Brain currently booting in Safe Mode

The hunt ended Saturday night. I survived! I do have some thoughts on GISH that might/might not spur a few of you on to do the thing.

First, the inevitable question of what is GISH? It's part be the weird you want to see in the world, part random acts of kindness, part make good art, part personal challenge. How this breaks down for you depends ON YOU. I won't lie, though; it is fun and creative, yes, but also stressful and overwhelming, too.

I participated in the ultimate GISHWHES last year and the inaugural GISH this year. This year, I knew what to expect, so had a much easier time judging my own capabilities and time constraints. That said, I did overdo it this year and did more than I probably should have done. Whoops. :)

Am I proud of what I did this year? Heck yeah! Did I exceed my expectations and do more than last year? Heck yeah! Will I repeat this crazysauce experience and do it next year? *crickets*

GISH is 8 frenetic days and 7 sleepless nights. You are pushed out of your comfort zone more than once. Hell, you PAY to be pushed out of your comfort zone (there's a nominal fee of $21.08USD to take part). It's part of the creative wacky weirdness to change not just your life, but the lives of others, too. GISH has a pretty big inclusive component and pretty strict zero tolerance policy for harassment and bullies. They don't have Rules and Regulations, but Commandments. And while they might be amusingly written, the intent behind them is pretty damned clear: do the thing as written or risk disqualification.

So, you have 8 days to collaborate with your team or whomever else you can rope into your shenanigans. Or not. A lot of the items can be done alone. You do what you can and don't worry about how much someone else on your team is doing. You can play for fun or play to win. Top prize is a trip with Misha Collins (aka Castiel, aka The Head Sock Monkey) somewhere in the world. This year, the trip is to New Zealand, hence the fee. Can't afford it? There are people who donate the entrance so that more people can play. It's called a GISHScholarship, and I think that's pretty damned nifty.

Now that you have some background on GISH and maybe a few reasons WHY you might want to play, I need to reason out why I am giving serious thought to giving GISH a pass next year.

I pushed myself this year. Really pushed myself. Normally, that's not a bad thing, but I started to have a depressive downswing in the middle of GISH because I was stressed out and starting to feel overwhelmed. So yeah, I overdid it.

About halfway through the hunt, I started passing out on the couch in the middle of the day. Not falling asleep for a cat nap, actual passing out from exhaustion. Creativity is tiring, yo. It's one thing to participate in NaNoWriMo, and another to get GISHed. The former is a month-long race to the 50 000 words, where you stay in your lane. The latter is about a week of sprinting in different directions at the same time. Whilst the creativity is amazing in both cases, one is a hell of a lot more draining because you are giving more of yourself in a lot less time.

I also found my team to be a lot less...supportive this time around. I'm not blaming anyone for fucking up my GISHy experience because it was awesome, but the other members seemed a little distant compared to last year. It might just be a combination of their circumstances and my perceptions of it, so take that with as much salt as you need.

I know it sounds like I'm complaining a bit here, but I'm really not. These are observations of my own experiences. The creativity and the process and the putting yourself out there is both terrifying and exhilarating and silly, and the things that you do and make are weird and wonderful. GISH is not dull, not by any stretch, but I think I've had my fill for a while.

(And for the curious, you can see what I did this year in Part 1 and Part 2.)

The Time Warp is the Goth Macarena. Discuss.

What is it about a shower in the evening (if you've already had one in the morning but really really need one now) that's just feels so decadent?

Thank you to all of those who had said that they would miss my posts and that I actually had something worth reading.

I wasn't boring, but just fucking bored. I felt uninteresting because I have spent the last little while living from tending to the baby to tending to the baby (feeding, diaper changes, cuddles, etc etc etc), going nowhere in particular (running out and picking up milk doesn't count as going somewhere) and doing nothing special. It was really starting to wear me down and I managed to convince myself that I was really a boring person with nothing of importance to say.

But the difference between boring and bored is something can be done about the bored, but the boring is ingrained and only really curable with shock treatment. Lots and lots of shock treatment...

So, I've been trying to find ways to be less bored, mostly so I don't go completely mad and convince myself that I really belong in Botswana living in a hut somewhere.

joncanuck and the ever-lovely the_daily_rant stopped by a couple of nights ago and hung out. It was truly what I needed. So thank you. :)

And the night before that, shock and amazement, Molly stopped by on her way home from school completely out of the blue! So now I'm playing an online Scrabble game against her and losing horribly. But that's what I figured would happen, so I'm just enjoying playing, because there's no point in getting upset. Soon, though, we should have her over for a game of Super Scrabble (twice the tiles, twice the board and quadruple scores!), just to reconnect.

I finally got around to doing some writing again last night. I hadn't looked at my latest novel since February! and it was time to pick up the thread again. I'm writing the end of it now, mostly because that's what I've been thinking about and if things are explained to the reader (and also to the writer..:P), then hopefully the other segments will come together a lot easier.

I found a house that was feasible for us to acquire. It's on Strange St, right at Park. It's small, and cute in a butt-ugly way, but financially within reach. You can look for yourselves here or here. I'm probably setting myself up to be crushed, but we really really have to move. And soon.

And I don't have to go back to therapy! Yay! I was finding that it really wasn't doing anything and since my life has gone back to a mostly even-keeled status, we're just wasting each other's time. I can call her, though, if I need to in future. So, I still have that as an option should I need it.

(EDIT: As an aside, for some reason, I prefer sex in the morning. Maybe because it's such an incredible way to kick start the day. But if I can get it in the afternoon, boy howdy! you'd better believe that I'll take it. And when it was offered earlier, how could I say no?)

So that is what you've been missing. It's still not terribly interesting, but since you want to read it, there it is...

I have so much to do and I'm so fucking bored. I hate it when it's like this. I want to get stuff done (write, read, whatever), but I don't want to at the same time. So apathy wins. I'm squandering the time off that I do have and when the inevitable comes and I have to go back to work (*shudder*), I'm going to be very disappointed that I did waste what I had.

So where's my ambition? Don't know, really. I think it's somewhere with not being sleep deprived day in and day out.

If I had the time to waste (like having won the lottery or somesuch), then it wouldn't be so bad. But this is finite. It will end. Long before I'm ready.