean vs. what people have angrily insisted I mean. This is because their brains process the order of my words differently than I do, which changes the meaning of a sentence.

What could possibly go wrong?

It leads people to put emotion where it doesn’t belong, because they’re, in effect, accenting the wrong syllable. Thinking I’m being aggressive, sarcastic, cold, whatever the emotion and telling me that- which is great. I need to know your experience of me. The problem comes in when there is no way to prove to you that I mean what I say and I say what I mean, so I am struggling against the way you perceived my words and not what they actually were. For instance, trying to prove I wasn’t trying to be aggressive when you are absolutely convinced I purposefully tried to anger you.

There is really no way to un-fuck that particular situation. I walk away from those relationships because the thing that’s harder than anything else in a relationship is proving you’re NOT angry. With autism, disproving any negative, really. It’s hard to prove you’re NOT anything if someone’s perception in their minds of you is certain.

Through being autistic, I have learned that I am a master manipulator while I sit there and wonder why people say that….. Or I did, until I learned I was autistic. That everything I say is probably going to come out wrong. So, I’m in a situation where people think I’m manipulating them and it’s supported by the fact that I’m bipolar.

I am not malicious and I am not mentally ill. I take medication every day for it. You don’t call someone blind when you can see the glasses on their face- their vision is corrected. You don’t treat a mentally ill person like they’re on thin ice for being put away.

You don’t focus on the fact that someone is an alcoholic. You focus on the fact that they’re in recovery.

So, if I know I’m not malicious and that I’m not trying to manipulate people, then obviously I am failing in my communication and need to learn new strategies for saying the same things. This is because I do not have a problem voicing needs anymore, but I don’t know how to talk at all without people telling me that I’m acting like I know everything.

However, it’s only a certain group of my friends that jump on me this way, so how they communicate plays into it as well. It is not a one sided communication issue. Because they have things in common, my pattern recognition on what they’re doing reads universal rather than personal to each individual relationship.

So, not only do I need better communication overall, I specifically need guidance on how to phrase things so that I don’t sound like I’m master of the universe. My self-esteem is so incredibly low (and I’m vulnerable about it) that I’m surprised people think I sit around and think about how great I am.

Coming into my own was hearing the child inside me say, “hey. You’re not THAT bad.” My trouble with communication made me reticent to give an opinion at all, because it always came out wrong. I have been told that the most fucking irritating thing about me in the whole entire goddamn world is that I’m always right, so take that for what you will.

One of the reasons I shut down and became a writer, basically talking to myself for incredibly long periods of time is that it came across like people tolerated me rather than genuinely wanting to be in my company. I jumped into writing because I wasn’t wanted elsewhere, and not in a “poor me” kind of way. It was “I don’t have to have friends, because I can entertain myself.”I do indeed have friends, I’m just saying that my happiness is dependent on them. I have the capability to bring myself joy; no one is responsible for making me happy.

I also think that writing reinforces what I think- I am not arguing with myself over how I feel in person because I’ve already written about it here. Therefore, people are deathly intimidated by me because I am deft in an arena where few people excel. My Achilles Heel is that I often have communication issues and end up beating the wrong dead horse instead of the right one…….. Because I interpreted someone else’s words putting the accent on the wrong syllable.

There are plenty of people that I look to for advice, generally my sister and Bryn are at the top of the list.

I ask Supergrover for advice all the time. It’s just that her responses are calculated on everything she’s already said. It’s the same way with Dana. I can’t go back in time, but their uploaded consciousnesses live in me. I talk to their characters. Their characters don’t grow and change, but it’s comforting nonetheless.

I am coming to rely more and more on myself because I realize that being disabled and autistic has led me to discount my opinions, buying into the view everyone else has about both groups. I realized when I was talking about people I go to for advice, it felt like I wasn’t even allowing myself to sit in the conference room with them.

I started taking up more space when I realized I wanted to define myself. That it was okay to take up room. It was okay if I didn’t swallow other people’s opinions whole in order to please them.

I’m not the expert. I constantly play tapes in my head of the things people have said about/to me and it sits in my brain like a rock. I defined myself by all the negative things that people placed on me, and thought I was a bad person because of it. I don’t mean recently. I mean I can tell you about feeling the exact same way at six years old. School is brutal for kids who can’t communicate. Having a neurotypical kindergarten teacher was the first time I realized that people couldn’t hear what I was saying and were putting meanings into my mouth.

I started releasing my demons as a writer…… Or at least, as I said the other day, exercising them. I hardly ever say “exercise” because I know they ain’t leavin.’ It makes me laugh to think of my demons in workout clothes. We are very serious. We are eating Starburst for breakfast.

Breakfast of champions.

I do not know what it is about the autistic brain that makes me insufferable. It’s funny because it’s true. But know that it’s not all me. Part of it is that I have a disability you know nothing about, and are choosing to believe I am not that different from you. The fault in this is not being able to predict my behavior and thinking you can because your heuristics are for neurotypical people.

I am taking responsibility for learning my half, but I can only meet you. I cannot go all the way to the other side and drag you to the middle. It is a disability. Worrying that I’m failing is a non-issue because it doesn’t matter. There’s no chance of winning. It’s miserable when that reality sets in.

I have found that I need respect for myself because I am so misunderstood. I am also not saying I’m not part of the problem. I haven’t known I was autistic since I was a kid, so I have to learn new coping mechanisms.

I think the thing that hurt me the most this week was a scene from “The Big Bang Theory” in panels as a meme on Facebook. It’s Amy telling Sheldon that his friends all hate his bad behavior and that the fact that he can’t do anything about it is the only reason they tolerate him.

I cannot be dependent on external validation. I write or pray. It’s a new development, but trusting in myself hasn’t backfired.

Things That Make Me Laugh

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

This meme, which I posted on Facebook with the caption, “they would never tell us if they were watching us through our microwaves. That is Pop Secret Information.

But as I have said before, I am not offended by the NSA or CIA because if China and Russia are spying on me, I want my people in the room, too. People do not realize that they are willingly handing over their every move to the Chinese government. They do not believe that we (the US) are trying to protect people by banning it. It’s a huge injustice to content creators, when all we’re trying to do is keep US information inside the US. It’s not working when people actively invite China into their mobiles. Why use the back door when you can walk through the front? Social engineering at its finest. For that reason, I do not have the Tik-Tok app installed on my phone. I do watch them, but on the web site in private mode or re-vlogged on YouTube.

I honestly don’t care if the US knows what I do and don’t. I really care if China can pick me up out of a lineup, because I am dangerous to them being interested in intelligence. I would not go to Iran because of this, either. I would love to see Tehran as a tourist, but if anything would get me marked as an American spy, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it’s “writing about American spies.” Just a wild guess.

It doesn’t take much, because they’ve got relatives selling prayer rugs on La Brea. 😉

There is an “Argo” quote or reference for every occasion, and that makes me laugh.

I’ve also gotten a huge kick out of watching Donald Trump go blissfully into every hearing and genuinely believe that he has never done anything wrong in the history of his life. It’s catching up to him in a major way, and I do not have schadenfreude. It’s fascinating to watch, like JK Rowling if she ever showed up at Pride.

Surely neither of them is that out of touch, and yet they are.

People say that both parties are the same, and on some issues, they’re right. I do not like the way either party funnels money to Israel. I do not like that Republicans are fighting over who gets to be a person. Who gets to be an American. So far, the mold is white, cis, straight, and male. It is unsustainable, and yet we continue to uphold it….. or at least more than half the nation does, because not all Democrats are that liberal. They do not see the problems inherent in treating minorities like shit, because none of, say, my problems affect them.

For instance, abortion would look different to most politicians if they were poor.

It makes me laugh, because I always laugh at people’s blind spots. It is better than rage or depression. Like, how dense are you if you don’t know that the news of a new baby is not always happy?For some women, it’s a death sentence because they made the devastating mistake of not trusting the bear instead.

The most vulnerable time in a woman’s life is pregnancy, because some fathers don’t support abortion. They support killing the mother because they’re not financially stable and the pressure becomes too much. The woman becomes the problem.

It makes me laugh that men do not understand this, because it makes them look like they don’t have eyes. As my friend Evey Winters points out, one of the reasons we trust bears over men is that good men stand there and say nothing. What am I supposed to do but laugh at their stupidity? I cannot solve everything by not leaving the house. If I didn’t laugh, I wouldn’t function.

My jokes are dark because the world is dark. It’s black humor to deal with an often black world….. or as I’ve put it before, trying to be an Easter person in a Good Friday world, but the way I go about it is to shed light on problems. I often am using dark humor to make a greater point, and I just have to hope that people come along with me. I think that most people who are minorities for any reason have a blacker sense of humor than the majority because there are so many more obstacles in our way….. and the more obstacles created the more things that make you a minority. For instance, AFAB (assigned female at birth), queer, neurodivergent, physically disabled, and poly are all separate sets of discrimination. The only way I escape all of it is by claiming it, because there’s no way to blackmail or shame me over any of these things. I learned that lesson at 14 when I came out as queer and it’s one of the few things that’s stuck.

Don’t cut myself into more manageable bites. Let them choke.

Republicans are asking minorities to either be just like them or get out of the United States. That should not be acceptable behavior in any country, much less “land of the free, home of the brave.” I quote this a lot, but it’s apt here:

Only the Americans would put “free” on a note so high no one could sing it. -Tony Kushner

I mean, I can, but that’s because I’m a classically trained soprano, not because I’m free.

Singing makes me laugh because that’s what I do when I hit a wrong note, and I hit a lot of wrong notes while trying to find the right ones, especially since it’s only now that I have a piano in my house (electric keyboard in the music room). This is also the first house in which I’ve been able to work out, and by that I mean “sing.” The attic is soundproofed, and so is the basement. David is also a singer, so hearing me warm up would not send him into hysterics the way it would have with my other housemates. I was very lucky that I got to sing at Bridgeport, because I was terrified to go into opera voice at 2300. I cleared it first, but permission is not reality when you have never heard someone sing before and they go full hat with horns in what would be considered “the middle of the night” in my neighborhood.

That thought makes me laugh in and of itself. It also makes me excited for January, because I might be in shape to try out for the opera chorus this year since I have a practice room that is ACTUALLY a practice room. Singing, like everything else you do with your body, gets easier as you limber up the muscles. I have not used those muscles in a long time, so I would prefer to be in a sound proof room until I can get control of it.

I can “fake it til I make it,” but it’s not how I prefer to sing. I will warm up for an hour before a performance. Otherwise, the chances of missing a note are greater, as are the epiglottal stops that make it where I can’t sing at all. The funniest time that’s ever happened was that I was filling in for another soloist in something that went up to a B flat (the highest note in the chord for the Star Spangled Banner, as well). I get up to the A and I have an epiglottal stop and just glissando down. It was…….. something.

I would like to work with Giles again, but he’s not taking students because he’s an elementary school teacher now. Giles was my voice teacher at University of Houston and we just happened to end up in the same city. Because he studied with Katharine Czienszky (apologies if I’ve spelt that wrong…. don’t have time to Czech), I have a lot of singer friends in common with him all over the country….. some of whom have known me since high school.

I think knowing really famous people before they got famous, like Robert Glasper, prepared me for the life I have now…. which is knowing that life doesn’t get better. You do. I just happen to know a lot of people that have defied insurmountable odds to get where they are, like Mireille Enos (The Killing, Good Omens) and Justin Furstenfeld (Blue October). One of the best plays I’ve ever seen starred Mireille as Anne Frank and Justin as Otto. Justin didn’t go to PVA for music, he was theater as well…. although one of the violists in my orchestra, Ryan Delahoussaye, is also in the band.

Yes, musicians. I know a violist with a gig.

Now that made me laugh.

I’m spending my evening writing because it’s distracting me from the fact that Bryn is not here yet and David has choir practice. I thought seriously about going with him, because I could commit to Tuesday nights. I have to think seriously about going to church twice a week again. However, it wouldn’t affect my schedule too much. I am rarely gone over the weekends and it would be a church in which I already had a ride. It’s a liberal church, but it’s Catholic. I would rather get paid as a ringer than attend a Catholic Church voluntarily, because I believe in open communion. I’m fine with the current pope and he’s one of my heroes because the Catholic Church is not where it needs to be in terms of being a liberal church, but it is better off than it has been in a long time. Christianity must change or die, and Catholicism would have been first due to their outdated views on, well, most everything.

However, church makes me laugh, and I’ve come a long way if I’d even consider it. What made me leave the last time was grief. I didn’t like going to church because I saw my mother in everything everyone did….. and I saw myself in the pastor. In fact, I’d been reading my pastor’s work for years because he’s also a blogger. I knew who he was online, but I was surprised as shit when I accidentally walked into his church.

There’s an Episcopal church near me now, so I might walk to it instead of Christ Cong, who was faced with closure due to their building issues. I think a reconciling Methodist congregation has it now, so that is also a viable option if I just want to stare my childhood in the face twice a week.

It makes me laugh, so it might be worth it. Or perhaps both churches are sharing the same space like “Little Mosque.” Maybe there’s a buddy comedy happening without me. I should look into this.

I’ve been a part of something like “Little Mosque” before, because we had a Jewish congregation rent our space at Bridgeport up until relatively recently, when they got bigger. I went to schul some Fridays just to listen to the transliteration, and I also enjoyed Ariel’s preaching. I also preach from a Jewish translation of the New Testament, because Jesus was a Jew and I’m trying to put him in the correct historical context. I once had someone say to me that “United Church of Christ” stood for “Unitarians Considering Christ,” and I don’t think that’s true at all. I think that people like Baptists depend on Jesus to comfort them when they’re distressed.

The UCC knows that Jesus was sent to distress us in our comfort.

And that makes me laugh.

Business

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

It’s one of my favorite Eminem tracks, and I have done it at karaoke (POORLY). But today I get to say that I had a win, because it made me feel good. I was going to post this in the article about productivity, but I’m neurodivergent. My brain diverged and I forgot. I said that I locked down my personal Facebook page and redirected everyone to my professional author’s page. What I did not say is that I started thinking like an entity and not a person, because now that’s true. Bryn also has an account on this blog, and has the capability to create entries independently of me. She doesn’t always post, yet I have to be prepared for the possibility that she could. I also would have offered one to Supergrover (after I’d added Bryn- it didn’t occur to me before) if I thought she wanted it…. For two reasons. The first is that she’s a wonderful writer. The second is that I would be very surprised if I didn’t give her an account, just access to mine, and you could tell the difference. It would be my voice, just on crack. You’d think I’d gotten better in a hurry, but you wouldn’t have thought I changed style and structure except a quarter of never.

That’s because Supergrover writes fantasy and I don’t.  I am so cerebral that the only fairy tale I’ve ever liked in my life is the one she handed me. I think that she thinks I get lost in thinking of her as the evil stepmother when I’m trying to reach “happily ever after.” Every story deserves an “HEA.” I can already see it, feel it on my skin. It just looks different than hers, and I have to be at peace with it. I am.

So, I started thinking of my blog as the beginning of Lanagan Media Group when I added Bryn and became open to the possibility of adding others; I felt an amazing amount of business savvy in locking down my personal profile. People don’t need to become friends with Leslie, they need to become friends with Lanagan Media Group. I am not a person anymore- because I have another author, I’m a brand.

But that brand is not Bryn pedaling my voice and views. It’s being able to talk about those things and discuss boundaries. We just don’t have to discuss much because we agree on most everything politically and neither one of us has a conniption fit when we write about the other. If we had a fight and she wrote I was a bitch that day, good for her. I probably needed to hear it. That’s because I know that when we have an intimate moment that strengthens our relationship, she’d reflect that, too. She’s not out to get anyone when she writes about herself, she’s digging deep and letting the right people go with her….. Because they like her for who she is and not who they think she is.

Sometimes, people don’t notice that it’s not me, so I started asking Bryn to introduce herself at the beginning of every entry she writes. I love it when she posts because she is naturally so much funnier than I am. My entries are not as full of laughter, because when I write, I am focusing on myself. How many of you when you sit alone and think are consciously trying to make yourself laugh? I am, and that’s the only reason there are jokes in here at all. However, no one does it all the time. Bryn just likes making herself laugh more than I do, and it shows.

Bryn is also neurodivergent, which is why we don’t have a problem in communication most of the time. Everything the other says is #relatable. Therefore, I am stereotypically #blessed.

I’m talking about her so much because she gets here tomorrow and I haven’t seen her since way before the pandemic, so the right amount of time to be over the top excited and can’t think about anything else.

I’m also excited to meet Dave, her boyfriend, and get to know him in the flesh as opposed to “this is Dave” occasionally as he walks by the video call. 😉 It’s necessary to get in good with your best friend’s partner, because we both need a person to talk to about her, because we both love her. We want to support her. I am not offering either of them more than that, just that when push comes to shove, I’m Bryn’s friend and not Dave’s. I am not ANTI-Dave. 😉 I am only anti-Dave if Bryn becomes anti-Dave. Just like Bryn would never in a million years be anti-Zac unless I became anti-Zac, and I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. I have both freedom and security. It’s a lot easier to deal with life’s ups and downs when you know you always have someone in your corner no matter what. And both Zac and Dave are Navy, so obviously we both know what we’re doing in terms of picking men. Navy, you are a different breed and we’re here for it.

Zac and I have similar stories- he joined the military because he didn’t know what he wanted to do after high school, but he wasn’t interested in school. I tried to join the Air Force for the same reason, because at the time music classes were the only ones I liked and I wanted to try to get into “Airmen of Note.” I just wasn’t medically eligible and Zac was.

At the time, being in the military and also in the jazz band seemed like the easiest way to work as a musician every single day and not worrying about chair tests, ever, because even if I got last they wouldn’t kick me out altogether. No matter what happened, I could work as a musician, even if I turned out to be a crappy one and did something else for my day job. As it turned out, what I did not like was grade school.

I had a great college experience because that’s the first time academics are on a level playing field with neurotypicls and neurodivergents alike. That’s because in college, they don’t do “daily work.” You are perfectly free to inhale all the reading in one night if that is the way your brain works (and mine does). I couldn’t see the forest for the trees in grade school, but I kicked the shit out of college unless it was something I didn’t understand, anyway, like Logic or Trig.

It’s not school I objected to- it was the system of education. So, if you’re a neurodivergent who struggles in grade school, don’t worry about college because it’s a choose your own adventure. Study every day, or study for 27 hours in a row before a test. Your choice. You do you. Don’t be afraid that you’re not smart enough for college, because “smart” and the way your brain works are two completely different things.

I did a lot better in school when I wasn’t micromanaged and my brain could just be my brain. That I wasn’t set up to fail by not having papers in my bag that day. I was excellent even in classes with the Socratic method, because I would inhale the reading and be able to talk about it, and in classes where reading wasn’t mandatory (as in, we didn’t discuss it), I wasn’t punished for saving up the reading til later because I knew it would be on the test….. So I had to read it at some point and did. Class and the reading were often disjointed when they didn’t reflect each other, because both we as students and the professor would get off on tangents, especially in International Relations (we were obsessed with the war in Kosovo at the time).

So, for all you ADHD/autistic kids it’s okay to stop worrying about what you’re going to do in college because you might find when you get there that college jives more with the way you think than high school did, anyway. No matter how you do it, it’s right.

Just like now, I would have a problem with being required to write long essays every day on a given topic, but I write them to myself because I think they’re important. I am lucky that they have become important enough to other people that the reason I allowed other authors was to increase my reach while I was asleep, because I’m on Eastern time and Bryn is on Pacific. It was a very Pacific strategy.

I am capable of synthesizing and adapting ideas. I got that one from ITIL, which is the Bible on how to run a helpdesk- “follow the sun.” Maybe one day I will make friends close enough to add in New Zealand and Australia rather than requiring one of us to move there. 😉

I worked for Alert Logic, and we had a “follow the sun” approach, which led to one of the greatest victories of my career. The vice president of the company in the UK took a support call and transferred it to me without hanging up the phone. He was absolutely blown away that it was 0300 and I was chatting to him like it was just a normal workday…. Asking who his Doctor was (I asked all British customers that just to calm their asses down before addressing the issue at hand. If they’re calling to say something doesn’t work, they want to fight. Don’t let them. A cappuccino machine in a dress is the one true way). This vice president said that if everyone was like me, they’d have a better company. Unfortunately, my manager did not also think this.

That’s because I thrive on my own structure, which I had a lot of at night, especially when I transferred my business phone to my cell phone so I could answer calls in my pajamas in my home office, which I did when I was the one following the sun, handling international customers from midnight til 9 AM.

It was so intimate to be the only voice in the dark on my end with the busy chatter of their offices in the background. I often got to know people quite well because you have to do something to pass the time when files are transferring, etc. because it’s not enough time to put someone on hold. So, we’d chat to each other. I also got to know my British coworkers in Cardiff better than most because I was the one on the American end who was handing things over.

In fact, I once met a “Davies” that looked very much like Greg, and in retrospect I wish I’d asked if they were related. He’s one of my favorite comedians of all time, and on “Who Do You Think You Are?,” Greg finds out that he’s Welsh. I also had a fascination with Cardiff and “The Doctor Who Experience,” but I did not get to go before it closed. I’m sure that if I’d stayed at Alert Logic, I would have gotten a rotation in Cardiff at some point, but they were not the best with autistic employees who didn’t know they were autistic. Hindsight is 20/20 on agreeing that why I got fired was unfair, and yet it wasn’t their fault, either. I cannot hold them responsible for something they did not know, I can only lament that I did not know to tell them and move forward in a different direction.

Which reminds me- I get so much attention from the daily prompt tag that the next time I get to use it, I will say it again. If you want to read me, you’ll have to follow me, because I don’t appear in #dailyprompt every day anymore. That’s because even if I use it, I don’t have the specific tag for that day to put me into that feed. So many people have gotten used to reading me on that tag alone, because of the number of people that showed up every day back then vs. now. It’s not that I don’t do well in other categories, that’s just a big one for exposure. I got a year of it, so I should be grateful, and I am. What would be more helpful is another year of prompts rather than reusing the same ones.

I suppose I could create another author tag and use THAT account, but I’ve been theantileslie for so long that I don’t think of myself as anyone else, except for possibly “Rev. Argo,” because that’s how Bryn used to address my mail (I did her wedding years ago, am ordained by the church of the Latter Day Dude, and Argo is my favorite movie). If I had thought of it on Dec. 31st, I probably would have done it. It’s too late now. But maybe next year if there are no new writing prompts to be had.

Writing prompts make it easier to blog, just like sometimes Alzheimer’s patients come into lucidity about the past if you prompt them. Details come up for both of us that wouldn’t have come up otherwise. I find that especially the way I write, no writing prompts is ever going to be the same from beginning to end, because it’s going to bring up different aspects of an experience depending on how I view it that day.

I don’t think the same thing about every situation all the time. I make peace within myself by seeing things in a hundred different ways, because there are a hundred different ways to explain what happens when I’m around other people, or two hundred stories total because my 100 won’t match theirs. A lot of it is that autistic thought processes don’t seem “correct” to neurotypical people. Because our pathways are different, they are wrong.

Sometimes, I have to get used to the fact that I’m wrong whether I am or not, because I cannot get people to see that my thought processes are not “crazy.” They’re DIFFERENT, because I cannot even begin to think like someone else and in a neurotypical world, difference is bad. Very bad. They googled it, and they do not like it.

I have known this for a long time because I am not officially diagnosed as autistic, I am in the process of waiting for a diagnosis and doing all the research/online tests I can do until that appointment. However, I have been diagnosed as ADHD, and had I known more about ADHD when I was at Alert Logic and why it’s like autism, I could have been more specific in my demands for accommodation. Very few of the things I need in a working environment are specific to Autism or ADHD. Both accommodations are nearly identical. If I had known that I take in information through sight and that’s why I have trouble talking on the phone and writing at the same time, I might have gotten accommodation for it. I cannot process what one person is saying and process a response and write down my experience while it is happening, i.e. documentation. There are ways around a problem if you know you have it. I could not help myself.

That’s what all this autism talk is about. It’s not trying to “prove” I’m autistic because there’s no real way to do that. We all look different, we all have different ways of presenting. I especially know that you’ve met autistic women your whole life without knowing it because most women don’t know whether they’re autistic or not. It never would have occurred to their parents to get them tested because classic presentation is young boys. That means there are millions of undiagnosed women in the work force and we all struggle a fuck you amount. That’s because they’re caught in a system not built for them, but never taught that it’s not built for them. They’re just angry and frustrated because obviously, it’s not the system. They’re just failures.

Up to 80% of autistic people are unemployed at any given moment, and for women, this is mostly expressed in not being able to handle life like a “normal woman.” We are taught that we are failing when we cannot handle being a partner, mother, and coworker/employee all at the same time. However, the more and more roles we take on, the more we’re spread thin without realizing it. The potential for constant meltdown/burnout cycles gets larger, which makes us look like we’re shirking our responsibilities because all wives and mothers are built to handle a million details and you’re just defective. I am so glad that I’m queer, because I have no doubt that if I’d bought into what being a wife and mother really was to a man and married someone to have that life, I would be dead by now. This is not saying that my husband would have killed me, but it is not unfathomable that he would be enraged by my lack. No, I’m talking about not having gender roles in a relationship kept me from feeling like I was failing as a partner all the time.

Life is relentless as an autistic person in an allistic world, because you cannot convince someone that you really didn’t know/understand something. “Everyone” knows. I would like to punch this mythical “everyone” in the face. They’re setting me up for failure, like commercials that try to convince people with no money that they need extravagant cars.

I thrive in my own system, and so do many autistic people. I just don’t think that many women have the language for it. I hope I’m giving it to them straight, because autism is probably a diagnosis they never would have thought they had because no one ever told them it was possible. There’s a woman I hold in my mind when I say this, and I hope she knows it’s her. It’s a face with many, many names when I follow the sun.

That’s because I’m not a brand, I’m an archetype. There are millions of women out there just like me, and I’m trying to find them. It helps not to feel so alone. I am already friends with lots of autistic guys due to the nature of always being online and having been on the Internet since it was born. I already indulge my autistic male side because men are more likely to know they’re autistic.

I have said that I’m enby and I mean it. I have just already met my quota in autistic men and want to get to know other autistic women, because it affects us differently in terms of the role we play in society. There is no room for an autistic woman to be herself unless she ignores a MASSIVE amount of American culture.

I get called “difficult” a lot when I don’t understand. It also doesn’t take much for a woman to be difficult in my society, so I am guessing that whether or not I am difficult depends on your perspective. I have definitely had to turn a negative into a positive, going even further against the grains of what female means in order to understand myself. I am not all of anything. I am a little bit of a whole bunch of things. I contain multitudes, and I’m not a good enough writer to have thought of that first but it doesn’t make it less true.

So, you should follow me because I am not going to be the same person tomorrow. You will perceive a different aspect of my personality then, because Bryn will be here…… And also because I’m a different person every time my outlook changes, because what I present depends on what I pick up.

Therefore, I would also like you to pick me up.

You know what I mean. Get your mind out of the gutter. 😉

Productivity

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 4 Comments

Today’s daily prompt is about times in my life that I’ve felt productive, and this is a great time to ask me about it because I don’t think I’ve ever been more productive writing-wise, and I don’t want to be known for anything else.

It’s been a transformation of enormous proportions. I have been pulling myself inwards, thinking about my directions and distractions. What and where are they? Why do I fail when I am so motivated by hearing other people talk about success? It’s all about dealing with the gap between knowledge, emotion, and communication. I do hear people, and I do take in emotions. However, I don’t do it at the same rate or speed because my pattern recognition is different. There are literally different pathways to your conclusions than to mine. I am not a sociopath, cut off from all my emotions. I show all of them very well in writing. I show them very well in person, although I am much less likely to tell people what I think in person because it’s hard for me to verbalize it. If something feels like a threat, I go mute. I do not stop taking everything in. My mind decides “we’re not going to do speech today.” And we don’t.

Part of being so much into chatting online vs. getting together is because I don’t experience those gaps in between trying to say what I think and trying to verbalize it. It is why I now think that Supergrover is my puzzle piece by now, because she’s had unfiltered access to my brain for 10 years without once hearing a stutter as I figured out how to put words in my mouth. I solve the problem of stuttering by taking time to think before I speak, because most of my stutter is just lag. Damn lag.

Therefore, people who know me would probably say “you don’t stutter.” I don’t when I’m not choking on buffer overload (and as you get older, the amount of RAM decreases). When people are talking to me, the thing that you are reading right now has not stopped. It is running underneath my speech. Therefore, I have multiple trains of thought running at all times, and picking one of them in order to speak slows me down by quite a large margin.

It also depends on how many other sounds are competing with your voice in the room. I like very intimate conversations because I can really only process one voice at once. I am never trying to “get people alone,” because I don’t have to. I go off to be by myself and the other introverts adopt me because they see it’s okay to be overstimulated… Or someone is concerned and now the person that’s concerned about me is in my bubble. Either way, it’s not about my personality. My personality is “when you’re overwhelmed, find somewhere quieter.” That’s how I got Bryn. She has always been in my corner because we were the introverts trying to get away from the noise. We talked to each other in quiet spaces because we could hear ourselves think.

I remember myself at that age (19) and just realized that my haircut now is the closest it’s ever been to when I was that young. And yet, I really don’t look much different except a few gray strands and a few more wrinkles. Some people say that they don’t feel any older. I do. I feel ancient- partly because I see how I’ve grown, but partly because I’ve been middle aged since I was nine. I have never talked like a child, ever, which is why in our family no one imitates things I said when I was little. No one. I have been very precise with language since I learned to use it; it just so happens that most people excel at conversation and I excel at taking a second to think of a reply and chatting back.

Supergrover once told me that it was clear I often said things before I thought about them, and I believe that is true. It has to be, because I’m ADHD. But at the same time, I think she was also talking about consequences that a naurotypical person would see coming, but not a neurodivergent one. I don’t mean issues of clear right and wrong. I have that. I mean being able to divine consequences and/or their feelings out of thin air, and our relationship was only using 7% of what went into communication in the first place. A good example of this is thinking I’m being the bigger person by laying out my vulnerabilities first. She took it not as “this is what Leslie is worried about,” but as “Leslie needs to guilt me about something.” Meanwhile, I think I have said something perfectly logical and she thinks I’m trying to hurt her. It’s unsustainable, because I do not want her to feel guilty.

I want her to see that these are the problems we need to resolve so that we can move on, because I can imagine that some of the things I think and feel do indeed make her feel guilty, but making her feel guilty was not my intent. I think she thinks I want to punish her for what she’s done, when she’s the most precious thing in my life. The fact that she thinks that I feel such negativity is overwhelming, and I feel like I’ve proven that within myself I was not asking for anything huge. She reassured me that I do come up in her mind all the time, and that was that. That she didn’t have to drop out of her life and appear in mine. That I was worried our relationship was truly lopsided and I was on the wrong track. It was a half a line in an e-mail, not a day at the beach.

Wanting to do things together is dreaming because she doesn’t have the bandwidth, but I didn’t make it clear that I was just dreaming, so she thought I was being demanding. If I was demanding, e-mails wouldn’t have been enough to sustain a relationship for 10 years. When I throw ideas out there and they’re not for her, she becomes part of the problem by not saying “eh. I don’t think meeting in person is for me.” Or whatever. She’s never said anything like that, so I’ve always treated her like a normal person. And in fact, I believe she sees me the same way. That’s because I was preaching at Bridgeport during the pandemic and she told me to send her a link. She didn’t get to come because something came up, but the fact that she told me to send her the link made my heart beat eighty times faster and I did very well that day.

However, I didn’t know she wasn’t able to come until after the service (Zoom), so I still put a reference to her in it because it tends to make people laugh to themselves. I also thought it would make her laugh to be an atheist and think “a preacher mentioned me in a sermon today.”

And the thing is, I wasn’t disappointed in the slightest because she was genuinely sorry that she couldn’t make it because what came up was really important- not that I’m not, but I’m not her only friend and I’m not a member of her family, unless you count the space in her head I’ve been renting all these years.

It feels very much like a constant running version of “All of Me.”

I do not know whether she would be Lily Tomlin or Steve Martin, but as I’ve seen Steve Martin age I actually think we’re more alike, despite Lily and me both being queer. I love comedy, but I also love zoning out and doing my own thing, like buying art and writing novels/screenplays. I have a feeling that Steve Martin is a neurodivergent introvert as well….. That stage presence is an affectation for EVERYONE who is in any way creative. You get to see us live, you don’t get to see us in the practice room.

You don’t get to see the thousand pictures I took before I got to the good one……………. Except you do.

I write in bulk, so how many of these entries do you think I think are amazing? Not all of them, I assure you. I feel like I spend my days work shopping ideas, throwing them around in my brain and trying to word it so that I understand them. If I can understand them, then mostly so can other people. I get lost in my own head and forget transitions a lot of the time, but that’s what it’s like to get a blog and not a book.

You are not getting the finished product, you are reading my notes. I am a different writer outside this blog because when I am writing for publication, I tend to clean it up more. Not only that, if it’s important I get someone to edit me (A friend or a Fiverr). By “important,” I mean anything I’m turning in to a contest or I’m being paid, like a book review. Even if I don’t get a salary, the book is the payment.

I took a break to make breakfast, and now I don’t remember where I was going.

The stove is gas.

The stove is gas.

The stove is gas.

I have to keep pinching myself when I say it. It has made me cry several times, both because having a gas stove is such a a good thing and because there are All-Clad pans to go with it. I remember every moment of learning to cook just by the way the pan feels in my hand. It’s too professional not to trigger me in a good way. David hasn’t seen me flip mushrooms or anything, but he has come home and say it smells good. What he’s smelling is butter. A lot of it.

Now that I have All-Clad, I’m back to cooking like I’m in a restaurant. It’s good, because I don’t eat very often, but everything I do eat is loaded with calories. Most days, it’s eggs and toast. Today, I made oatmeal.

I started with a couple tablespoons of butter, oatmeal, and chia, flax, and hemp seeds. I sauteed all of it until it was brown, then added water, Mexican vanilla, and sugar. It sat on the stove for about five minutes (steel cut, but microwavable so it doesn’t take long on the stove) and then I added some peanut butter and dried cranberries to finish.

Then, I let it sit while I was cleaning the kitchen, because I like oatmeal to cool so that it breaks apart in chunks. It took me about 15 minutes to clean up, at which time I took the liberty of pouring some almond milk on it.

Now, the whole house smells like brown butter, and I am very, very pleased. I wish I had made a larger pan, because I like steel cut oatmeal warmed up in the microwave rather than buying quick oats. These were some I’d ordered off of Amazon years ago and I’m still using them up because I didn’t know I was ordering six boxes of six. Normally, I buy Irish steel cut oats and it takes about half an hour. For my money, now that I’ve cooked with microwavable steel cut, it’s fine. It tastes the same when you put the amount of ingredients in yours as I do in mine. I didn’t do it this time, but last time I sauteed pumpkin seeds for oatmeal as well.

Generally people who say they don’t like oatmeal haven’t had what I consider oatmeal. It’s watery, or soupy, or whatever. Mine actually looks like cereal. Plus, the grains all taste better after they’ve been sauteed in butter first. Pretty much anything tastes good sauteed in butter, but get exponentially better with sugar, vanilla, and dried fruit.

I need to go to the grocery store at some point today, but breakfast was just “throw it together.” I like to go to the grocery store when I’m full, because it helps my impulse control…… But not too full or nothing else will look appealing. I will go to the grocery store, walk around, and leave. I get overwhelmed at too many decisions. It is literally why I have a standard order on Uber Eats and I just hit reorder. If they don’t have something, I discuss substitutions. I do not want to go through decision fatigue with every single item.

The only thing I know I want today that I haven’t gotten in a while is toilet paper. Hayat always bought all of ours, I didn’t have to get it myself. So, I get to pick out my own. This is exciting for me. You have no idea.

Before David left for church, he told me I could put my office in the sun room. He said that no one uses it, and that it’s kind of cold. I told him that was fine. I could get a little electric heater if I had to. It’s nice to have a place to write that’s not shut up in my bedroom. I’m having trouble transitioning into having a whole house again. My housemates and I stuck to our rooms and rarely came out. Therefore, I’m usually in my room. I think David thought I was unhappy and that’s why I’m shut up in here. Nope, it’s that I only think of myself as renting one room.

I have seen David visibly relax over time, because since he’s also neurodivergent, having someone move in with him was VERY intimidating. It was intimidating for me, too, but not in the same way. He’d never rented out his space before, so he didn’t know what to expect from anyone at all. I’ve had housemates in every living situation since college except a spot here and there. Once I lived in a junior efficiency by myself. All of the others, I was either in a relationship or I had housemates. Once, I had a one bedroom in a retirement community. I was in my 20s and I was delighted. They didn’t legally discriminate, they picked up the trash door to door, there were two pools on the grounds and I was the hottest person at both of them….. I mean, what was not to like in that situation? 😉

They stopped doing things for the residents after a while. At first, we all had breakfast together every Sunday morning on the landlord’s dime. That stopped, and then picking up trash door-to-door stopped. The only thing left that marked it as a retirement community at all was a bus that went to several shops around the area. In Houston, I drove, so I didn’t use it. Basically, though, what made it unique was gone.

I am trying not to do that to myself. To give pieces of myself away so that I am no longer unique. I am also not trying to be invulnerable, to actively disconnect myself from my emotions so that things hurt less. If I felt less, I wouldn’t have so much inspiration to write, because I wouldn’t think my life was worth remembering.

Smiley

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What are your favorite emojis?

I have jokingly called Zac “Smiley” since we met. That’s because George Smiley was John Le Carré’s main character and Zac is not in a big three letter, but he works in both military and civilian intelligence roles. I was delighted one day when I said something in voice dictation like, “you’re adorable, Smiley.” Siri wrote:

You’re adorable 😊

So, if I had to pick one out of all, it’s the OG. I was around when it began, and I use/say it almost as much now as then.

I feel like I use emojis the way they were intended, which is to indicate which lines are jokes… not a mode of communication. To me, that is like saying “I need 300 words on my desk by 1500, but make sure it’s in Wingdings.” Therefore, I hardly ever use emoticons that I can’t type.

It’s not fun to me to stop and insert imagery like a web designer. I will add emojis at the end, but only sometimes. Mostly I am concerned about getting you an answer, not picking pictures.

My other top two are a winking face and a smiley with the tongue hanging out because they’re easy to use at 90 wpm. I also try not to use them in every single paragraph. They are decorations, not cake. My feelings may have more to do with the creation of the web not being what maintains it. As in, I may be telling you things that no longer apply. In my background, they were lifelines to ensure that you let someone know your intent in a chat room, because an emoji transcends language. I get that going to pictures is nothing new and hieroglyphics are valid, but that’s not how we did it in the beginning. I’m not advocating we go backwards. I just haven’t had a situation where I needed to stop talking and use emojis instead. It has never come up.

I also don’t expect other people to be writers, so I am not telling you what you should do, either. I am saying that my habits are built from having specifically a desktop since I was eight. It was a different feel not to have the Internet on all the time, like a utility. You might have only been able to chat for a few minutes before someone accidentally picked up the phone. The phone lines carried both data and voice just like the internet does now, but picking up another phone in the house would drop the data connection and you would be “kicked off.” I have to explain this because not all my readers are my age.

I wish I could remember more of those early conversations, because I didn’t realize how quickly my day to day life was changing. My watch has a faster processor now than my desktop had back then.

I have a watch that would have genuinely been helpful at CIA during The Cold War, and I would not doubt that they had something like an Apple Watch long before we did. It’s not because I think there’s a deep state or anything shady. It’s that with all the technology research CIA does, a computer that’s capable of sitting on your wrist like a Pip-Boy can’t be an original idea. Jonna used to take calls from her staff after “Get Smart” and “Dragnet” from officers saying, “can we do that?”

But there’s a second reason, and that’s that during one of Jonna’s talks, she said that they do such specialized things that one person will spend their entire career on one thing, like batteries or cameras. That’s because once an asset got to the place where they were supposed to plant the bug, it had to last a long time, because who knows how long it will be before we can get into that room again? And in fact, she was talking about “The Americans,” the scene where the maid hides the bug in Caspar Weinberger’s clock.

(I thought it was really funny that Ollie North consulted on “The Americans. It’s just the richest ending to that story I could imagine, because it was a major one. I remember it and I couldn’t have been even a teenager yet.)

We, the people of the chatrooms, have conversations exactly like this because we’re always looking for the next new thing, computer-wise. Zac and I have a Chinese Wall on technology, because he knows I’m interested and I’ll ask way more questions than he could possibly answer. The only thing he’ll say is the history of something if it’s UNCLASS. Like, “we have stuff that looks similar.” If he says “looks similar,” that’s kind of my cue to go read a book. 😉

I have never been in a chatroom where we weren’t discussing computers or the chessboard at some point. I have no doubt that I’ve met half of Anonymous by now. I know for certain I’ve met one. I didn’t even have to catch him at anything. He took some Ambien and came to my house because he still couldn’t sleep……… Then I didn’t sleep for three days.

However, he was the kind of hacker you want. Someone who’s a hacktivist on the good guys’ side. White hats do exist.

In all of my years on the Internet, it’s been as nonbinary as everything else about me. I got sucked into the world of hacking, but I don’t hack. It’s kind of the way Lindsay is woven into the queer community in Houston even though she’s cis and straight.

Oh, and I should write this down. “Enby” is short for nonbinary. It’s the gender that most fits me, and yet I don’t care if people think I’m male or female. Pronouns are not about respect to me, because I think it’s more important for me to know who I am than anyone else. Pronouns are a non-issue because I don’t make them one. The easiest thing is just to say “they” if you don’t know, anyway. It’s funny how my gender often depends on how people perceive me, which most of the time is female, but when people don’t look closely, I’m always a “sir.” Neither bother me in the slightest.

(And for the record, if you misgender me, just apologize and move on….. Because you didn’t misgender me and I’m not offended. Plus, I do not need your entire history with trans people as an apology. I’m sure your nephew is great.)

The truth is, though, lots of people on the Internet are nonbinary by now, whether we like it or not. The Internet has changed the rules of the game because you become disconnected from your physical body during emotional intimacy. It’s not that way for everyone, obviously, but it’s a good observation of most. For instance, “straight guys” trolling gay chatrooms because they’re curious and don’t want anyone to know they’re chatting with other queer people at night.

And most of the time, that comes off as rage bait. It’s very popular to come into a gay online community and start asking things like “so which one’s the wife?” And you watch a mix of insults go by because it’s our space.

It is also true that a disproportionately large neurodivergent community exists on the web because we built it. I have always worked with other autistic people without being able to identify it for myself, because I did not know that I was social masking, first of all (in a way that other people don’t), and I also didn’t know that you can have a full range of emotions and pick up all social cues and guess what? That’s not what autism is, either. It’s a criteria, but it’s not all of it.

Being autistic is absolutely why I gravitated toward Linux. It wasn’t to play around with Linux, necessarily. Part of it was learning Linux, and it was exciting because I could do things that very few people my age could do. The better part was a group of people who could understand me in my own language, which for years turned into me being the only woman in many rooms (because that’s mostly how I’ve presented at the office, although we all kind of look nonbinary in  Oregon because we’re all wearing the same Columbia jacket we got on sale last summer at REI.

I wouldn’t have learned any of the things I’ve learned about myself without an Internet connection, because I didn’t have many queer friends growing up locally in Texas, but I had a ton of them in Australia.

So, I suppose the easiest way to say it is something you’ve heard all your life, so I hope it makes sense.

“My kindom is not of this world.”

😉

Locked -or- Friends of Friends

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I am sending out an announcement to all of my readers, because people tend to find me personally on Facebook and either follow or friend me. I don’t get paid for that. But I do get paid if you share things on my professional author’s page. I am on my way to being what Facebook calls a “Rising Creator,” and I can now give Top Fan badges and all that. The one who has it right now is a Canadian writer/editor that is not even related to me- not even on my ex-girlfriend’s step neighbor-in-law’s side.

However, she does live close to Ottawa so maybe we’ll meet some day simply because I like the city and want more photographs of it. I was very impressed with the French cathedral aspect of Parliament, and you really don’t see how different Canada really is unless you go there and see it for yourself. It’s kind of like stepping back in time and wondering “what if we lost the Revolutionary War?”

I’m not joking or being light. Canada is the country I think of when I think about how they’re so much happier than we are and they have WAY CRAPPIER WEATHER. So, it’s definitely a thought experiment because it’s a delightful blend of British and American culture. But if you only know Canadians from their accents, you don’t see the street signs in French and English, or the aforementioned Parliament. You don’t see how disorienting it is because it’s like the US, but it’s SO not.

No one in Canada breaks a leg and owes thousands of dollars.

There are other government safety nets, but that’s probably the biggest. Preventative care is so much cheaper than emergencies and because no one goes to the doctor because it’s too expensive, everything is a multiple thousand dollar emergency. If we kept people healthy, we cut down on emergencies.

Americans should be mad as hell by Googling what other countries pay in medical fees. It does not cost $5,000 to set a leg, but that’s what you’re going to pay. It doesn’t really cost thousands of dollars for all drugs, but that’s what you’re going to pay. That’s because prices in this country are built for the government to pay, not us. For instance, it’s not what they’re supposed to charge the patient, it’s what they’re supposed to charge the insurance company or Medicare/Medicaid. Putting those prices on citizens is insane. And the government and all the insurance companies know it, but it’s too big a racket to shut down.

Reaaaaaallllllyyyyyy wishing I was a Canadian about now.

No, I’m not serious, but I’ve been thinking about it since my senior year of high school in a “Calgon, take me away” sort of haze. As I was telling my “Top Fan,” I’ve never had enough points because you get so many for being bilingual.

I am not saying that I hate America and we aren’t a good country. I am saying that some countries do things better than others. We have filmmaking wired. Taking care of poor people? Not so much.

I have no idea where I would live, but I do know that I would like television. My favorite Canadian TV show is “Little Mosque on the Prairie,” which I saw on Hulu a million years ago. It’s about a young new imam (which was originally autocorrected to “Miami.” Eyeroll. ) whose congregation is renting space from an Episcopal church (or some variation thereof). It’s very much a buddy comedy like “Boston Legal,” it’s just theologically hilarious instead of legally hilarious.

I’m not sure which is better, but render unto Caesar?

I like them both.

I sat here for a minute and I was thinking about other old shows that I like besides “Boston Legal,” because there’s some characters missing in my life that I’d really like to interview.

I would love to sit with Sidney Bristow and find out how she finished her career. Bonus points if I get both the Bristows at once (Jennifer Garner was Sidney, Victor Garber played her dad, Jack).

Another great character interview would be Austin Powers and Foxy Cleopatra (plus getting to tell Beyonce who I am). It would be good to see Captain Mal and Wash to see how that whole thing turned out in retrospect (I’m a Browncoat.).

I would like to live in the world of Good Omens, because I think it might be the only thing I’ve watched that’s weirder than I am (in a good way).

I know that SpongeBob is perpetually in his late teens/early 20s, but since I’m a line cook, I have a good time thinking about him being retired and that whole line of conversations.

I would like to meet Dexter Douglas and Freakazoid, because Dexter is Autistic and Freakazoid is ADHD………………………….. And yet they’re the same person.

This Needs Attention

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

There needs to be an overhaul of #dailyprompt on WordPress, because not being able to use it cuts you off from the WordPress community. I got more exposure from #dailyprompt and #dailyprompt-x than I have from tagging anything else. That’s because you’re more likely to appear in people’s feeds because they have it- people have to go looking for things like “friendships,” “relationships,” and “CIA.” And now I’m really laughing hard because to a new reader, this must look horribly confusing and I think it’s better to just leave it.

If you only have dailyprompt-x for so many days, and then you just start reusing them, eventually, you can’t answer them anymore. It doesn’t matter to me that it’s an old prompt. I am never starting from the same place on a different day, especially with 365 days in between. It also reinforces using the Jetpack app, which I have noticed they like reminding you to use it a lot…… So make it easier, Matt (Mullenweg, owner of Automattic). It creates a habit, and literally the only habit I have. Now, I’m feeling a bit weird at committing to write every day and I somehow have to think of it myself? Like I’m a creative writer? This is bullshit.

I hope I’m kidding…………..

I have gotten so used to rolling over, picking up my tablet, and seeing what the prompt is- then taking a few minutes to think about it while I get myself together- and writing everything in one shot.

One of the funniest things I’ve ever gotten is that the prompt came out at midnight and by 12:30 AM I had a fully functioning essay ripping Evangelicals a new one; a reader said, “whoa. You are good at this.” How did he know I was good at it? Daily prompt tag.

I write a lot faster when I feel passionately about something, and a writing prompt doesn’t have to be followed strictly. You receive the idea, and whatever comes up, comes up. If the prompt is about a time in my life when I felt embarrassed and it was on a fishing trip so my ADHD brain jumps to everything I know about fish, it’s still valid because I was still prompted.

Today’s is “topics I’d like to discuss.”

And I’m all like, “this web site is always about me. What about them?”

I will talk to anyone about anything, but I like listening to subject matter experts. That’s why living in Washington is so important to me. One of the best nights I’ve ever had socializing in Silver Spring was stopping into a restaurant on a whim (All Set for some Sriracha Cheddar biscuits. If Red Lobster closes, Silver Spring is going to be okay). I started talking to the man next to me and he was president of the National Black Journalism Association. So, I got to hear about what he does and how he does it. Those are the conversations I treasure because I am all about self-improvement and learning from people who are better than me at what they do. I think that people think I’m obsessed with fame, but they don’t see Tim Ferris that way.

There’s a difference between wanting fame and wanting success.

Not only that, I’m not impressed by anyone, ever. I find that if I get impressed, I won’t speak at all. The inverse is also true. The more that you treat people like you’re impressed, the less they want to get to know you because you’re somehow weirdly obsessed with them. I got my own taste of that when I realized that I did not want to date a fan. Since I have mentioned that Supergrover started as a fan, I feel like I have to specifically say I’m not referring to her.

I went on a date with a woman who’d read me and she grilled me over the coals. It felt like one would feel when they show up to a party and get served because of the bait and switch. I will give you a for-instance. If I said on my blog that I was married three years ago, then why am I not married now? Fair. But it just kept getting deeper and deeper, like she was trying to catch me in a lie and there was some kind of “gotcha” somewhere. She didn’t do anything specifically wrong, per se. I’ll just never forget the feeling of being on the witness stand and not being able to give any right answers. If they didn’t match up exactly to what I’d written months ago, then I was a liar……. When time had gone by and I was in a different mindset and god knows what I was thinking while I was writing that day…….. You get my drift.

Blog entries are just a snapshot of my day, and you can see it in my feelings between entries, because some entries are diametrically opposed. To me it is a way of saying to the world “yes, she can be taught.” I don’t feel like I am now lying, I feel like someone is holding me to the past. My blog is helpful to me because I can see where I need to grow and adjust. It is not useful to have people around me that do not see it as a living document. Everything is being amended to reflect progress.

It’s also about accountability. I can’t go back and cover up my past, but I can read it to change my future. It’s scary to go back and look at what you’ve said in light of what it did and didn’t do for you, and that’s what happens when I go back and read an entry from even last year or the year before. It doesn’t take five years for things to change. It doesn’t even take one. The blog changes every single day not because I’m making things up, but because I make it my business to think about how I can improve my relationships and get clarity on my life.

However, I made a decision to paint myself as an unreliable narrator because I am. I have given you everything you need to know about why I am an unreliable narrator, and that mostly has to do with the fact that narration is unreliable in and of itself. It’s harder to take seriously when that person is documented as having mental health issues.

I am not trying to be anything I’m not. Interesting, yes. But an expert? No. I’m also still laughing about “who peer reviews you?” Because if there was a peer review for bloggers back in the day, it was all of us commenting on each other’s posts. People don’t comment now. They acknowledge. It’s the difference between Facebook and Reddit. Both have ways of one-tap recognition, but redittors are not known for being terse. Reading people’s writing on Reddit is sometimes better than reading a novel…… As long as you don’t mind looking through a lot of spam and porn to find actual intelligence. Reddit is the best of us because it’s the worst of us….. Just like we loved “The Real World” when it stopped being polite, and started getting real.

For instance, I posted on r/washingtondc about the beauty of Washington and how you should stop and take a look because it’s worth it, etc. Basically using lines I’ve used with you guys about DC before. All of the sudden, I had almost 300 upvotes along with a cacophony of where’s hiking? Where’s biking? What are you talking about?” People came out of the woodwork saying “here’s where to rent a boat,” here’s where to hike/bike, here’s the good lakes, etc.

And when you’re in r/washingtondc, you do not dare mention Virginia or Maryland. There are places to do all of these things inside the city if you are not expecting the Columbia River Gorge dumped into a major metropolitan area, which is what most of the people from Seattle seemed to be so fucking mad about. Like “Rock Creek Park is not hiking…. When I was a hiker…. :::dramatic flare:::

Sit your jack ass down.

I realize that this is not The Gorge, but Rock Creek Park does have good hiking, and I think that Great Falls is just as beautiful as anything I’ve seen on the West Coast. Just because it’s a little different doesn’t make it less divine. Sailing on the Chesapeake is just as spiritually satisfying as driving out The Gorge.

I’m blessed that I’ve gotten to live on all three coasts in the US, because I’ve lived in Houston/Galveston as well. I also know that I am an Oregonian, not a Californian. I am not that kind of “West Coast.” Portland is full of old white lesbians that nine times out of ten look something like Paul McCartney. I fit right in.

Oregonians and Californians have a tense relationship, because basically when California started becoming expensive, Portland became the new hot place to live. Oregonians are gatekeepers, most of whom think should have closed when they came in. I am guilty of a little bit of that because it made rent skyrocket dramatically. I lived in Portland when it was the right time for someone my age to do that, but I’m glad I left. It’s not just that I’m a different person, it’s that Portland is a different city. If I moved back, Portland would remind me of DC and not the other way around in terms of the way the city is more focused on business and industry, less on being the place where “young people go to retire.”

Maryland’s suburbs do not remind me of Oregon, but Virginia’s do. There are lots of pockets that look like Lake Oswego, Beaverton, etc. On the Maryland side, the population is too dense to spread out like that. Zac’s neighborhood is a perfect example of what we don’t do here in MD, because it’s a townhome community backed up to a nature preserve. It looks very much like many of the houses I visited in Oregon. It’s not a beauty contest to me. Both cities have a lot to offer, I just think Washington has more because of the transit infrastructure (I would be broke trying to get around Portland or Houston). I don’t wake up every day and think, “God, The District is gorgeous, but it’s not Oregon.”

I’m not always on Reddit.

Here’s my favorite quote so far:

That morning was when I began to invent my own personal version of shorthand, which I would continue to use throughout my career. It was so secure and so covert that even I couldn’t make out its meaning sometimes.

I gravitated toward her style in some ways because it’s reminiscent of mine. Or mine is reminiscent of hers, but I started writing before I started reading her books. So, chicken and egg debate on who sounds like whom. I know I sound like her when I write about intelligence because she’s my touchstone on how to do that. But as a general rule, both she and Tony write like me because their books and my blog are both memoirs. Mine is just written paragraphs at a time.

Memoirs are one-sided, always. People get very angry about them. Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Harry Wales are the three recent memoirs that have caused the most scandal, but all memoirs are written with one person’s story in mind- the writer’s. I keep memoirists in my head all day long because I only have a few people giving me blowback at any given time, not a nation or a kingdom.

I don’t think I could cause an international incident with my blog, but give it time……. Eyeroll.

If I could pick a writer that I would like to spend a day with, learning their secrets, it would be Vladimir Zelenskyy. I’ve thought he was brilliant since I saw “Servant of the People” on Netflix, so I know that we are kindred spirits. This is because he’s also interested in writing, comedy, political affairs, satire, etc. I believe I would need a translator, but if I were to meet Zelenskyy at all, I would FIND a translator. There’s got to be a Yellow Pages in this house somewhere, damn.

The other thing I learned this week that I’m going to have to tease Jonna about the next time I see her is that I’ve already found a typo. She called it “Silver Springs.” I kidded her that one day I’d write something as good as hers and she said, “it’s good you’re still workin’ on that.” Every time I hear her say it in my head, I fall over laughing. It was the right way to tease a writer…. Because I like talking to subject matter experts. It means a lot to me that we can joke about craft, and more importantly, I know that Jonna has lived in my little town.

The funniest gag in the first episode of “SOTP” for me was the newly elected president saying he needed to stop by the mall for a CD for his niece on the way to work because it’s her birthday. His staff offers to do it for him so he can get to work. He agrees and the scene ends.

Later, the secret service show up with the band, because as they explained, they could not find the CD.

And on that note, it’s time to go and make coffee…….. Because I just heard the pipes.

Gratitude Journaling

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I just caught a dog rifling through my trash can, so I am not feeling particularly good about myself right now. I didn’t know that the dog was smart enough to open the trash can himself. I shouldn’t have doubted it, and I can’t get him to clean up the trash, either. So, I cleaned it up…. by myself…. again.

I’m not bagging on David, my housemate. I am bagging on Jack, who is a useless housekeeper. My coworker needs a visit with HR for a performance improvement plan. I don’t know how to keep a dog out of the trash except getting a different trash can or keeping the door closed all the time. I’d rather just train the dog, but again, Jack is very smart. You have to get right up in his face before he will even begin to think you have half a brain. So, we’ve been working on “sit,” “heel,” and “bring Mama a Diet Coke.” That last one was a joke that Heather Armstrong (Dooce) wrote about her dog, Chuck, the former Congressman.

I’m trying to keep Heather’s name alive because she’s a part of the zeitgeist, but no one has influenced the direction of this web site, because Supergrover and I both loved her once upon a time. It was the same for me- I fell out with reading her when she got on the influencer bandwagon, because like my beautiful girl I thought it lost something when Dooce stopped getting so real. There was no more Dooce (a typo she used to make while typing Dude), no more Asian Database Administrator (probably good she took that one out), no more dry humping and Sprite.

Sometimes I feel like Dooce is gone and I got the best of the best and you just got me. I keep trying, though. I’ve just realized that what I thought was Texas old guy is actually Utah blogger, apparently, and I know her writing well enough that she would be pleased by this. Unfortunately, I never got to meet her. We just ran in the same circles. If I had an hour with her, I’d ask her about blowback.

I’ll ask her about the friends she lost, and the friends who came to take their places. It’s something for which I’ll always be grateful, and I’m glad she came up in my mind while I was trying to say “I’m not in a very good mood, so I need to find things for which to be thankful.” I count blessings, every single one. It keeps me from thinking that I am failing all the time, because I recognize when I have a win.

I continue to be thankful for my house, and even Jack. He continues to be “my dog,” and he’s as lovable as every dog ever. If he’s ever missing, I know he’s in my bed as far under the covers as he can go. He’s shaved almost to the skin right now; when the wind is blowing in from the windows he shivers. It’s how I like it, because it’ll be 55F outside, but I’ve got a sheet, a blanket, and two comforters on top. I think I’ll be okay.

At the same time, when I take sleeping pills my body temperature goes way up, and having the windows open keeps me from sweating because of them. There have been a few days, though, where I woke up and thought I lost three pounds because I’d shake the blankets off, it would be too cold, then I’d pull them all back…. All night. It was glorious, let me tell you.

I’m grateful for a comfortable place to sleep, and a room with so many new possibilities. Neither my lamp nor my shelf with a light came with light bulbs, so I ordered some retro LEDs. They look like they’re from the early 1900s. I have a floor lamp without a shade, which is why I thought it would be nice with the bulb exposed to go decorative. I am hoping that I will have enough light, because each bulb is 60w. I wanted higher than that, but I couldn’t find any yellow bulbs that came in 75w or 100. I do not like the bulbs where they take all the yellow out and it leaves a slightly blue glow on everything. I do use 100w white bulbs in my bathroom because I want to get dressed in the most unflattering light possible. That way, when I get myself fixed up, I will look better when I leave the house. It’s good to have goals, anyway. 😉

I’m grateful I have a bathtub again. Hayat replaced our bathtub with a stand up shower long ago, so it’s nice to be able to sit and relax when I want. I liked the stand-up shower, too. I’m not knocking it. I just had trouble shaving because I am terrible at balance. It’s not that one was bad, it’s just that with a bathtub I can also sit in lavender and eucalyptus salts.

I’m grateful to still have a garden. David is the gardener, I’m just the enjoyer. I’m going to have to put some lavender out for me, because I’ve talked many times about talking to the bees. It’s real. I don’t mean that they can hear me, necessarily, but that it does make you feel better to talk to them.

I’m grateful for DC. There are limitless possibilities for beauty here. There’s kayaking, biking, hiking, sailing- basically everything I could do in Portland is also right here. The two cities mirror each other in lots of ways when it comes to layout. That’s because people in DC do not think of Arlington as the same city, but if you look at it from the sky, it looks the same as Portland being divided by the river north to south and Burnside east to west. We are a bridge city, and I can’t wait for Bryn to see it from the air. The only real difference is that when you land at National, there’s not a long airstrip parallel to the river. If the pilots at National can’t stop in time, they’ll fall into the Potomac.

Seem to remember something about that in the news when I was a child.

Zac says he has never met a person that loves this area as much as I do. Zac has never left and come back for any real length of time. I wonder how it would look different to him if he’d lived here in his early 20’s and then traveled all over. I missed the Potomac because the Willamette is always cold. Always. I cannot remember a 4th of July in which I was not absolutely freezing my ass off. I once drove with a housemate up to Mt. Hood for lunch (we weren’t skiing that day) and it started as we were driving home. It was June 27th. DC is the beauty of a city with a river running through it that is also not 54F and raining 280 days a year. I love Portland a whole lot, and I would move back if I had to do so. It’s just not my first choice for a number of reasons, and the weather is at the top.

The only pro here would be getting to live in the same city as my best friend, because the position has been filled- end of story. That being said, occasional video calls and visits are fine. I do not have a need for Bryn to move here or me to move there. If so, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. I just can’t think of a good reason all our time needs to be in person.

There are moments, of course. You don’t move to your partner’s or your best friend’s city because something is happening. You move there to be available if it does. That’s because even now when something is going on with Bryn, I can’t help but want to jump on a plane. Therefore, I’m not sure I’ve ever been more surprised than when she said she was jumping on a plane to get to me. It’s getting so exciting thinking about her visit, and it’s already the 25th. So, not many more sleeps. I’m grateful.

I’m grateful that both Bryn and Dave want to see SPY so it doesn’t feel like I’m strong-arming them into going there on my account. I live here. I can go any time I want (and do). We haven’t decided what we’re going to do all days, and I know they’ll probably also want time to themselves. We just need to talk about dates so that I can send Zac an invitation. I live and die by Google Calendar.

Zac’s acceptance is not mandatory, I just want him to know he’s included in the fun and he’s said that he does want to meet Bryn. So, now Zac will have met one friend I met in high school and one I met my freshman year of college. I’m glad I can bridge those gaps in time, and it makes me happy that Zac is going to learn just so many “Borum-isms.”

I am grateful for “Borum-isms.” It’s a specific cadence, and I will pick it up instantly because it’s not based on accent but rhythm. Bryn’s dad said something so incredibly profound that I’ve remembered it for over 20 years…. “the hardest part of teaching is remembering what it was like not to know.”

Bryn also reminds me of Arya Stark, and I don’t have to squint. But by that I mean she is take charge alpha dog all the time, which means that she is strong and firm, but also the most loving person in the room because the alpha’s job is to manage the whole pack by seeing their needs and helping them……. serving, not owning……. as opposed to whatever the fucktard morons think it is this week.

In some ways, I’m grateful for guys like that because it reminds me of Roy Wood, Jr. who said that he appreciated businesses with the confederate flag outside because then at least you had a tip it wasn’t going to go well for you. If someone is advertising on the internet that they want a “tradwife,” they probably mean that they want someone who will take all their bullying all the time and call it Biblical. Therefore, there’s no confederate flag, but there’s a big waving red one.

I’m grateful for the ability to see red flags and work on them. I see them in myself by rereading my work. Throwing words on a page and seeing what they look like once they’re outside you gives you enough separation to say “ok, that’s good…. but that’s bad.” Not the writing, the way I behaved.

I am working to find peace within myself, so don’t think I don’t notice when I’m angry and figure out a way to resolve it in myself. I think I have. My tone is completely different than it was a year ago. A lot of it has to do with Supergrover finally telling me what she really wanted. She wants peace and rest, I assume for both of us. Maybe one day our paths will cross again, but I doubt it. I require something she does not have, which created the initial attraction to each other in terms of energy. This is because she has something I don’t, which is pragmatism and logic. In some ways, our personalities are exactly alike. In others, they are diametrically opposed.

But leaning in through all of that made me who I am today, and I’m more confident in myself as a result, and grateful I ever got to meet her at all. I am so angry that what she chooses to highlight in our relationship is all the negativity and not our incredible potential for joy. Maybe she already has these things with everyone else but me, and it’s because I’m a shitty friend that I don’t have these things with her and I’m whistling Dixie because no one else ever has a problem……. I would tell her the same thing I told her when she said she was giving up Diet Coke. “Yeah. Uh huh. Keep talkin,’ sweetheart.” No, wait. It wasn’t about Diet Coke. That was another day. And now I’m laughing my ass off, but that joke is above your pay grade.

I think the thing that makes her spit nails is that I’m right. What I realized through my mistakes is that I didn’t have to sit in them just because I’d made a long time making them. That my history with her meant a lot, but not at the expense of my own health and happiness. It’s not because I wouldn’t have done it. It’s because I expected her to pull her weight. I would have done anything for her, but I realized that she didn’t feel that way about me, and it was stupid to think that, in retrospect. I did not feel that way every single day. I recognized her hurt and talked about what happened often, but she never took the bait and opened up to me so that I could better understand her. I thought, “I am going to end up giving her absolutely everything I have and she’s not going to notice in the slightest.” I’d listened to the whispers and the screams long enough.

I’ve said this before, but I did not get angry that she was also angry. I was furious because she refused to tell me anything that gave me any headway. All I could do was talk about myself when it was the last thing I wanted to talk about. I also didn’t always want to talk about her, as if I was mining her for information. I wanted an easy give and take, the strength and comfort of someone I’d known for a very long time.

There was every reason to stay except having a feeling of safety and security when we talked, because it was missing for a very long time. Any attempt to lighten the load was wrong, so I didn’t get tired of her. I got tired of how I felt about myself. She says I’m “a lot.” She has never really grasped that she’s a lot. That for everything she’d like to change about me, there’s something I’d like to change about her. What I cannot get her to see is “this is me. Take it or leave it.” And that’s what we’ve both been trying to say to each other for years, mostly at the top of our metaphorical lungs. I have found that it is much more fun to fly with a dragon than to be touched by its fire.

I’ve thought for many years that if I did ever see her face to face, that I would go mute. That she’s the only person I know where that would happen. It’s not that I am not interested in talking, it’s that I would be completely overwhelmed before the conversation began. But I know us. We both know how to make each other laugh. After a few minutes, it wouldn’t be weird. One of us would say something to break the tension, and the spell would be broken. This person that we’ve each built up in our heads will be gone, and it will seem like we’ve never met.

Here is something I also know. I will never know how much of my e-mails she’s taken in until I hear her talking around other people, because I know what I’ve written. I would know when she was quoting me and when she wasn’t, and I would never say a thing. It wouldn’t mean as much to her as it would to me.

I do know that if we were at the same party, one of two things would happen. The first is that I’d be telling a story and get a detail wrong, and from across the room I’d hear, “THAT IS NOT WHAT HAPPENED. This is how it happened…..” The second would be her seeing someone else mistreating me because despite how she feels about me at any given moment I know she’d eat off their legs.

What I mean about getting a detail wrong is that all of the sudden she becomes very, very familiar with absolutely everything I’ve ever said when she is irritated. When she’s irritated, she quotes me back to me. How much she’s irked is inversely proportional to my joy at watching her quote me, because the more angry she is, the more likely she is to do it. I don’t do anything to irk her on purpose, I’m just saying that after a fight, when I feel calmer I go back and reread everything. I notice style, structure, all of it. Even when I’m devastated, I still find beauty in hearing from her at all because I rip her off mercilessly. Without my e-mail history, I am so much dumber, I promise you. I hope that in some ways she feels the same, because my dexterity helped her when her own words failed her. It’s something I hope she knows, really- that wherever she is in the world, my heart is with her. That’s because everywhere I go, her heart is with me.

So, even if she was trying to avoid me at a party, she’d never make it. We don’t have any mutual friends so far, and I’m not interested in making them…. mostly to protect the innocent.

I also know that no matter what, as long as I don’t start going with the crowd, she’ll still be in my audience. I know that when she told me that Dooce sucked now and she wasn’t going to read anymore and I told her it was her job to tell me when I should retire because she could just re-send that e-mail.

Come to think of it, that’s what would happen at a party. She’d hear me use a joke or two I’ve told in front of her and then we’d be picking up the end of each other’s sentences because we’ve both heard them before.

We could also have a lot of inside jokes that other people wouldn’t get, but we’d be falling out. For instance, me being the president of Overthinker’s Anonymous not because I am smarter, but because president is a public-facing office.

I think part of me hoped she would join Lanagan Media Group, because she would be great at both writing and podcasting if she had the bandwidth. She told me that she was always looking for what to do in her next career, and I think part of me hoped she would say “writer,” but I didn’t push. I got her stuff to help her in her own direction. She’s talked about writing before, but in a faraway sort of way. The bits of her story I’ve gotten to write because our lives overlapped are unique and beautiful. I know she thought it was unique. One out of two ain’t bad.

I feel like the way autism logic works, people think you’re much more negative than you mean to be because neurotypical brains are used to hearing things in a certain way. There are patterns to neurotypical speech that contain social cues. Autistic people can imitate them, but they cannot understand them. However, not being able to pick up social cues is only one of the criteria for autism. You do not have to have every single one to “prove” you’re autistic. For me, it’s a mixed bag. I do not recognize social cues in a person based on what they are thinking, but from the millions of faces I’ve seen before that looked exactly like that when X…… or when my parents described people’s emotions to me without meaning to…… I started understanding speech very, very early. Therefore, I have overheard things and ruminated on them for years before I understood them. But it’s because I’ve ruminated that I have accurate heuristics for the most part.

It’s easier to social mask when you’re hearing phone calls regarding pastoral care, because if you’re the pastor’s kid, you’re learning how to talk to people while they’re upset…… and mostly at each other. For instance, people who need marriage counseling, etc. But of course there’s a lot of people angry with you, too. Mostly over the things you’ve said.

Being a creative is being a creative. Preaching and writing are two separate skills, but they are two ways of expressing the same ideas. With me, it’s readers who don’t come back. For pastors, it’s church members who inexplicably disappear. Therefore, I am used to an ebb and flow in size and don’t get wigged about stats. I check them, but I don’t focus on them. The only stat I really like is how many flags I got that day. I like how far my site goes. This week, the leaderboard has been Africa- hello to South Africa and Ghana.

OH! South Africa!

Speaking of which, I started watching this YouTube channel called “Flipping Johannesburg,” and it’s incredible. It’s tempting to move to South Africa in some ways because land and resources are so cheap. I could build my own house or purchase one in disrepair so that I could have more land for cheap and more room to overhaul. The last house I watched on “FJ” was 800,00R, which is about $40,000. It was a U-shape with everything from a garage to staff quarters to a huge pool in the middle. I am certain that it took a lot of work to get it where it is today, and also a lot more Rand. Because of this, I am grateful that when I cannot go to South Africa, Flipping Johannesburg brings it to me.

And finally, I am grateful for Zac. He and Oliver, who is a dog, have made me feel more at home. It’s so much fun to have two hiking buddies. It’s nice to have someone to hold onto when I walk. It’s exciting to see him when his car (Antimony) comes over the hill to the Kiss and Ride. Yes, that’s really what they call the place where you pick up and drop off.

If he gets there first, he’ll park. If I get there first, he barely has to slow down and I’m on his way home, anyway. It makes me feel good that he’s relatively close to the Metro so it’s not a big imposition to drive me around. He also knows that all he has to do is say “I’m busy” and I’ll Uber. He does it just to be sweet to me and I appreciate little things. Like, how it is problem to worry how I’ll get around? It was Sam’s whole deal, too, except that Zac (for some disastrous reason) thinks that I am a fully functioning adult and doesn’t have an issue with saying “God, I’m slammed. Meet me at my house.” Therefore, Sam never got to see that I’m a perfectly capable adult. She drove me around and sulked about it because she offered and then regretted it. So, of course the easy thing to do would be to stop offering to drive me around so that I don’t have the choice to say yes or no. Because I can feel energy very well and if you resent that you have to come get me, I’ll know it. I feel it like a scar on my skin.

I would only need a car if I moved from the DMV metro area and out into Virginia or to the eastern shore. With a combination of bus, train, and/or Uber I can get anywhere. I just need a little bit more notice. This is great because if you call me and say you want to do something short notice, I probably won’t want to do it, anyway. I am bad at transitions and like to have my calendar planned out in advance.

Therefore, I am limited to staying in the city because I don’t want to lose excellent transit without a car payment and insurance. A car is just another place for me to let stuff accumulate. I’m not sure I used my car for much more than a high speed crap wagon.

“High Speed Crap Wagon” is my new band name.

I’m grateful.