In my defense (aka excuses, excuses), we had a busy week and weekend: Wednesday was getting M's hair done in honor of her birthday (omg, I love it when I'm not the one with the comb making her scream), Thursday was our nuclear family celebration at Dave & Buster's, Trick or Treating Friday, and then M had 3 little girlfriends over for a small birthday party yesterday. We're done with big production birthday parties for awhile. I'm all about small, laid back things at this point; my overflowing brain and blood pressure cannot handle Involved. For example, the party theme yesterday was Frozen, and I googled some Not Involved games with a Frozen theme we could play at her party. One was Toss Snowballs (or balled up white socks) into a Bucket. The other was Stick the Carrot Nose on Olaf. Except I forgot to get the bucket. And the white socks. And I never made a white posterboard Olaf. Or orange carrot noses. Because my brain had too much information in it on the account of I had a 2nd grade fire to put out on Friday afternoon and after that I had to emotionally decompress most of Friday evening before trick or treats, and when this happens I temporarily completely forget about my own child. This is my biggest complaint about public school teaching right now: Dear Parents...please raise your own children so we can focus on ours. Some of us do have our own children to raise, not just yours. Thanks, Mommy/Teachers Everywhere.
At any rate, it was fine. Turns out little kids don't give a rat's ass about games...they just want to play. Plus, they came up with their own game--yesterday's invention was a Dance Off competition. A very uncoordinated, LOUD dance off. And someone got her feelings hurt. And M started crying because she couldn't be first. And someone else ran off because SHE wanted to be first. Girls are exhausting. And loud. Did you know this? Girls are loud and exhausting. And they have too many emotions. And I can say that, because I am a girl. (Who is not loud, but CAN be emotionally exhausting.)
Speaking of socializing: Social Media thoughts...I've downloaded HootSuite. I hear it's THE way to go, in terms of managing your social media accounts and your time. I'm still teaching myself the HootSuite ins and outs, though, and this is a process.
(Related Side Story: When I was 13, my dad signed me up for a summer school computer class. This was back in 1985, when computers were the size of a table and you told them what to do in "string" format. I think about typing in these formulaic string codes, telling a computer the size of a table what to do. And then I think about how I bitterly cussed at HootSuite yesterday and got all annoyed with the process. When we were sitting at these gigantic machines typing string code, did we even KNOW we'd walk around with phones in our purses/pockets with more data in their microscopic computer chips than the entirety of all human knowledge since the dawn of time. I mean, you can stream a movie from the middle of the Sahara Desert if you can find a GPS cell tower connection. On Thursday, at Dave & Buster's, M and I paid 12 points off her swipe card to sit in a machine that made us feel like we were actually IN an animated movie. I can get on Skype and talk to someone on the other side of the world and a computer will translate the whole thing and beam it up to the alien nation of Alpha Centauri II for the love of all.
Still. Goddammit, HootSuite! Are you for real!? Why the hell can I not link my public writer Facebook page to you?! And damn you, I DO have a Google+ account under that email address what are you effing talking about, HootSuite?! expletive expletive expletive this is hard expletive.)
What I'm saying is: Jesus Christ. We need to manage our social media? I can't even manage my offline social life--make an app for THAT, Apple. ......Bet they have one, and I'm certain I'd swear bitterly at it, too.
Here is where Social Media does come in handy: yesterday I saw on Twitter where Jason Isaacs (watch DIG on USA starting March 2015!) tweeted to someone about how he uses YouTube hypnotherapy sessions to sleep. I read this and thought: what?! there are hypnotherapists on YouTube?! So I went over there and did some research. Sure as shit and Donald Trump is an egomaniac, there are! Y'all! There ARE hypnotherapists hypnotizing people about all kinds of things. On YouTube! Technology: it frustrates and amazes the brain.
Friends! The possibilities are endless! I'm going to try it on my class this week and see if I can make them be quiet. And then I'm going to try it to see if I can lose weight, actually want to run a 5K, get to sleep faster, be less stressed and more organized. And then I'm going to try to it to see if I can write more productively and win NaNoWriMo for the first time ever, and have one whole novel done. This is...this is just amazing. I'm just so happy I was exposed to this concept. I don't know if Jason Isaacs will ever know how drastically he just altered my life, but hopefully one day I'll run into him somewhere and can high five him for this knowledge share. He's proclaimed publicly he thinks social media is weird (so do I) and doesn't really get it (me neither) but apparently is doing it because it's what you're supposed to do if you're in the storytelling business these days (he's in my tribe!). Yet look at all the good he is doing on it, and he doesn't even know! He doesn't even know. Which is why he wins Best Human on Social Media for November.
(Related Side Story: Speaking of sleep hypnotherapy, I did try one of Jason's hypnotherapy YouTube videos and it does work. Which is why I really want to get on Twitter and leave Jason Isaacs and Jessica Chastain a whole series of tweets letting them know I dreamt about them both last night, thanks in part to a British lady's calming, hypnotic voice. I can see why Jason Isaacs wormed his way into my subconscious since I fell asleep on account of a video link he social media-shared, but I have no idea why or how Jessica Chastain got in there. At any rate, the plot of the dream was: Jason, Jessica, and I went to a theater. But not together--we went separately.
Jessica and I were sitting next to each other, and we were both behind Jason. When the play [or awards ceremony or movie or whatever we were doing] was finished, Jessica and I had a nice conversation and then I asked her to sign my file folder. My empty, letter-size, manila file folder. Because you'd totally bring that to a fancy theater with you. And I remember, in my dream, she asked me if I wanted a selfie with her, but I said no because I thought her hair looked more beautiful than mine. But then she was so interesting and friendly so it was really important she sign my file folder, and she did. She signed: "Love, Jessica Chastain." That was it.
I really wanted Jason Isaacs to sign my file folder, too, but I decided to just leave Jason Isaacs alone, because he seemed nice but I didn't want to bother him in case he was in a hurry. But then he stayed and talked to the person next to him and so I thought: why not. Maybe I'll ask him for a selfie. Maybe because my hair would look okay next to his? Brains are weird. So I did ask, and he was very kind and sweet and we took a selfie together. We actually took two, because he said the first selfie wasn't awesome enough to share on Facebook. And because he was concerned about making sure I had an awesome picture of me to share on social media, it made me brave. So I asked him to sign my file folder. And he did. And he wrote a 2 paragraph essay right next to Jessica's "Love, Jessica Chastain." On my file folder. And every time he wrote the letter "i" he made a heart on top instead of a dot.
However, I decided not to leave Jason Isaacs and Jessica Chastain a series of tweets about this that might show up in their Twitter @Mention feeds, because I didn't want to look crazy. You know how sometimes you'll have a dream about someone you know, and you'll tell them your dream, and they'll look at you like you're crazy and go: Um, Okay. And then that's it? You had this WHOLE involved dream about them, and their reaction is just: Whatever.
?! What ?! No! If I dream about you, it's a compliment. Listen, I have a lot in my life going on, and a lot of other people my weird brain could be sticking into my dream pathways. If my brain pulls you out, it's a compliment. I always take it as a compliment when someone dreams about me. But I think other people don't, and when I tell them about the dream they were in I'm worried I'm creeping them out and they're thinking: Hey, tell your spooky brain to stop adding me to its dreams.
Personally, I think when you dream about other people it means our souls may have connected interstellarly. But take that with a grain of salt, because I'm a double Pisces with a moon in Cancer and that's how we navigate this planet. Not everybody navigates it like this. Which is why I'm careful about telling people when they have a starring role in one of my dreams.
.....one time, I dreamt that Bradley Cooper and I went on a date together, and our date was gardening. We picked roses and weeded a garden. And a friend of mine said, "Oh, is THAT what you're calling it these days." And I said, "No. Seriously. We gardened. We weeded and picked roses. We GARDENED." Stop trying to sully up my chaste Bradley Cooper dreams, people. On an interstellar level, Bradley and I totally connected through flowers, and you're just jealous.
So anyway. I think this means that if I am ever anywhere that Jessica or Jason will be, I guess I need to bring an empty file folder with me so they can sign it. Or write a brief essay on it with heart-dotted i's. And if I ever run into Bradley Cooper and he brings up his love of rose gardens, I'll know my dream theory is correct and you atheists can all suck it. Meanwhile, Bradley and I will be bonding at the Botanical Gardens.)
So I'm off now. M's Big Halloween/Birthday Weekend: it's a wrap. And now I get to start my genre-less pirate/beach/ghost novel. A friend suggested I not worry about genre or how it sounds as I write; just write the damn thing and see what the hell happens. She didn't say that last part--I said that...she's very Southern and far too polite to say that. But seriously, she had a good point: just write it and see what happens. This was most astute, and incredibly impressive coming from someone who isn't doing NaNoWriMo. She wins Best Human on My Private Facebook Page for November. (Hi, G!)
In conclusion, I think the clue to getting much of anything creative done is to get some sleep, but also will yourself to stay off Social Media. I'm going to go to YouTube and see if they have a hypnotherapy session for that, too.
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